NASHUA – The Fashion Bug store in Somerset Plaza on Route 101A is closing as part of a corporate reshuffle, not long after a business sibling, Dressbarn, opened on Daniel Webster Highway.

The Fashion Bug store will close “at the end of December, early January,” said Mindy McComas, assistant store manager at Fashion Bug, which sells casual and business attire for women, plus accessories.

The Fashion Bug chain has been on life support since its parent, Charming Shoppes Inc., was bought this summer by the Ascena Retail Group Inc. for $890 million.

Ascena owns Dressbarn, a store with similar products and customers, and it said after the purchase that the Fashion Bug line was going to be wound down so the company wasn’t competing with itself.

On Oct. 18, a Dressbarn opened in a Market Basket plaza at 261 Daniel Webster Highway in south Nashua.

The employees of Fashion Bug will lose their jobs after the closing. It’s not known how many employees are affected.

The Dressbarn on Daniel Webster Highway is one of seven stores in New Hampshire.

The chain has 30 stores in Massachusetts, including one in Tewksbury.

The Fashion Bug at 375 Amherst St., which is also in a Market Basket plaza, is running a clearance sale, with 50 percent off regular-priced items and 70 percent off clearance items. The stock will be replenished as part of the corporate wind-down.

“Everything that’s in the warehouses are coming into the store,” said McComas.

Fashion Bug’s previous owner, Charming Shoppes, started with a single Philadelphia store in the 1940s.

Fashion Bug was created in the early 1960s and did well for decades, growing to more than 1,000 stores nationwide, but fell on hard times when the recession came.

The previous owners closed 124 Fashion Bug stores in 2010, leaving some 600 Fashion Bug stores in 43 states when Ascena bought them.

Ascena, based in Suffern, N.Y., owns DressBarn and Maurices for women and the Justice chain, which caters to girls ages 7 to 14. Charming Shoppes also had Lane Bryant and Catherines Plus Sizes stores.

Ascena had about 3,800 stores in virtually every state after the purchase, according to news reports.

David Brooks can be reached at 594-6531 or dbrooks@nashua
telegraph.com. Follow Brooks’ blog on Twitter (@GraniteGeek).