Usually a liquidation company comes in. That is their business to help liquidate companies that go out of business. Some, I think buy the whole store inventory and sell it off, some take a percentage of the total liqidation. All I do know is that is cost a lot of money to liquidate a store, put the store back to original condition (ie. take down walls, fix things, etc.), pay severance pay to employees etc. And then you are also losing sales, even if they were not very good, and that means less cash coming into the company