The Innovation of Victoria’s Secret
Erika Santos, Kat O’Leary, Abdullah Wright, Torlisa Jeffrey, Judy Lin
I) Executive Summary
The history of lingerie can be traced back thousands of years to 3000 B.C., but it was not
until 1977 when Roy Rogers founded Victoria’s Secret that lingerie evolved into what we think
of now. In this paper, we examine the emergence of Victoria’s Secret as the leading retailer in
women’s lingerie, the context for the innovation, and the approaches the firm took to
commercialize the innovation. Victoria’s Secret was hardly the first lingerie retailer, but it was
able to take advantage of a niche market demand, fortunate timing, and a well-sequenced
ecosystem to become the market leader it is today. Our focus is on the period between 1977
when Roy Rogers first founded VS, through 1982 when he sold the company to The Limited
Brands, and finally ending in 1995 when The Limited Brands was able to fully realize Victoria’s
Secrets’ value proposition.
II) Context for Innovation
The Evolution of Lingerie:
Lingerie as derived from the French words lin (linen) and linge (washables), translates to
washable lineni. Our notion of lingerie, as fashionable and alluring undergarments for women, is
a modern concept as compared to that of previous generations. For most of history, women’s
underwear was designed for functionality rather than sensuality. Until the glamorization of
women’s underwear, deemed as of the 1960’s, undergarments served three main purposes:
shape, hygiene, and modestyii.
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Historical records trace the origin of lingerie to ancient Egypt, around 3000 B.C., where
status or social prestige was represented by the types of clothing. High-ranking Egyptian women
wore tunics – narrow undergarments that started below the chest, extended to the ankles, and
were supported by crosswise shoulder strapsiii. Additional forms of women’s innerwear are
depicted by statues, paintings and writings from classical Greece: the zonѐ (a band of linen worn
around the waist and lower torso for shape and control), apodesmos (breast band or girdle),
mastodeton or mastodesmos (band that flattens the breast)iv. In Roman, undergarments which
were also worn as outwear at times, were designed as well for functional uses rather that
aesthetics: mamillere and fascia as clothing bands to support the bustv.
During medieval times, linen underwear was worn by nobility as a means to protect
expensive outwear and to provide a layer of warmth. Of note, the chemise (a tunic that gathered
into a square or circular neck) and early forms of the corset (a tight-fitting bodice) were
introduced in the fourth and sixteenth centuries A. D. respectively. As fashion trended towards
tailored clothing, designed to follow the shape of the body, women began to use more of tightfitting garments to manipulate body shape. For example, women used paste as a stiffener
between two layers of linen to create stiffer, harder bodices. vi
Perceived as one of the most controversial garments in history, the corset, often referred
to as “stay” or “support”, was enhanced to provide even more structure for the female form. The
corset functioned by binding the body to compress at the center and move flesh from the waist to
the breasts and hips. The practice of “tight-lacing” became common, training the body to accept
progressively narrower binding to achieve and extremely exaggerated, hourglass shapevii. This
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Erika Santos, Kat O’Leary, Abdullah Wright, Torlisa Jeffrey, Judy Lin
practice was in some ways symbolic of sexual intercourse obviously provoking erotic appeal
during this age. However, the corset was often painful and limited movement. Many argued that
the corset was responsible for causing miscarriages and deformities and that it repressed and
victimized womenviii.
The Victorian age yielded greater innovations in lingerie. The steel-front busk fastening,
allowed women to put on or take off corsets without assistance. The elastic corset emerged
offering more comfort. Laced trimmings and embroidery, and silk underwear were introduced.
Innovations in steam molding and dyes enabled lingerie to be colored and shaped. Victorian
fashion highlighted women’s bodies: exaggerated full sleeves, minuscule corseted waists, and
whalebone hoops and crinolines accented yards of fabric and bustles. Victorian clothing became
associated with sexual anticipation given the difficulties presented in taking it all off. The
introduction of garters (hooked corsets to stockings) heightened excitement and is credited with
the spawn of striptease shows and dances.ix The name Victoria’s Secret was adopted from this
era.
Lingerie cycled through various trends from the early twentieth century to the present.
