Victoria’s Secret
Has Sexy Become Too Trashy?
By Daniel Muniz

Lingerie is a huge ten billion dollar industry in the United States and to no one’s surprise; Victoria’s Secret dominates about half of it with annual sales of more than $5 billion. But this retail giant is at a crossroads with its future due to slumping sales. As a result, the enormous franchise is taking a hard look at a new marketing approach in hopes of regaining its former customers as well as attracting a bumper crop of new ones.

However, critics point to the perception that the huge chain has become too sleazy. For years, parents in shopping malls loudly complained that this colossal retailer flaunted far too many provocatively posed mannequins in their storefront windows wearing outfits that were better suited for a porn star. In addition, their sultry advertisements and glitzy fashion shows featuring scantily clad models have begun to take on the look and feel of soft porn.
 

Story Continues Below ę

Today's Top Stories

● Desegregation Decrees - We Must Stop Living in the Past ● Birthday Suit Parties - The Ivy League Rebellion ● Obesity Politics - New Ways to Feel Good ● Disrespecting Teachers - Parents are Out of Control ● Audacity of Molesters - Teach Children as their Probation ● The Color of White - The Meaning of White

Yesterday's Top Stories

● Reforming Bureaucracy - Say Goodbye to the GS System ● Helicopter Parents - Parents Who Do Too Much ● Unsavory Pictures - Mayor Forced Out of Office ● Poor Minorities - A Collective Moral Responsibility? ● Firing Teachers - States Need New Tenure Reforms ● Nude Carwash - Drought Drives Aussies to Extremes

In fact, CEO Sharen Jester Turney admitted that the image of Victoria’s Secret has become:

“Too sexy... We have so much gotten off our heritage."

Source: The Wall Street Journal

However, many industry experts insist that instead of being “too sexy” the retail giant simply got too trashy. After all, we live in a “Girls Gone Wild” era where the antics of celebrities such as Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, and Lindsey Lohan saturate our popular culture. So the franchise sought to try to appeal to this flashier but growing segment of the population with products specially tailored to them.

The result was the enormous success of their Pink brand which featured a trendier line of apparel and underwear primarily targeted to college students and to the twenty-something crowd. And since teenage girls also want to imitate their young adult counterparts, Pink also caught on with the high school age group.

Unfortunately, the Pink success eventually became an albatross around their neck.

All of a sudden, what was once a specialty lingerie shop that catered to the upscale tastes of women who sought to become more elegant and sophisticated; the chain now focused their attention on the “Girls Gone Wild” genre. Consequently, their longtime loyal shoppers, many who were professional women, found fewer product lines that appealed to them and they weren’t all that interested in the racier styles geared towards college kids.

But in essence, Victoria’s Secret cannot have it both ways.

And that is because both categories of customers are diametrically opposed to each other. Being too flashy and too adolescent may be fine for what teenage girls want but it turns off the women who desire to be chic and upscale in their intimate wear. Also, the inverse is just as true.

Although one possible nightmare scenario for the retailer is that young women will stop wearing panties altogether if Britney Spears and Lindsey Lohan ever turn that into a trendy fashion statement.

However, this dilemma is the same that all success stories eventually have to face.

In the beginning, Victoria’s Secret only had four locations and a catalog when its parent company Limited bought it in 1982. But the lingerie shop was just like all the other seedy stores that offered gaudy undergarments that looked like it belonged in a triple X adult movie. Alternately, the big department stores at the time only offered the depressingly bland styles of beige, black, and white for their bras and panties.

The parent company then took Victoria’s Secret into a completely new direction.

They turned their stores into upscale specialty shops and upgraded the quality of their lingerie with a stylish European flair. No longer were they cheap and seedy like all the other lingerie stores but they also didn’t carry the dull and uninspiring undergarments that populated pricier department stores.

This transformation hit pay dirt by striking a nerve in female consumers. Now lingerie could be as elegant as it was sexy with a vast array of colors and styles that didn’t have a hint of being trashy. The small time lingerie shop exploded in size and catapulted itself into a chain with one thousand locations.

But as with most corporate giants, Victoria’s Secret has become a victim of its own success by trying to become everything to everyone. It simply cannot be done without sacrificing its core base of customers that turned it into a juggernaut. So in words, it has reached its ceiling but that is not a bad thing. It just means that the franchise has to become the best specialty shop in the industry by increasing profit per customer and limiting overall costs.

Lots of companies in totally different fields have done the exact same thing in reducing market share in order to increase profitability. In fact, the irony is that it is actually more profitable to lose extraneous customers so that the existing customer base can be catered to with more attention and focus.

Overall, Victoria’s Secret got caught with its pants down when it tried to expand beyond its traditional clientele. And just like with so many other big corporations, only time will tell if they can successfully recapture the magic that created its success.

We want your opinion! Tell us what you thought about this article. Click the Your Feedback menu item to send us your comments.