• Retailer Eddie Bauer is facing potential store closures in the US and Canada.
• The operator of the outdoor apparel chain’s stores is prepping a bankruptcy filing, sources said.
• There are roughly 180 Eddie Bauer stores across North America.

Outdoor apparel chain Eddie Bauer’s nearly 200 stores in the United States and Canada may soon be on the chopping block.

An entity of retail holding company Catalyst Brands, which owns the license rights to operate Eddie Bauer stores across North America, is prepping a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing, sources familiar with the situation told Business Insider.

Eddie Bauer’s roughly 180 stores in the US and Canada would be at risk of closure in the potential Chapter 11 restructuring.

The brand, best known for its durable outdoor apparel, is 106 years old. It was founded in Seattle in 1920 by outdoorsman Eddie Bauer, who later patented the first quilted goose down jacket in the country, dubbed the “Skyliner.”

In addition to outerwear, Eddie Bauer also sells hiking and travel gear, including luggage.

Sources told Business Insider that a Chapter 11 filing for the Catalyst Brands entity would not affect Eddie Bauer’s manufacturing, wholesale, or e-commerce operations, nor its retail business outside the US and Canada. Japan is home to several Eddie Bauer stores.

There are multiple parties interested in a portion of the existing North American store fleet, the sources familiar with the matter said.

In a Chapter 11 scenario, those interested parties could bid on all or part of the store operating business, according to the sources.

Any winning bidder would then acquire the operating business out of bankruptcy and license the rights from Authentic Brands Group — which owns the Eddie Bauer brand and IP worldwide — to operate any remaining Eddie Bauer stores.

Representatives for Authentic Brands Group declined to comment, while Catalyst Brands — the operator also behind JCPenney, Nautica, Brooks Brothers, and others — did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Eddie Bauer has filed for bankruptcy twice before, once in 2003 and again in 2009. In 2021, the brand was acquired by Authentic Brands Group in partnership with SPARC Group, which later became Catalyst Brands.

• “Melania” had an opening weekend box office gross of $7 million.
• It’s the biggest opening for a doc in a decade — but there’s more to consider.
• Amazon MGM Studios paid $40 million to acquire the movie and another $35 million to market it.

To the casual Hollywood observer, “Melania,” Amazon MGM Studios’ documentary on first lady Melania Trump, looks like a hit. But looks can be deceiving.

Brett Ratner‘s all-access glimpse at the first lady in the days leading up to the 2025 inauguration of President Donald Trump took in $7 million at the box office this weekend despite dismal reviews (it currently holds a 10% critics rating on Rotten Tomatoes). The $7 million take is the biggest opening for a non-concert, non-fiction movie in a decade.

But delving deeper into the numbers, it’s clear that “Melania” faces an uphill battle to profitability.

Amazon is $75 million in the hole for ‘Melania’

At first glance, the $7 million opening looks impressive in the context of how other popular docs have fared at the box office.

Questlove’s 2021 Oscar-winning documentary “Summer of Soul,” for example, broke the record for the biggest Sundance buy ever for a doc when it was sold to Searchlight/Hulu for $15 million. And that film only has a lifetime gross of $3.7 million.

However, Amazon bought “Melania” for $40 million ($28 million of which was pocketed by the first lady, according to The Wall Street Journal) and spent an additional $35 million on marketing the film, meaning it’s $75 million in the hole and could face a long road to profitability.

This is an astronomical amount, according to veteran documentary film producers and industry insiders, who told Business Insider that documentaries released by streamers typically get between about $500,000 and $2 million on marketing to spend off-platform (this doesn’t count award-season contenders — those get spends in the tens of millions).

“Spending upwards of $75 million on ‘Melania’ is not about art, it’s about positioning,” Exhibitor Relations box-office analyst Jeff Bock told Business Insider. “It certainly feeds news cycles and gets viral discourse, but ‘Melania’ is really a corporate chess move with a human brand as the piece. This is access and leverage for Amazon, plain and simple.” 

In a statement to Business Insider, an Amazon MGM Studios spokesperson said, “We licensed the film for one reason and one reason only — because we think customers are going to love it.”

‘Melania’ found success using the faith-based model

“Melania” found its box office dollars in the areas of the country that are pro-Trump.

Going into the weekend, industry projections had the doc earning between $3 million and $5 million in a release over 1,700 theaters. But theaters in Texas and Florida ended up overperforming, with cities like Fort Myers, Dallas/Fort Worth, Tampa, Orlando, and Houston all cracking the top ten box-office earners for “Melania,” according to Deadline.

