Once a fixture of the British high street, Mothercare may now be set for an ignominious end.
Shares in the 65-year-old baby and childrenswear brand cratered 70% on Friday after it warned over its future, with its Middle East franchise partner set to shut most of its stores in the region next year.
Mothercare, founded in 1961 and now surviving as a franchise-only business, got the bad news on Thursday, when the partner blamed the ongoing situation across several of its territories.
That is a hefty blow, and the company is not pretending otherwise.
The closures will take a big bite out of its order book for the year to March 2028, hitting revenues, profits and cash flow all at once.
Chairman Clive Whiley called it a heavy blow to the business and its stakeholders, though he insisted the group would keep pushing for talks to restore critical mass and value.
For now, Mothercare reckons it has enough in the tank to trade for a few more months and has kicked off a review of its business model and cost base, warning that its longer-term solvency is "highly uncertain".
The warning caps a miserable run: only last month the group posted a 42% slump in annual revenue to £22.4 million and a £4.3 million pre-tax loss.
It is a distance fallen that few would have predicted when the retailer opened its first shop in Kingston upon Thames in 1961, the creation of the entrepreneur Selim Zilkha and the financier Sir James Goldsmith.
The idea of a single store stocking everything for expectant mothers and young children was a novelty then, and it caught on.
At its peak Mothercare traded from more than 350 outlets in the UK and over 1,000 internationally across some 40 countries, generating north of £500 million in annual sales.
The unravelling was long and very public: profit warnings and store closures piled up after the financial crisis, and a 2018 rescue deal with creditors did little to arrest the slide.
In November 2019 the UK arm was placed into administration, and by the following January all 79 remaining British shops had closed with the loss of around 2,500 jobs, ending 59 years on the high street.
What survived was the brand itself, licensed to franchise partners abroad and listed on London's junior AIM market, with the Middle East its single biggest region.
That reliance now looks precarious.
The latest slump was driven by instability across the Middle East, where the war involving Iran hit trading, and by the end of Mothercare's long-running supply deal with Boots in the UK.
A 2024 joint venture with Reliance Brands, part of India's Reliance Industries, bought the company time in South Asia, but it has not been enough to rebuild the scale management keeps insisting the business needs.
For a name that once seemed a permanent feature of British parenthood, an end that once looked unthinkable is starting to look like a live possibility.
