On November 16, 2006, Justin Timberlake, a popular fried chicken in the United States, took to the stage of the Dolby Theater in Hollywood in a formal suit.
Coinciding with the eleventh anniversary of the release of "Sexy Back", in boss Jia's sexy voice and windy dance steps, 15 top supermodels came out to present the world with the most wonderful Victoria's Secret show in history.
The show contributed a lot of classic scenes: KK mistakenly threw off a high heel when he walked to the middle of the runway, and then casually tiptoed his right foot to complete the second half, the whole time did not change color, perfectly explaining what is the big heart of a supermodel.
Giselle Bundchen acted as the opening angel, and when he took the first step, he broke his foot heavily, and still walked domineeringly all night. It is worthy of being a Brazilian national treasure worth 450,000 US dollars, a woman born for big scenes.
Ji Niangniang left the Victoria's Secret stage after this show, and with her, there was also the fortune of the global female lingerie leader that has been prosperous for decades.
In 2001, victoria's secret shows were first broadcast on ABC and were viewed by 12.4 million viewers. By 2015, it was almost cut off, with only 6.59 million left. In 2017 and 2018, it plunged further to 5.37 million and 3.27 million, setting consecutive record lows.
Victoria's Secret angels still represent the most beautiful flesh in the world, and the world's love for them will not stop, at least not xiao Lizi. People just lost interest and patience with Victoria's Secret.
01
Victoria falls
On January 31, 1999, the 33rd Super Bowl was played at Sun Life Stadium in Miami, with the Denver Broncos playing against the Atlanta Falcons. Just halfway through the highly anticipated "American Spring Festival Gala", a small episode attracted people's attention.
During intermission, a 30-second video of the catwalk was suddenly inserted into the webcast, and 26 Victoria's Secret models took the stadium as a catwalk. The footage attracted 1.5 million people into the live broadcast room, and the network was overwhelmed and paralyzed.
In just 30 seconds, Victoria's Secret became a hit, truly hitting the market influence and brand awareness to the world. The man who planned the operation was Les Wexner, the owner of The Limited Group, a marketing genius and the founder of the Victoria's Secret show.
In 1982, the founder of the "Victoria's Secret" brand, Roy Raymond, broke his capital chain and had to sell all five of his Victoria's Secret stores to The Limited Group for only $1 million.
Led by Ohio political and business legend Wexner, The Limited was in full swing, setting off an acquisition frenzy that included Victoria's Secret, lane Bryant and Lerner chains, and Henri Bendel.
Wexner's talent is not limited to marketing. Before buying Victoria's Secret, he risked bankruptcy by borrowing $30 million to buy logistics company Mast Industries, and has since owned contracts for more than a dozen plants in Asia and hundreds of factories around the world.
With american fashion trends changing, Wexner's Asian factory allows him to produce and transport faster at a lower cost.
Therefore, under the operation of The Limited, in the 1980s, Victoria's Secret quickly expanded to major malls in the United States. In the early 1990s, Victoria's Secret became the nation's largest retailer of lingerie for women.
But imitation is not as good as creation, especially the homogenization of the market imitates to a stage of near saturation.
In the late 1990s, limited experienced a growth bottleneck, and Wexner made a strategic adjustment to strengthen the brand, requiring the company to shift from following the fashion to the creator of fashion. Of course, Victoria's Secret is a trump card with his greatest potential.
In 1995, wexner's Victoria's Secret show began. In 2001, the Victoria's Secret show was officially broadcast live on television.
As the fame of the Victoria's Secret show began to spread overseas, wexner's earlier global supply chain played a greater role and became an indispensable bridge on the road to victoria's secret internationalization.
In 2003, Victoria's Secret had more than 1,000 stores worldwide and annual sales of $2.8 billion. By 2009, sales had doubled several times to $10.75 billion, setting a record for 600 pieces of underwear sold per minute.
It took only 20 years for Victoria's Secret to go from bankruptcy to the top, but it took even less time to slide from the peak to the bottom.
