Most people don’t register a familiar storefront until the day it changes — a closing-down sign taped in the window where the display used to be, in a shop you’ve walked past for years without really looking. That’s happening right now to shoppers of two well-known Australian womenswear brands. Cue and Veronika Maine are closing 26 stores across the country as the chain’s prospective buyers push for a smaller footprint.
26 stores, two names you’d recognize
Cue & Co Pty Ltd, the parent company behind both Cue and Veronika Maine, is closing 26 of its 51 Australian stores starting October 15. That’s roughly half the combined footprint, gone from storefronts within weeks of each other.
In South Australia alone, that includes the Veronika Maine store on Rundle Street and the Cue store at Harbour Town Adelaide. If you’ve shopped either label locally, there’s a real chance one of your regular stops is on that list.
What voluntary administration actually means here
Cue & Co entered voluntary administration in September 2026, with FTI Consulting brought in to manage the process. Voluntary administration isn’t the same as a company shutting down — it’s a formal, court-supervised process where administrators take over to figure out what the business can realistically keep running.
Former owner Hilco Capital called the move “disappointing,” while still describing it as necessary. That phrase is worth sitting with: not a company giving up, but one acknowledging that something had to change before it could keep going at all.
UK-based Hilco had owned Cue & Co before this process began, and administration typically means the current owner steps back while a buyer is found, rather than the business simply closing its doors. For the stores staying open, day-to-day shopping shouldn’t look any different in the meantime.
Why the stores are closing — it isn’t that the sale failed
Here’s the detail easy to get wrong: the sale process for Cue & Co hasn’t collapsed. The business is still trading while a small number of shortlisted bidders work through buying it. These 26 closures exist because those bidders have already identified which stores they’d want to keep — and which ones don’t fit the business they’re trying to buy.
That’s a meaningfully different story than a failed sale forcing a fire-sale shutdown. It’s closer to new owners sketching out a smaller, leaner version of the company before they’ve even signed anything — and the stores outside that sketch are the ones closing now.
The number behind the closures
FTI Consulting has said the real pressure on Cue wasn’t falling sales — it was overhead costs that outpaced the business even while sales were actually rising. That’s an uncomfortable combination: a brand doing better with customers while still losing ground on the balance sheet.
It’s a reminder that a store closing near you doesn’t always mean the brand failed to connect with shoppers. Sometimes the math behind the storefront breaks before the relationship with the customer does.
What’s not changing: Myer and David Jones
If you buy Cue or Veronika Maine pieces through department store concessions rather than standalone stores, there’s a specific reassurance here: FTI has said the current difficulties won’t affect either label’s presence inside Myer or David Jones.
That distinction matters if you’re trying to figure out whether your own shopping habits are about to change. The standalone stores are where the cuts are landing. The department-store racks are, for now, untouched.
It’s a useful thing to know before you assume the worst from a headline about store closures: a brand can be shrinking in one channel and staying exactly where it was in another, at the same time.
What this means if you shop these brands
If one of the 26 closing stores is your regular one, the practical move is simple: check before you drive there, and don’t assume gift cards or returns policies stay exactly the same during a restructuring like this one.
If you’re a Cue or Veronika Maine customer somewhere else in the country, this doesn’t necessarily touch you directly — the brands aren’t disappearing, and a leaner footprint under new ownership is still a footprint.
Either way, a 26-store closure under an active sale process isn’t the same story as a brand going under. It’s a company getting smaller on purpose, with someone already lined up to run what’s left.