Victoria's Secret is closing dozens of stores this year — here's why the brand has failed to keep up

Victoria's Secret reported that it will close 53 stores in North America this year, up from 30 stores last year.
Victoria's Secret has been criticized for a lack of inclusivity, in part because of comments made by the chief marketing officer, Ed Razek, in an interview with Vogue last year.
Brands like Aerie and Rihanna's lingerie Savage X Fenty take a more body-positive approach toward sizing and marketing.

Following is a transcription of the video.

Mary Hanbury: On Wednesday, Victoria's Secret's parent company L Brands reported earnings and announced that they'd be closing 53 stores this year. That follows up from 30 in 2018.

Victoria's Secret has been accused at the moment of not fitting into the #MeToo era and not adapting to change. Critics say that the runway show is outdated and that the images in stores are inappropriate, while other brands like American Eagle's Aerie are kind of launching more body-positive campaigns. They also said that they would never use airbrushed photos. Since 2014, that's been really popular for them. So while Aerie's had explosive success over the last few years, Victoria's Secret's slowly seen its sales slide.

In the most recent runway show, which took place in November, Victoria's Secret came under fire because before the runway show aired publicly, Ed Razek, the chief marketing officer, was interviewed by Vogue, and he made some controversial comments about plus-size and transsexual models being featured in the show or rather not being featured in the show. And so this caused a big outrage online and consequently, whether or not it's a result of this, but their ratings, the viewership ratings actually fell this year versus the year before.

So increasingly, new brands are cropping up, and I think they're realizing there's a lot of opportunity here. People are seeing that more body-positive brands like American Eagle's Aerie are achieving a lot of success. And so new brands like ThirdLove, Lively, and Rihanna even has her own line of lingerie that's trying to fill in the void that Victoria's Secret has created of creating more body-positive clothing by having extended sizes and also, crucially, more body-positive and inclusive marketing.

So I think the store closures is obviously a start. That's addressing a more urgent problem that sales are slipping, and then I think really it comes down to marketing. That's what people are most critical of at the moment. So if they were to readdress their fashion show and the way that it's done, and roll out more sizes, and be more inclusive, I think that could have good results for them.

But there is also an argument that it's not actually down to the marketing but it's actually the quality. Customers felt the quality of the clothing has slipped, so this is obviously a bigger issue that needs to be fixed.