Victoria's Secret is the world's largest intimate-specialty retailer, or it has been for the past thirty years. They cater to a customer percentage of approximately ninety percent women, selling women's underwear items and specializing in lingerie, as well as beauty products such as skin creams and lip glosses. They are also known for their numerous locations in malls across America, instantly noticeable to customers and passersby with their striking black décor and light pink detailing. Their fitting rooms are lavish, and their employees are experts, specially trained to help customers find the size that fits them best. Although, whether the store carries a customer’s size has been a different matter entirely. Though historically Victoria's Secret was a pioneer in the early lingerie industry, known for being one of the leading brands of the 90s and early 2000s that drastically shaped American culture and fashion, it has begun to falter in recent years, dropping in popularity, sales, and cultural relevance.

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Company History

 

The company was founded in 1977 by Roy Raymond, who was an entrepreneur at the time. As the story goes, Raymond went to buy a pair of lingerie for his wife but felt rejected and uncomfortable going to the current retailing stores, where the stock was filled with floral nightgowns and “unappealing” designs, and the attendants made him feel “unwanted” there (Lamare). In response to the experience, and with the help of his wife, he founded Victoria's Secret, and with $40,000 in savings they opened their first store in Palo Alto, California. The name “Victoria's Secret,” was chosen to give the company an aesthetic of sensual elegance and risqué (Washington Post). Victoria was picked as a regal, upstanding name, in the way that Vicki or Kandi could not be, and the “secret” refers to what lies underneath that regal and elegant façade: namely, their product, the lingerie.

 

By 1982 they had opened six locations near and around the original store, but none of them were doing very well and the company was near bankruptcy. The reason for this was surprisingly not the product itself, but the store’s aesthetic: while Raymond’s idea of sexual elegance may have made male customers feel comfortable in the store, it made the target audience, women, feel alienated and put off. This is when Les Wexner came onto the stage. Wexner was a huge figure in the business world, founder of The Limited, the chain credited for beginning the athletic wear craze of the 1980s, as well as the owner of L Brands, the conglomerate that managed many famous apparel chains such as Lane Bryant, Bath and Body Works, and Abercrombie and Fitch (Lamare). Apparently, he saw the same potential in Victoria's Secret, because in 1982 he bought the entire brand – the stores and the catalog – from Raymond for $1 million. Roy Raymond continued to found a handful of other companies, but his endeavors were unsuccessful, and in 1993 he committed suicide by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge (Lamare).

 

Under Wexner’s ownership, the risqué and dark aesthetic was switched out for light colors and floral patterns to make women feel more comfortable. In response, business for Victoria's Secret boomed. By the beginning of the 1990s Victoria's Secret had grown to 350 stores across the nation, grossing in $1 billion yearly sales and becoming the largest lingerie retailer in the country (Hanburry, ‘Rise and Fall’). The 90s also saw the introduction of the Miracle Bra, which took the ever-popular “push-up” style of Hanes Brand's Wonder Bra and made it wireless. Advertisements emphasized the comfort and the effectiveness of the bra, and the product flew off the shelves (Hanburry, ‘Rise and Fall’).

 

In 1995, chief marketing officer Ed Razek pitched and produced the first Victoria's Secret Fashion Show, which was streamed on their website by 1.5 million viewers, causing the site to crash (Hanburry, ‘Rise and Fall’). 1997 saw the birth of the “Angels” in popular culture, after an angel-themed ad campaign ran that year featuring famous models Karen Mulder and Stephanie Seymour, as well as Tyra Banks, who was a household name in her own right. From that point on, all girls who had modeled for Victoria's Secret were referred to as “Angels,” and the position was treated almost with a sense of celebrity. To those in the modeling industry, becoming an Angel was akin to starring in a Hollywood blockbuster, and meant joining an exclusive club of models with resumes studded with high-end brands like Gucci, Versace, Dior and others (illuminaughti). By proxy, Victoria’s Secret shared a similar reputation.

