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It's hard to disagree with the landlords.

It's true that there are some failed retailers - such as The Works and Whittard of Chelsea - that have been successfully revived, but this usually only happens where there is new ownership and new ideas post-administration, reinventing the brand and offer to address the shortcomings that brought it down in the first place.

In contrast, the approach here - where a business keeps making itself smaller by shedding loss-making stores, but with no notable change to how it's run or who's running it - is usually doomed to failure. The brand gets damaged, what economies of scale there were are lost, and the business ends up disappearing with a whimper, leaving disgruntled staff and landlords in its wake.

I do actually quite like Blue Inc - its own-label men's clothing is much better quality than you might expect, yet the brand messaging seems to be all about price, price, price. If it's to have one last chance of avoiding doing an Ethel Austin, maybe it's time for Blue Inc to talk less about cheapness and more about value?