Essentially, Amazon went the path of the faith-based titles of the past: focus on your base to come out, and the rest is gravy.

Take, for example, The Cañon, a four-screen theater in Cañon City, Colorado. “Melania” was the theater’s biggest draw this weekend, according to Luke Parker Bowles, whose Cinema Lab owns The Cañon.

“Exit poll interviews indicated that audience motivation was relatively evenly divided between political alignment and personal curiosity, with a smaller contingent citing a lack of alternative new releases as their primary reason for attendance,” Bowles said.

The movie has a challenging road ahead to profitability

But the film’s future in theaters is a murky one.

“Melania” is up against the Super Bowl this coming weekend; after that, Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi steam up the screen in the latest big-screen adaptation of “Wuthering Heights,” which is certain to attract the female demo. (Comscore PostTrak exit polling showed 72% of the “Melania” audience was over 55, and 72% was female.)

The general consensus in the industry is that Amazon is using the “Melania” theatrical release to generate interest for when it becomes available to stream on Prime Video, though that’s an expensive ploy.

“It’s just outrageous,” one documentary producer told Business Insider about the amount of money Amazon put into “Melania.”

But Amazon’s deep pockets mean it can take gambles others in Hollywood can only dream of.

Only $68 million left to profitability!

• Dr. Thaïs Aliabadi, an OB-GYN, promoted the lifetime risk assessment score to her patients.
• The two-minute online test helped Aliabadi realize her own risk for breast cancer was high.
• After fighting for a preventive double-mastectomy, she was diagnosed with stage 1 breast cancer.

At first glance, it seemed like Dr. Thaïs Aliabadi stopped the faint possibility of breast cancer in its tracks.

At 48, the Los Angeles-based celebrity OB-GYN of clients like the Kardashians and Rihanna went in for a routine mammogram. The doctor spotted and ordered a biopsy of a lesion of atypical cells in her left breast that could become cancerous over time. Aliabadi was told that everything was fine and to come back in six months.

Still, Aliabadi wanted to be cautious. She was a proponent of the lifetime risk assessment score, a two-minute online test that she recommended to her patients (among them, Olivia Munn, who credits the test with helping her get diagnosed with stage 1 breast cancer).

Taking the test herself for the first time, Aliabadi learned that her risk was surprisingly high. According to the test, anyone scoring above 20% is advised to get a breast cancer screening. Aliabadi scored 37.5%.

“I remember I almost fell off my chair,” Aliabadi, now 55, told Business Insider. “I couldn’t believe that someone with no family history of cancer, no genetic mutations, no smoking, no alcohol, healthy, would ever have a lifetime risk of 37.5%.”

Wanting to be safe, Aliabadi sought out a preventive double-mastectomy. But she said she was met with resistance by multiple doctors, who thought she was being overly worried and pushing too aggressively for a complex surgery given her medical history.

“The dismissal was the hardest part for me,” Aliabadi said. After a year of seeking other opinions, she eventually got her surgery. A week later, when the pathology report came back on her breast issue, she learned she had stage 1 breast cancer, proving her instincts were right all along.

Multiple clean bills of health

As Aliabadi sought out her double-mastectomy, she also underwent several more breast cancer screenings.

“My cancer was missed on all imaging,” Aliabadi said. After that first biopsy, she had a benign mammogram, ultrasound, and MRI.

From her work as an OB-GYN, Aliabadi knew that she wasn’t necessarily out of the woods. For one, she had extremely dense breast tissue, which affects 40 to 50% of patients and makes it harder to spot potential tumors in routine mammograms.

Knowing her lifetime risk assessment score, which took into account factors like her breast density measure and prior biopsy history, helped her better understand how proactive she should be.

The assessment is still an estimation. As a result, some doctors have noted that it can sometimes overestimate cancer risk and cause undue anxiety in patients.

Aliabadi said she would rather patients — and herself — “be safe than grieve the loss of someone who could have been saved.”

It took her a year to get her surgery

Aliabadi asked her doctor for a double-mastectomy right after she learned her lifetime risk assessment score. The surgery would reduce her risk of developing breast cancer by almost 100% (it’s rare, but possible, to still develop it in the surrounding tissue).

“I was very worried, I had three little kids at home,” Aliabadi said. “I had a busy practice, a beautiful life, beautiful children, and I didn’t want to risk it.”

