Adore Me Plans To Open Stores To Compete With Victoria’s Secret

As Adore Me seeks to gain market share in the lingerie market, the eCommerce retailer plans to open brick-and-mortar stores in the U.S. The company wants to open 200 to 300 locations over the next five years to compete with Victoria’s Secret’s 1,200 brick-and-mortar stores, The Wall Street Journal reported.

“We don’t believe 1,200 is an appropriate number of stores, but there is room for 200 to 300 stores in the U.S.,” Adore Me Founder and CEO Morgan Hermand-Waiche told the WSJ.

This year, the Adore Me brand plans to build between seven and 10 stores. New York City will be home to the company’s first brick-and-mortar location, which is scheduled to open in the next couple of months. Beyond New York City, the company plans to introduce another 20 stores next year to experiment with foot traffic and then move faster with future store openings. Some of the new locations will be in malls where Victoria’s Secret already has locations.

The news comes as another eCommerce retailer, Warby Parker, is expanding its own brick-and-mortar portfolio. The eyeglass retailer is aiming to have approximately 100 stores in the U.S. by the end of 2018, CNBC has reported. Warby Parker currently has 64 stores in markets the retailer carefully chose. The company has also experimented with pop-up stores, mobile stores and other mediums.

“We think the presentation by retail experts of ‘either [online] or [offline]’ is a false choice,” Warby Parker CEO Neil Blumenthal told CNBC. “It really is the intersection of the two … and we are trying to approach retail expansion in a very deliberate manner, where we are testing and learning.”

After Warby Parker was founded online in 2010, the brand pioneered the strategy of eCommerce retailers opening brick-and-mortar stores. In 2013, it opened the doors of its first store in New York to meet customer demand for a place to try on their glasses.

In the future, Blumenthal said Warby Parker could have 800 to 1,000 physical stores, while another eCommerce retailer, Bonobos, plans to have 100 stores by 2020.