
Design Group Americas Voluntarily Files for Chapter 11 Protection, Initiates Sale Process Aimed at Maximizing Value Through Going Concern Transactions
IG Design Group Americas, Inc. and its domestic subsidiaries (collectively, 'DGA' or the 'Company'), a design, manufacturing, sourcing, and distribution company of branded and private label consumer products, announced today that it has voluntarily filed for chapter 11 relief in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas (the 'Court') to facilitate a court-supervised marketing and sale process pursuant to section 363 of the Bankruptcy Code.
The Company intends to pursue a value maximization strategy by engaging with buyers who are interested in purchasing certain of the Company's business segments as a going concern, while concurrently winding down its domestically manufactured woven ribbon products business and supporting assets.
DGA includes over 50 product categories and brands, some of which were established over a century ago. Like many companies in the consumer products sector, DGA has been navigating a challenging operating landscape for several years, compounded by the loss of a major customer, who entered liquidation and significantly impacted DGA's revenue as well as new trade tariffs imposed in 2025 that increased operational costs, affected pricing strategies, and contributed to reduced customer orders. The Company's decision to pursue an in-court process was driven by liquidity constraints, substantial working capital requirements, and the seasonal nature of significant portions of its business.
'Following DGA's sale to an affiliate of Hilco Capital Group, we have worked diligently with our advisors to evaluate the optimal path forward for the business,' said Sue Buchta, Chief Executive Officer of DGA. 'We enter the court-supervised sale process in dialogue with multiple interested parties for certain of our business segments as a going concern and intend to leverage chapter 11 to maximize the value of our assets. We thank our employees, customers, and partners for their support and will work diligently to minimize any potential impact during the process.'
Additional Information about the Court-Supervised Process
DGA has secured an agreement for approximately $53 million in committed debtor-in-possession ('DIP') financing from an affiliate of Hilco to support its value maximizing strategy throughout its Chapter 11 cases, subject to Court approval.
Additionally, to uphold its commitments to its stakeholders, DGA has filed several customary 'first day' motions. These motions, upon approval by the Court, will provide authorization for the continued payment of employee wages and benefits arising under programs that were in effect as of the petition date, the maintenance of certain customer programs, payments to certain critical vendors for prepetition amounts owed, payment to vendors for amounts owed on post-petition goods and services delivered to the Company, and other relief measures standard in these circumstances.
DGA's non-U.S. affiliates are not part of the chapter 11 cases and will continue to operate while the Company considers the impact of asset sales and the optimal plan to maximize the value of the interests it holds in those subsidiaries.
Additional information is available at https://cases.ra.kroll.com/DGA. Stakeholders with questions may call the Company's claims agent Kroll, toll-free at (877) 307-2977 (U.S. and Canada) or (646) 290-6127 (International), or email at [email protected].
Advisors
Latham & Watkins LLP is serving as legal counsel, Huron Consulting Group LLC is serving as financial advisor and investment banker, and C Street Advisory Group is serving as strategic communications advisor to DGA.
About DGA
Design Group Americas (DGA) is a diverse group of companies operating across multiple regions, categories, seasons, and brands. The company employs over 1,400 people and works with customers in the US and around the world, with offices and operations in the United States, UK, Australia and Asia. DGA products are found in over 100,000 retail outlets internationally, with products reaching millions of consumers of all ages. Design Group Americas creates, designs, and manufactures products that help the world celebrate life's special occasions. They are proud to serve the best retailers around the globe with a complete end-to-end service from design to distribution.
Design Group America's products are found within six core categories:
Gift packaging: DGA is one of the world's largest producer of celebrations products, including gift wrap, gift bags, ribbons & bows
Party: Party-ware, balloons and accessories
Ribbon: Craft, décor, ribbon for branded or floral business
Craft: Craft and creative play products that empower consumers of all ages to express themselves, learn new skills, as well as create individual looks, unique gifts and keepsake items
Stationery: Wide range of stationery products for consumers of all ages, for use in education, commercial, and home settings including both standard and fashion ranges
Homeware/Décor: Seasonal and everyday décor such as florals, holiday signs, tabletop décor and ornaments
View source version on businesswire.com:https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250703734892/en/
CONTACT: Media
[email protected]
KEYWORD: UNITED STATES NORTH AMERICA PENNSYLVANIA
INDUSTRY KEYWORD: RETAIL OTHER RETAIL HOME GOODS MANUFACTURING SPECIALTY OTHER MANUFACTURING OFFICE PRODUCTS
SOURCE: IG Design Group Americas, Inc.
