Victoria's Secret, Bath & Body Closing Stores; See NC Locations

NORTH CAROLINA—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 Charlotte metro area has eight Victoria's Secret locations that could be on the list:

• SouthPark Mall, 4400 Sharon Road, Charlotte
• Carolina Place Mall, 11025 Carolina Place Pkwy, Pineville
• Blakeney Mall, 9812 Rea Road, Charlotte
• Concord Mills Mall, 8111 Concord Mills Boulevard, Concord
• Carolina Mall, 1480 US Highway 29 N., Concord
• Northlake Mall, 6801 Northlake Mall Drive, Charlotte
• Birkdale, 16805 Birkdale Commons, Huntersville
• Eastridge Mall, 246 N. New Hope Road, Gastonia

North Carolina also has 2 PINK stores and more than three dozen Bath & Body Works stores.

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 also filed for bankruptcy after furloughing 14,000 employees and temporarily closing its 43 stores.

Shannon Antinori, Patch Staff, contributed