Victoria’s Secret and Bath & Body Works Closing 300 Stores

LOS ANGELES, CA — Victoria’s Secret will permanently close about 250 stores in the United States and Canada by the end of this year, parent company L Brands announced this week.

Also slated for closure are 50 Bath & Body Works locations. The news came this week after L Brands posted its quarterly earnings online.

Victoria’s Secret, a popular women’s lingerie retailer, has 1,091 stores in the United States and Canada. L Brands said it will close 235 U.S. Victoria’s Secret and three Pink stores. It also plans to close 13 of its 38 stores in Canada.

While the company has yet to name which stores it plans to close, The LA area has Victoria’s Secret locations that could be on the list:

• Hollywood, 6801 Hollywood Blvd
• Beverly Center, 8500 Beverly Blvd
• Westwood, 1046 Westwood Blvd
• Canoga Park, 6600 Topanga Canyon Blvd
• Northridge Fashion Center, 9301 Tampa Ave
• Westfield Fashion Square in Sherman Oaks, 14006 Riverside Dr #64
• Burbank Town Center, 201 E Magnolia Blvd.
• Glendale Galleria, 2148 Galleria Way
• FIGat7th, 735 S Figueroa St, Los Angeles
• Westfield Culver City, 6000 Sepulveda Blvd C4
• Del Amo Fashion Center in Torrance, 21540 Hawthorne Blvd
• South Bay Galleria in Redondo Beach, 1815 Hawthorne Blvd #186
• Los Cerritos Center in Cerritos, 342 Los Cerritos Center c10

Some LA area Bath & Body Works stores are located at:

• Westfield Fashion Square, 14006 Riverside Dr, Sherman Oaks
• Beverly Center, 8522 Beverly Blvd, Los Angeles
• FIGat7th, 735 S Figueroa St, Los Angeles
• Glendale Galleria, 1105 GLENDALE GALLERIA, Glendale
• Westfield Culver City, 147 FOX HILLS MALL
• Santa Monica Place, 395 Santa Monica Place
• Westfield Topanga & The Village, 6600 TOPANGA PLAZA CANYON BLVD, Canoga Park
• Fallbrook Center, 22900 Vanowen St, West Hills, CA 91307

In February, L Brands was prepared to sell a majority stake of Victoria’s Secret to Sycamore Partners, a deal that would have spun off the Victoria's Secret brand — made up of Victoria's Secret Lingerie, Victoria's Secret Beauty, and PINK — into a separate, standalone company.

However, the companies agreed to terminate the sale after L Brands was forced to impose furloughs and mass store closures in response to the coronavirus pandemic. Ending the agreement also avoided a lawsuit by Sycamore Partners, which had accused L Brands of breach of contract.

Victoria’s Secret reported net sales of $1.65 billion for the first quarter of 2020, compared with $2.6 billion for the same quarter last year.

In a call with analysts, Interim Victoria’s Secret CEO Stuart Burgdoerfer said the closings will occur over the next several months. Additional closings are anticipated, USA Today reported.

L Brands said in a news release that it "remains committed to establishing Bath & Body Works as a pure-play public company and is taking the necessary steps to prepare the Victoria’s Secret Lingerie, Victoria’s Secret Beauty and PINK businesses to operate as a separate, standalone company."

Victoria’s Secret and Bath & Body Works are the latest in a series of retail closures prompted by dwindling revenue amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Last week, Pier 1 Imports and J.C. Penney both announced the companies would file for bankruptcy. While J.C. Penney plans to close about 240 stores, Pier 1 will close all locations. Earlier this month, luxury department store Neiman Marcus filed for bankruptcy after furloughing 14,000 employees and temporarily closing its 43 stores.