With the rise of big e-commerce retailers like Amazon, American businesses face a lot of challenges. Bankruptcy might be the fate of companies that succumb to mounting online competition. But filing for bankruptcy doesn’t mean a company has to kill its operations. In fact, it might give some companies a chance to try again. Marketplace host Kai Ryssdal spoke to Eliza Brooke, a freelance writer who wrote for The Goods by Vox about the second-chance dance that many companies experience when filing for bankruptcy. 

Companies do need a reason to be in business, and so that’s kind of the question that they’re asking themselves when they’re thinking about ‘do we want to restructure, do we want to liquidate?’ Are they going into bankruptcy because they have too much debt, but they still have strong sales? Or have all their customers left them?

Click the audio player above to hear the interview.