Inventory

Victoria's Secret is a retail brand of lingerie and beauty products, owned and run by the Limited Brands company. Victoria's Secret generates more than $4 billion in sales a year. It is the fastest subsidiary of Limited Brands and contributes 42% of corporate profits. More than 1000 Victoria's Secret retail stores are open in the United States. Products are also available through the catalogue and online business, Victoria's Secret Direct, with sales of approximately $870 million.

In the past decade, Victoria's Secret has incorporated software for data mining and analysis to further advance sales. Specifically, employees use a data warehouse that tracks the sales of every piece of merchandise by store in order to make decisions on the allocation of products. Applying this comprehensive tool, the company has significantly improved over its former system, which pieced together information from several databases that give questionable results.

This company uses a joint data warehouse and intranet application system. The result is based on MicroStrategy's DSS Server, a relational On-Line Analytical Processing (OLAP) server optimized for very large database (VLDB) analysis. MicroStrategy's DSS Web has access to the database and helps communication between the data warehouse and the browser. About 20 million rows of data are loaded into the system weekly. Over 1,000 queries are run each week, with the most frequently-executed queries coming from intranet users. The data warehouse that drives the application contains detailed information about the sales and inventory levels for each item in each store. The application enables associates to make decisions to improve their in-stock position and create individualized color/size models for each store.

Access to facts, on which to base allocation decisions, is especially significant in the initimate apparel business because merchandise normally comes in a dozen different sizes, in addition to many styles and colors. To maximize revenue, Victoria's Secret must recognize geographical variations in purchasing so that the distribution of merchandise adapts to serve the size and tastes of customers who regularly shop at the same store. Otherwise, sales opportunities are missed on unstocked items or poor sellers are left to be discounted.

Victoria’s Secret has about 20 percent growth rate per month in users. When a user queries the data warehouse and receives an answer, guided walk-throughs, tutorials, and customized help screens gives instructions for what actions to take based on the results of those analyses. The new intranet application program also lets associates access detailed information and take action based on the information they receive from the data. This definately makes it a lot easier to adjust to reorder products based on store's selling patterns and inventory.