 

In 2000, Sharon Jester Turney became CEO of Victoria's Secret catalog, and later the entire brand in 2006. Company sales increased by 70% during her nine years in the position: however, in 2016 she abruptly resigned (Hanburry, ‘Rise and Fall’). Wexner took her place as interim CEO and drastically changed the company, cancelling the catalog and removing all items from sale that weren't strictly lingerie. Then he split the brand into three daughter brands: Victoria's Secret lingerie; Victoria's Secret Beauty, which sold perfumes and beauty products; and PINK, which was geared towards preteen and teenage girls. 

 

Jan Singer was recruited as CEO of Victoria's Secret lingerie that year, but by then sales had begun to falter with marketing shares – and allegedly even product quality – dropping noticeably (Hanburry, ‘Rise and Fall’). The Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show was cancelled in 2018, after a series of inappropriate comments made by Ed Razek during an interview with Vogue Magazine received widespread criticism. While many called for his resignation over the debacle, it was Jan Singer who resigned instead, with no comment released to the press (Hanburry,’Head of VS leaving’). She was replaced by John Mehas in 2019, but the company continued to decline further, with other brands gaining popularity in their stead.

 

In February of 2020, Wexner stepped down from both the chairman and CEO positions at

L Brands, after allegations came to light over the complicity and knowledge Wexner had over the illegal dealings of Jeffrey Epstein, his financial advisor and close friend (Hanburry, ‘Rise and Fall’). As of July 14th, 2022, a documentary has been released on Hulu about Wexner’s complacency regarding Jeffrey Epstein, and while this source was unobtainable to the author of this paper, there is no doubt that the exposé is truly damning, and Victoria’s Secret’s success will suffer in the future.

 

Mission Statement

 

Despite the rather fraught history of Victoria's Secret, contemporary representatives of the company seem to be in high hopes. The company web page has recently been updated to a more simplistic aesthetic, with a calming color palette, a fashionable design layout, and numerous pictures of their models—all very diverse—wearing samples of their newest product line, which comes in a very different style than their previous lines. Unfortunately, this new webpage design has made it almost impossible to find their Mission Statement, which could only be found in defined words on jobsage.com, listed next to its alleged employee benefits:

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“The mission statement for Victoria's Secret retail chain is committed to building a family of the world's best fashion brands offering captivating customer experiences that drive long term loyalty and deliver sustained growth for our shareholders” (Jobsage)​

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Conversely their pitch and values for employees and associates as they call them is found on their website under the section of “Our Values and Culture”​​

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“As a company whose associate base is nearly 90% women, we're focused on ensuring women are

seen, heard and represented in all we do as a brand both internally, with our associate culture and

workforce development, and externally, including our customer experience, product launches,

marketing campaigns and all merchandising, design and creative. [...] together with our associates

we're shaping the future of the company, and fostering and advancing a happy, healthy and inclusive culture.”  (Victoria’s Secret & Co. Company)​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

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Neither of these statements are very straightforward or define the reasons for Victoria's Secret’s existence. The quote from jobsage.com does not even accurately reflect reality. The words “world’s best fashion brands” seem to imply that they are working with the best of the best—the likes of Gucci, Alexander McQueen, Balenciaga—when in fact no such collaborations have been made. A stray promotion with Ugg's does not a designer partnership make.

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It also implies a diversity of apparel styles, such as daywear and streetwear as well as intimates. While there are some pieces for sale on their website that would be considered more casual, the Clothing section of their website is still dominated with lace bodysuits and Babydoll nightgowns (Victoria’s Secret & Co.).

 

The quote from the Victoria’s Secret website has more of a solid standing: it has a clear definition for what it wants its company culture to be like: one that protects women's rights to be “seen, heard, and represented,” both inside the company and with customers. That is a lovely and honorable goal to aspire to; however, it would be more helpful if they provided information on how they planned to reach it.

 

News and Controversy

 

As stated above, Victoria's Secret has had no shortage of scandals and controversy. Over it's almost forty-year history, there have been numerous sexual harassment claims and debacles. Ed Rasek and his Fashion Show were the most well-known offenders within the modeling culture. Rasek was infamous for using these events to harass models, while they were clothed only in lingerie. There were many times, too many, where he asked models for kisses or hugs, asked for them to sit in his lap, or touched them inappropriately (Jessica Silver-Greenberg). In one instance, he reportedly touched a model’s crotch backstage before the Show, while she was only wearing her bra and panties (Jessica Silver-Greenberg).