The increased participation of women in sports and dancing gave rise to brassieres and less
restrictive girdles. The “alphabet bra” was introduced with cup sizes ranging from A, B, C, and
D. Also advancements in materials for such garments shifted from steel and rubber to synthetic
materials, precursors to Lycra, rayon, and Lastex. The historical context of wars, hippie and
feminist movements, and the boom of the film industry, began to shape a bigger social context
for lingerie than previously in history. On one hand, lingerie was socialized as restrictive,
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artificial, and conforming. On the other hand, some advancements (briefs, bikinis), provoked
feelings of youth and freedomx. Regardless, by the 1960’s it was quite evident that women’s
lingerie incited some type of emotional response from women and men alike. The timing was
ripe for promoting lingerie in a greater business context.
The Introduction of Victoria’s Secret:
Roy Raymond, an alumnus of Tufts University and Stanford Graduate School of
Business, started Victoria’s Secret in 1977. His impetus for creating the business was his
embarrassment at purchasing lingerie for his wife in a department store. He was uncomfortable
with the interaction with salespeople in department stores and thought that the product offering
in such stores was undesirable. Roy borrowed $80,000 from a bank and relatives to implement
his vision of an ideal lingerie store, one that would provide a comfortable environment for men.
The first store was opened in Stanford Shopping Center in Palo Alto. Roy envisioned a
Victorian-boudoir theme for his store with wood-paneled walls and a helpful sales staff.
Furthermore, instead of racks of bras and panties in every size, there were single styles, paired
together and mounted on the wall in frames. Men could browse for styles for women and sales
staff would help estimate the appropriate size, pulling from inventory in the back roomsxi.
In the first year, the store generated half a million dollars in sales providing Raymond
the funds to open three new stores and start a mail-order cataloguexii. The Victoria’s Secret
catalogue was also a success, showcasing Roy’s growing collection of bras, panties, slips, and
loungewear. The main rivals to Victoria’s Secret at this time were department stores such as
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Sears & Roebuck, other mail-order programs, and Fredericks of Hollywood. Although
Fredericks sold similar products, the retailer had a darker edge that perhaps appealed to fewer
people.
After five years of operation, Victoria’s Secret had grossed $6M in profit. However, Roy
experienced difficulties running the business, often running late on mail-orders and not
producing to meet demand. In 1982, Roy sold Victoria’s Secret six stores and mail-order
catalogue for $4M to the founder of The Limited women’s apparel firm.xiii
III) Ecosystem and Value Chain
The secret behind Victoria’s Secret’s success can be attributed to the construction of its
ecosystem. When Roy first created Victoria’s Secret, he established a Minimum Viable Footprint
ecosystem: he started with one unique store that provided some commercial value to male and
female shoppers (a comfortable shopping experience outside of the prying eyes in department
stores). His challenges were in the sourcing and execution of his plan. In addition to building the
brick-and-mortar storefront, he needed to establish the value chain and build relationships with
lingerie designers and manufacturers so that he had product to sell to his end customersxiv. These
early challenges may have been daunting at times, but Roy was able to successfully establish a
Minimum Viable Footprint and start to build a client base.
Design
Manufacture
Distribution
(Store or Mail)
Victoria’s Secret
Customer
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As he gained traction, he expanded his operations to include similar stores in other parts
of California and also developed a mail catalogue for customers who could not go to a store. In
keeping with his goal of making lingerie accessible to men and women, Roy’s initial catalogues
showcased male and female couples together and allowed customers to mail in their requests and
have their orders shipped to their homes. It was an innovative concept at the time, but by the
early 1980s, Roy ran into problems meeting demand and running the mail order businessxv.
