The list of brick-and-mortar retailers in financial distress continues to grow. On Monday, Fitch Ratings Inc. warned that a new batch has significant risk of default on their debt obligations over the next 12 months, CNBC reports, including: Sears Holdings Corp. (SHLD), J.Crew Group Inc., Claire's Stores Inc., Vince Holding Corp. (VNCE), Nine West Holdings Inc., 99 Cents Only Stores, True Religion Apparel Inc., Charlotte Russe Holding Inc., Charming Charlie LLC and NYDJ Apparel LLC. Meanwhile, Gymboree Corp. has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, joining the likes of Payless ShoeSource Inc. and rue21 Inc.

"A number of these names have been at the forefront of past restructurings," observed Joshua Friedman, a legal analyst for fixed income research firm Debtwire, in an interview with CNBC. Gymboree, the most recent to declare bankruptcy, plans to close 375 of its 1,300 stores, per CNBC.

In addition to discount retailers and online merchants, Fitch's research note also cites "fast-fashion" apparel and "shifts in consumer spending toward services and experiences" as contributing to the woes of retailers such as those listed above, as quoted by CNBC. For elaboration, Investopedia spoke to Rose Klimovich, who teaches fashion marketing and entrepreneurship at Manhattan College in New York City.

Regarding fast fashion, Klimovich explains that fashion-conscious consumers increasingly gravitate towards retailers that get the latest styles to market the quickest, adding to the woes of the laggards. Meanwhile, a growing segment of the young adult market is spending less on hard goods, and more on experiences and services, such as travel, entertainment and social activities. Meanwhile, the accelerating closure of retail storefronts is creating a downward spiral for malls and their remaining tenants, as consumers have less and less reason to visit increasingly empty shopping centers. (For more, see also: These Mall REITS May Turn Into a Nightmare.)

Privately-held J.Crew Group Inc. is straining under the weight of over $2 billion in debt, a burden increasingly difficult to service given the clothing retailer's 11 consecutive quarters of declining same-store sales, according to the Wall Street Journal. Particularly worrisome is a $567 million slug of debt scheduled to come due in May 2019. The company is scrambling to get the maturity date pushed back to September 2021, while also trying to convince creditors to accept more debt in lieu of interest payments, the Journal says.

Fundamentally, the clothing retailer has a multitude of marketing problems, according to Bloomberg. These include, for example: high prices relative to product quality, a J.Crew Factory website that offers deep discounts on the same merchandise offered on its full-price website, and shipping that takes six to eight business days and costs $5 for orders of under $150.

Meanwhile, J.Crew's maneuver to shift intellectual property into a separate subsidiary, to get it out of the reach of creditors, has sparked lawsuits, and the company is crafting incentives for creditors to drop this litigation, the Journal says. Claire's Stores has made a similar move, and other struggling clothing retailers may be candidates for trying the same, per another Bloomberg report. Much, if not most, of the value of these companies' intellectual property involves their brand names, so this may be a ploy to keep creditors at bay, lest they be stuck with "nameless stores selling anonymous" merchandise, as Bloomberg puts it. On the other hand, as Rose Klimovich of Manhattan College notes, the value of these brand names is rapidly diminishing, and may plummet further in bankruptcy.

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Sears, J. Crew, Claire's Are Bankruptcy Risks (SHLD) | Investopedia - Investopedia