EHobbies, parent company of Next Planet Over has reportedly begun the process of shutting down and selling the assets of the company.  We'd been hearing of major league attrition among the company's staff for some time, and now it's apparently reaching the end stage, with only eight employees keeping things running and looking for a buyer.  Both the NPO.com and eHobbies sites were live and taking orders as of Sunday, April 29th.

 

The situation at NPO is not as advanced as the one at Fandom Shop, where the site remains down as it has been since the beginning of April.  Although a deal was announced on April 19th (see 'Fandom Shop Inventory Deal Set') for Ross Rojek's CMI holdings to begin selling the Fandom inventory using the Fandom Shop site, we've been hearing doubts from people close to the situation that the site will be revived.  Among the problems cited are the financial and  operational hurdles to be overcome to complete the deal.  The operational issues alone are daunting -- restarting a large-scale website, bringing product offerings and merchandising up to date, dealing with a massive customer service backlog, operating the company's fulfillment software, and actually running the pick/pack operation in Virginia.  No news yet on Fandom's content operations, which we were told would be sold soon.