Victoria’s Secret Ecosystem under Roy Raymond
Co-Innovation Risk:
Design and
manufacturing of
stylish products
Innovation Strategy:
Boudoir stores, mail
catalogue featuring
men and women
Execution Risk:
Establishment of supply
chain, retail presence,
and customer base
Informed Expectations:
Start with the
Minimum Viable
Footprint
Adoption Chain Risk:
Threat / response from
department stores
By the time Leslie Wexner bought Victoria’s Secret for The Limited Brands in 1982,
Victoria’s Secret had six stores and a 42-page catalogue. Wexner wisely recognized that Roy had
established a Minimum Viable Footprint and had a small but growing customer base. He carried
over some of the components of the ecosystem that Roy had established (the boudoir store
experience and the mail catalogue) and improved upon them. He amped up the sex appeal in the
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catalogues by having female supermodels pose exclusively for Victoria’s Secret. He drew on The
Limited’s deeper pockets and invested in improvements to the mail delivery channel, which was
one of the main sources of customer dissatisfaction in the earlier development. He also grew
Victoria’s Secret’s presence geographically and expanded its product lines to include swimwear,
bath and body products, etc. This carefully staged approach to developing a robust ecosystem
served Wexner well. By the mid-1990s, Victoria’s Secret was a well-known presence across the
United States and had a store in almost every large shopping mall.
Victoria’s Secret Ecosystem under The Limited
Co-Innovation Risk:
Improving mail delivery
system for on-time
delivery, developing
web channel
Innovation Strategy:
Stores in almost every
mall, runway shows
and mail catalogues
featuring supermodels
Execution Risk:
Expansion to new
geographical regions
Informed Expectations:
Gradually scale
expansion to full value
proposition
Adoption Chain Risk:
Dependence on
designers,
manufacturers
Roy Raymond established the basis for the Victoria’s Secret innovation, but Wexner was
the one to commercialize it and expand it beyond a Minimum Viable Footprint into a full roll out
of the value proposition. He leveraged elements of what Raymond started and added additional
channels, products, and value.
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Victoria’s Secret currently has a much more robust value chain than what Roy Raymond
initially developed:
Design
Pre-Production
Manufacture
Product
Reception
Test
Positive
Mass
Production
Distribution
(Store, Website,
or Mail)
Victoria’s Secret
Customer
Negative
Now, after products are designed, they go through a vigorous test / pilot process to see what
consumer reception would be like. Products are repeatedly iterated upon before they are
approved (if at all) for mass production and distribution through Victoria’s Secrets store,
website, or mail channelsxvi. To help balance the additional complexity, the company has become
almost fully vertically-integrated. It now has a design team headquartered in New York and is
able to maintain significant control over its value chainxvii.
IV) Multi-Channel Strategy
Today, many retailers struggle with creating the right strategy to align their different
channels to maximize the financial return from their customers. For instance, Walmart
completely separates its .com business from the brick and mortar stores, treating each medium’s
shoppers as different customers, each team in a different state with a different marketing team.
Target, on the other hand, adjusts as it goes in integrating the site, mobile and brick and mortar to
provide its customers with a holistic experience. The results are mixed.
Thus we can see that Victoria’s Secret was well before its time when it decided to
embrace a multi-channeling strategy in the 1990s, as it recognized the synergies that such a
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strategy would bring. It recognized that the benefits that customers would receive through multichanneling went far beyond simply having additional sources of communication with the retailer.
And for the retailer itself, the prospect was of significantly higher revenue. One study in
particular indicated that multi-channel customers spent between two to three times more than
single channel customersxviii.
But the change toward multi-channel strategy was far beyond a change in vision and
aspirations. There was much complication in the execution of multi-channeling. For one,
retailers have to manage a very high number of SKUs. SKUs have different vendors, different
end users, different logistics, etc. Also, the merchandising mix was different for each channel.
The VS stores, which were the face of the company, offered the core VS products, such as
lingerie, sleepwear, and VS Beauty stores only sold beauty products. The catalogue and web
channels offered these same core products, but also carried women’s apparel. So women could
purchase substitute or compliment their purchases via the catalogue and web store.
Although the stores continued to be the face of the brand, with 75% of all salesxix, it was
also an essential component of the catalogue and online experiences. Many customers would
have the enchanting store experience, get measured, try on pieces at the store, and make their
purchases at the store, but then they would purchase replacements via the web store or the
catalogue. In addition, boyfriends and husbands would make purchases on the web store,
something they would not be comfortable doing in a store.
