The broken angel wings of Victoria's Secret

The third quarter Victoria's Secret report released Monday after the recent departure of two senior executives (Jan Singer, head of lingerie, and Denise Landman, PINK sub-brand), once again showed how much # 39; s brightest star of L Brands is fading.

Victoria Store's Secret comps fell 2% in the quarter, following a 4% decline in the brand's quarter a year ago. Who left The company's Bath & Body Works unit, which saw its offers climb by 13%, pushed its overall same-store sales in the dark to 4%.

John Mehas, today president of Tory Burch and former head of Ralph Lauren Polo's Monaco Club, has succeeded Singer as CEO of Victoria's Secret Lingerie, the company added. Mehas acquired her first experience in retail and merchandising at The Gap. Bloomingdale, according to a press release from the company. Management has been wise to find a third party to pull out the mark of what Neil Saunders, chief executive of Global Data Retail, has called his "inertia. "

"John Mehas will bring new ideas, essential to Victoria's Secret," Saunders told Retail Dive in an email. "His previous brand experience also means that he will probably focus on what customers want.That means he will listen and learn from the market.However, he has a very difficult job to do to change the culture. of society, which is deeply rooted in what consumers want. "

These cultural entrenchments have been fully exposed recently. A few days before the announcement of Singer's departure, the brand was shaken by the fallout from Remarks made to Vogue by Edward Razek, marketing manager at L Brands. Prior to his famous annual fashion show, he said, among other comments poorly received, that he did not think that they should have "transsexuals in the parade".

Razek's interview revealed a cultural break in the #MeToo era, 48 hours after the election of a record number of women in the US Congress. And they arrived while sales of the brand's comparable stores continued to fall.

Shaky shops

By removing e-commerce, Victoria's only-third-quarter physical store-only Secret's compositions have further declined, with a 6% drop. "VS stores did not show a positive result in the last 23 months, although they needed additional promotions," says Instinet. analyst Simeon Siegel said in comments on the October numbers of the brand, which were sent to Retail Dive.

The brand has been slow to recognize the demand for bralettes, for example, according to research firm Edited and Lee Peterson. executive vice president of brand strategy and design at WD Partners, who was with The Limited at the time the brand belonged to her. (Something that Razek also acknowledged in his controversial Vogue interview.)

What is often overlooked is that Nick Egelanian, president of retail real estate services company SiteWorks, operates too many stores in distressed malls. The company owns 1,023 Victoria & Secret stores and 147 PINK stores in the United States and Canada, having closed eight and opened a since February.

"I've been saying for years that they needed a dynamic program, a decade, to get out of shopping centers B and C where they have hundreds of stores," he said in an interview with Retail Dive. "Staying with hundreds of stores in these centers, it's like having the best cabin of the Titanic and continuing to hold a party while the ship is down.It's fine as long as it lasts, but the ship is still down. "

This account may be imminent, according to Monday's statement by L Brands CEO Les Wexner: "Our number one priority is to improve Victoria's Secret performance. Lingerie and PINK, "he said. perspective and looking all … Our marketing, brand positioning, internal talent, real estate portfolio and cost structure. "

The cultural miss

Will "all" understand

Glorious annual fashion show of Victoria's Secret? Even the decline in television ratings has not changed it, let alone finished it. In Vogue, Razek defended part of his defense of the event's approach to the brand's enduring popularity.

It is true that Victoria's secret, which has seen massive sales in the quarter of 1.53 billion dollars (against 1.54 billion a year ago), remains the leader in its segment. Last year, it won 28.8% of women's underwear market share, 27.6% of women's sleepwear and perhaps a lot more in the lingerie industry, according to an email addressed to Retail Dive by Michelle Grant, Head of Retail Trade at Euromonitor International. Lingerie shoppers spend three-quarters of their intimate purchases at Victoria's Secret stores and 85% of their online purchases are made on victoriassecret.com, according to a report from the NPD's purchase tracking service. two years ago.

Yet, he does not know how many young consumers are vehement about political and cultural issues. Generation Z is particularly sensitive to society's position on some issues and will account for 40% of all consumers by 2020, according to the NDP group.

"While many may disregard the social and environmental perspectives of young consumers, they do so at their own risk," Marshal Cohen, Senior Industrial Advisor, NPD Group said in comments sent to Retail Dive. "After all, the older Generation Z consumers are now entering the workforce – and the purchasing power of this generation will increase dramatically in the years to come."

The antithesis of Victoria's Secret

In his defense of his brand and his fashion show, Razek also managed to take on one of his most recent rivals, ThirdLove, stating to Vogue: "But we are not the third person's love. We are their first love. And Victoria's Secret is the first love of women since the beginning. "

Saunders thinks that Razek's words are revealing. "Much of this failure is rooted in leadership," he said in a note to Retail Dive, adding that Razek's comments on transgender models were "bad for his image" and noting that "his more incisive rival, ThirdLove … is stealing shares of Victoria's Secret for quite some time."

In fact, Razek's comments prompted Third love Co-founder and co-CEO Heidi Zak said she was not threatened by her own statements. "If I was [Singer], I'd also have resigned after [his] comments last week. It was shocking to read, word for word, the way one of Victoria's top male leaders secretly considers the world, "wrote Zak in part. Lori Greely, the former head of Victoria's Secret, sits on the board of directors of her brand and has led a boycott of the infamous show.

ThirdLove then published a one-page ad in the Sunday's New York Times, inspired by the same ideas, in an open letter to its biggest rival: "You sell to men and sell a fantasy …Your show can be a & # 39;Fantasy& # 39; but we live in reality. Our reality is that women wear real-life bras at work, breastfeed their children, play sports, take care of their sick parents and serve their country. "

"ThirdLove", we also read in the letter, "is the antithesis of Victoria's Secret."

And after

And so the lines of battle are traced.

It is possible that L Brands precipitated Singer's departure in the hope of silencing Razek's comments, or even that she was sufficiently disturbed by Razek's departure to let him go, speculated Peterson de WD, speculative on Retail Dive. After all, social media has thinned after the Vogue interview, and Razek's deviation has done little to reduce that impact, he said in an interview.

Enter Mehas, the first male chef of Victoria's Secret in more than a quarter of a century. Women have been leading the brand since Grace Nichols took over from president Howard Gross in 1991 and boosted sales with "additional bras and better store launches," said Peterson, noting that the choice was not the same. nature of this story, but of character. in his refusal to bow to public opinion.

What really matters, though, will be his next step. The brand must now find its place at a time when women claim different attitudes and different underwear, said Peterson. It could be that Victoria's Secret offers an answer – a new way of defining and conceiving the term "sexy", which is not often mentioned in such passionate statements as that of Zak, but remains an encouragement for many women, including autonomous women.

"Victoria's Secret suffers from a thousand wounds – I do not think it's death per thousand cuts, "said Peterson. "They can do what they want with this show. Part of the question and part of the discussion is, "Why are you doing the same thing? In the year of the woman? Why not start changing some parts? Come on, that's detail 101: stop doing the same thing. "