In 2009, Victoria's Secret Outlets sold more than $20 million in broadcast rights. After 10 years, the Victoria's Secret Show officially announced its suspension. In the same year, Victoria's Secret had sales of $6.8 billion. By the first three quarters of 2021, revenue remained at $1.44 billion.
A generation of "sexy myths" that even a decent ending cannot be sought.
In 2020, Victoria's Secret UK declared bankruptcy liquidation. Limited plans to sell Victoria's Secret at a modest $1.1 billion valuation. Even due to the pandemic, the discount sale program has been forced to be suspended.
For the reasons for the fall of the "King of Underwear", Victoria's Secret has his own thoughts. In a presentation document for the IPO roadshow, Limited management wrote the following sentence:
"We have lost the bond of connection with modern women."
02
Secret secrets
In 1977, Roy Raymond opened the first Victoria's Secret in San Francisco, California. Roy graduated from the Stanford School of Economics, but the direct reason he founded Victoria's Secret was because he felt embarrassed to buy underwear for his wife in public.
Victoria's Secret's original purpose was to create a comfortable shopping environment for men, and from this point of view, it slid so quickly to fall, and planted seeds from the beginning of its birth.
This conclusion is somewhat suspected by hindsight, but it is indeed difficult for women's underwear brands under the domination of men to build a real bridge with the target customer group.
Verksner proved this more clearly than Roy.
In 2020, Epstein's bizarre death in prison became an open case. The "Lolita Island" industrial chain he single-handedly created shocked the world after it was exposed, and the service objects involved former President Clinton, British princes, Hollywood superstars and Bill Gates and other rich people.
In fact, as early as 1997, a young model sued Epstein, saying that her "secret scouts" disguised as Victoria's Secret had violated her in a hotel room.
Wexner was a close friend of Epstein's, and not only did he try to protect him, but at one point he also entrusted most of his property to him. After Epstein died in prison, Wexner also resigned as CEO to be investigated by the board.
Both Epstein's imprisonment and Wexner's resignation are related to the Metoo movement launched by actress Alyssa Milano in 2017.
Under the overwhelming public opinion, more and more "authoritative figures" have fallen or been punished by law. The movement spread to the commercial sector, which was manifested in the collapse of "authoritative brands" such as Victoria's Secret on the right to speak about fashion.
Over the years, Victoria's Secret has used countless advertisements, big shows and magazine covers to define "sexy" as a white and thin child under the male aesthetic and promote it globally. The infinite Victoria's Secret show leads the so-called "women's fashion", but behind it is precisely the embodiment of patriarchy.
In order to maintain the "sexy" and damage the body has become the daily life of Victoria's Secret angels, many supermodels only eat one apple a day. Irene Heatherton, who had taken diet pills and injected artificial hormones, suffered from depression after she was overwhelmed and gave up her job.
Bridget Malcolm, who had been living on protein shakes and steamed vegetables for months, finally suffered from malnutrition and frequent panic attacks due to intense mental stress, and had to take anti-anxiety medications.
The yearning for beauty is human nature, but the angels living in hell because of Victoria's Secret's demand for a perfect body are essentially the same as the small feet wrapped in the feudal period, which is a double destruction of women's bodies and spirits.
In 2020, more than 100 models sent an open letter to Victoria's Secret CEO at the time, calling on him to change Victoria's Secret's misogynistic and abusive culture. But at that time, Victoria's Secret was already crumbling due to the years-long decline in sales.
In 2019, Victoria's Secret began to use plus-size models
The ups and downs of Victoria's Secret can be summed up as "success and failure and failure."
Now Victoria's Secret has played the slogan of "redefining sexiness", from "Fat is not enough" to inviting "Plus Size Girl" to shoot the cover. But over the years, the Victoria's Secret show has continued to reinforce the stereotype in people's minds: Victoria's Secret's personality means the body of the devil.
Besides, the Victoria's Secret Show has been suspended. With its current strength, no matter how it finds compensation, I am afraid that it will not be able to reproduce the influence and dissemination effect of the past in other forms.