The doctor turned her down. So did a few more. As a doctor, she knew they likely saw a double-mastectomy, a serious surgery with a long recovery time and possible side effects like scarring and long-term numbness, as too intensive given Aliabadi’s clear tests and lack of family history.

“That’s when I started noticing the resistance,” she said. “I was told that I was too healthy to get breast cancer, that I was paranoid, that I was too anxious.” Her colleagues also thought she was going a step too far, she told Business Insider.

Over a year later, Aliabadi found a doctor willing to perform the double-mastectomy. Even she advised against it initially.

“I was adamant about it and argued for a long time before she finally agreed,” Aliabadi said.

A shocking discovery

A week after her surgery, Aliabadi’s suspicions about her risk were vindicated: she was diagnosed with “invasive” stage 1 breast cancer from the pathology of her removed breast tissue.

“I was angry that I had to fight for so long to be taken seriously,” Aliabadi said. “I was called crazy, anxious, paranoid, among other things.”

Aliabadi has hope for future cancer screenings. The advancement of AI imaging has shown promising signs of spotting “early cancer details we simply can’t see with the naked eye,” she said, which is predicted to become more available to patients in the future. Increased awareness around breast density has also led to broader coverage of alternative screening options for affected patients.

Still, Aliabadi said her experience changed her. In 2024, she started “She MD,” a medical podcast she co-hosts with influencer Mary Alice Haney on topics surrounding women’s health.

“That’s what has sparked this passion in me,” she said. “If I had to fight this hard, other women really have no chance in this current healthcare system.”

• The industry’s biggest hedge funds posted gains last month.
• Citadel and Schonfeld’s smaller strategies had a strong January, as did Asia-based funds.
• The S&P 500 index hit record highs in January, though it gave back some gains at the end of the month.

The biggest hedge funds in the $5 trillion industry started 2026 in the black, for the most part.

Ken Griffin’s $65 billion Citadel returned 1% in its flagship Wellington fund in January, a person close to the Miami-based firm told Business Insider. Schonfeld also returned 1% in its flagship Partners fund last month, a person close to the firm said. Michael Gelband’s ExodusPoint, which had the best year in its history in 2025, was up 1.8% in January, a person close to the manager said.

Multistrategy funds place bets across a diversified set of strategies to generate strong returns for investors. However, a trend started in 2025 seems to be continuing for some bit names: several firms’ smaller funds outperformed their broader flagship offerings.

Citadel’s Tactical Trading fund, which blends its fundamental stockpicking strategies with its computer-run ones, was up 2% in January, a strong showing given the choppy start to the year quant funds have faced. The firm’s fixed-income-only fund was up 1.3%, the person close to the manager said.

Schonfeld’s Fundamental Equity fund was up 2.4% in January, and LMR’s convertibles-focused fund posted a 2.5% gain last month, people close to the two managers told Business Insider.

The S&P 500 index was up 1.4% last month, hitting all-time highs in the middle of January, before dipping slightly before the month’s end.

A bright spot in the industry was strategies focused on Asian markets. Two Asia-based multistrategy managers, $5 billion Dymon Asia and $3 billion Pinpoint Asset Management, had banner months, returning 5% and 4.8%, respectively.

For Pinpoint, it was the best monthly return since July 2020, a person close to the manager told Business Insider. Dymon Asia’s returns were driven by Asian equities and FX strategies, a senior executive at the firm told Business Insider.

The firms mentioned declined to comment.

(Editor’s note: This story was originally published on February 2 at 12:33 p.m. New figures have been added to the table below as they have been learned.)

• The Bureau of Labor Statistics won’t be publishing the next jobs report as originally scheduled.
• That’s due to the partial government shutdown.
• BLS said it will reschedule the reports once funding resumes.

Economists and job seekers will have to wait longer to know how the job market performed in January.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics said it won’t be able to release scheduled data reports on time because it’s one of the agencies affected by the partial government shutdown. BLS told Business Insider it “will suspend data collection, processing, and dissemination” during the shutdown and release the reports once funding resumes.

BLS was scheduled to publish new data on Tuesday that would indicate how job openings, layoffs, quits, and other job-market indicators fared in December. Metropolitan area employment and unemployment numbers were supposed to be released on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, the highly anticipated monthly jobs report was set to be released on Friday. It would’ve shown how job growth, unemployment, wages, and more looked in January. It was also expected to show revisions to job growth for the past few years. The most recent report showed the US added 584,000 jobs in 2025, the lowest level since 2003 outside recessions.

