Victoria’s Secret will close up to 50 stores this year, parent company L Brands announced on Wednesday.
The lingerie retailer will permanently close 30 to 50 stores in the United States and Canada in 2021, after 241 stores closed in 2020. By the end of this year, Victoria’s Secret could have fewer than 800 stores, compared to 1,100 in early 2020, from according to CNN.
USA Today reports that L Brands also plans to open 49 new Bath & Body Works stores in the United States and one in Canada, according to its most recent quarterly earnings. The new locations will be “almost entirely outside the mall”, while up to 40 mall locations will be closed; its total store count remains around 1,736 in the United States and Canada.
L Brands did not say which locations will close when.
Victoria’s Secret currently has 47 locations in the state of New York, including Pink stores, with stores in Syracuse’s Destiny USA, Albany’s Crossgates Mall, Buffalo’s Walden Galleria and Eastview Mall near Rochester. Bath & Body Works has locations in the same malls, as well as additional stores in places like the Great Northern Mall and Shops at Ithaca Mall.
AL Brands still plans to transform Victoria’s Secret, which has struggled in recent years, into a separate company within the next six months. The New York Times reports that Goldman Sachs will begin formally introducing acquisition firms about a possible acquisition soon.
“In the next six months, we will continue to work on separating the two businesses, moving forward in two ways to prepare for a split or a sale,” the company said in a statement.
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