Nau calls it quits

Apparel company Nau has gone out of business.

A statement on the company's Web site home page, headlined "Goodbye for Nau," blames a "highly risk-averse" capital market for the shutdown.

"We simply could not raise the necessary funds to continue to move forward," the statement reads. "We believe this is not so much a reflection of the viability of our business, but the result of an unfortunate confluence of events."

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All five Nau stores will shut down: Bridgeport Village in Portland, and stores in Bellevue, Wash., Chicago, Boulder, Colo., and Los Angeles. The latter store opened just last month. Ninety-five people will lose their jobs.

Though the closure seems sudden, the Portland-based sustainable clothing company has been struggling for a year. Nau executives told the Business Journal last July that they were scaling back expansion plans and tweaking their clothing mix. Nau executives have never released revenue figures.

Nau had built a unique retail business based on sustainable products and operations combined with a charitable giving program that dedicated 5 percent of each sale to charity. Company bylaws prohibited any Nau executive from earning more than 12 times what the lowest-paid U.S. worker earned. The clothing also had no logo.