The web store specifically had the purpose of strengthening and supporting the Victoria’s
Secret brand and consequently enabling the brand to surpass its sales goals. The leadership of the
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company backed these goals with sizable resources; the original web store cost the company five
million dollarsxx. This investment enabled the Victoria’s Secret web store to grow very quickly,
moving as aggressively as the stores had moved when the brand was launched. The financial
investment continued to grow with promotions, and changes in its advertisement approach to
bring customers to its web store.
The Victoria’s Secret fashion show was annually held in New York, but in 1999 the
company decided to provide the real-time streaming video of the Victoria’s Secret annual
fashion on its web store. The cost for this live streaming went far beyond the streaming itself, to
include TV spots, internet banner ads, print ads in newspapers, and a teaser advertisement during
the Superbowl. This advertisement was the first .com ad in the Superbowlxxi- a risk that paid off.
The teaser produced one million web store hits in thirty minutes, and the event itself won
Brandweek’s Interactive Marketing Awards for Best Marketing Eventxxii. This is particularly
impressive given that the demand was so high that the internet infrastructure wasn’t able to meet
demands during the show, crashing networks all over the country. Investments in its web store
resulted in a sales growth from nothing to $200 million in 2001xxiii. These numbers were
generated from new customer, and increases order sizes and purchase rates by existing
customers.
Beyond the investment in the web store, Victoria’s Secret was very intentional about
integrating the catalogue and the web store, positioning both mediums as part of a holistic
support for the brand and the store. For starters, the web store and the catalogue were
administered as onexxiv. From the distribution outlook, it leveraged the infrastructure in place like
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a call center, filling out both web store and catalogue orders from the same centrally located
warehouse.
In the same manner, the company integrated its different channels, for instance, allowing
customers to enter a product’s catalogue number to find the item on the web store. It also
segmented its customers, delivering specific messages to them depending on their location, later
augmenting the strategy throughout its campaign. The distribution of catalogues was then timed
with its e-mails, so that a customer who indicated preferences for clothing would receive an
email about a clothing sale and the most recent clothing cataloguexxv.
Furthermore, the company took steps to use its customer database to improve synergy
between it’s the brick and mortar stores, the web stores and the catalogues. The company built a
robust database with information on ten million of its usersxxvi. The databases e-mail addresses
from customers that shopped for each channel were merged to build a cross-channel database,
and leveraged this information to allocate appropriate advertising and make cost decisions, such
as whether someone would receive a catalogue, and what kind of catalogue it would be.
Victoria’s Secret integrated its channels in a manner that is quite unique, in which
retailers still struggle to successfully accomplish today. Nonetheless, by 2001, this multi-channel
strategy still had its shortcomings. Although the president of Victoria’s Secret Stores work
closely with the President of the Web Store and Catalogue, their P&L were separate. This means
that nether president had the power to bring about full scale changes to the brand, and
particularly regarding merchandising, the soul of any retailer. This limitation left much
unexplored room for optimization in Victoria’s Secret multi-channel strategy.
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V) Firm Differentiation and Value Creation
Beginning with founder Roy Raymond’s vision in 1977, Victoria’s Secret has positioned
itself as a boudoir-style lingerie showroom with an atmosphere that is a significant cry from the
fluorescent-lighting-laden corners of department stores that have represented the traditional
lingerie sales model. Victoria’s Secret entered the market as a standalone chain lingerie store in
a time when no true competitors existed in this marketplace. The aim of Victoria’s Secret was to
provide a place where men could comfortably purchase lingerie for women; Raymond started the
company because he felt awkward shopping for lingerie in a department-store environment.
