Victoria Secret
Victoria's Secret is an American lingerie, clothing, and beauty retailer known for their high visibility marketing and branding that began with a popular catalog and later featured an annual televised fashion show with supermodels dubbed Angels. Originally founded in 1977 by Roy and Gaye Raymond the company's lingerie stores were sold to Leslie Wexner in 1982. Wexner drastically expanded into American shopping malls, growing the company into 350 stores nationally with sales of $1 billion by the early 1990s when Victoria's Secret became the largest lingerie retailer in the United States.
From 1995 through 2018, the annual fashion show was an essential part of the brand's image featuring models promoted by the company as fantasy angels. The 1990s saw the company's introduction of the miracle bra, the new brand Body by Victoria, and the expansion into cosmetics. After 2000, Victoria's Secret expanded their stores into Canada and later established retail outlets within several dozen international airports abroad.
By 2016, Victoria's Secret market share began to decline, increasingly giving way to a growing consumer preference for athleisure. The brand has struggled to maintain its position following ongoing criticism and controversy. As of May 2020, with over 1,070 stores, Victoria's Secret remained the largest lingerie retailer in the United States. Parent company L Brands announced the planned closure of 250 Victoria's Secret and Pink stores in 2020, a nearly 25 percent reduction of all retail locations, following the COVID-19 pandemic
Victoria's Secret was founded by Roy Raymond, and his wife, Gaye Raymond, on June 12, 1977.The first store was opened in the Stanford Shopping Center in Palo Alto, California
Eight years prior to founding Victoria's Secret, Raymond was embarrassed when purchasing lingerie for his wife at a department store. Newsweek reported him looking back on the incident from the vantage of 1981: "When I tried to buy lingerie for my wife," he recalls, "I was faced with racks of terry-cloth robes and ugly floral-print nylon nightgowns, and I always had the feeling the department store saleswomen thought I was an unwelcome intruder." Raymond spent the next eight years studying the lingerie market.
At the time when Raymond founded Victoria's Secret, the undergarments market in America was dominated by pragmatic items by Fruit of the Loom, Hanes, and Jockey, often sold in packs of three at department stores, while lingerie was reserved for rare and special occasions such as one's honeymoon. "Lacy thongs and padded push-up bras" were niche products during this period found "alongside feathered boas and provocative pirate costumes at Frederick's of Hollywood" outside of the mainstream product offerings available at department stores. In 1977, Raymond borrowed $40,000 from family and $40,000 from a bank to establish Victoria's Secret: a store in which men could feel comfortable buying lingerie.
Raymond picked the name "Victoria" after Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom to associate with the refinement of the Victorian era. The "Secret" was what was hidden underneath the clothes.
Victoria's Secret grossed $500,000 in its first year of business, enough to finance the expansion from a headquarters and warehouse to four new store locations and a mail-order operation. By 1982, the fourth store (still in the San Francisco area) was added at 395 Sutter Street. Victoria's Secret stayed at that location until 1990, when it moved to the larger Powell Street frontage of the Westin St. Francis.
In April 1982, Raymond sent out his 12th catalog; each catalog cost $3 (equivalent to $7.95 in 2019). Catalog sales accounted for 55% of the company's $7 million annual sales in 1982. The Victoria's Secret stores at this time were "a niche player" in the underwear market. The business was described as "more burlesque than Main Street
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