VICTORIA'S STRUGGLES WITH THE CHINESE LINGERIE MARKET.

      Although Victoria's Secret is the leading lingerie brand of the US, and being huge in the UK, the brand is looking to widen their custom into the far east. With china having a population of 200m women, Victoria’s secret need to make a name for themselves in the Chinese lingerie market in order to get high sales in the Far East. Demand for high-end women's underwear is extremely high in china as sales volumes have doubled in five years (from $9bn to $18bn) due to females wages rising and social attitudes changing. If VS were able to increase their popularity in China, then profits would start to increase again, after their fall due to transphobic comments in the media. Although, China is a much harder audience to please, as women want comfortable and functional underwear rather than something that is particularly sexy and seductive, which is what VS are known for. The brand sexualises the female body with the majority of their lingerie typically being lacy and sexy. If the Chinese women were to watch one of they runway shows, they would probably be less likely to buy their underwear because they don't look comfortable which is what the majority are looking for. Victoria’s secret had a launch in china, though two of the main celebrities invited to the launch were refused visas; including singer Katy Perry for supporting the independence of Taiwan and Gigi Hadid for squinting which could be deemed to be offensive to Chinese people. I think the brand need to know their audience better before they try to take over the lingerie market. Its not just the functionality of the product thats important, but also the colour. Chinese people are very superstitious, particularly about colours. For example, white products are said to represent death and yellow to be pornographic, this means that the designers would have to make sure they are only producing garments for the stores that were of particular colours in order to sell. Victoria's Secret are desperate to make a name for themselves in China due to the lingerie market being expected to reach nearly $25 billion by next year, although there are already plenty of Chinse lingerie websites online that sell their garments for half the price of Victoria's Secret, and their designs are much more desirable to the women buying them. Although Victoria's Secret opened their first store in Shanghai in 2017, they need to change their habits in order to get their sale numbers up as the consumer is very different to the typical Western consumer when it comes to expectations and even body size as Chinese women usually have much smaller body frames. In order for the brand to take over the Chinese lingerie market, they need to pretty much reinvent the brand, by making their underwear for comfortable instead of sexy, only sell particular colours and also lower their prices of their garments, otherwise they are going to just have to target a smaller audience, for example the richer percentage of Chinese women who do want sexy lingerie.