 

Another incident related to the Fashion Show was in the case of model Andi Muise. This happened in 2008, and at the time Muise was 19 years old. She had been a Victoria's Secret model for four years, during which she received unwanted attention from Rasek. The first instance occurred in a limousine, on the way to what Muise believed to be a professional work meeting over dinner, when Razek tried to kiss her and touch her inappropriately. After that, Razek sent her several romantically charged emails, requesting that she move in with him or go on vacation with him. When he again invited her to a “professional” dinner, this time alone with him at his house, Muise decided to skip the dinner for her own safety. Soon afterwards she learned that she had been passed up for a position in the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show for the first time in her career (Jessica Silver-Greenberg).

 

More heinous, however, was the company's relations with the infamous Jeffrey Epstein. Before his conviction and suicide in 2019, Jeffrey Epstein was Les Wexner’s main financial manager, as well as his close friend. He was also given a great deal of weight in managing the company, sometimes being allowed to hire and fire employees in Wexner's stead (iilluminaugutii). There were many times where he took advantage of Wexner's influence, using it for ill gains. On at least two occasions between 1992 and 1997, Epstein used his connections to Victoria’s Secret to impersonate an Angels talent scout, in order to lure young women to an empty hotel room where they would be alone with him (Jessica Silver-Greenberg).

 

Wexner and other executives at Victoria’s Secret were not oblivious to this. Epstein had been sketchy from the beginning, with a shallow resume and shady dealings. There were plenty of rumors of what Epstein was doing—not enough for proof, but enough to unnerve Wexner's advisers, who knew that if they didn’t act soon Epstein's actions would be tied to the company. Except, years after the fact, there has been absolutely no indication that Wexner did anything to stop Epstein, besides ignoring the claims against his ‘friend’ and allowing him to keep doing his business (illuminaugutii). He only started to draw away from associating with Epstein in 2007, when he was first officially caught for something (illuminaugutii).

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Wexner also had plenty of his own harassment claims. There were several accounts of him publicly berating female employees, and it was his creative directing that allowed the brand’s image to go from risqué to woman-friendly, only to bounce right back to risqué as soon as enough brand loyalty had been established. There was also an incident where he was asked by fellow employees and marketing managers within the company about whether they should change the sizes of their products to fit more plus-sized people, in order to serve a wider demographic. He allegedly said no, and responded (according to two people who were present), “Nobody goes to a plastic surgeon and says, ‘make me fat,’”: in essence, calling such people undesirable (Jessica Silver-Greenberg).

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Speaking of marketing executives, there were many who have gone on record after leaving the company, claiming they had tried to steer the company's image into more inclusive, women-centric branding, but were rebuffed, or in some cases, fired (Silver-Greenberg, Rosman, Maheshwari, & Stewart, 2021). There are also a number of other scandals, such as Russell James's consensual nude Angels photography being sold as a collectors' book not affiliated with the company (Hanburry, ‘Overly Sexualized Ads’), or when one such photograph was used as advertisement in public Victoria’s secret stores, raising backlash for the company, both from the public, who rightfully believed that the picture crossed a line of decency, and from the model in the photo, who had consented to the pictures but not to being in an advertisement (Hanburry, ‘Overly Sexualized Ads’).

 

Stakeholders

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Victoria's Secret affects a wide range of people, whether intentionally or not. Primarily, it affects its “more than 30,000” employees, who are paid money to keep the company running, and its customers, a clientele of about 90% women, who buy the products they sell (Victoria’s Secret & Co. Company). Next there are the stockholders and financiers of the company, who invest in the wellbeing of the company in exchange for an eventual return on said investment. Then there are the cultural consumers: people who aren’t customers per se, but are affected by the company and their products regardless. For instance, anyone who has watched the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show or seen one of their advertisements may be convinced that the models featured in them are examples of reachable beauty ideals, when often they are not. There are also those who sell the ad space that the Victoria's Secret advertisements take up. Finally, there's the ecology and the environment around the company, and how the process of doing business affects that environment’s wellbeing.