Copyright Business Wire 2025.
PUB: 07/03/2025 07:26 PM/DISC: 07/03/2025 07:26 PM
http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250703734892/en
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
27 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Local photographer raises funds for Texas flood victims
BAY COUNTY, Fla. (WMBB) – A local photography business is using its lens for a greater purpose, raising money for flood victims in Texas. Simple Memories Photography held a raffle offering a free deluxe package photo session. A $250 value as the grand prize. Owner Saydee Wilson says after seeing the destruction and loss across Texas, she felt compelled to help however she could. WATCH: Commercial boat crew caught manta ray near Panama City Beach As a mom, she says the images of children and families impacted her. So she turned her platform into a way to make a difference. 'I don't have extra funds to donate or try to help. And I can't just up and go and leave my family to help as much as I want to. I just couldn't do that. I have one-year-old twins, and they keep me busy. People just started flooding, and I'm so thankful. And I had a couple like extra donations on that,' photographer Saydee Wilson said. Wilson raised $280. Every dollar is going to a vetted relief group, including TEXSAR and the Community Foundation of the Texas Hill Country. While the raffle is over, donations are still being accepted. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
27 minutes ago
- Yahoo
$300 billion, 500 million users, and no time to enjoy it: The sharks are circling OpenAI
The sharks are circling OpenAI. The world's premier AI startup is facing a multi-front attack from Google, Meta, Amazon, and others. Here's everything you need to know about OpenAI CEO Sam Altman's rough summer. It's been a rough few months at OpenAI. At the end of March, the premier AI startup was collecting superlatives. It had just secured another $40 billion in funding, the largest private tech deal ever. That valued the company at $300 billion, which is the highest of any startup on the planet. Its flagship product, ChatGPT, was attracting some 500 million users a week, far more than its closest competitor. All seemed to be going great for OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who, on top of it all, welcomed his first child a month earlier. Then the sharks started circling. In the last several weeks, OpenAI has faced attacks on multiple fronts, mostly from Big Tech behemoths like Meta, Google, Amazon and Microsoft. Smaller companies, too, smelled blood in the water. And rival chatbot makers, like xAI, have released buzzy new models, putting pressure on OpenAI to rush its own update. OpenAI engineers, some of whom told media outlets they've been working 80 hours a week or more, faced burnout. The company gave them all a week off to recover earlier this month. It's lonely at the top, as they say. Here's what the siege of OpenAI looks like. Meta poaches OpenAI staffers It seems a top AI engineer is the new superstar athlete. During a June episode of the "Uncapped with Jack Altman" podcast, Jack's brother Sam said Mark Zuckerberg's Meta tried to poach OpenAI's staffers with "giant signing offers." Altman said Meta offered "$100 million signing bonuses," which he called "crazy." "I've heard that Meta thinks of us as their biggest competitor, and I think it is rational for them to keep trying. Their current AI efforts have not worked as well as they've hoped," Altman said. Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth later told CNBC that Altman "neglected to mention that he's countering those offers." A week later, Meta had poached three top OpenAI researchers. One of them said on X that he was not offered a $100 million signing bonus, calling it "fake news." Retaining top talent is a necessity to compete in the AI race (Meta's Llama has had its own struggles), and some prominent investors, like Reid Hoffman, say paying huge signing bonuses makes sense. OpenAI itself has poached talent from xAI and Tesla in recent weeks, Wired reported, and Altman brushed off Meta's poaching on the sidelines of the Sun Valley conference earlier this month. "We have, obviously, an incredibly talented team, and I think they really love what they are doing. Obviously, some people will go to different places," Altman told reporters. OpenAI's deal with Windsurf falls through OpenAI took another hit this summer when its deal with Windsurf, the AI coding assistant startup, collapsed. OpenAI had agreed to purchase Windsurf for about $3 billion, Bloomberg reported. By June, however, tensions were rising between OpenAI and Microsoft. The tech giant is OpenAI's biggest investor, and it considers Windsurf a direct competitor of Microsoft Copilot. Microsoft's current deal with OpenAI would give it access to Windsurf's intellectual property, which neither OpenAI nor Windsurf wants, a person with knowledge of the talks told BI. On Friday, OpenAI told BI that its deal with Windsurf had fallen through. Instead, Windsurf CEO Varun Mohan and some other Windsurf employees would join Google DeepMind. "We're excited to welcome some top AI coding talent from Windsurf's team to Google DeepMind to advance our work in agentic coding," Google's spokesperson told BI. "We're excited to continue bringing the benefits of Gemini to software developers