Limited Brands Inc.

ABOUT THIS COMPANY:

Limited Brands (formerly The Limited Inc.) operates 3, 800 clothing and specialty stores across the U.S. The company's stores include The Limited, Express and Henri Bendel. Limited also owns a majority stake in Intimate Brands Inc., home to the famous Victoria's Secret lingerie stores and catalogs, Bath & Body Works and White Barn Candle Co.

Appeal of apparel

When he settled on the idea of operating a clothing store chain as a long-term career plan, founder and current Limited CEO Leslie Wexner didn't fall far from the tree -- his parents, Russian immigrants, ran a chain of budget clothing stores while he was growing up in Dayton, Ohio. He later credited his work ethic and business skills to his retail upbringing. After dropping out of law school, Wexner returned home to work at his parents' store full time. With a $5,000 loan from a family member, Wexner opened his own clothing store in 1963 in Columbus, Ohio, called, simply, "The Limited."

The Limited grew rapidly. Within six years, Wexner was operating a chain of five Limited stores. After the company went public in 1969, he used some of the profit from the stock sale to further expand, and had built the chain up to 100 stores by 1976. Two years later, Wexner opened a distribution center in Columbus the size of 30 football fields; the center shipped new products to stores consistently every few weeks, instead of at the start of every season, as had been custom at the time. By the mid-1980s, The Limited was one of the hottest stores in malls across the country and Victoria's Secret was emerging as a leading catalogue retailer. The recession of the early 1990s led to slumping sales and a drastic corporate restructuring that stretched through the late1990s, when the company closed many stores and spun off parts of its empire.