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đź”´ PRIVATE EQUITY OWNED
Hot Topic
specialty retail · City of Industry, CA
PE Firm
Sycamore Partners
Year Acquired
2013
“Your favorite mall goth store is owned by a Wall Street buyout firm. The irony burns.”
The PE Playbook
- •Sycamore Partners took Hot Topic private for $600 million in 2013
- •Also owns BoxLunch (spun off from Hot Topic) and Torrid (plus Staples and now Walgreens)
- •One of Sycamore's longer-held investments — over a decade without an exit
- •The counterculture brand that built its identity on anti-corporate rebellion is now a PE portfolio company
Since the Acquisition
- ▸Suffered one of the largest retail data breaches in history in October 2024 — 57 million customer records stolen including names, addresses, and partial credit card data
- â–¸Despite the massive breach, Hot Topic failed to notify affected customers or state attorneys general for months
- â–¸350 million user records from Hot Topic, BoxLunch, and Torrid (all Sycamore-owned) posted for sale on a cybercrime forum
- â–¸Employee reviews cite drastic payroll cuts making it 'extremely difficult' to staff stores, with average pay of roughly $14.40/hour