Tok&Stok undergoes eviction request at Iguatemi de Ribeirão – 06/23/2023 – Market

The furniture retail chain Tok&Stok has 30 days to vacate the space it occupies in Iguatemi Ribeirão Preto, in the interior of São Paulo. The decision of the 10th Civil Court of the municipality complied with a request presented by the shopping consortium on June 8th.

The decision of Judge Isabela de Souza Nunes Fiel, on the 12th, states that the chain of stores has been in default with the rent payment since February and already owes R$ 212.7 thousand. The eviction order was determined because, according to the injunction, the contract has no guarantee in case of late payment.

Iguatemi says it does not talk about commercial relations with its tenants. Tok&Stok does not comment.

To get the store released, Iguatemi will need to pay a deposit equivalent to three months’ rent, in cash (the mechanism is provided for in the Tenancy Law; the money is recovered by the creditor at the end of the process).

In the expense request submitted to the Court, Iguatemi de Ribeirão Preto says that the lease agreement with Tok&Stok was signed in April 2019 and would last for ten years.

This is not the only legal dispute between the mall chain and the furniture and decoration items store. Iguatemi units also went to court to ask for the eviction of the retailer for non-payment of rent in Campinas (SP) and Brasília (DF).

In São Paulo, Judge Guilherme Rocha Oliva, of the 12th Civil Court, considered that it was not possible to anticipate the decision to vacate the property, since the contract is guaranteed by surety. The merits of the request will still be analyzed. The decision is on the 14th of June and Tok&Stok has 15 days to respond.

The existence of a guarantee in the contract was also the reason given by Judge Ana Leticia Martins Santini, from the 23rd Civil Court of Brasília, when denying the request for an injunction to evict Tok&Stok. In a decision dated June 15, she wrote that the chain of stores will be able to “avoid contractual termination and the decree of eviction” with the payment of rents due, with fines and other penalties.

Tok&Stok is also fighting with the Iguatemi group over the amount it pays for rent at the Pátio Higienópolis shopping center, in the neighborhood of the same name in São Paulo. The unit has 1,100 square meters and has been occupied by the store since 1999.

The lease renewal action began in December last year. The chain of furniture and decoration stores asks that the contract expiring on the 14th be renewed for 60 months, until June 14, 2028, and with a minimum rent of BRL 100,000, in addition to maintaining other clauses.

The mall contested the proposal. To the Justice of São Paulo, Pátio Higienópolis stated that the lease of a store with the dimensions of the one occupied by Tok&Stok is approximately R$ 295.5 thousand. In the action, the mall also said that during the most acute period of the pandemic “it was extremely sensitive” and “reduced the limit of all rental expenses arising from the contract.”

In May, Judge Dimitrios Zarvos Varellis, from the 11th Civil Court of São Paulo, determined that an investigation be carried out in the space and now the process awaits a decision.

Earlier this year, Tok&Stok was also the subject of an eviction request for not having paid the rent for a logistics warehouse it locates in Extrema (MG). The owner of the property is Vinci Logística Fundo Imobiliário.

At the end of March, the fund reported that Tok&Stok paid BRL 2.092 million in court to settle the debt. A few days later, the action was closed. Tok&Stok occupies 66,900 square meters of gross area in the Extrema condominium, a municipality that has become a hub for the distribution of goods.

In April, the chain closed units in Fortaleza (CE), Vila Velha (ES), Rio de Janeiro (RJ) and Campinas (SP) during sales weeks with discounts of up to 50%, according to customers at the time.

The difficulties of the chain of stores point to problems in maintaining the company’s cash, in a year of retraction in consumption and a series of storms among retailers – Marisa is undergoing debt restructuring, Americanas, through judicial recovery, Amaro , by extrajudicial recovery.

In 2020, Estok, the business name of Tok&Stok, even prepared to be listed on the Stock Exchange and even requested registration for an initial stock offering (IPO, in its acronym in English), but the plan did not advance.