One of the challenges VS faced in entering the marketplace ended up being one of its
major opportunities. At the time VS was founded, there was not much differentiation within the
lingerie industry. As noted in the case “Victoria’s Secret,” “In the past, intimate apparel rarely
generated much enthusiasm in the business community. The sameness of the product in style, fit,
and price made it difficult for consumers to discern the difference between national brands and
generic labels.”xxvii Meanwhile, intimate apparel has historically made up a sizeable percentage
of the women’s apparel industry. Victoria’s Secret was the first lingerie retailer to exploit the
lack of recognizable brand names in the marketplace
The Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show was one way in which the company took a unique
approach to marketing itself. Traditionally, runway shows had usually been reserved for higherend brands, and, if televised, were aired on non-network channels (such as VH1, which
showcased designer runways on its FT – Fashion Television program). The first Victoria’s
Secret Fashion Show which featured iconic models Stephanie Seymour, Beverly Peele, Veronica
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Webb, and Frederique van der Wal, was held in 1995 at New York City’s Plaza Hotelxxviii. The
following year, other big-name models, including Tyra Banks, Naomi Campbell, and Helena
Christensen joined the group; many more top models have been added to the roster since then.
The first four annual shows were not broadcast nationally, but in 1999, the show was streamed
online for the first time. By 2001, the full opportunity presented by the show was recognized,
and the 2001 edition was broadcast on ABC. Since 2002, the show, which continues to take
place each year, has been broadcast nationally on CBS.
In addition to the shows overall, the annual Fantasy Bra has added to the aspirational
nature of the brand. Each year, one model in the show is chosen to wear a high-dollar-value bra
adorned with expensive jewels. The most expensive Fantasy Bra to date is the $15 million Red
Hot Fantasy Bra worn by Gisele Bundchen in 2000. While no Fantasy Bra has ever sold (since
the line debuted in 1996), the attention garnered by the annual unveiling of this bra at the VS
Fashion Show
A major marketing differentiator for VS has been its Angels, a group of top supermodels
who, individually, represent brands nearly as big as Victoria’s Secret itself. The Angels have
included Banks, Christensen, and Seymour, along with Alessandra Ambrosio, Gisele Bündchen,
Laetitia Casta, and Heidi Klum, among other top models. Victoria’s Secret’s decision to
incorporate some of the biggest models in the world into its shows has been instrumental in the
evolution of VS as an aspirational brand. (The models who participate in the VS Fashion Show
are known as Runway Angels.) Traditionally, big-name models have rarely had such close
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associations with mass-market retail brands, and Victoria’s Secret has used its relationships with
top supermodels to communicate a Victoria’s Secret lifestyle proposition to consumers.
Victoria’s Secret has also appealed to college-aged women through its PINK line, which
includes not only includes age-appropriate undergarments, but also officially-licensed universitythemed merchandise – and has recently been expanded to include officially-licensed NFL
merchandise as well. The PINK line has been successful in recruiting younger consumers to the
brand and developing brand loyalty among them that translates to purchases of Victoria’s
Secret’s higher-end lingerie, targeted at a slightly more mature consumer.
One remarkable facet of Victoria’s Secret’s success has been its emphasis on employing
high technology in developing new bras. Victoria’s Secret has a history of profound innovation
in the lingerie industry. While intimate apparel may not seem, on first glance, to be an industry
requiring high-level technology, innovative bra design has become increasingly important for
biological reasons, and Victoria’s Secret has arguably done more to design and market the
necessary technology than any of its competitors. As noted in Discover magazine, “Poor eating
habits, as well as breast implants and the estrogens in birth-control pills, have led to an increase
in the past 15 years of more than one bra size for the average American woman—from a 34B to
a 36C. For many women, this has been a burdensome trend. A pair of D-cup breasts weighs
between 15 and 23 pounds—the equivalent of carrying around two small turkeys. The larger the
breasts, the more they move and the greater the discomfort.” Victoria’s Secret’s collections have
included innovative lines such as the Miracle Bra, the IPEX, the Infinity Edge, and the Secret
Embrace.
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The IPEX launched in 2004 and was promoted as “the remarkable achievement of an
international collaboration of designers, engineers and technicians using the latest in digital and
laser technology and proprietary manufacturing processes.”xxix The IPEX appealed to consumers
because it was a very lightweight bra that nonetheless provided full coverage in the form of a
graduated pad that was light around the edges and fuller in the center of each cup. Even the
name of the IPEX was designed to communicate that the product was high-tech and pushing the
boundaries in terms of expectations consumers previously held for lingerie. The IPEX has since
been discontinued, but a new innovation called the Showstopper bra, featuring a similar value
proposition but a different marketing approach – one that focuses on appearance rather than fit –
launched in August 2011.
