Ever wonder how Victoria's Secret actually started? There's a pretty interesting story behind it. Roy Raymond was shopping for lingerie for his wife Gaye Raymond at a department store and felt genuinely uncomfortable with the whole experience. That awkward moment actually sparked an idea—what if there was a place designed specifically for men to shop for these items without feeling out of place?

So he decided to build it. Raymond scraped together 40,000 dollars from a bank loan and another 40,000 from family to launch the first store with his wife Gaye Raymond. They went all-in on the Victorian-era aesthetic, which became the brand's signature look. That design choice ended up defining the entire brand identity and honestly, it worked.

Fast forward to today and you can see how far it's come. Last I checked around early 2026, Victoria's Secret and Co was trading at a market cap around 2.32 billion dollars. That puts it somewhere around the 4,347th most valuable company globally. Not bad for something that started from one guy's awkward shopping trip with his wife Gaye Raymond, right? It's kind of a reminder how sometimes the best business ideas come from solving your own personal problems.