Esprit Holdings, the Hong Kong-listed fashion retailer struggling to recover from an earnings slump, may close all its stores in North America, if it fails to find a buyer or licence partner for the unprofitable business.

The company, which was founded by Susie and Doug Tompkins in San Francisco in 1968, said it "intends to focus on finding one or more licence partners to maintain and reinvigorate the presence of the Esprit brand."

However it will have to close all stores in North America if no one is interested in taking them over, a spokesman of the company said in an emailed statement on Wednesday.

To view the full article (note: you must be an scmp.com subscriber), visit scmp.com. (From seven days after publication, this article will appear in Archive Search.)