“Once funding is restored, BLS will resume normal operations and notify the public of any changes to the news release schedule on the BLS release calendar,” the bureau told Business Insider.

The Senate passed a spending package on Friday that would fund several agencies, but it still needs to go through the House, which wasn’t in session over the weekend.

• Lauren Brusie’s grandparents are 87 and 90 years old, and she sees them weekly.
• They’re incredibly involved in her seven children’s lives, even hosting sleepovers at their house.
• She feels so lucky to have such an incredible support system like them in her life.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Lauren Brusie, mom of seven. It has been edited for length and clarity.

Last year, my 87-year-old grandmother, Doris, and 90-year-old grandfather, Jerry, hosted nine of their 14 great-grandchildren for a Christmas sleepover at their house. It’s an annual tradition they started several years ago that involves a night of eating cookies and ice cream, kids playing, boys wrestling, and movie watching, all culminating in Doris and Jerry waking up bright and early the very next day to cook breakfast for everyone, smiling and chipper as ever.

As their 34-year-old granddaughter, I’m not sure how they have the energy they do.

They are the most joyful, generous, busy, and amazing people I know, and they have been a constant presence in my life. They were always there. For all six of us grandchildren, for every game, every school event, they were there. We spent our weekends with them, holidays with them, and summers at their cabin.

They’ve definitely helped shape my cousins and me, and they continue to maintain that loving presence and involvement with all their great-grandchildren, including my seven children.

My grandparents have been there for my kids since day one

Just like I can’t remember a day in my own life without my grandparents in it, neither do my kids. They were waiting outside the door for their first great-grandchild, my daughter, to be born, and they’ve been there for everything, just like they were for me.

We even lived next door to them for a few years, and we spent every day with them. They are two of the people my kids are most comfortable with, and because of that, they are often our first choice for babysitters on a quick errand. The kids just love to be with them.

We have since moved, but they still stop by at least once a week, call the kids, attend their sporting events, and even help me with running them to and from practice or school.

One of their most beloved traditions is taking out each great-grandchild for a birthday lunch/shopping trip to spend one-on-one time with them. They had a rule that the child needed to be 4 years old, but they have bent it twice now for two of my younger children, taking them on their third birthdays because they were just so excited about it.

Both of my grandparents are in great health, and while some of their longevity and energy is probably genetic, I think their overall joy and love of people has kept them going. They always have something going on with others, whether it’s hanging out with their camping club, golf leagues, bowling leagues, card nights, casino trips, or following us kids around. They’ve always just worked hard and enjoyed life.

They are the biggest blessing in our lives

I’m not sure how to put into words what our relationship with my grandparents means. I’m aware of how unique this is, and I’ve never taken a moment with them for granted. I don’t think my kids will understand it all until they’re older, so for now, I just try to take as many pictures as I can so they’ll know how truly blessed and loved they were by these amazing people.

As life has gotten busier and the kids have gotten older, we make it a priority to continue our relationship with my grandparents. For instance, we’ll stop in to visit, and we try to do malt nights on the weekends with them, just like I did as a kid.

I also try to make them my first call if I do need help with the kids. It gives them purpose, and it really does help me too!

I don’t know anyone who has great-grandparents so involved in their family’s lives

When I try to think of anyone who, like my kids, has not just their grandparents, but their great-grandparents so actively involved, it’s not even a close comparison. And it’s not just my kids — Doris and Jerry still travel all over the state to attend events and visit my cousins and their kids, too. I know my cousins feel the exact same way I do about our grandparents: they are the most incredible people we know, and we’re so lucky to have them.

I am not sure I even appreciated how amazing they were when I was a kid. It took me having my own kids to realize that the relationship I had with them wasn’t necessarily normal either. They are truly one of a kind.

There is so much that inspires me about my grandparents, like their joy and how they’ve dealt with all the ups and downs of life. And let’s be honest: I’d love to have their energy too, but I’ll never count on that!

My grandparents are also so humble about their involvement. Doris simply says that the reason they spend so much time with all of us is because they love us, so why wouldn’t they want to be with us?

Both of them attribute their energy and longevity to being “lucky” and hope that all their grandchildren and great-grandchildren will remember that they were good to them and loved them. I’d say mission accomplished!