No Longer Sexy,

Les Wijksna, 82, is known as the "evergreen tree" of American business before February 20th of this year, Les Wexner. He is the longest serving CEO in the world's top 500 companies, even Buffett, the head of Boxill Hathaway.

In the interview with foreign media, Weeks Na was outspoken. "I don't have a retirement plan. Once you have a retirement plan, it means that you are slowly dying. "

The tough stance of the past also made him retire manifesto which was suddenly announced at the end of February, which seemed more helpless and desolate. On the same day, Weeks Na announced through the company that he will leave the CEO and chairman of L Brands at the same time. Together with the pride of the global underwear brand "Vitoria's Secret", he has agreed to sell the majority stake of its secret 55% to the private sector.

The valuation of US $1 billion 100 million is not as good as 1/10 of the market value of another female sports consumer brand Lululemon. "Cheap sale" shows the embarrassing situation before the privatization of Victoria's Secret: not only poor performance, debt, but also the founder and sex trade scandal protagonist Epstein's personal relationship, all of which have hit the brand. The market expected to vote with feet believes that Victoria and Weeks Na are falling into the altar.

　　 "Secret show" for 20 years, eat the "straight man" bonus.

Weeks Na and Maxwell Stella Maxwell were photographed at the 2016 New York perfume Foundation awards.

In the past half century, the "secret Vitoria" empire has been the maker of the "sexy" golden rule.

According to wickernall's later recollection, in 1970s, during the business trip to San Francisco, she occasionally saw the "secret of Vitoria", which was founded by MBA student Roy Raymond of Stanford University. Since then, weinsenna, who tried to explore the vertical category American chain store, received the news that "Wei Mi" was on the verge of bankruptcy and sought sale. He made a decisive bid of $1 million, and based on this, set out to build his "sexy brand".

Weeks Na first made a new brand positioning for the company: to follow the European high-end underwear brand La Prela, and even set its headquarters address to a virtual London address to conform to the "human set". At the same time, he redesigned the store of Victoria store and replaced the "brothel like red sofa" in the original store. It changed to the atmosphere style of the American high-end fashion magazine Vogue. Weeks Na said that the store should be built as "Lady s Paradise". In the store, the fragrance, posters, carefully adjusted lights and mirrors, and the catalogue of products for men to read are different.

It is the "secret show" of the "underwear Super Bowl" that truly promoted Victoria to become the "trend of the times" and let wicknna be crowned as "marketing genius".

Since 1995, Wei began to hold a large-scale fashion lingerie show. The first big show was played on the official website in real time, with more than 1 million hits in 30 minutes, resulting in network paralysis. In 2001, the show was first broadcasted on television, and the Fantasy Bra, valued at $12 million 500 thousand, was launched by Heidi Klum, which triggered a nationwide debate in 2001.

So far, the "secret show" has maintained "sexy formula" in the life of more than 20 years: "underwear with long legs and waist," showing the underwear products of supermodels, the most popular entertainment stars to come to the scene, the luxurious "dream Bra" and countless celebrities. The "secret show" made this underwear brand eat up the dividend in the time window of "straight male aesthetics" in the United States.

Sales are also rising. In 2003, its sales amounted to US $2 billion 800 million and has more than 1000 stores worldwide. In 2009, it sold 600 underwear per minute. Before privatization, Wei's sales had been maintained at 7 billion US dollars for a long time.

But looking back on the road of scale, Weeks Na's own marketing ability has echoed the trend of American consumers shifting from mass consumption to brand consumption at the end of last century.

In 1970 -1990, the population of the 25-44 year old age group doubled from 48 million 473 thousand and 200 to 80 million 925 thousand, which rose from 23.64% to 32.44%. The well-educated, consumptive middle class young people are no longer satisfied with their functionality. Victoria's "dream image" caters to the psychological needs of consumers to imagine more fashionable material life.

While in the development stage, Wei MI has designed a seductive product catalog, and regularly promoted sales to consumers, maintaining user stickiness, and allowing it to occupy the most effective marketing channel before the arrival of the electricity supplier era.

　　 Behind the new "sexy rule", miss the millennial generation.

But after entering the twenty-first Century, in the United States "millennial generation" rational consumption habits, as well as the electricity supplier brought about by the channel change, Wei consort gradually become inopportune, declining trend gradually.

In 2001, the ratings of the first show were 12 million, while by 2018 the number of viewers in the United States was only 3 million 300 thousand.

The millennial generation no longer recognizes the beauty standard advocated by Victoria, but also advocates new "sexy criteria" such as self respect, equality and tolerance. Camilla Yanushevsky, an analyst at CFRA Research, once said that the problem of L Brands lies in its inability to adjust the display and marketing methods of products so as to conform to the new "positive" flavor.

In November 2018, the Internet underwear brand ThirdLove was publicly bombarded on the New York Times. "The secret marketing strategy is to impose the illusion of men's perfect body on women." ThirdLove, founded in 2013, has never been fussy about the size of consumers. Its size is over 70, including super size codes.

Similarly, the Savage x Fenty, the underwear brand of fashion star Rihanna, is also mainly inclusive. In contrast to the "angel" of "Wei", the brand will choose different colors and stature, including large size models as underwear models.

When women are losing interest in the sexy lingerie, they also admire the healthy and comfortable sports underwear. Therefore, the conflict of values brings about the transfer of funds.

Data show that the American sports underwear brand has seen rapid growth since 2010, and its market share has increased faster than the traditional underwear brand. For example, the market share of professional brand sports underwear, led by Nike, climbed from 0.7% in 2010 to 1.6% in 2017.

Besides sports brands such as Nike and Adidas, fashion brands like Calvin Klein and H&M follow suit. Wei once tried the brand of water sports in 2013, but always failed to solve the conflict with the core brand positioning, and lost the pricing power of this category.

