Parent company Dick Smith Holdings (DSH) was placed into receivership on Tuesday and voluntary administrators were appointed.

The electronics goods chain entered a trading halt on Monday as it faced mounting debts owed to the company’s creditors.

One of the appointed receivers and managers – Ferrier Hodgson partner James Stewart – said many customers would be affected by the changes.

He said outstanding gift vouchers will not be honoured and deposits will not be refunded to customers.

Also, affected customers will become unsecured creditors of DSH.

Mr Stewart said it was too early to identify the primary causes of DSH’s financial position and the reasons for its decline.

It would be business as usual while the receivers looked at the “restructuring and realisation opportunities for the group”, he said.

Chairman Rob Murray said Dick Smith’s go-for-broke discount sale in December had not generated as much cash as management had expected.

“The directors formed the view that any success in obtaining alternative funding would not have been sufficiently timely to support short-term funding requirements and allow the company to order required inventory during the next four to six weeks,” he said in a statement released through the ASX. 

Mr Stewart said Dick Smith was one of the best- known brands associated with consumer electronics in Australia and New Zealand.

“We are immediately calling for expressions of interest for a sale of the business as a going concern,” he said.

Dick Smith Bathurst is one of 393 stores operated by DSH across Australia and New Zealand.

DSH has 3300 employees and annual sales of approximately $1.3 billion.

Dick Smith began in 1968 as a car radio installation business in Sydney. 

Woolworths sold the business to Anchorage Capital Partners in 2012 and it then took DSH public in 2013.