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Victoria's Secret has had several CEOs. The current co-chief executive officer is Mr. Martin Waters (Comparably). Before taking on this position, he led the international division for all VS brands from 2008 to 2020, during which the international business expanded from the early phases to more than 1000 stores globally (Victoria’s Secret & Co. Company). He was also the managing director at another company called Boots Retail International and was a leading retailer (Victoria’s Secret & Co. Company). He has a Bachelor of the Art in Retail Marketing from Manchester University in the United Kingdom, and he seems to be doing well in this position, despite turbulent times.

 

Under Martin Waters’ leadership, has Victoria's Secret fulfilled its obligations to its stakeholders accurately and ethically? For some of them, yes. According to the Nasdaq, as well as the stock information provided on the Victoria's Secret company website, the prices of shares have risen roughly $10 in the last month, even despite troubled times (Nasdaq). But for other stakeholder groups, things have not gone so well. To begin with, there is no Victoria's Secret union for United States employees, and the employees in other countries that do have unions still have to fight hard for their rights to be respected. One such rights violation occurred in Thailand in May of 2022. According to The Guardian, the scandal began when a factory that had been making L brands apparel goods for almost thirty years was abruptly closed by its owners, leaving some 12,050 workers without jobs and violating Thai labor laws (Guardian). This violation was only taken seriously after the laborers, many of them women 40 years and older, protested publicly (Clean Clothes Campaign). Some were even arrested by police (Guardian). Originally, L brands was ordered to pay workers 242.22 million baht in compensation for the debacle, but because they dragged their feet and went over the payment deadlines, in the end they paid an equivalent amount of 8.5 million U.S. dollars, plus interest, which was the largest wage theft settlement for an individual garment factory ever (Clean Clothes Campaign).

 

Customers haven’t exactly been satisfied either. Between 2016 and 2018, many customers reported that the quality of Victoria's Secret’s products had decreased, and that stores were disorganized and not well kept (Hanburry, ‘Rise and Fall’). In response, stores have tried to appease worries with discount prices, but many are still not satisfied (Hanburry, ‘Rise and Fall’). Similar things can be said for cultural consumers, who have steadily changed their perspectives on the functionality and sexuality of intimate apparel, keeping up with the times in a way that Victoria's Secret has failed to do. As for the company’s environmental impact, while Victoria's Secret donates to many different charities—many of which use their proceeds to help lower gas emissions, save the planet, etc.—they also sell a lot of polyester products, which release microplastics into the air, water, and the human body (Rauturier)

 

Corporate Social Responsibility

 

Victoria’s Secret’s Corporate Social Responsibility is not very good at all; they are the definition of a Cynical Theory company. Their inventory has very few eco-friendly materials, and often toxic chemicals are used in the process of production (Rauturier). As stated before, their labor practices are unsavory. Not only do they carelessly break labor laws, but they have also been known to use sweatshop labor. One such sweatshop in Jordan forces its employees to work 14-to-15-hour days, with an average of five hours of mandatory overtime (Tasini). Many workers are routinely shortchanged on their overtime pay and lose the equivalent of three days' worth of wages per week (Tasini). Using the labor of these sweatshops only makes conditions worse for workers who will be pushed further and further for more ‘productive’ labor and better profits.

 

In 2011, Victoria’s Secret signed up for the “Detox My Fashion” challenge, in which a large group of fashion brands pledged to lower the number of toxic materials they use in their products by the year 2020. While the PR and brownie points Victoria’s Secret gained by pledging themselves to the challenge helped their sales, the deadline has since come and gone with no sign that they reached their threshold (Rauturier).

 

It’s not just that Victoria’s Secret has failed in these ways, however, but instead that they have been so slow to react and change, in no hurry to fix their mistakes. In fact, there has been very little change in the company from 2008 to present day, notwithstanding the company-wide rebranding campaign, which came in the wake of the scandal connecting Les Wexner with Jeffrey Epstein and was desperately needed for the company to survive. Aside from that, they have a very short and vague list on their website which totes a lovely sounding variety of minority-supporting charities (Victoria’s Secret & Co. Company), but every other aspect of their “change” has been purely lip service. After so many of the company’s problems have been allowed to fester for decades, these small, superficial solutions come off more as pandering to an audience, rather than from any actual desire to change their ways.

