Victoria’s Secret has acquired digitally-native intimates brand Adore Me, a move designed to help the lingerie and beauty products retailer as it looks to expand its audience online and off.
The purchase includes a $400 million upfront cash payment and further cash consideration based in part on growth targets, according to a Tuesday (Nov. 1) news release.
“The deal will create significant upside for VS&Co, including the opportunity to leverage Adore Me’s expertise and technology to continue to improve the Victoria’s Secret and PINK customer shopping experience and accelerate the modernization of VS&Co’s digital platform,” Victoria’s Secret said in the release.
In mid-October, the company said it was looking to boost its growth after a difficult summer, with the company reporting declining net sales for the first fiscal quarter, and net sales that were flat absent the impact of government stimulus money.
Victoria’s Secret quietly let go of roughly 5% of its management team in July amid an overall corporate restructuring. And August, it reported that sales were still somewhat down, a trend the company said was due to broader patterns in consumer spending.
Still, CEO Martin Waters argued at the time that the company has “created a solid financial platform” since going public last year.
The company also unveiled plans to grow its market share in its primary categories — bras, intimates and beauty — “while evolving our brand positioning to be more inclusive and attracting a broader, more loyal customer base with more compelling storytelling in stores and on our digital platforms.”
PYMNTS’ Karen Webster spoke with Adore Me Chief Customer Officer Nicolas Capuono earlier this year about his company’s focus on the digital consumer experience.
Read more: Lingerie Space Gets Intimate With More Insights
“We’re digital native brand,” he said at the time. “Since Day One [we’ve been] a true believer that the online experience can bring something very new to the customer. What we do is reinforce … the shopping experience itself on the website, trying to make sure that the customer has the best knowledge about the product and our value prop during the two, three, four, five minutes [they give] us.”
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