About a week and a half ago, I spent two fairly excruciating hours on what had to be the longest, slowest moving line in sample sale history! While waiting, I encountered everyone from quitters to disgruntled shoppers to patient loyalists who had already been waiting for five and a half hours for the liquidation of downtown line Mayle…it all got me wondering — how could a designer with such a fanatic customer base be going out of business? Didn’t help that a couple nights before and four storefronts over, BabyStyle, owner of Cadeau Maternity shuttered all 6 of its doors and its web business-after 10 years of delivering maternity chic-in a liquidation of an expectantista’s lifetime. So, what gives?

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