Delia's was the 90s teen catalog — a $258m peak, and liquidation before Christmas

Delia's was founded in 1993 by two Yale graduates as a mail-order catalogue for teenage girls, and with its gURL.com lifestyle site became a defining brand of 1990s teen fashion. The catalogue generation moved into malls, and sales peaked at $258 million in 2006. After that the decline was steady: the company had not reported an annual profit since 2007, and by 2013 sales had fallen 47 per cent to $137 million — four consecutive years of losses.

In July 2013 hedge-fund manager Whitney Tilson bought 2.2 million shares at $1.05 and backed a turnaround, calling the company's prior state 'a decade of mismanagement.' Former J.Crew executive Tracy Gardner came in as chief executive to rebuild the brand for a new generation of teenagers. The reset failed to reverse the sales, and by late 2014 the company could find neither a buyer nor rescue financing to keep it alive.

On the Friday before the end, Gardner and chief operating officer Brian Lex Austin-Gemas resigned; early in December 2014 Delia's filed Chapter 11 with a plan to liquidate its roughly 90 mall stores — $74 million in assets against $32.2 million in debt. Shareholders were told the company 'does not anticipate any value will remain from the bankruptcy estate.' Tilson's $1.05 shares fell below a cent as the stock dropped more than 85 per cent on the news. The filing was timed deliberately: liquidation sales would clear the inventory through the Christmas rush.