L Brands History

← Back to the current L Brands profile

The Company Description of Its Time

This filing opens with a dated corporate announcement, and the date matters more than anything else on the page. On August 2, 2021, L Brands (NYSE: LB) completed the separation of the Victoria's Secret business into an independent, public company through a tax-free spin-off to L Brands shareholders. The new company, named Victoria's Secret & Co., includes Victoria's Secret Lingerie, PINK and Victoria's Secret Beauty, and is a NYSE listed company trading under the ticker symbol VSCO. In conjunction with that announcement, L Brands changed its name to Bath & Body Works, Inc. and now trades under the ticker symbol BBWI. Everything below that announcement on the historical record page is explicitly labelled for historical purposes only, and this rebuild keeps that label's meaning intact.

For Historical Purposes: From Leslie's to The Limited

The kept history begins a generation before the famous store. L Brands, Inc. was formerly known as Limited Brands, Inc. and The Limited, Inc., a fashion retailer based in Columbus, Ohio. In 1951 Bella Cabakoff and her husband Harry Wexner opened a women's clothing store named Leslie's, and that store became the training ground for their son Leslie 'Les' Wexner. In 1963 he borrowed $5,000 from his aunt and $5,000 from the bank and opened a store at the Kingsdale Shopping Center in Upper Arlington, Ohio. The store was named 'The Limited' because it focused on clothing for younger women, unlike his parents' general merchandise store - a narrow assortment, aimed at a defined customer, as the founding idea of the whole enterprise.

The later history in the filing is a chain of ownership moves, each dated. In the 1990s the company began a string of acquisitions, purchasing several other retailers. On August 3, 2007, Limited Brands sold 75 percent ownership of its flagship Limited chain to buyout firm Sun Capital Partners, Inc., and in 2010 the remaining 25 percent of shares were also purchased by Sun Capital. The Limited announced on its website that all The Limited stores in the United States had officially closed their doors on January 7, 2017, with the web operation initially announced to continue; the filing adds that The Limited online also soon filed for bankruptcy and discontinued services, and that the brand was revived in mid-2017 by Sycamore Partners subsidiary Belk, with Limited-branded merchandise available on its website.

The Early-2018 Brand Family, as Recorded

The snapshot that closes the historical section is dated early 2018. As of early 2018, L Brands operated the following retail brands: Victoria's Secret, Pink (sold through Victoria's Secret), Bath & Body Works, Henri Bendel and La Senza. The company's own summary of that period describes an international business selling lingerie, personal care and beauty products, apparel and accessories through those world-renowned household names, operating more than 3,000 company-owned specialty stores in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland and Greater China, with brands sold in more than 800 franchised locations worldwide and products available online through the brand websites historical descriptions list.

Use this page for the 2021 facts and the labelled history, and use its sibling filing, Limited Brands, for the older record written while that was still the company's name - the two pages are deliberately different documents, one headed by a spin-off announcement, the other a period profile ending around 2010. This rebuild asserts no outcome beyond the historical record: it does not report how either listed company performed after August 2021. For current corporate information, the Bath & Body Works, Inc. and Victoria's Secret & Co. websites in the References are the authorities, and the routes to the L Brands financial filing and the Victoria's Secret profile remain on this page.

Photos

← Back to the current L Brands profile