Victoria’s Secret Discontinues Catalogs, Swimwear Line

Tim Kenneally
Victoria’s Secret Discontinues Catalogs, Swimwear Line

Sorry, ladies; your mailman’s bulging sack is about to get a lot less sexy.

Victoria’s Secret is discontinuing its catalogs, the Columbus Dispatch reports.

The company is also discontinuing its swimwear line.

Leslie H. Wexner, founder of VS parent company L Brands, said at a shareholders meeting on Thursday that the discontinuations are part of a bid to simplify operations for the company.

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Wexner said that, after examining the company’s operations, he “diagnosed a problem: Too damn much complexity. Victoria’s had to be simplified so that it could be faster, more efficient.”

The elimination doesn’t come entirely out of left field; during Thursday’s meeting, L Brands CFO Stuart Burgdoerfer said that the company did a test elimination of the catalog in two markets for a year, and “saw no significant change in sales.”

Meanwhile, the company had been spending between $125 million and $150 million annually to publish and mail the catalogs.

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“If we were starting the business today, would one of our marketing activities be paper catalog?” Burgdoerfer pondered.

TheWrap has reached out to spokespeople for L Brands and Victoria’s Secret for comment.

Victoria’s Secret will be compartmentalized into three distinct segments: Victoria’s Secret Lingerie, Victoria’s Secret Pink and Victoria’s Secret Beauty, each led by a different executive reporting to Wexner.

Sales will revolve around online transactions and Victoria’s Secret’s brick-and-mortar locations.

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“The rationale behind our category exits is that we focus on our most significant core categories,” Burgdoerfer offered. “Our conclusion was that swim is not a core category. We’re making changes from a position of strength.”

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