03
Angels love beauty
In 2021 Double 11, the top four Tmall underwear brand store sales are UBRAS, Banana, Uniqlo and Nei, and victoria's secret official flagship store ranks 19th.
Victoria's Secret's new management should not be too happy, and they clearly have high hopes for the growth potential of the Chinese mainland lingerie market.
Judging from the recent actions, Victoria's Secret began to carry out drastic reforms after the failure of its sale. The first step, of course, is open source and throttling, and last May, Victoria's Secret, the most valuable brand, was split and listed by the parent company.
With more than 900 stores worldwide, Victoria's Secret was closed 248 between early 2020 and early 2021, but four new stores were added in Greater China.
As of the third quarter of 2021, Victoria's Secret has 63 direct-operated stores in Greater China, and plans to open about 80 by the end of 2021.
Victoria's Secret attaches great importance to the Chinese market is not difficult to understand.
Under the epidemic, the offline stores in Europe and the United States, the base camp of Victoria's Secret, have been impacted, more and more stores have been closed, British companies have even gone bankrupt and liquidated, and the situation in the United States is presumably not much better.
In contrast, China has been able to control the epidemic effectively on the one hand. In the past two years, it is not uncommon for brands such as ZARA, Uniqlo, and Nike to maintain profitability in large stores.
On the other hand, the data released by CBNData shows that the per capita consumption of intimate clothing in the mainland is less than half of that of Western countries, and the growth prospects are very broad.
Since 2020, Victoria's Secret has successively officially announced actors Zhou Dongyu, Yang Mi and skier Gu Ailing as spokespersons. In addition, in May last year, when Yang Tianzhen was announced as a close friend of the brand, it also caused a hot discussion.
Whether in terms of body, image or occupation, Victoria's Secret is quite thoughtful. Unfortunately, the effect of wishful thinking in favoring the Chinese market does not seem obvious.
On Tuesday, Victoria's Secret announced that it would sell a minority stake to Virginy for $45 million, and the two sides would form a joint venture to operate Victoria's Secret China business, with 51% and 49% of the joint venture shares, respectively.
On Wednesday and Thursday, Virginy fell 17 percent and 3 percent, respectively. The market is not optimistic about the future of Victoria's Secret China, compared with the popularity of several Chinese Victoria's Secret angels in the entertainment industry, Tmall's sales ranking is indeed not very good.
In the final analysis, the rise of a brand is inseparable from its own struggle, but it must also take into account the historical process.
After the 1970s, the American middle class rose. They have money and aesthetics, and their requirements for consumer goods are more concerned with forced rather than price.
"Victoria's Secret", it sounds elegant and exquisite. Victoria's Secret has firmly bound the concepts of "sexiness" and "fashion" to the brand, which has naturally been widely welcomed.
But the times are different, the bubble era Japanese also love luxury goods, and in the end, it is Uniqlo that is cheap and fast fashion. As for China's consumption situation, the data released a while ago is not optimistic.
According to a market survey by Ai Media Consulting, in 2020, only 4.1% of consumers in China tend to buy foreign high-end brands, as high as 76.6% of consumers prefer underwear without underwire, and 59.1% of consumers prefer cotton bras.
Gen Z doesn't believe in marketing concepts, and Victoria's Secret realized it too late: the wave of consumerism has receded. Angels not only love beauty, they are also like ordinary people, more concerned about comfort and cost performance.
04
epilogue
Marketing lingerie as a luxury product looks like a scam. Even without the pandemic, the suspension of the Victoria's Secret Show is proof of the unsustainability of luxury.
Moreover, the biggest problem of Victoria's Secret is not even in business behavior, the price can be reduced, and the product line can be expanded. But feminism is a more esoteric business, and it is a failure to understand it.
From the moment of the rise of the lingerie revolution, Victoria's Secret was destined to be the first to be knocked down the flag. In such a historical trend, even the greatest marketing experts may have no choice.
Corporate culture is the hardest thing to change, and Victoria's Secret probably still doesn't understand what women are thinking. What it does best is just how to please men.