Can Victoria's Secret Rebound? NewsWire

NewsWire: 6/26/21

• Long-embattled Victoria’s Secret is ditching its Angels for athletes and actresses. The company’s new direction may be the most drastic attempt at a brand turnaround in recent memory. (The New York Times)
• NH: In recent years, Victoria’s Secret (part of L Brands, or LB) has gotten more negative press than positive. It has long resisted changing its sex-soaked marketing, even as a slew of competing brands found success by positioning themselves as more down-to-earth. It has also battled scrutiny over its owner’s ties to Jeffrey Epstein. (See “Sex Doesn't Sell Like It Used To” and “Victoria’s Secret’s Struggles Are No Secret.”) Since 2015, the company’s share of the U.S. women’s underwear market has fallen from 32% to 21%.
• Faced with shrinking sales and racked by scandal, the company is starting fresh. This summer, Victoria’s Secret will split from L Brands and become its own public company. Its famous Angels are no more. The new faces of Victoria’s Secret are seven accomplished women, including soccer star Megan Rapinoe and size 14 model and activist Paloma Elsesser. The board of directors will be mostly female. The mannequins will come in a wider range of sizes. 
• Victoria’s Secret isn’t going, well, Victorian. It’s still a lingerie store. But it’s shedding all of the playboy marketing and will also begin selling items it previously shunned, such as nursing bras and post-mastectomy bras.
• The danger is, of course, that in trying to win over new customers, Victoria’s Secret is losing all of what--for better or worse--made it distinctive and (in the past) expanded its margins. Investors have been enthusiastic about the company's new direction, helping to drive up LB shares around 80% so far this year. But the company is in a tough spot. If it doesn't change, it loses market share by sticking to an outmoded formula. But if it does, it loses all the faithful customers who once paid a premium to partake in the mystique.

Did You Know?

• Meet the Nonbinary Americans. The U.S. Census asks about age and sex, but it doesn’t ask about gender identity. A new study by the Williams Institute offers the first population estimate of nonbinary adults in the United States: 1.2 million. The term “nonbinary” is used to describe people who don’t identify exclusively as male or female. Some go by they/them pronouns or use other terms like “gender fluid” or “genderqueer” to describe themselves. The study found that those who identify as nonbinary are overwhelmingly young people: Fully 76% are 18- to 29-year-olds. This falls to 16% among 30- to 45-year-olds, and just 8% among 46- to 60-year-olds. They’re also more likely to be white (58%) and to live in urban areas (88%). It’s unclear whether the large age disparity reflects an actual difference in the shares of nonbinary adults, or unfamiliarity with or less willingness to use such terminology among older Americans. It’s only over the past decade that nonbinary identities have grown hugely in public visibility.