Roy Raymond’s idea for a lingerie shop that was both accommodating for women and for men shopping for women has flourished into the premier enterprise in its industry. Closing in on three decades since its startup, Victoria’s Secret has become a household name with worldwide notoriety. Due to the company’s widespread popularity and success, there has been an exceeding interest within the apparel stores industry. Although a portion of the company’s success can be accredited to “Victoria’s Angels” and its highly attractive advertising campaign, its use of technology and information based decision making has propelled the company to be the top women’s lingerie company in the United States.
With thanks to Victoria’s Secret’s IT approach towards its operations, the company is now expanding globally. With lingerie models ranging from the Netherlands, Brazil, and Australia, just to name a few, the company has taken its broad differentiation strategy out of the U.S. and has gone international. In September 2010, VS opened its first store outside of the U.S. in Edmonton, Canada, and by 2012, a flagship store will be open in London.
Five things you may not have known about Victoria's Secret.
ReplyDelete1- Its founder jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge
Tired of the humiliation involved in trying to buy lingerie, Roy Raymund created Victoria’s Secret in 1977 by putting the first store at the Stanford Shopping Center in Palo Alto, California. After opening a few other stores and launching the mail-order catalog, Raymond sold the company to Limited Brands in 1982 for a sizable paycheck.
By 1993, Limited made Victoria’s Secret a nationally recognized brand, while Raymond’s most recent business venture had ended in bankruptcy. He was last seen alive walking toward the Golden Gate Bridge, and shortly thereafter his body washed up on the shores of Marin County. Investigators concluded he’d committed suicide by leaping off the bridge.
2- It is named after a notorious prude
So who is Victoria? Since the first stores were designed to resemble Victorian boudoirs, the company’s namesake is England’s long-reigning 19th-century monarch, Queen Victoria. She and husband Prince Albert played “hide the scepter” enough times to produce nine children before his unexpected death in 1861 threw her into a state of profound mourning that lasted until her own death 40 years later.
Despite this climate, fashions of the day included the corset, a sexually charged garment that embellished a woman’s curves above and below the waist. So what, then, was the Queen’s secret? Was she a royal horndog? Did she love a carriage quickie? Was the prim former princess a party-girl, always shouting for Prince Albert to get out of the can and into her Very Sexy chiffon bloomers? We’ll never know. I suppose that’s why it’s a secret.
3- It regularly denies celebrity requests to model
Ed Razek, the company’s chief marketing officer, was quoted recently in a Forbes article stating that each month he has to turn down a number of requests from high-profile female celebrities desperate to be an honorary Angel.
The Angels are not a desperate bunch, however. In fact, they are products of an intense and extensive program designed to make each of them media-savvy celebrities. But that isn’t the only reason this commercial icon with a fresh star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame does not take requests. Another reason is Modeling 101: While the seraphic beauties in Angel garb typically stand around 5’ 9” or so, most Hollywood celebs fall more than a couple inches short, even if standing in a pair of Miss Sixty Side Button boots.
4- Its Angels are chosen based on their appeal to women, not men
Women make up the majority of the company’s executives -- they represent two-thirds of those tuning in to their fashion shows, and they account for a whopping 98% of the company’s customer base. This is their audience, plain and simple. It’s no coincidence that two of the most high-profile Angels in its short history are women other women don’t, as a rule, dislike: Tyra Banks and Heidi Klum. Both are charming and down-to-earth models who aren’t bitchy about their beauty (perhaps this is why Naomi Campbell has never, in any sense of the term, been an Angel).
We men aren’t entirely disregarded, but according to Ed Razek, Victoria’s Secret doesn’t “do salacious shots that women would not like.” It should be easy to tell if this paradigm ever changes: Future fashion shows will be on pay-per-view and many of us will recognize a few of the models from online porn.
5- It provokes numerous FCC complaints every year
Now in its seventh year, the televised Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show enjoys a devoted fan base, but its most dutiful viewers can probably be found among a loose confederacy of conservative tight-asses. Operating under such vague catch-all names as the American Family Association, these groups annually flood the FCC with complaints about how the show is indecent or obscene.
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