TOPEKA, Kan. — The financiers who had taken over Payless ShoeSource didn’t have much experience selling low-priced footwear, but they had big ideas about how things ought to be done. One was capitalizing on enthusiasm for the 2018 World Cup in the Latin American countries where the company had hundreds of stores.

When they saw an opportunity to buy a million pairs of World Cup-branded flip-flops, the money men turned shoe sellers overruled the midlevel supply managers at corporate headquarters in Topeka, who had pointed out a couple of problems.

First, the sandals mostly wouldn’t arrive on store shelves until after the World Cup was over.

Second, they were branded with the flags of countries like Mexico and Argentina — countries where Payless didn’t have any stores.

Ultimately, the flip-flops had to be unloaded at steep markdowns, one of many missteps at a company that by early 2019 would liquidate its stores in the United States and enter its second bankruptcy in rapid succession, putting 16,000 people out of work. (It emerged from bankruptcy last month, with its third ownership group in four years.)