Jack's Cancellation Shoes

We've walked past Jack's Cancellation Shoes at 161 Havemeyer (between North 2nd and North 3rd streets in Williamsburg) a million times, and always wondered "why Cancellation shoes??"

Well we finally got around to Googling the phrase, and according to the American Marketing Association's Marketing Terms Dictionary, in this context the term cancellation means

A notification to a vendor that a buyer does not wish to accept ordered merchandise. Also, it is merchandise declared surplus by retailers, often sold in broken lots to discount houses or liquidators. (Out-of-style or slightly damaged shoes are frequently sold as "cancellation shoes".)

A glance around Google's results suggests that 'Cancellation Shoe' stores were a mid-20th century phenomenon in the US, and that there's only a couple of stores left using the phrase - including Jack's, and one Dan's Cancellation Shoes in Philadelphia.