 

Marketing

 

Victoria's Secret has been in business for a very long time. In the past, the company has stuck to its intimates-only inventory, only selling lingerie and a few beauty products. Their size range during this period went from 30A to 40DDD, which only covers a small group of very thin, very well-endowed women It did not cover plus sizes, nor did it cover the bust or waist size of what was then the average American woman (iiluminaughtii). Some customers also reported that underwear and bras had slipped in quality. This was possibly because the products were being made with polyester and plastic-based materials, which made them less comfortable and less healthy, as well as generated microplastics that littered both the human body and the environment (Rauturier).

 

In response to public outcry and drops in sales, Victoria’s Secret has recently—from 2020 onwards—begun to change their image and their products, widening their lingerie size range to fit plus sizes and adding other non-lingerie apparel products to their inventory, such as athletic wear and sleepwear (Victoria’s Secret and Co.). They have also added more underwear products that focus on comfort and functionality. However, their customer options are still limited compared to other retailers of the same quality, and there is no recorded difference in material quality (Hanburry, ‘Rise and Fall’)

 

As for the price, Victoria's Secret is not a cheap store to shop at. The pricing system they use is mostly value-based: like many other brands that consider themselves “designer,” they have taken advantage of their thirty years of brand recognition to jack up product prices far higher than competitors. For context, the lowest priced Demi Bras on Victoria’s Secret’s online catalog starts at $34.95 (with holiday sales, it can sometimes go down to about $20) (Victoria’s Secret and Co.). In contrast, Target’s cheapest bra of the same style sells for about $8.99, and Walmart's lowest price bra is $7.99 (Target)(Walmart). Compared to the higher-priced Victoria’s Secret products, however, $34 is almost reasonable. The “Valerian Bra,” made up of little more than a harness of black ribbons that neither supports nor covers the breasts, costs $64, not including the matching underwear (Victoria’s Secret and Co.). The “Online Exclusive” items are worse. The highest priced piece is made of a thin, shimmery lace, has no wiring or support that would make it even vaguely wearable outside of the bedroom, and costs $175, also not including the matching underwear (Victoria’s Secret and Co.).

 

To talk about Victoria's Secret’s promotions, though, is to delve directly into the company’s most fatal flaw: despite being a company that sells everyday apparel items for women, almost every piece of advertisement for their products has been geared towards men and the male gaze. Rather than promising to sell intimates that are comfortable, functional, and fit for the average woman, Victoria’s Secret advertises a near-unobtainable sexual fantasy, presented by beautiful, flawless models and wrapped in pretty, uncomfortable lace. Comparing Victoria's Secret’s present-day online catalog with that of its competitors reveals that their promotional imagery utilizes more eye contact with their models on average than both Target and Walmart combined (Victoria’s Secret and Co.): Target often posed their models to stare off camera or to the side, or, when eye contact was used, posed them in a relaxed manner with cheerful, comfortable smiles (Target); Walmart, on the other hand, was more likely to crop out the models faces entirely, focusing only on the product (Walmart). Many Victoria's Secret models are featured in poses one might describe as vaguely sensual, and some promotional photos on the site feature full-body shots of models where it isn’t necessary, such as with the “Scarf and Beanie set,” where the model is shown wearing the product along with an unbuttoned sleepshirt that exposes the bra (Victoria’s Secret and Co.).

 

This sexual concept has bled into practically every other aspect of their promotional material—from their mail-order catalogue in the 80s, to their Fashion Show in the late 90s and early 2000s, and the massive promotional posters hung outside locations in malls all across America—and has been present from the very beginning of their business (Lamare). It is controversial as well, because it promotes this sexualized view of what should be normal for every woman, affecting both how men expect women to be like and how women should see themselves (Le, Mina).

 

Speaking of their infamous locations, Victoria's Secret has over 1,091 stores in the United States. Many of these stores are in shopping malls, known culturally as common gathering spaces for young girls, teenagers, and women of all shapes and sizes looking to buy fashionable new clothes and accessories to wear.

