• by Sarah Mahoney  @mahoney_sarah, August 15, 2024

Victoria’s Secret, which has spent the last five years trying to reclaim its heyday, named Hillary Super its new chief executive officer. She replaces the departing Martin Waters and brings with her an impressive track record: Most recently, she was the CEO of intimates and accessories at Savage X Fenty, Rihanna’s buzzy fashion brand. She has also been CEO of Anthropologie Group, owned by Urban Outfitters, and held key roles at Guess?, American Eagle Outfitters, Gap and Ann Taylor.

Fixing Victoria’s problems won’t be easy. While many people admired the brand’s long-overdue attempts to pivot away from the super-sexualized marketing that first put it on the map, it has yet to find its feet. And new efforts, focusing more on diverse body sizes and Gen Z’s radically different ideas about comfort and what women should look like, have not caught on. At the same time, dozens of competitors have sprung up, offering more appealing products, imagery, and business models.

However, the company says the new appointment is more about focusing on what it needs to do in the future than what has gone wrong in the past, and it says Super will focus on accelerating growth in its core business in North America.

“We are particularly impressed with her merchant leadership capabilities paired with an operator’s discipline and bias for driving value creation,” says Donna James, chair of the company’s board, in the announcement. “She understands vertically integrated retail brands and has an intuitive understanding of the consumer landscape, informed by customer insights which are critical for consistently delivering in this industry and its ever-accelerating fashion and economic cycles.”

The retailer, long one of the most successful mall-based chains, has been losing steam for some time. “North America revenues have declined by about 20% as of 2023, relative to 2019,” writes Matthew Boss, an analyst who follows the company for J.P. Morgan. In the last year, declines have continued in the mid-single-digit range.

And under Waters’ leadership, the company’s 2023 share of the intimates market in North America shrank to 17.5%, compared to 18.7% in 2022 and 26.4% in 2019. Meanwhile, Boss, writes, the trio of Aerie, owned by American Eagle Outfitters, Skims, and Savage by Fenty has "collectively grown.”

The new CEO announcement also contains preliminary results for the second quarter. While final numbers won’t be reported until later this month, the Reynoldsburg, Ohio-based company says results are in line with its earlier forecasts and that while sales are still declining -- down between 1% and 2% -- they show continued sequential improvement, as trends improved in both stores and digital channels.

The launch of the Victoria’s Secret Dream bra collection helped, as did campus-themed promotions for the Pink brand.