CASE $2$: THE LIMITED BRANDS

Source: Based on: The Limited Designs Supply Chain to Begin and End with the Customer, Baseline Magazine,

April $3,2006.$

Founded in $1968,$ Limited Brands now is the holding company of Victoria's Secret,

Express, Bath & Body Works, C$.$O$.$ Bigelow, The Limited, White Barn Candle, and Henri

Bendel. In $2005,$ the annual sales of Limited Brands reached $$9\mathrm{.}4$ billion. Limited Brands

achieved its expansion of brand and growth on the sales and market over the years through

the active acquisitions of different retail companies. As the result of acquiring so many

stores and brands, Limited inherited a complex hodgepodge of IT systems and software,

including $60$ major systems running hundreds of applications, many of them redundant, on

numerous platforms. Many of these platforms $($e$.$g$.,$ Hewlett$-$Packard HP$-$UX$,$ Sun

Microsystems Solaris, and IBM OS$/390$ and AS$/400,$ as well as Intel$-$based servers and

Tandem computers$)$ are still in place today. Given the complexity of the company's IT

operations, Limited's ability to stay on top of its supply and demand chains was going to be

a challenge.

The situation became acute beginning in $2001.$ Discount retailers started encroaching

on Limited's market space. In response, the company began shifting to a high$-$end product

line that would generate better profit margins. To make this new strategy work, however,

Limited needed new supply chain technologies and processes to drive the speed$-$to$-$market

requirements of the new growth strategy$-$what Leonard A$.$ Schlesinger, Limited's vice

chairman and chief operating officer and a former Harvard Business School professor, has

described as "integrated brand delivery" $($i$.$e$.,$ integrating and leveraging the supply chain

and logistics supporting a brand for maximum value$).$

Limited Brands buys merchandise from more than $1,000$ suppliers worldwide and

sells through multiple channels retail stores, the Internet, catalogs, and third parties. An