Nine West rose from a $900M IPO to a $900M fire sale — Ch.11 in 2018

Nine West was founded in 1983 by Jerome Fisher and Vince Camuto as a women's shoe company. It grew rapidly in the 1980s and 1990s by offering stylish, affordable footwear through department stores and its own retail outlets. The brand became synonymous with working women's shoes and was one of the most recognizable footwear names in America. Nine West went public in the 1990s and was a Wall Street darling.

In 1999, Jones Apparel Group acquired Nine West for $900 million, integrating it into a portfolio of brands that included Easy Spirit, Bandolino, and Evan-Picone. The acquisition was part of a wave of consolidation in the footwear and apparel industry. But the department-store channel on which Nine West depended was already under pressure: consumers were shifting to athleisure, online shopping, and direct-to-consumer brands.

By the 2010s, Nine West was struggling. Its products had lost fashion relevance — the classic 'office shoe' was no longer what women wanted — and its dependence on mall-based department stores meant falling foot traffic translated directly to falling sales. Debt from acquisitions and declining revenue created a capital structure the company could not sustain. Nine West's Canadian distributor, Sherson Group, had already filed for bankruptcy in July 2015.

In April 2018, Nine West filed for Chapter 11 in New York. The company closed all its North American brick-and-mortar stores — both the Nine West retail chain and its outlet locations — and shifted to an online-only, wholesale model. The brand was acquired out of bankruptcy by Authentic Brands Group (ABG), which licenses the Nine West name to retailers. The company that had been the largest women's footwear brand in the US was reduced to a licensing operation.