Things in retail were shaky even before a sledgehammer fell on the world's piggy banks. Bloomingdale's alumnus and longtime retail executive Glen T. Senk, now chief executive of Urban Outfitters, says as much.

"I feel like the industry was ill well before the current economic environment," said Senk, whose $1.8 billion company is based at Philadelphia's Navy Yard.

There had come to be too many stores, too many new shopping centers, and too many Internet venues, and retailers were fighting to hold on to their customers.

"Look at Talbots, Ann Taylor, Chico's, and Liz Claiborne," Senk said. "These brands have been struggling for years. The economy has just exacerbated their struggles."

Even department stores and malls had lost loads of shoppers to big-box retailers and huge, outdoor shopping centers.

And yet, Senk said, few could imagine the scope of the economic crisis that has unfolded.

"I don't think anyone understood the enormity of the situation or the confluence of events," he said.

A local company that had feverishly expanded for years - Charming Shoppes - has undergone intense upheaval over the last year.

As many plus-size and value-oriented customers stopped shopping at its Lane Bryant, Fashion Bug, and Catherine's stores, the $2.4 billion company's profits and stock price were tumbling in 2007-08. Activist investors pointed the finger at management.

Last spring, they won two seats on the board, and longtime chief executive Dorrit Bern was ousted soon after. The company has set about selling some unprofitable divisions that had been acquired under Bern, who had steered the company through exponential sales growth.

In recent months, new brand-division leaders have come on board, and in April the company hired a new chief executive, James P. Fogarty.

Fogarty is a turnaround veteran from Alvarez & Marsal Holdings L.L.C., where for years he was dispatched to consumer companies either in bankruptcy or in distress and helped make them healthy again.

"The company has already done a lot of tough stuff," Fogarty said of Charming Shoppes. He left the New York turnaround firm to run the retailer.

Although the company has ample credit and cash to fund its operations, Fogarty said it had a way to go in restoring profitability.

"We need to sell more per square foot, and we need to continue to work on our operating margins in the business," he said.

The new leaders are making changes to the company's stores, he said, hoping to attract shoppers by offering more focused assortments.

The company has halted many new-store openings and shuttered existing stores. It is also aggressively negotiating rent breaks from mall and shopping center owners.

"We've done a lot of work on rent reductions," Fogarty said, "like every other retailer in America."

In March 2008, the same hedge fund that rattled cages at Charming Shoppes gained a board seat at Destination Maternity, which is headquartered at Fifth and Spring Garden Streets in Philadelphia.

Several months later, in July 2008, the $548 million maternity-apparel retailer announced a restructuring plan that included headquarters layoffs and the renaming of a number of its stores.