- L Brands once dominated the American mall. In its heyday in the 1980s and 1990s, the company owned The Limited, Limited Too, Abercrombie & Fitch, Victoria's Secret, and Express, among others.
- However, after a series of missteps, the beleaguered company has since sold off nearly all of its brands, including Victoria's Secret on Thursday, leaving just Bath & Body Works as a standalone company.
- We took a closer look at how the rise and fall of L Brands mirrors the death of the American mall.
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If there is one company that best exemplifies the demise of the modern mall, it's L Brands.
Over the course of several decades, L Brands evolved from a humble women's clothing store in Columbus, Ohio, into a full-fledged retail behemoth. At its peak in the 1980s and 1990s, L Brands operated several of America's most popular mall brands, including The Limited, Express, Abercrombie & Fitch, Victoria's Secret, and Bath & Body Works, among others.
Under founder Les Wexner, L Brands seized opportunities for growth through a handful of acquisitions and the development of new brands that diversified its brand portfolio. These additions helped L Brands widen its empire into new areas like sporting goods and luxury, at the now-defunct stores Galyan's Trading Company and Henri Bendel, respectively.
However, Wexner's propensity to buy up brands, squeeze them for sales, and then sell them at any sign of strife eventually caught up with him. Before long, L Brands seemed to be losing companies from its portfolio almost as quickly as it had added them. Thanks in large part to the 2008 recession, which rocked nearly every sector of the retail industry but particularly mall brands, L Brands began to lose steam that it was never quite able to regain.
We took a closer look at how the unraveling of L Brands mirrors the death of the American mall by examining the downfall of each of its brands.