Limited Brands - Fashion Company Profile

Company Profile

Nothing operates under the Limited Brands name today: the company shortened it to L Brands in 2013, spun off Victoria's Secret & Co. in August 2021, and renamed itself Bath & Body Works, Inc. This single page keeps the Limited Brands-era record - the family of brands as it stood around 2009-2010, and the 2010 sale of the Limited stores themselves - as the predecessor filing to the L Brands profile, which carries the 2021 ending of the story.

The scale snapshot is dated 2009. In 2009, Limited Brands operated more than 2,900 specialty stores across the continental United States, recorded 2009 annual sales of approximately $8.6 billion, and employed more than 90,000 associates throughout the United States. The business description of that period runs: Limited Brands, through Victoria's Secret, Pink, Bath & Body Works, La Senza, C.O. Bigelow, White Barn Candle Co. and Henri Bendel, is an international company that sells lingerie, personal care and beauty products, apparel and accessories. Its brands were sold in more than 700 additional company-owned and franchised locations worldwide in the filing's 2010 framing, and its products were available through the Victoria's Secret Catalogue and the brand websites historical descriptions name. Intimate and beauty categories are described here, as throughout this profile, in retail and product terms only.

A Family of Brands, and the 2010 Limited Stores Sale

The stated ambition of the period is kept in the company's own sentence: Limited Brands is committed to building a family of the world's best fashion brands, offering captivating customer experiences that drive long-term loyalty and deliver sustained growth for their shareholders. Family of brands is the organising idea - separate specialty names, each with its own customer and store format, held by one Columbus parent. The seven names in the 2009-2010 list include two the later filing drops from its early-2018 list - C.O. Bigelow and White Barn Candle Co. - which is exactly the kind of difference that makes keeping both filings worthwhile: the roster of a group is a dated fact, and each page's roster belongs to its period.

The closing fact of this filing looks backward to the founding store. In 2010, Limited Brands sold their remaining stake in Limited Stores - the chain that began at Kingsdale in 1963, the company's namesake and original business, exiting the parent's portfolio while the parent kept the founder's other creations. The sibling L Brands filing carries the longer version of that exit - the 2007 sale of 75 percent to Sun Capital and the 2017 store closures - and carries the story forward to the 2021 spin-off and renaming. This page deliberately does not: its record ends where its own period ends, around 2010, with the name change to L Brands noted at its head as a signpost to the newer filing.

How the Two Filings Divide the Story

Use this page for the Limited Brands period facts: the 1963 first store at Kingsdale in Columbus, Ohio; trading over-the-counter from 1969 and the NYSE listing in 1982; the 2009 summary of more than 2,900 stores, approximately $8.6 billion in sales and more than 90,000 associates; the seven-brand roster including C.O. Bigelow and White Barn Candle Co.; the family-of-brands commitment; and the 2010 sale of the remaining stake in Limited Stores. The routes are this filing's own - the L Brands profile, the Victoria's Secret profile, and the Limited Brands news and financial pages - and the one substantive external reference the historical record carries, La Senza, is in the References.

Keeping an older-named filing beside its successor is a directory habit this letter also applies to closed and renamed companies elsewhere: names are how researchers search, and a company searched under its former name should land on a page that explains that name's period and points onward. This profile therefore closes under the name Limited Brands, on purpose - with its successor filing one click away, carrying the 1951 family prehistory this page omits and the 2021 ending this page predates. Neither page is the complete story alone; together, in period order, they are the record as the historical record site filed it.