Popular Clothing Chain Suddenly Closes All Illinois, WI Stores

Growing up in the 1980s visiting the mall was something we did regularly and it seems unreal that many of the stores we visited have been gone for a while.

For me, a visit to the Honey Creek Square Mall in Terre Haute, Indiana always included a stop at Orange Julius for a Strawberry Julius, then to Sam Goody's for a couple of albums, before checking out the Hyper Color shirts at Chess King.

READ MORE: Popular National Chain Suddenly Closes Illinois, Wisconsin Stores

While you can still stumble across an Orange Julius location here and there, Sam Goody's is long gone except for 2 random stores, and Chess King has been gone since the mid-1990s.

Clothing Chain That Has Hundreds of Mall Locations is Closing All Their Stores

A trendy, retail clothing store founded in 1976 is throwing in the towel for the final time with the announcement of a bankruptcy that will close every store in Illinois, Wisconsin, and Iowa.

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According to USA Today, Chapter 11 bankruptcy has been filed by teen fashion retailer rue21, and over the next 2 months that store will hold "going out of business" sales before they shut down all 543 locations in the U.S.

How Many Stores Will Be Closing in Illinois, Wisconsin, and Iowa

There are currently 20 rue21 stores in Illinois with the highest concentration of locations in the northern part of the state with 11 in Chicagoland and 2 in Rockford.

Wisconsin has 12 rue21 stores located in malls or outlets in the Dairy State, and in Iowa, there are 8 locations.

Just under 5,000 employees work for rue21 across the country, which has filed for bankruptcy twice before in 2003 and 2017, according to USA Today.