One of Victoria’s Secret’s other recent innovations, which has received considerable
media attention, is the Miraculous Bra, which launched in late 2009. The Miraculous Bra’s
differentiator is that it promises to increase the appearance of the wearer’s bra size by two
cups.xxx While some argue that wearing such a bra is deceptive to people who might see you
without it later on, the value proposition of the Miraculous Bra is that it offers consumers
additional confidence for a $50-60 price tag.
A valuable service offered by Victoria’s Secret is the availability of trained salespeople in
the store who will measure consumers to ensure that the bras they purchase are the proper size.
It is often reported that between 70% and 85% of women who wear bras are wearing the wrong
size.xxxi Victoria’s Secret enables its customers to more comfortably wear the company’s
merchandise, which likely translates to a better bra experience and increased consumer loyalty to
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the brand. The boudoir feel of Victoria’s Secret stores make what could be an uncomfortable
experience tangibly more bearable, and the black suits worn by VS employees make the
experience feel less like an awkward occasion in which one is forced to stand topless in front of a
stranger and more like the rendering of a professional service like any other.
VI) Expectations for Market Growth
Currently Victoria Secret is well positioned as a market leader. To assess its future
competitiveness and ability to remain an industry an industry leader, one must look at the
competitive landscape including current direct competitors and the changing business
environment.
Competitive Landscape:
Frederick’s of Hollywood is Victoria Secret’s most comprehensive competitor. The
Lingerie retailer sells products that include its flagship lingerie line, the bra and panty
undergarments, and its beauty line that consists of an assortment of lotions and spraysxxxii.
Frederick’s has attempted to adopt many of Victoria Secret’s strategy. Its 200 boutique stores
across the United States have captured customers that do not feel comfortable using large
department stores to purchase their intimate apparel. Fredericks Catalogue and Website
operations have provided access to additional clientele. Although Both Victoria secret and
Fredrick sell similar products through comparable channels, the two companies have very
distinct points of difference. Frederick’s market’s itself with racier, adult imagexxxiii. Its overly
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reveling clothing and use of romantic black and red colors make it less appealing to younger
teenage customers whom prefer more colorful patterns for their undergarments. This pigeon
hold’s Fredericks into a more adult audience. Victoria Secret’s ability to capture both teenage
and adult shoppers has created a sense of brand loyalty prevents its customers from switching to
Fredericks as adults. With lines such as Victoria Secret’s “Pink,” the company has tapped into
the demands of multiple age groups and to created price appropriate products xxxiv. As a result
Frederick’s of Hollywood is left with only a small subset of customers and not a true threat to
Limited Brand’s Victoria Secret empire.
Agent Provocateur is Victoria Secret’s newest competitor and biggest threat. Founded in
1994, Agent Provocateur has skillfully walked the line between acceptable and indecent for main
stream salesxxxv. The company provides the same array of products as Victoria Secret but has
captured the lion’s share of the high end and international markets. Similarly to Frederick’s of
Hollywood, Agent Provocateur is solely in the adult markets but due to its tastefully sensual style
and premium perception it has the ability transition Victoria secret customers to the UK company
once they come of age. An additional threat, is Agent Provocateur’s brand name is growing fast
and if choose to go down stream and enter younger markets with teenage pajamas and
undergarments, Victoria secret could be seen as “their mommy’s brand” and lose its luster.
La Perla, a lingerie company established in the 1950’s has positioned itself as a high end
luxury brand. Similar to Victoria Secret, La Perla has used innovation and product expansion to
grow the business throughout the decadesxxxvi. Although La Perla is known as a quality brand
with a breadth of products, it has not moved down stream to meet customers at age group and at
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multiple price points. This makes La Perla a direct competitor to Agent Provocateur but not a
true threat to the Victoria Secret Franchise.
Department stores sell a number of brands at multiple price points providing the variety
that is needed for its diverse customer base. Customers use department stores for more practical
purchases; such as comfortable bras and other undergarments. Department stores fail to deliver
the same aesthetic appeal that Victoria Secret has mastered. Department stores have also failed to
find a solution to the awkward feeling men have when walking through the intimate sections. At
their core, department stores are family shopping depots with sub-standard customer service.