everywhere." Tensions with Microsoft The failed Windsurf deal was just another in a string of disagreements that have fueled tension between OpenAI and its largest investor. The deal between OpenAI and Microsoft is unsurprisingly complex. At the heart of the dispute is revenue splits and equity, of course, but also the very definition of artificial general intelligence. AGI is broadly considered AI that matches or surpasses human intelligence, but in terms of the deal between OpenAI and Microsoft, AGI is defined as $100 billion in profit. That's a lot of potential revenue. Under the deal, once OpenAI reaches that benchmark, Microsoft loses its share of OpenAI's revenue. Microsoft would understandably like to revise that line. As BI's Charles Rollet wrote earlier this month, the tension is made worse by the fact that Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella isn't as sold on AGI's transformative power as all the people developing it at OpenAI. He also doesn't think it's coming anytime soon. He called AGI "nonsensical benchmark hacking" on a podcast earlier this year. OpenAI delays release of new model Back in simpler times, at the end of March, as Altman was basking in the glow of the world's most valuable startup, he said the newly secured funding would allow OpenAI to "push the frontiers of AI research even further." He then announced that OpenAI was close to rolling out its first open-weight language model with advanced reasoning capabilities since GPT-2 in 2019. On Friday evening, generally a good time to unveil bad news, Altman soberly told the world that OpenAI's new model would be delayed — again. "We need time to run additional safety tests and review high-risk areas," Altman said on X. "We are not yet sure how long it will take us." He then apologized and assured everyone that "we are working super hard!" It marked the second delay in a month, pushing the timeline indefinitely beyond earlier promises of a June launch. Open-weight AI models offer a middle ground between open-source and proprietary systems by sharing only the pre-trained parameters of a neural network but not the actual source code. OpenAI products, unlike some of its competitors, like Meta's Llama and the Chinese AI chatbot, DeepSeek, and despite the company's name, are not open source. The new model's delay comes days after Elon Musk's xAI launched a major update to its chatbot, Grok. While that update came with some significant trouble, forcing xAI to ultimately apologize, the chatbot boasts advancements in vision and voice that are resonating with users. Iyo sues IO In May, OpenAI announced a partnership with io, the design company founded by the famous former Apple design chief Jony Ive. Together, the two stars would develop future AI consumer devices. The deal was valued at about $6.5 billion. The announcement included a photo shoot of the two men that wouldn't have been out of place in a Vogue spread and a highly produced video in which Altman and Ive sit and chat in a wine bar drinking espresso. A month later, OpenAI removed all mentions of the collaboration from its platforms. Another company, iyO, a Google spinoff, had filed a trademark complaint. The names io and iyO were too similar, the suit says, and by all accounts, the new io collaboration would be developing products similar to ones iyO had planned. US District Judge Trina Thompson ruled that iyO's case is strong enough to move to a hearing this fall. She ordered Altman, Ive, and OpenAI not to use the io brand and take down mentions of the name. OpenAI denied the claims and said it was reviewing its legal options. OpenAI announced on July 9 that, despite the lawsuit, it had completed the deal to acquire io and posted a statement on its website. "We're thrilled to share that the io Products, Inc. team has officially merged with OpenAI. Jony Ive and LoveFrom remain independent and have assumed deep design and creative responsibilities across OpenAI," the statement said. Amazon is making a movie about Altman The coming film, "Artificial," produced by Amazon Studios, is all about Altman. And it's not a wholly flattering account, said Matt Belloni, a reporter at Puck who said he has seen a recent draft of the script. Belloni said the drama recounts the period in 2023 when Altman was fired and then rehired as CEO. It also follows OpenAI cofounder Ilya Sutskever, who was also at the center of that drama and who left the company months later. At the heart of the tension over those few days was a disagreement between Altman and some top OpenAI execs over the company's commitment to its mission to develop AGI safely. A string of engineers working on alignment, an AI industry term for ensuring the tech is developed safely, left the company after Altman's reappointment (Microsoft, incidentally, played a key role in helping Altman survive). While many OpenAI employees rallied around Altman, others involved with the company described him to the press at that time as a manipulative leader who had not always been "consistently candid in his communications with the board." Belloni reported that the film has parallels to "The Social Network," the 2010 biographical drama about Facebook and CEO Mark Zuckerberg. That film gained critical acclaim and likely damaged Zuckerberg's public persona. Zuckerberg called "The Social Network" inaccurate and "hurtful." According to