It also tried to transform, and once triggered a huge earthquake.

In 2016, CEO Sharen Jester Turney, who had been in office for 9 years, suddenly quit because of "personal reasons". Weeks Na, founder of L Brands, replayed the handsome print. Under the leadership of wickerna, it is required to abolish the swimwear and other by-product lines, and first launch the big code model, and re promote the sports underwear product line, but it is difficult to pull down the trend.

In the 2016-2018 years, the share of the US market dropped from 33% to 24%. In November 2019, it announced the cancellation of the "secret show" hosted in 1995.

　　 The Chinese market is no longer an international "life-saving straw".

Wei also tried to compensate for the decline in local sales by international strategy, and China was once seen as a life-saving straw.

In 2017, it was a year when Wei and China moved forward. It not only opened the first flagship store in mainland China, but also moved the "secret show" to Shanghai for the first time, and increased interaction with Tmall's online shops and local consumers.

Statistics show that China's 14-65 year old female has a large population of about 485 million people. With the change of per capita disposable income and consumption concept, the per capita expenditure of underwear has been upgraded, and the growth rate is also higher than the average growth rate of the international market.

According to Sullivan's related reports, the average annual composite growth rate of the global underwear market in the past 2014-2019 years is about 7%. The annual growth rate of China's underwear market is about 20%. The market size is about 200 billion yuan, of which the proportion of women's underwear market is above 60%.

However, after the online show of "Xi Meng Yao wrestling" and "Wang Sicong standing tickets" created by the secret show in Shanghai, it is difficult for the products to enter the hearts of the people.

First of all, the way of developing China by Wei is not sincere enough. The size design of underwear products is copied in Europe and America, which is not suitable for Asian body shape and lacks localization strategy. In September 2017, CCTV reported that the Shanghai entry-exit inspection and Quarantine Bureau concentrated on returning or destroying a number of imported garments, including the products of Wei MI, because the imported secret underwear and formaldehyde exceeded the standard.

Second, China has long passed the period of blind admiration for the world's big names. Middle class consumers' pursuit of international brand names is gradually being replaced by the new trend of traditional cultural identity.

Similar to the United States, China's underwear brand is showing amazing vitality. Although emerging brands are small, they were originally born in eastern culture and more suitable for local consumers. By increasing the way of vegetarian models and experiential teachers, we strengthened the multidimensional interaction with consumers online and offline, and formed a consumer group with high loyalty and high repetition rate. Some brands, such as "inside and outside", even began to reverse brand export to the international market and cut into the base of Wei MI.

In the third quarter of 2019, when the results were announced, CFO Stuart Burgdoerfer told Burgdoerfer analysts that the $250 million of assets impairment of the store was concentrated in the Greater China region.

In early 2019, Stuart Burgdoerfer had said that it would close 53 stores in the North American market in 2019.

　 Can privatization bring brand regeneration?

The secret of internal and external troubles is ultimately privatized.

The valuation of US $1 billion 100 million is 0.15 times that of the previous year's sales of US $7 billion 400 million, which is much lower than the average of the US apparel trade in the past three years, 1.3 times. Analysts say the sale at low prices shows that L Brands is powerless for Victoria.

Data show that between 2016 and 2019, Victoria's operating profit continued to fall for three years, from $1 billion 400 million to $463 million. The parent company's L Brands shares were more sensitive, and the price per share rose to nearly $100 in 2015, and dropped to around $20 in 2019.

The price per share of L Brands rose to around $100 in 2016, but now it has dropped 80% from its high point.

In March 5, 2019, a letter from Barington Capital, a radical investor, summed up the "multi sins" of Victoria's secret, which exposed investors' long-term dissatisfaction with Wei. The letter pointed out that the products of Wei MI were divorced from contemporary women's aesthetics, missed the strategic opportunity of internationalization, executives frequently changed, but the profit rate was still declining. They also denounced the director of Victoria for being too old, and had been very close to the founder, and had already lost the independence of business decision.

Sycamore Partner, a private equity firm with a 55% stake in New York, is an investment institution specializing in the acquisition of non-performing assets. The company's official website shows that as of 2020, the company's management funds amounted to about $10 billion, mainly focused on dealing with the decline in the electricity supplier under the impact of physical retailers.

The most famous case is the purchase of office supplies brand Staples at a price of 6 billion 900 million US dollars. After the acquisition of the latter, Sycamore Partner disassembled the Canadian branch of Staples and the United States. The private-equity believes that the direct competition between the US market and Amazon has led to a slump in performance, but Canada still has an opportunity.

William Susman, managing director of Threadstone Advisors, a retail consulting and investment company, once explained the Sycamore style. "You can make a profit from selling stones, and then polish the rest of the gem to make it attractive as well." Similar spin off techniques may be used in the business restructuring of Victoria.

"Brand can transform itself." Michael Houstton, founder of Beanstalk, a brand consultancy, has expectations for Victoria. "I think this is a brand that will not disappear."

But the first step is to undergo a more thorough transformation and reconstruction. It is expected that after the intervention of private equity agencies, Victoria or will experience more radical cost cutting and efficiency improvement, and do not rule out further splitting or closing.

During the same period, wicks will officially retire from the parent company's CEO and chairman.

This boy from a small business family in Ohio, America, once used to feel that her personal assets were limited, the name of the self shop was "The Limited", literally translated as "limited", and also the predecessor of L Brands. After 55 years, after his fame, he named his luxurious cruises "Limitless (unlimited)" to feel the boundless possibility of commercial scale and personal circumstances.

And between "limited" and "infinite", it is the rise and decline of a sexy Empire and the rolling forward with the trend of the times.