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Victoria's Secret

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Victoria’s Secret
Public Criticism of its Business

Victoria’s Secret is one of the America’s biggest designer, manufacturer and marketer of women’s premium lingerie. Founded in 1977 by Roy Raymond and his wife, it has long been the leader in its market, with $1.1 billion revenues in 2015. Today Victoria's Secret is wholly owned by L Brands, a publicly traded company. However, notwithstanding the company’s remarkable success, Victoria’s Secret, since several years, suffers from the public criticism of its business.
There are both Internal and External factors that led to this public criticism of the brand. Some of these factors include a series of scandals that damaged their image and identity, and a new wave of competitors and new entrants that starts to challenge the brand, which create a high bargaining power for customers.
The primary internal issue, and also the most important one that led to Victoria’s Secret public criticism, is the series of scandals that damaged their brand image and identity. The company suffered from a wide range of critics from 2009 to 2016, among which :

In 2009 Victoria’s Secret was sued several times for producing underwear that contained formaldehyde.
In 2012 they were accused of the use of child labour in harvesting cotton and of selling knockoffs of the company’s stockings. Moreover the new lingerie collection « Go East » has been criticised for being racist.

However, today we are investigating the two biggest scandals that happened in 2014, and more recently in May 2016, concerning the negative image of women that the brand delivers in its advertisings. In 2014, a petition was signed against the lingerie collection called “Body”, that displayed the slogan “The Perfect Body” over some well-known Victoria’s Secret Angels. The petition demanded that Victoria’s Secret apologise and take responsibility for the unhealthy,

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...emotion was the one, which motivated Raymond to create a new store where men didn’t felt this way. That was when in 1977 his wife and him opened the first store at Palo Alto, California, United States with $80,000 of saving and loans from his family. The style of this store would be like Victorian era, that’s why the store was named “Victoria. The second part of the business name was “secret” because it would have a secret that no one would ever know. Victoria’s secret’s was starting to grow because of the revealing underwear they had because before women’s underwear aim was of practically and durability but not at 1970 women wanted more sensual underwear and Victoria’s Secret’s gave that. In 1982 Raymond had opened more stores in San Francisco and the annual sales had grow to 4 million, but although this Victoria’s Secret was near of bankrupt. That was when Leslie Wexner appears. That in 1963 opened a sportswear store called “limited” and within 1977 has 188 stores. In 1980’s she mas looking for new brands and that was when in San Francisco she found that small Victorian store called “Victoria’s Secret’s” that was a different lingerie store of what she normally saw “more sexier”. And she knew the reason why this business had fail, because women felt uncomfortable when they went to this shop. But finally she bought the catalogue and the stores for $1 million. What they first did was study the European lingerie boutiques because European use at daily basis all the sexy lingerie...

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