LOS ANGELES — Sexy lingerie retailer Frederick's of Hollywood Group Inc. has closed all of its stores and will do business only online.
"We no longer have store locations," the retailer’s website said today, adding its online shop offers the same selection of products.
Frederick's operated 94 stores in 27 states and a catalog business, in addition to its website.
Through the past years, Frederick's of Hollywood has had a hard time differentiating itself, competing with hundreds of retailers that have both a brick-and-mortar and online presence. At one point in the past century, Frederick's of Hollywood was the Victoria's Secret of its time.
Entrepreneur Frederick Mellinger opened a lingerie business in New York in 1946 and the next year moved it to Los Angeles.
Renamed Frederick's of Hollywood, the company soon became famous for its mail-order catalogs featuring pinups and curvy models.
In 1990 Mellinger died and his family sold its interest in the company in 1997 to an investment bank that took the company private. The company declared Chapter 11 in 2000, emerging from bankruptcy in 2003 and later going public in 2006.
In 2013 the company was bought out by a consortium for 25 cents a share that included HGI Funding, a subsidiary of the New York-based Harbinger Group Inc., and some of its own shareholders.
In the past decade, the company diversified its inventory by selling sex toys but long ago it dropped that segment.
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