Victoria’s Secret to Acquire Adore Me for $400 Million
Lingerie retailer Victoria’s Secret & Co. has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Adore Me – for a reported $400 million price tag.
The deal is expected to close in early 2023, subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory clearances. According to the announcement, Victoria’s Secret intends to finance the transaction at closing with cash on hand.
Founded over a decade ago, Adore Me has become well-known for its digital-first culture, inclusive sizing, and proprietary “Home Try-On” platform technology. The start-up is a Certified B corporation, serving over 1.2 million active users and offering monthly subscription options. In 2012, the lingerie brand increased its product lines to carry 77 sizes, leaning into the extended sizing options the company had built their reputation upon.
As e-commerce continues to grow, other, much larger retailers have been eyeing the try-on technologies that Adore Me has long been offering their customers. In 2021, Walmart announced plans to acquire virtual fitting room platform Zeekit. More recently, the chain boosted their personalization efforts with Be Your Own Model technology, allowing consumers to select from 50 models in order to get an idea of how products will look on them.
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“I’m absolutely delighted to be announcing this transaction, welcoming Adore Me into the VS&Co family. Adore Me is a technology-led, digital-first innovator in the intimates category that will help us bring differentiated experiences to Victoria’s Secret and PINK customers,” said Martin Waters, CEO, Victoria’s Secret & Co.
Adore Me’s commitment to DEI – as well as their proven sustainability track record – will likely play well with Victoria’s Secret’s Gen-Z target demographic, and also chimes with the brand’s eagerness to modernize rapidly at scale. In May 2022, Victoria’s Secret launched VS&Co-Lab, a digital platform aimed at working with women or minority-owned or led businesses, indicating a more concrete move towards inclusion and diversity in their brand value goals.
Commenting on the news, the Victoria’s Secret CEO added that the “acquisition will be a significant accelerant as we pivot toward growth and modernize the foundation of our company with an entrepreneurial mindset that puts technology at the forefront of everything we do. In partnering with the incredible team at Adore Me, we will move to the future much faster.”
Adore Me’s AI-Powered, Comprehensive Workflow
Ranjan Roy, vice president of strategy at Adore Me recently spoke to RIS News about how the company has leveraged artificial intelligence to ramp up their creative projects. After partnering with Writer on its AI-driven platform, Roy and the Adore Me team have found myriad ways to improve business and free associates up for more value-added, creative tasks. In their copywriting, for example, the company now employs AI-generated content, with Writer technology trained to recognize Adore Me’s best-performing work, generating drafts that match their brand voice and unique formatting.
“Natural language generation technology is the future of retail, and we want to be ahead of the curve,” Roy told RIS. “AI-generated content should help you with the boring, structured stuff. A writer who wants to work on more creative endeavors should have the time to do that, and not have to worry about the day-to-day, monotonous work.” In terms of results, Adore Me found the conversion rate was indistinguishable from when a product description was written by a human versus by Writer’s CoWrite platform.
