Detailed SWOT Analysis of Victoria’s Secret – The largest Retailer Of lingerie In The United States

Quick Stats on Victoria’s Secret

Founder	Roy Raymond & Gaye Raymond
Year Founded	1977
Origin	The United States
No. of Employees	30,000+
Company Type	Public
Market Cap	$ 5.094 Billion (2021)
Annual Revenue	$ 11.84 Billion (2021)
Net Income/ Profit	$ 844 Million (2021)

 

Victoria’s secret is rebranding her strategy:

“WE HAVE CHANGED, WE NOW KNOW BEAUTY IS ALWAYS YOUR TO DEFINE” is the first line of a video commercial released by Victoria’s Secret on YouTube on June 28, 2022. America’s most well-known lingerie company is receiving a makeover. Victoria’s Secret has extended its audience after years of focusing primarily on slender, supermodel women. It offers women of various ethnicities, morphology, ages, and backgrounds in its promotion for its new Victoria’s Secret VS collection.

Products of Victoria’s Secret

• Lingerie
• Activewear
• Fragrances
• Make-Up
• Body products

Buyer Persona

Close Competitors of Victoria’s Secret

• Understatement Underwear is a Swedish lingerie brand founded in 2017 by Marie Stolt and Maria Lager with the goal of revolutionizing women’s underwear. There are no distracting underwires. There is no limiting padding. There will be no itchy labels. Their bralettes and panties are created with comfort in mind and are meant to complement any body type.
• Calvin Klein is Victoria’s Secret’s first competitor. Calvin Klein and his collaborator Barry Schwartz launched the firm in 1968. Calvin Klein’s status as an American fashion pioneer stems from its inventive designs and clean style.
• Bluebella Emily Bendella created Bluebella, a British lingerie company, in 2005. Bluebella is all about innovation, inclusivity, and extraordinary elegance, with each new collection redefining sensuality.
• Thirdlove Heidi Zak and her husband, David Spector, created the American lingerie firm Thirdlove in 2013. The company is well-known for promoting body positivity and providing bras and half-cup sizes.
• Nubian Skin Ade Hassan founded Nubian Skin, a London-based English lingerie and hosiery brand that specializes in “nude” underwear for women of color, in 2014.

Now that we’ve seen a concise overview of the company, we can go right into the SWOT analysis of Victoria’s Secret.

SWOT Analysis of Victoria’s Secret 

A SWOT Analysis is a strategic planning and management approach for determining an organization’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats in relation to commercial competitiveness or project planning. It’s a valuable planning approach that allows Victoria’s Secret to compare its performance to that of its competitors and the whole industry.

To better understand the SWOT analysis of Victoria’s Secret, refer to the infographic below:

  

So let us first start by looking at the strengths of Victoria’s Secret from the SWOT analysis of Victoria’s Secret.

Strengths of Victoria’s Secret

• Brand Presence: Brand recognition and visibility on a national and worldwide scale with over 1000 corporate outlets throughout the world.
• Fashion Show: The annual Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show, which is broadcast on all major fashion publications and networks, is responsible for most of Victoria’s Secret’s popularity. The show features not only the season’s newest styles but also high-priced fashion events.
• Premium Customer: Victoria Secret’s best strength is its huge list of devoted consumers who purchase lingerie and innerwear from the company regularly. This is feasible not just as a result of the company’s product quality, but also as a result of its customer engagement activities.
• Marketing and Advertising: Because of the nature of their product line, Victoria’s Secret is unable to rely on conventional advertising. Victoria’s Secret, on the other hand, has been able to penetrate the minds of female audiences through commercials in glossy fashion publications and brand placements in films. Active internet marketing by the company, includes active blogs, social media presence, and catalogs to raise awareness of their product lines.
• Celebrity Following: Unlike other fashion companies that have celebrity endorsements, Victoria’s Secret is a brand that produces celebrities. Many of the models who promoted their products have gone on to become superstars, and the brand always selects models who are relatable to their target audience, which is largely female. The models serve as the lingerie brand’s initial point of contact with its clients.
• In-store Experience: Women choose to purchase at Victoria’s Secret not because of the reasonable prices, but because of the exceptional customer service the business offers. The in-store experience is completed with pink decor, large and sultry fitting rooms, knowledgeable and friendly employees, and a strong desire for innovation.

