Case 38 — Victoria's Secret · Les Wexner · 2019

The show is the brand's biggest asset and its biggest liability at the same time. Do you keep it, reform it, or end it?

You have owned Victoria's Secret for thirty-seven years, and for twenty-four of them the fashion show has been the brand's engine — Angels, wings, a network broadcast, a week of coverage for which the company paid nothing. Last November's show drew 3.3 million viewers on ABC, down from 9.7 million five years earlier. Three weeks before it aired, your chief marketing officer told Vogue the show should not cast transgender or plus-size models because it is 'a fantasy'; he apologised, and he has just retired. Aerie has stopped retouching its models and is growing comparable sales at 20% or more a year. Rihanna's Savage X Fenty staged its own show last year with every body on the runway. Your comparable sales fell 7% last quarter. And since July, Jeffrey Epstein's arrest has put your own name in every story about the company for reasons that have nothing to do with lingerie.

Choose before you scroll. The answer is hidden until you commit.