Where are my pants?

Someone should tell Chico's to get the bananas off the boat before more bad luck hits.

Chico's FAS, the Fort Myers-based women's retailer that ships clothes from manufacturers in China and other Asian countries, can't catch a break on the high seas.

Late last year, just in time for the big holiday selling season, 44 containers of clothing and accessories bound for Chico's shops in the U.S. from Asia got stuck in West Coast ports because of a slowdown by angry dockworkers. As a result, the company altered its shipping routes to friendlier East Coast ports — at a cost of an extra seven to 10 days in transit — and took a sales hit during the holidays.

Now there are more port snafus. Call this one pants-gate.

“We've had the unfortunate and almost unbelievable bad luck to have one of the ships carrying fall merchandise collide with another ship while still in Asia, which caused a delay of about 500,000 units for Chico's and White House,” says Chico's President and CEO David Dyer, in a transcript of the call on SeekingAlpha.com.

“Over half of these units were for a key Chico's pant program,” Dyer adds. “As a result, we postponed this important promotion by two weeks since it obviously didn't make sense to advertise goods that we did not have on hand.”

The delay caused a 4% drop in sales for the most recent quarter, Dyer says.