Ssense is entering its next phase. On February 18, Ssense’s founders received approval by the Quebec Superior Court to buy out the Canadian retailer. This approval follows last month’s news that Ssense’s founding family — CEO Rami Atallah and his co-founder brothers, Firas and Bassel — had won their bid to retain ownership of the company when it emerges from bankruptcy protection.
Now, the bankruptcy protection process will continue under the Atallahs. “After months of uncertainty, the closing of the transaction marks an important milestone and affirms our ability to continue building Ssense for the long term,” a spokesperson said in a statement. “Our priority throughout this process has been to sustain operations, protect jobs, and provide stability for our employees, customers, suppliers, and partners. With the transaction complete, we are moving forward with clarity and confidence. We remain committed to our purpose — moving culture forward and providing a platform to amplify the voices shaping it — and we’re grateful to our community for their support during this time.” (Ssense declined to comment further at this stage.)
Community support, though, has wavered over the past year. In August 2025, Ssense filed for bankruptcy protection with Canada’s Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act (CCAA). This came after the retailer laid off over 100 employees, amid struggles after the US enacted high tariffs on Canada. Customers complained online about being hit with additional fees on Ssense orders upon delivery, as well as delayed shipments and customer service difficulties as the year progressed. In September, Ssense won court approval to restructure the business under the founding family. All the while, brands were left in the lurch, with many waiting on hundreds of thousands of unpaid dollars, per August court documents. A group of lenders, which was owed about CA $113 million (USD $82.6 million), tried to block the buyout deal, pushing instead for a liquidation of the company in order to recoup more money.
Now that the retailer has a path forward, questions rise about what the future of the company will look like. Ssense has long been a destination to shop independent brands, operating as a discovery point for consumers keen to invest in smaller, growing fashion businesses not found in the major retailers. To maintain its allure, Ssense will need to keep prioritizing independent brands. “If it doesn’t continue to do so, then it will not be Ssense,” says Gary Wassner, CEO of factor Hilldun Corporation. “It might as well change its name and start from scratch.”
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Keeping these designers on board, though, won’t be easy. Whereas brands are cautiously optimistic about Saks Global’s future largely by virtue of their relationships with and trust in Saks’s new leadership team, Ssense doesn’t have this advantage as it moves forward under its founders. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, Wassner says. “The founding vision of a company is usually its strongest,” he says. Without them, Wassner adds, companies can lose their identities and quickly become generic.
Experts are optimistic that this could provide the opportunity for a much-needed reset. “They got so big and need to recalibrate,” says luxury consultant Robert Burke. Neil Saunders, managing director and retail analyst at Globaldata, agrees. “There is still a big question mark over the purpose of Ssense and how it stands out in the market,” he says. “In its latter years, it became something of a confused jumble of brands that seemed to trade more off discounts and sales than having a distinct point of view.”
To rectify, Burke doesn’t anticipate a complete overhaul, but a refining of strategy. “I don’t see them making a dramatic merchandising change,” he says. “I think they’re going to pull it in and speak to who they know their customer is — and probably be more organic in their growth.”
Still, the Ssense team has their work cut out for them to make this growth attainable. Namely, Ssense needs to rebuild trust among both brands and consumers, as brands reckon with payments unlikely to ever materialize, and consumers remain cautious about tariff impacts when ordering from a Canadian retailer. Can Ssense rebuild better?
Credit and credibility
The founders’ first priority must be to regain brand trust — for without it, the inventory mix that made Ssense so successful to begin with will be a thing of the past. Ssense must secure its relationships with its vendors, Wassner says. “Regain their trust: present a business plan that will allow credit providers to guarantee that the vendor’s deliveries will be paid for,” he says. “Without credit and credibility, Ssense will not be able to merchandise its site with the brands that set it apart from competitors.”
In addition to regaining brand trust, now that the buyout is in the works, Ssense will need to prove to factors that it can pay the bills. Independent brands, wary of further losses, are likely to rely more on companies like Hilldun to ensure they’re paid, Wassner expects — meaning Ssense needs factors to approve its credit. What will this take? “Financials. Projections. A balance sheet.”
Ultimately, smaller brands are likely to still engage, experts say, by virtue of necessity. “Ssense is an entry point for emerging brands to widen their distribution,” Saunders says matter of factly, whereas larger retailers tend to watch brands for longer before onboarding them. That said, if Ssense needs to tighten its curation, there’s the question of whether it will continue to cast such a wide net among emerging brands. Plus, with retailers including Bloomingdale’s and Nordstrom investing more in emerging, independent labels, Ssense isn’t the only mainstream outlet for independent brands.
The customer question
Brand relationships may be Ssense’s biggest obstacle at present, but the retailer also has work to do to ensure consumers are keen to shop. Known for its major ‘Ssense sale’, the e-tailer has long been a favorite among fashion fans looking for new brands and good deals, and remained popular even as the product assortment got, as experts say, more muddled.
But when tariffs hit last year, Ssense became a major topic of conversation on social media, as Canada was hit with higher-than-expected duties, which now sit at 25%. (Friday’s Supreme Court ruling to strike down Trump’s emergency tariffs may walk back some Canadian tariffs, but the future is up in the air.) “There goes my 25% off,” one TikToker posted last year, shocked at the $163 charge to pick up her package. Others reported long-than-usual shipping times. Now, when ordering from Ssense in the US, users are notified that they will pay duties only at checkout, and no further levies upon receipt of the package. But on Reddit, users are still wondering about tariffs and delays, with mixed reports from those who have continued to order from the Canadian retailer.
Even so, Wassner isn’t overly concerned about tariff impact on Ssense’s future business. Because global tariffs have already driven up wholesale prices and hit consumers, they’re now used to higher prices, he says. The shock factor of the initial hit has passed, and tariff fluctuation is, for now, the new normal.
Multi-brand retail upheaval is also, one might argue, the new normal. Saks Global aside, this scramble to get back ahead once more is especially potent among luxury e-tailers. Farfetch’s future under Coupang remains ambiguous. This year, Matches, now owned by Mile founders Joe Wilkinson and Mario Maher (under their newly formed luxury group Hulcan) is staging a comeback. And last year, Mytheresa acquired a struggling Yoox Net-a-Porter (YNAP), forming LuxExperience. It hit profitability this month. Can Ssense steer the same success?
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