Weaknesses of Victoria’s Secret

• Research and Development: Investment in R&D is lower than that of the industry’s fastest-growing companies. Despite spending more on research and development than the industry average, Victoria’s Secret has been unable to compete in terms of innovation with the industry’s leading companies. It appears to be a well-established company eager to release goods with market-proven characteristics.
• High Attrition Rate: In comparison to other companies in the sector, Victoria’s Secret has a greater turnover rate and should spend significantly more on staff training and development than its competitors.
• Poor Penetration: The majority of Victoria’s Secret consumers live in Tier 1 or urban areas. As a result, the majority of their outlets are in cities, and the brand’s penetration into smaller towns is quite minimal. Most markets, on the other hand, are focusing on these areas.
• Switching to a New Product Line: To compete with the lower-cost competitors, the company began to focus on new product lines. Some of the most recent product introductions have received negative responses from the market, particularly in terms of comfort. As a result, many of the brand’s long-term customers have switched to competitor brands.
• High Day Inventory: When compared to rivals, days inventory is high, forcing the company to acquire more funds to spend in the channel. This may affect Victoria’s Secret’s long-term growth.

Opportunities for Victoria’s Secret

• Emerging Markets: Because of rising income levels, rising population, and most importantly, changing gender equations among youngsters, which involves openness of sexuality, emerging markets are promising for Victoria’s Secret growth.
• New Taxation Policy: The new tax policy might have a big influence on company practices and provide new opportunities for established businesses like Victoria’s Secret to raise profits. 
• Online Advantage: The corporation has put a lot of money into the internet platform in the last few years. Victoria’s Secret has gained access to a new sales channel as a result of this investment. In the next few years, the corporation can capitalize on this potential by better understanding its customers and meeting their demands using big data analytics.

Threats to Victoria’s Secret

• Intense Competition: Over the previous two years, stable profitability has expanded the number of participants in the market, putting downward pressure on not only profitability but overall sales.
• Fake Products: Several brands are replicas of well-known designer labels. People are hesitant to spend a lot of money on lingerie, so they go for cheaper replicas.
• Emerging Local Distributors: Local distributors’ growing power poses a challenge in some sectors, as the competition pays local distributors better margins.
• Online Market: The present physical infrastructure-driven supply chain paradigm may be threatened by changing customer buying behavior through online networks.
• Less Discount: When it comes to product promotion and discounts, most lingerie companies go above and beyond what Victoria’s Secret does.

This ends our detailed SWOT analysis of Victoria’s Secret. Let us conclude our learning below.

Victoria’s Secret’s ‘Perfect Body’ Campaign

What was the issue?

Victoria’s Secret released a promotion for its new BODY bra range in October 2014. The advertising featured images of slender models with the tagline “The Perfect ‘BODY,'” presenting a traditional and false appearance of perfection.

What backlash did the brand face?

Customers and rival lingerie businesses were outraged by Victoria’s Secret’s ‘Perfect Body’ Campaign. On the website change.org, a petition has been begun requesting that the US lingerie firm “apologize for, and amend the irresponsible marketing of your new bra range Body.” Many irate customers have resorted to Twitter to vent about the promotion, with the hashtag #iamperfect trending on social media.

What did the brand do in this situation?

Victoria’s Secret modified the wording of their advertising for their bra line Body from “The Perfect ‘Body” to “A Body For Every Body.” They updated the wording online and removed posters with the original wording from stores.

Did they take down the campaign or change it as a whole?

Victoria’s Secret’s campaign was not canceled, although it did undergo significant alterations. The company modified the wording of its commercial from ‘The Perfect ‘Body” to ‘A Body For Every Body,’ and they removed posters with the old text.

This campaign idea for Victoria’s secret:

Offer to three ordinary women who are purchased on the Victoria’s Secret website within a period, the opportunity to be a part of the famous Victoria’s Secret annual show. This opportunity will be announced on Instagram and Facebook.