support and invest in the brands. Just 16 months later, the British distressed assets investor appointed FTI Consulting to find another buyer. That sale process has now been overtaken by the formal insolvency proceedings. Chief executive Melanie Remai resigned last week after less than 18 months, while chief financial officer Josephine Barbaro has also departed after less than a year. The loss of both senior executives in the lead up to the collapse points to a turnaround that had run out of time despite recent signs of financial improvement. A brand built to last Cue began in Sydney’s Strand Arcade in 1968, when founder Rod Levis channelled the energy of London and Paris into a store filled with red plastic furniture, aluminium floors and loud pop music. What followed was not simply a successful chain, but a label that moved with Australian women, from youthful mod fashion to power dressing, occasion wear and sharply tailored work wardrobes. Its Australian identity became a commercial advantage and a point of pride. Cue grew into the nation’s largest local fashion manufacturer and Myer’s most successful fashion supplier, even as producing garments locally became harder to justify against cheaper imports. By 2016, it had about 230 stores and concessions. In 2023, Levis received the Australian Fashion Laureate Lifetime Achievement Award, 55 years after opening the first Cue store. A family rupture The public celebration concealed a business approaching a painful break. In May 2024, Cue withdrew its backing from Dion Lee after a strategic review, saying it would focus on Cue and Veronika Maine. The designer label entered administration with liabilities of about $35 million, including a $20 million loan from Cue, and was later liquidated. The collapse also exposed a succession dispute. Justin Levis, who had accepted his father’s lifetime achievement award alongside sister Melanie only months earlier, said he was removed from Cue while helping manage Dion Lee. He later launched legal action against parents Rod and Lynette, seeking an interest of up to 50 per cent in the company. The Hilco sale was announced days after that dispute became public, ending more than half a century of family ownership under a cloud rather than through an orderly handover. A turnaround without certainty Hilco inherited a retailer with falling sales, heavy losses and a much smaller footprint. Cue and Veronika Maine operate 51 stores, alongside department store concessions, compared with the group’s much broader network before the pandemic. Those stores are now under administration, with their future dependent on the outcome of receivership and any renewed effort to find a buyer. Yet the numbers had appeared to show the turnaround was gaining traction. Revenue rose from $98 million in the 2024 financial year to $103.2 million in 2025, while the loss narrowed from $14.1 million to $5.1 million. Those improvements were not enough to secure Cue’s future. Hilco’s decision suggests that better sales and narrower losses had not restored sufficient financial stability or convinced a buyer willing to take on the business through the existing sale process. Sale documents had pointed to better product, inventory, supply chain operations and digital marketing, presenting Cue as a platform for growth. The collapse now casts those claims in a different light. A turnaround is only meaningful if it creates a financially viable business, and Cue has instead entered administration a little more than a year after Hilco acquired it. Cue’s enduring value remains obvious in its name, design heritage and Australian manufacturing story. The immediate question now is whether the receivers can convert that heritage into a sale, or whether Cue’s nearly six decade run will end in store closures and liquidation. One of Australian fashion’s proudest survivors has outlasted countless changes in the market but it could not outlast the turmoil in its own business