Fingerhut was once a giant in the mail-order catalog business. It differentiated itself from other businesses by having customers build monthly payments, basically the equivalent of today’s “acquire now, pay later.”
In 2002, Fingerhut’s parent company, Federated Department Stores, announced it was closing operations in St. Cloud and cutting nearly 2,700 jobs. That same year, the retailer was bought by Tom Petters, who was later convicted of running one of the nation’s largest and most complex Ponzi schemes.
In 2020, Bluestem filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection but continued operations. No one from the company returned a request for comment.
Carson Hartzog of the Minnesota Star Tribune contributed to this story.
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