L Brands, Inc.

L Brands, Inc. was the Columbus, Ohio specialty-retail group built by Leslie H. Wexner from The Limited, founded in 1963, into the parent of Victoria's Secret, PINK and Bath & Body Works. The company traded on the New York Stock Exchange as LB. On August 2, 2021 it completed the separation of Victoria's Secret into an independent public company, Victoria's Secret & Co. (NYSE: VSCO), and renamed the remaining company — the Bath & Body Works business — Bath & Body Works, Inc., which trades as BBWI. There is no longer a company trading under the L Brands name.

Company Profile

The February 2019 summary in the record describes L Brands at its combined peak: evolved from an apparel-based specialty retailer into a leader in women's intimate apparel, personal care, home fragrance and beauty, through Victoria's Secret, PINK, Bath & Body Works and Henri Bendel, with more than 3,000 company-owned stores in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland and Greater China and 800-plus franchised locations.

The October 2013 summary records the two-segment structure the market valued: Victoria's Secret and Bath & Body Works, sold through company-owned stores in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. The 2021 separation simply turned those two segments into two listed companies — and gave this page's successor its new name, ticker and financial identity.

The range behind the name is women's intimate apparel, personal care, home fragrance and beauty products under Victoria's Secret, PINK and Bath & Body Works. Its customers are women shopping through specialty stores, catalogues and online worldwide. That combination — what is sold, and to whom — is the simplest way to place L Brands, Inc. in the industry: it explains the company's costs, its competitors and the kind of news that moved its shares when it had them. A change in either half of the combination, a new product category or a new customer, is usually the first sign that the business described in the older summaries is turning into something different.

Scale should be read from the dated summaries with their dates attached. Store counts, sales descriptions and market positions quoted there were the company's own account of itself in that year, and they are the right basis for comparing L Brands, Inc. with the other companies in this section — a component supplier against a retailer, or a catalogue house against a mall chain — as long as each figure is compared with figures from roughly the same period.

For current dealings, the snapshot at the top of this page is the place to start: it gives the company's present status — Renamed — on August 2, 2021 L Brands spun off Victoria's Secret & Co. and renamed itself Bath & Body Works, Inc. — and links to the official website, which is where current product ranges, store information and investor or corporate contacts are maintained. Anything in the dated summaries that conflicts with the snapshot should be read as the older position: summaries describe the year they are dated, and the snapshot describes the company as it stands now.

For anyone researching the fashion industry's public-company era, L Brands, Inc. is a useful case: a holding company that turned two specialty chains into two listed companies. The summaries in this section were compiled while the story was still unfolding, which is exactly what makes them worth keeping — they preserve what the company said about itself at the time, before the outcome was known.