The Fastest Selling This Week! Leaving China Is At Stake.

CNBC once again quoted the news that due to the complexity of the negotiations, L Brands originally planned to postpone the sale of last week's sale, and announced this week that the secret of the classic underwear brand Victoria's Secret Vitoria will be sold to private Holdings Company Sycamore Partners LLC this week.
Last weekend, after the US financial media released the news, L Brands rose 8.3% to 25.53 dollars before last Monday. The stock fell 29% in 2019, falling for four consecutive years, thanks to a rumor of trading up to 30% in 2020 and a market value of about $6 billion 500 million.
CNBC first disclosed the L Brands Inc. plan to split Victoria's Secret in November last year. The Wall Street journal also said last month that Leslie Wexner, the group's founder, will also step down as chief executive.
Leslie Wexner
The 82 year old Les Wexner has been leading the company directly since its establishment of The Limited store in 1963. It has expanded The Limited, Victoria's Secret and Abercrombie, Fitch, Express, and Abercrombie. Limited Brands Inc. was launched in 1969, and Les Wexner became the longest serving chief executive in S & P 500.
With the decline of performance, L Brands Inc. ended all the stores of Henri Bendel in the brilliant New York boutique in early 2019, and decided to sell underwear brand La Senza, leaving only Victoria's Secret and personal care brand Bath Body Body two businesses. Les Wexner owns about 16% of the group and is the largest shareholder.
In 1982, Les Wexner acquired Victoria's Secret, which was founded for only five years in the form of $1 million. After its transformation, the brand began to take off. In 2019, sales of Victoria's Secret were about 7 billion 400 million US dollars, still the largest female underwear brand in the United States. But in recent years, the market share has been gradually lost because of the brand image and marketing methods are lagging behind, and the emerging brands are rising. The relationship between Les Wexner and the late American tycoon, the registered offender Jeffrey Epstein Jeffrey Epstein (Epstein is the trustee of Wexner Wexner of Les Wexner Foundation) has made the Victoria's Victoria's passive.
More than 100 models last week jointly protested against Victoria's Secret, who had been "disgusted with women" for many years, and condemned the retailer's failure to take steps to protect women and connive at improper management and improper management of Ed Razek, the chief marketing officer who stepped down last year.
Radical investor Barrington Capital Group intervened in March 2019 and asked L Brands Inc. to split Victoria's Secret and reorganize the board. The group began to rebuild the brand image of Victoria's Secret in the second half of the year. The annual underwear show was also cancelled after 24 years of continuous production.
More and more consumers give up the Victoria's Secret, which is further reduced by 12% compared with the sales in the 11-12 month holiday season, and 8% in the first 11 months of fiscal 2019, much higher than the 2% in the previous year. Management, according to the overall performance of comparable sales in the holiday season, dropped 3% from EPS to four in the four quarter.
Sycamore Partners LLC specializes in acquiring difficult business brands, and its brand portfolio includes The Limited, which is Les Wexner's fortune.
The brand was acquired in 2007 by Sun Capital Partners Inc. from L Brands Inc., and filed for bankruptcy ten years later, saved by Sycamore Partners LLC. In 2011, the company held a 51% stake in L Brands Inc. procurement business Mast Global Fashions (now MGF Sourcing). Sycamore Partners LLC bought the department store Belk Inc. two years ago from bankruptcy.
Sycamore Partners LLC completed 4 billion 750 million US dollars in financing for third funds in 2018.
Even after the completion of the separation, investment bank Jefferies Group LLC Jie Fu Lei still looked down on the development of Victoria's Secret and Bath Body Works in the future, mainly because they both rely heavily on shopping malls that are experiencing structural decline. Even if Bath / Body Works has been growing strongly in recent years, there will be little room for growth in the future.
As for Victoria's Secret, not only the problems of core bra category and brand marketing remain to be solved, but the competition of American Eagle Outfitters Inc. (NYSE:AEO) brand Aerie, the trend of girl underwear product line Pink is on the decline.
Tang Xiaotang, an industry analyst who has only expected private equity funds to be interested in Victoria's Secret, has once again stressed that the probability that the brand withdraws from the Chinese market is close to 100%. However, he believes that after a short restructuring, Victoria's Secret may continue to operate in the Greater China market through proxy or authorization, but its direct mode in the Chinese market is difficult to sustain.
At the beginning of 2017, Victoria's Secret opened in flagship store in Shanghai's Li Po Plaza, which meant that the American underwear and beauty brands were officially stationed in the Chinese market. At the end of the year, the brand's underwear show was also held in Shanghai and caused great controversy. This is also a lament before the brand's iconic show. In 2019, the brand officially shut down the world-famous underwear show.
Before entering the Chinese market, Victoria's Secret has been in the Chinese market for many years, and mainland retailers have started stores in the Chinese market through the purchase of brand stocks. At the same time, Victoria's Secret agents have publicised for investment and inventory sales, and when the brand enters the Chinese market, with the development of Internet and e-commerce, Chinese consumers' hopes for the brand have been overdrawn, and the reputation of the brand in social media has also declined rapidly. By the 2017, the global women's movement was vigorous.
Two years after entering the Chinese market, according to the no fashion Chinese net data, the Victoria's Secret brand increased 7 stores to 22 in the Chinese market in the 2019 fiscal year ended January 4, 2020. The group's chief financial officer, Stuart Burgdoerfer, said last year that the brand is still losing money in the Chinese market, and that it will take at least 3-4 years to break even.
Tang Xiaotang said that when Forever 21, Gap Inc. (NYSE:GPS)'s Old Navy and a series of giant brands quit China, and the Chinese clothing market is facing the slowdown and recession and uncertainty of the macro environment, with the transaction close, the Victoria's Secret brand quit China is already on the verge of attack. On the contrary, the analyst said that L Brands Inc. might consider making the Bath & Body Works brand located in China. Besides the fact that the Chinese beauty market is still strong, "the consumption habits of the younger generation of consumers in China and the trend of follow suit may be a real opportunity for the US retail group."