Amazon launches bid for bra dominance

Well, this should be quite a show.

In the great battle between Amazon and, well, everyone else, the latest target of the online giant's desire for dominance is said to be Columbus-based lingerie retailer Victoria's Secret.

That's the L Brands chain, of course, that essentially invented the market niche it has dominated for decades.

According to a recent report, Amazon is planning to battle Victoria's Secret by selling low-priced bras online. The online retailer has been selling its own line of bras for under $10 in Europe as a warmup.

Should the folks at L Brands be worried?

At least one influential retail analyst says: nope.

"While (Amazon) is a retail juggernaut, and we

fully expect it to be extremely successful within apparel ... the strategy (Amazon) is clearly going after within intimates is low price,” analyst Kimberly Greenberger of Morgan Stanley Research wrote in a note to investors.

“In our view, if Victoria’s Secret customers were after price, they would have already traded down” to Wal-Mart, Target or other discount retailers,

Greenberger said.

Instead, Victoria’s Secret has been able to steadily maintain its market share over the past five years or so.

“Thus, we conclude that the (Victoria’s Secret) shopper is looking for something beyond price — likely service, fit, quality and design.”

Those are things that aren’t so easily done online, which is why intimate apparel is the second least frequently purchased clothing category on Amazon, Greenberger said.

Meanwhile, it’s not as if L Brands has been sitting on its hands. Lest anyone forget, it was only three months ago that Leslie H. Wexner told Wall Street analysts that he “wasn’t happy with the performance the last several years of Victoria’s (Secret). I thought the brand had stalled out. ... We had to make change.”

Wexner, the founder, chairman and CEO of the chain’s parent company, therefore reorganized the Victoria’s Secret business. And, perhaps

anticipating challengers like Amazon in the sports bra and bralette category, began focusing on gaining market share in that subcategory by cutting prices.

“We probably sold as many sport bras in the last four weeks as we did in the last calendar year,” Wexner said in November. “We’re going to be a factor in this market and ... we’re seriously going after this market. It’s going to cost a few bucks to eat somebody else’s lunch.”

Considering how long Wexner has been at this

game, maybe it’s the folks at Amazon who should be worried about their lunch.

Brand power, too

After The Limited filed for bankruptcy protection last month, a New York-based private-equity firm bought the intellectual property and other assets of the New Albany-based women’s specialty fashion retailer.

As it turns out, that kind of purchase, made so the brand could live on as an e-commerce site, has been done before — and with a brand rather close to The Limited.

In 2015, brand management company Bluestar Alliance acquired the Limited Too brand trademarks with the idea that the tween girl retail brand would be sold in a “mixed-distribution model” that would include online sales.

The Limited created Limited Too in 1987 as a way to introduce young girls to the brand. And the wheel turns.