Mothers Work (Destination Maternity)

Mothers Work, Inc. was the Philadelphia-area maternity apparel company founded in 1982 by Rebecca Matthias, which renamed itself Destination Maternity Corporation in 2005 and traded on Nasdaq as DEST. It was the world's largest designer and retailer of maternity clothing, operating the Motherhood Maternity, A Pea in the Pod and Destination Maternity nameplates in stores and leased departments across the United States and Canada. Destination Maternity filed for Chapter 11 on October 21, 2019; its stores were liquidated and Marquee Brands acquired its brands and online business, which continue online. A separate profile in this section covers the same company under its Destination Maternity financial name.

Company Profile

The October 2013 summary in the record gives the listed-era scale in full: more than $500 million in annual sales, 1,893 retail locations including 606 stores and 1,287 leased departments, the Oh Baby by Motherhood collection in more than 1,100 Kohl's stores, and franchise relationships in India, the Middle East and South Korea, with 141 international franchised locations. The leased-department model — maternity sections inside department and baby stores — was the company's distinctive national asset.

The 2008 note in the record shows the nameplate consolidation that produced the Destination Maternity identity: Mimi Maternity folded into A Pea in the Pod, single-brand stores renamed A Pea in the Pod and multi-brand stores renamed Destination Maternity. Read with the Destination Maternity profile, which carries the 2019 contraction and filing in detail, this page preserves the earlier Mothers Work half of one company's record.

The range behind the name is maternity apparel and accessories under Motherhood Maternity, A Pea in the Pod and Destination Maternity. Its customers are expectant mothers, in stores, leased departments and online. That combination — what is sold, and to whom — is the simplest way to place Mothers Work (Destination Maternity) in the industry: it explains the company's costs, its competitors and the kind of news that moved its shares when it had them. A change in either half of the combination, a new product category or a new customer, is usually the first sign that the business described in the older summaries is turning into something different.

Scale should be read from the dated summaries with their dates attached. Store counts, sales descriptions and market positions quoted there were the company's own account of itself in that year, and they are the right basis for comparing Mothers Work (Destination Maternity) with the other companies in this section — a component supplier against a retailer, or a catalogue house against a mall chain — as long as each figure is compared with figures from roughly the same period.

For current dealings, the snapshot at the top of this page is the place to start: it gives the company's present status — Stores closed — as Destination Maternity, the company filed for Chapter 11 in October 2019; its brands and online business were acquired by Marquee Brands for about $50 million — and links to the official website, which is where current product ranges, store information and investor or corporate contacts are maintained. Anything in the dated summaries that conflicts with the snapshot should be read as the older position: summaries describe the year they are dated, and the snapshot describes the company as it stands now.

Company summaries of this kind were the working tool of the apparel trade as much as of investors: a buyer, landlord or supplier checking Mothers Work (Destination Maternity) could see its scale, its headquarters and its own description of its business in a few paragraphs. Those dated descriptions are kept with their dates, because a store count from 2013 or a strategy statement from 2019 is evidence about that year, not about today. The current position is the one given in the snapshot: stores closed.