Victoria Secret differentiates itself from by creating comfortable, helpful store experiences that
helps to put all customers at ease when shopping in their locations.
Future Market Capture:
With Agent Provocateur as Victoria Secret’s only threatening competitor, it won’t be a
traditional competitor that could uproot the status quo. The real threat is the changing market
place. Although Victoria Secret as thrived for years using their multi-channel strategy to keep
customer awareness high and their products accessible. The Victoria Secret store is a staple in
most malls across the country. Through excellent customer service helping to create a first rate
shopping experience, Victoria Secret is able to capture and create loyal customers. The threat
facing future growth is the shift to online shopping. Victoria Secret has answered this threat by
standing behind the strength of their catalogue as both a marketing and shopping tool coupled
with their dynamic websitexxxvii.
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The winner in this space will be the company that is able to utilizing its channels to create
products that meet multiple age brackets and allow their consumers to grow with the
companyxxxviii. Victoria Secret is well ahead of the curve in this area making it difficult to
dethrone them moving forward.
i
ii
iii
iv
v
vi
vii
viii
ix
x
xi
xii
xiii
xiv
xv
xvi
xvii
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lingerie
http://www.sexy-lingerie-models.org/historyoflingerie.htm
http://www.randomhistory.com/1-50/028lingerie.html
http://www.randomhistory.com/1-50/028lingerie.html
http://www.randomhistory.com/1-50/028lingerie.html
http://www.randomhistory.com/1-50/028lingerie.html
http://www.sexy-lingerie-models.org/historyoflingerie.htm
http://www.randomhistory.com/1-50/028lingerie.html
http://www.randomhistory.com/1-50/028lingerie.html
http://www.randomhistory.com/1-50/028lingerie.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victoria%27s_Secret
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victoria_secret
Ibid
http://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/33324/62314026.pdf
http://www.answers.com/topic/victoria-s-secret
Interview with Kristy Reed, former Director of Marketing at Victoria’s Secret.
http://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/33324/62314026.pdf
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http://mba.tuck.dartmouth.edu/pdf/2002-6-0014.pdf
http://mba.tuck.dartmouth.edu/pdf/2002-6-0014.pdf
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http://mba.tuck.dartmouth.edu/pdf/2002-6-0014.pdf
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http://mba.tuck.dartmouth.edu/pdf/2002-6-0014.pdf
xxii
http://mba.tuck.dartmouth.edu/pdf/2002-6-0014.pdf
xxiii
http://mba.tuck.dartmouth.edu/pdf/2002-6-0014.pdf
xxiv
http://mba.tuck.dartmouth.edu/pdf/2002-6-0014.pdf
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http://mba.tuck.dartmouth.edu/pdf/2002-6-0014.pdf
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http://mba.tuck.dartmouth.edu/pdf/2002-6-0014.pdf
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http://mba.tuck.dartmouth.edu/pdf/2002-6-0014.pdf
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victoria%27s_Secret_Fashion_Show
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http://www.studiotimo.com/works/vs_ipex2/swf/main.swf
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/05/miraculous-bra-victorias-_n_347460.html
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http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1208335,00.html
xxxii
http://www.fredericks.com
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick's_of_Hollywood
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The Innovation of Victoria’s Secret
Erika Santos, Kat O’Leary, Abdullah Wright, Torlisa Jeffrey, Judy Lin
Lomartire, Paul. “The Not-So-Secret Corporate Takeover of Spring Break.” Palm Beach Post, Accent, pg. 4D.
March 22, 2004.
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http://www.lingerie-direct.co.uk/articles/History_of_Agent_Provocateur.html
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http://fashiongear.fibre2fashion.com/brand-story/la-perla/history.asp
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Case: “Victoria’s Secret, ” Center for Digital studies; Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth
Lomartire, Paul. “The Not-So-Secret Corporate Takeover of Spring Break.” Palm Beach Post, Accent,. March
22, 2004.
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