 

The average location is instantly recognizable, for better or worse, as ‘that store.’ Passersby in the mall are attracted by their color palate—dark shiny black accented with light pink—which contrasts starkly with other surrounding outlets. Their infamous promotional banners are present both inside the store and out, ranging in size from simple picture frames to wall-sized banners. The interiors of the stores, however, are not so glamorous. The retail floors are often a confusing maze of tables and displays, and the products themselves are organized poorly. Underwear is kept and displayed in a series of bins and drawers, easily made to look disorganized and unruly by customers searching for products. The result is a display that often looks more like a hamper full of used laundry, rather than an inventory of fresh intimate apparel one might want to buy. Bras were similarly displayed: though some are hung on hangers, many of them are stacked and organized in rows on a table, which is equally difficult to keep tidy.

 

The one helpful element of these locations—and unfortunately the most underutilized element—is the attendants and employees. Though this is a variable that can be difficult to keep consistent between locations, these attendants are specially trained to help customers find the perfect cup and band size for them, by measuring the waist, chest, shoulders and bust. This could be a great help to a less-experienced customer, such as a young girl buying her first bra, or any customer who doesn’t know how to find their own size.

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The website is a little more welcoming, with a light and refreshing aesthetic and an updated color palette of cremes and light pinks to match the new company image. The promotional pictures for each product are expertly shot, though there’s only a maximum of two pictures per product, which isn’t very helpful for shoppers. The banner at the top of the webpage

is designed in a way that it closes surprisingly if the mouse moves too fast, which makes maneuvering the site a little frustrating. During November 2022, they had a rather loud and in the way e-banner for a Christmas Sale, boasting “60% off all bras,” (Victoria’s Secret and Co.). As for details on their shipping efficiency, there was no information available.

 

Corporate Strategy

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Victoria's Secret’s overall business strategy has been to expand their business outside of the United States and into the global market, according to their website (Victoria’s Secret and Co. Company). In order to do this successfully, they've employed a number of different strategies in order to make their product and their name brand more popular, some to better effect than others.

 

When a company begins to build a business strategy, they must first begin by assessing the company and their products, using the basic theory of Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning. In Segmentation, the inventory is evaluated according to how wide their product variety is, and how many different people can be customers because of that variety. Victoria’s Secret isn't the best in this category, as while they try to have a wide price range their starting prices are still rather high, and the sizing and style variation for their products has only recently begun to change to include more realistic options. Targeting focuses on the demographics of the perceived future customers. Who would buy what product, and at what rate could they afford it? Because Victoria’s Secret sells bras, one of the many products that almost every modern woman needs to buy at least a few times in her life, they have a very wide range of customers, targeting both the 17 to 26 demographic and the 20 to 40 demographic for female age groups. The basic archetypes of customers that they cater towards are either ‘the fashion-conscious teenager shopping with friends,’ or ‘the career woman who has enough income to spend often on fashionable clothing.’ Positioning focuses on using Segmentation data and Targeting data to put the product in the most advantageous place to be bought. The most common places that the modern ‘teen’ and ‘working adult woman’ go to shop for clothes has almost always been the coveted ‘shopping mall,’ and so most of their locations are found there.

 

After all that, companies tend to work on getting better SEO, otherwise known as Search Engine Optimization. Essentially, this is when companies organize their online presence and maximize exclusive search words for their products, so that when their customers look them up on a search engine, the company websites and products will come up first, before any competition does. This is a more modern tactic, but it’s become essential in the “Internet” age. According to the Chrome extension ubersuggest, Victoria's Secret has 706,490 keywords that lead directly to their site and about 11,427,482 monthly visitors to their website (Shastri, ‘Marketing Strategy’), and as of November 2022, a quick search for bras on Google brings up Victoria’s Secret as the third result, with upstart brand Third Love coming in first and CUUP coming in second.

