Destination Maternity, which bills itself as the largest designer and retailer of maternity apparel, has had a troubled run in recent years. The CEO left last year, during a quarter when top-line sales fell by more than 7% and shortly after bringing on Berkeley Research Group to help in turnaround efforts and bring finances under control. Since then, the company is already on its second interim CEO.
In their letter, Miller and O’Malley put that “turnaround” in quotation marks, pointing out that it had been in progress for more than three years. “Despite the company’s rhetoric about its supposed plan and its focus on ‘maintain[ing] a stringent profit focused philosophy,’ the company’s financial and operating performance has collapsed,” they wrote. “In fact, the company hasn’t had a profitable year since 2014.”
