VICTORIA'S SECRET

''For the Sonata Arctica single, see Victoria's Secret (song)''
'Victoria's Secret' is a retailer of lingerie and beauty products.^[2] It is the largest brand and a segment of publicly traded Limited Brands with sales surpassing $5 billion and an operating income of US$1 billion in 2006.² ''Victoria's Secret'' is well known for its fashion shows and catalogues, which feature top fashion models.

Contents

History

Marketing Strategy

Victoria's Secret Angels

Victoria's Secret Fashion Show

Sub-Brand

Victoria's Secret PINK

References

External links

History

''Victoria's Secret'' was started in San Francisco, California in 1977 by Stanford Graduate School of Business alumnus Roy Raymond,^[3] who felt embarrassed trying to purchase lingerie for his wife in very public and awkward department store environment. He opened the first store at Stanford Shopping Center, and quickly followed it with a mail order catalog and 3 other stores. The stores were meant to create a comfortable environment for men, wood paneled walls, Victorian details, and helpful sales staff. Instead of racks of bras and panties in every size, there were single styles, paired together, and mounted on the wall in frames. Men could browse for styles and then sales staff would help estimate the appropriate size, pulling from inventory in the back. In 1982, after 5 years of operations, Roy Raymond sold the company to The Limited.
The Limited kept the personalized image of Victoria's Secret intact. Victoria's Secret was rapidly expanded into the America's malls throughout the 1980s. The company was able to vend a widened range of products such as shoes, evening wear, perfumes among others with its mail catalog issued eight times annually.
By the early 1990s, Victoria's Secret had become the largest American lingerie retailer topping the billion dollar mark.
On July 10, 2007, Limited Brands Inc. sold 75 per cent of Limited clothing chain to buyout firm Sun Capital Partners Inc. to focus and boost sales growth on Victoria's Secret lingerie stores and Bath & Body Works units, which provided 72 per cent of revenue in 2006 and almost all the firm's profit.^[4]

Marketing Strategy

The cover of a Victoria's Secret catalog from 1990 with Jill Goodacre on the cover.

Victoria's secret is a specialty retailer of women's intimate apparel. It has about 1,000 Victoria's Secret lingerie stores and 100 stand-alone Victoria's Secret Beauty Stores in the US, mostly mall-based. It sells bras, panties, hosiery, beauty products, sleepwear, and more. Victoria's Secret mails more than 400 million of its catalogs per year.
Victoria's Secret decidedly built its image with a fairly conservative, middle-class shopper in mind and avoided any connotations of sleaziness which lingerie might carry.^[5]
The company gained notoriety in the early 1990s after it began to use supermodels in its advertising and fashion shows. Throughout the past decade, it refused to follow the celebrity trend, turning down at least one celebrity a month begging to model the brand. ^[6]

Victoria's Secret Angels

Victoria's Secret Angels on a commercial for the Secret Embrace line.

'Victoria's Secret Angels' are the most visible members of the modeling team and are the spokespersons for ''Victoria's Secret''. The 'Angels' are chosen, "By having clearly spectacular physical gifts, and I think also great energy, great personality. To be an 'Angel' and to be a supermodel for ''Victoria's Secret'', you have to appeal to women, not to men.", as stated by Edward Razek on VH1 Victoria's Secret Uncovered 2004. In May 2007, the Victoria's Secret Angels which includes Adriana Lima, Selita Ebanks, Alessandra Ambrosio, Izabel Goulart and Karolina Kurkova were chosen to be part of ''People'' Magazine's annual 100 Most Beautiful People in the World. "The Models of Victoria's Secret", ''People''. Retrieved on 2007-05-11. The 'Angels' are among the world's highest paid models with its multi-million dollar a year contract.

Victoria's Secret Fashion Show

The company made history in 1999 with the first internet broadcast of the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show, which drew 1.5 million viewers, with many others unable to view the show. The fashion show was advertised on the Super Bowl.
The fashion show is generally held in the New York Armory on Lexington Avenue, with the exceptions of the 2000 show which was held in Cannes, France, and the 2006 show which was held in the Kodak Theatre, Los Angeles. It features mostly lingerie and a multi-million-dollar "Fantasy Bra". The show has since evolved into a lavish event with elaborate costumed-lingerie, varying music and set design according to the different themes running within the show. The show attracts hundreds of celebrities, and entertainers, with special performers and/or acts every year. The giant angel wings worn by the models, as well as other wings of various forms and sizes such as butterfly, peacock, or devil wings, are ''Victoria's Secret'''s fashion trademark. The fashion show is also a meeting of today's supermodels, who are always posing in the middle, after the final walk.^[7]
In 2004, instead of the annual Victoria's Secret Fashion Show, The Angels (Tyra Banks, Heidi Klum, Gisele Bundchen, Adriana Lima and Alessandra Ambrosio) did an ''Angels Across America Tour''.^[8]
In the past, most of the clothing exhibited was not available to the general public, but in 2005, the show was specifically redesigned to feature clothing available to the general public through the catalogue.^[9]

Sub-Brand

Victoria's Secret PINK

:
In July 2004, company executives launched 'PINK', a lineup of loungewear, sleepwear, and intimate apparel geared mainly towards college undergraduates.^[10] Alessandra Ambrosio was named the line's first spokesperson. PINK models tour the country at college campuses.^[11] The company markets to youth through MySpace, Facebook, partnerships with MTV, and youth-oriented blogs. The brand has received world wide nomination for the best in the category performance year on year over the last 2 years.

References

1. [1]biz.yahoo.com. Retrieved July 25, 2007.
2. Limited Brands 2006 Annual Report
3. [2]accessed 2007-06-13.
4. [3]thestar.com. Retrieved July 23, 2007.
5. [4]bookrags.com. Retrieved July 25, 2007.
6. The World's Top-Earning ModelsForbes. Retrieved on 2007-06-16.
7. [5]accessed 2007-06-13.
8. [6]accessed 2007-06-13.
9. Victoria's Secret Fashion Show back on CBS
10. Victoria's Secret teams up with coeds
11. [7]accessed 2007-06-13.

External links

★ Official website

★ Victoria's Secret PINK