Belloni, the version of the script he read depicts Altman as a "master schemer" and a liar. OpenAI won't go down without a fight Despite all the competition, OpenAI is still the leader in the space and is making its own moves that will likely worry rivals. It is planning to launch a new AI-powered web browser, for instance, that could compete with Google Chrome, the current industry leader. The browser will embed ChatGPT and feature an AI agent that can handle tasks like booking reservations and filling out forms. It also secured a $200 million contract to provide AI support to the US military. OpenAI will help develop capabilities to "address critical national security challenges in both warfighting and enterprise domains," the Pentagon said in June. OpenAI earlier partnered with Palmer Luckey's defense tech firm, Anduril. OpenAI is also forming more playful partnerships. Last month, Mattel announced it was working with OpenAI to bring AI to its iconic doll, Barbie. By using OpenAI's technology, Mattel will "bring the magic of AI to age-appropriate play experiences with an emphasis on innovation, privacy, and safety," the California-based toy manufacturer said in a press. Altman, for his part, is at least publicly optimistic. "I have never seen growth in any company, one that I've been involved with or not, like this," Altman said at a TED conference in Vancouver in April. "The growth of ChatGPT — it is really fun. I feel deeply honored. But it is crazy to live through." Read the original article on Business Insider Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
27 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Dow futures sink as Trump keeps pushing tariffs while White House suggests Powell's job could be at risk
After Wall Street previously downplayed risks from President Donald Trump's trade war, investors are starting to take his tariff threats more seriously. U.S. stock futures fell on Sunday as Trump continued his letter-writing blitz, warning the EU and Mexico over the weekend that they face 30% tariffs unless they reach trade deals by Aug. 1. U.S. markets pointed lower on Sunday night as the Trump administration showed no signs of backing off on tariffs or Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell. After Wall Street previously downplayed risks from President Donald Trump's trade war, investors are starting to take his tariff threats more seriously. Trump continued his letter-writing blitz, warning the EU and Mexico on Saturday that they face 30% tariffs unless they reach trade deals by Aug. 1. The EU said Sunday it will delay its retaliatory tariffs that were due to take effect on Monday to give negotiations with the U.S. more breathing room. Trump officials have also claimed Powell has mismanaged the Fed and point to renovations of the central bank's headquarters, with National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett even indicating that Powell's job could be at stake. When asked by ABC News if the renovation could be used as a reason to fire Powell, Hassett said, 'I think that whether the president decides to push down that road or not is going to depend a lot on the answers that we get to the questions that Russ Vought sent to the Fed.' He added that whether Trump has the authority to remove Powell is being explored, 'But certainly, if there's cause, he does.' Deutsche Bank said financial markets are underpricing the risk that he could be ousted. Futures tied to the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 214 points, or 0.48%. S&P 500 futures were down 0.50%, and Nasdaq futures fell 0.55%. The yield on the 10-year Treasury edged down 0.6 basis point to 4.417%. Gold was flat at $3,364 per ounce, while the U.S. dollar was up 0.2% against the euro and down 0.12% against the yen. U.S. oil prices rose 0.58% to $68.85 per barrel, and Brent crude climbed 0.16% to $70.79. Key economic indicators are due in the coming week. The consumer price index will come out on Tuesday and the producer price index is due on Wednesday, offering fresh clues as to how much tariffs are impacting inflation. That comes as tariffs have yet to trigger a spike in prices, though many companies are still drawing down inventories that were stockpiled prior to the duties going into effect. Also on Wednesday, the Federal Reserve's beige book survey of business and economic conditions will be issued, while retail sales will be available on Thursday, and housing starts come out on Friday. Those datasets will also provide insights into how consumers and companies are responding to tariffs. Several Fed policymakers will speak this coming week amid intense pressure from the White House to lower interest rates. Earnings seasons get going in earnest over the coming week, with Wall Street eager to find out how much of the tariff are impacting margins. The top U.S. banks will report second-quarter results, starting with JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and Wells Fargo on Tuesday. In the tech sector, streaming leader Netflix and chip giant TSMC report on Thursday. Among industrials, results from Alcoa, GE Aerospace and 3M are also due. On Thursday, Delta Air Lines beat earnings and revenue forecasts while also reinstating its 2025 profit outlook because demand had stabilized. This story was originally featured on Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data