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Marketing campaigns are the bread and butter for almost every retail company, and they can come in many different forms. Victoria's Secret has opt-in e-mail promotions, as many companies do, which includes newsletters and exclusive coupons for dedicated customers. Twice a year they have a semiannual clearance sale with discounts as low as 50% off, and each of these sales is announced several weeks before via a vigorous marketing campaign (Friedman). There are also non-product campaigns, which focus on the inclusivity and positivity of the company itself, rather than the products. This works to increase customer loyalty, selling viewers on the trustworthiness and goodwill of the brand itself. Victoria’s Secret’s current “Love Cloud” Campaign was enacted after Les Wexner’s relations with Jeffery Epstein were released and he stepped down, and focuses on inclusivity, diversity, and feminism to attempt to appease angry critics and consumers (Friedman). So far, it has been met with tepid reactions.

 

Victoria's Secret has several social media accounts, including Twitter and Facebook. As of 2022, their Instagram has 72.9 million followers and 2751 posts, and their Pinterest has 696.4 thousand followers (Shastri, ‘Marketing Strategy’). Their YouTube channel features much of their promotional material, including videos that have been posted as far back as 2008, the oldest of which is a vintage interview with Miranda Kerr about the original angels marketing campaign. Their channel home page features more recent interviews with the new spokespeople, as well as some informational interviews, focusing on breast cancer awareness and other important topics centered around the theme of women and female empowerment (Victoria’s Secret, YouTube).

 

All of these platform accounts rely heavily on another modern strategy: influencer marketing, an essential tool for the modern-day apparel retailer. Victoria's Secret has been using this in strategy before it was even given its name, practically inventing the concept with the genesis of the Angels in their Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show. Their current day “Love Cloud” Campaign has done away with these, instead relying on their “spokespeople,” a collection of famous women who are well known in their professional or celebrity fields (Meyersohn). Their e-commerce is also equally experienced: their website launched in 1998 at the very dawn of webstores and has been profitably selling products worldwide ever since (Shastri, ‘Marketing Strategy’).

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Overall Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats

 

Victoria's Secret has its strengths and weaknesses just like every other company. It has stores practically everywhere, which means that mall shoppers all over are within the direct range of their products, advertisements, and any other subliminal messaging that benefits the company. They also have the perfect product—intimate apparel—which every woman needs to buy multiple sets of at least every few years, and a widespread, golden demographic range. The in-store experience that they provide for customers is great and extremely helpful if you're not experienced in buying their products, despite being underutilized by the company itself, and their advertising and messaging has been extremely successful to keep the company afloat for so long. 

 

But the advertisements have proven to be a double-edged sword: because they historically relied on the ‘fantasy’ of underwear—in other words, idealized and sexualized models in skimpy underwear—women who did not fit that fantasy felt excluded and alienated from the brand and product. And fantasy can only help so much. When an entire culture decides they no longer share your ‘fantasy,’ it becomes far more difficult to sweep larger social problems under the rug: problems such as bad labor policies, toxic product materials, non-eco-friendly practices, a long history of scandals and bad corporate etiquette, and a refusal to change with the times. The contemporary change in product inventory and the overhaul of their public image in response to these unpopular social problems comes too little too late, as much of the inventory still overwhelmingly consists of sexy lingerie, and many of their promotional ads still maintain a level of unnerving sensuality. All of these things make it easier for customers to notice the dropping quality of their products, which many have decided is no longer worth their ‘designer’ price.

 

There are also other variables to consider, mainly things outside of the company's control. Thanks to the pandemic of 2020, online stores have become more popular than in-person stores. This has allowed Victoria's Secret to reevaluate certain low-achieving in-person locations, closing the ones that become a liability and conserving energy into making the salvageable locations better. On top of that, after multiple back-to-back political events over the span of 2021 and 2022, many of Victoria’s Secret’s critics have had bigger things to be upset about, and new economic policies have given them a little grace with their financiers and shareholders. 

 

On the other hand, the dissatisfaction caused by Victoria's Secret’s copious scandals has spawned a great number of upstart intimate apparel brands, which means the competition for customer attention will only get worse and worse over time. There's the issue of knockoff companies as well, which make replicas of specific products in cheaper quality for a cheaper price, and there’s always the possibility that online stores, at least for intimate apparel shopping, will become obsolete.

 

In the end, despite their long history and powerful influence on American fashion and pop culture, if Victoria's Secret doesn't reform itself in time there's a chance that the brand won’t be able to survive the future markets.