Long gone are the days when people regularly saddled Columbus with the derisive label of “Cowtown.”

Today, the Columbus Region is experiencing a boom in economic development and is at the top of the list of hot spots for brawny national businesses like Amazon or IBM, both of which have committed to major investments here, says Bill Ebbing, president of the New Albany Company.

“Central Ohio has clearly had success bringing companies to the region,” he says. “With the recent announcements of Amazon and IBM, it’s a great opportunity to showcase the region as the next Silicon Valley.”

Online retailer Amazon has announced a $1.1 billion investment would be made in New Albany, Dublin and Hilliard over three years. And IBM opened a Client Center for Advanced Analytics at Tuttle Crossing in 2012. There have been other successes attracting outside businesses here, too.

“We are strong believers in the ongoing opportunity to bring additional mission-critical companies to the region and specifically to New Albany,” Ebbing says. “An even greater opportunity exists for growing the businesses that are located here in the region already.”

The New Albany Company, a community developer focused on economic development and quality of life for the neighborhood, has certainly done its part. Its first home in the area was built in 1991 and the International Business Park was started in 1998, since attracting more than 8 million square feet of development on more than 3,000 acres, providing jobs for 14,000 people.

And the Village Center, which includes Market Square, an arts center, school campus and retail, business and government offices, along with the 55,000-square-foot Philip Heit Center for Healthy New Albany, has also been critical to the economic growth and development in the area. Work continues in the center, Ebbing says.

“It’s the heart and soul of the community. It continues to be a focus and we are expanding the mixed-use nature of the center,” he says. “One of our strengths is our commitment to a master plan to develop the quality of life here for residents, employees and for businesses to locate here.”

Continued development in New Albany and the Columbus Region relies on the collaborative nature of groups like Columbus 2020 and JobsOhio and public-private partnerships, Ebbing says.

“Each partner brings different strengths to the table, providing a formula necessary to close deals like Amazon Web Services,” he says.

The New Albany Company itself is “pretty lean,” with 10 employees who work primarily on planning and design with various consultants, Ebbing says.

Besides the solid collaborative aspects of the region, other keys to continue economic development success will be investments and planning for infrastructure from Downtown to the Outerbelt and a persistency in telling the story of the region, he says.

“Private entities and developers must spend more time planning for growth, which is valued by businesses who want to locate here or grow their business,” Ebbing says. “We are now on the national stage and competitive on a very large scale. We need to keep telling that story nationally and internationally.”

By TC Brown
Columbus CEO

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As the stewards of central Ohio’s economic-growth strategy, Columbus 2020 conducts business outreach to companies in the 11-county Columbus region and around the world. We promote the Columbus region and its various communities to growing companies to create awareness and generate local employment opportunities.

Communities, like nations, want healthy economies and jobs for their citizens to maintain and improve their quality of life over the long term. To say that it is a difficult task is an understatement.

Economic and employment growth are required to fund infrastructure and education assets needed to maintain the quality of the community. Finding the right recipe to induce growth in the short term to achieve positive long-term results is, and should be, a dialogue that community leaders — both public and private — consistently have with residents.

Long-term success requires careful planning and, from time to time, tough decisions. Communities have physical and financial constraints that shape these decisions and they must creatively build new opportunities and capacity for future growth. This often requires forgoing some short-term revenue to achieve results, squeezing public finances even in times of great growth.

Providing incentives to help companies expand is necessary to reduce costs and compete with other communities and states also trying to grow and prosper. These incentives can be a powerful tool to build a sustainable tax base and contribute to the area’s economic and cultural diversity.

The use of public and private incentives helps level the playing field with other communities and states that have different tax structures. These incentives can help mitigate costs for businesses and their use is most beneficial when they align with a community’s well-planned development strategy to result in a healthy return on investment.

When incentives are provided, companies locating in our region benefit for a specified time. In return, the communities attracting these companies benefit from increased capital investment and job growth, leading to higher tax revenues to support local services.

The New Albany International Business Park is an excellent example of the economic value generated by attracting businesses that invest in the community and create careers for residents.

These companies have come from all over the world and are helping to fuel local infrastructure development and city and educational services. New Albany’s progressive, forward-leaning philosophy has helped to attract these businesses. It is a good example of the pro-business attitude so many central Ohio communities have developed to compete in the global economy.

The Columbus region has a diverse, growing economy and population base. Growth is poised to continue due to a young, educated workforce, aggressive economic-development efforts and geographic and institutional advantages.

Job creation is a critical factor in moving everyone — our local communities, our region and our state — forward. Communities that actively work to build business partnerships are creating a better region for all of us.

By Kenny McDonald
This Week Community News

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Axium Plastics’ expansion in New Albany’s International Personal Care and Beauty Campus has increased in scope, according to local officials.

The expansion project, which is expected to be completed by December, has increased from 90,000 square feet to 158,000 square feet.

Jennifer Chrysler, New Albany’s community-development director, said City Council in March approved a 15-year, 100 percent property-tax abatement on the proposed 90,000-square-foot expansion.

“They need to make the facility larger, which is different than what was approved,” she told City Council on July 7.

City Council on July 7 voted unanimously to amend the agreement to include the increased expansion.

The new expansion plans include “an additional 8,000 square feet of manufacturing space and an additional 60,000 square feet of warehouse space,” according to the legislative report.

Axium also “will commit to create an additional 20 jobs with an annual payroll of $600,000,” the legislative report said.

Axium built a 110,000-square-foot facility in 2011 and expanded by 90,000 square feet in 2012, Chrysler said.

She said the company has exceeded all the city’s benchmarks for the development.

Axium officials said in March the company has more than 200 full-time employees working three shifts and seven days a week at the site. They said the annual payroll is $7.5 million.

“Once complete, the total project (including all expansions) will generate at least $33,500 annually for infrastructure debt service, $30,800 annually for the Johnstown-Monroe school district and $30,800 annually for the city’s general fund. The overall growth of the company has resulted in a $2,000,000 increase in payroll in 2015 from the benchmarks provided in the original two community-reinvestment-area agreements,” according to the legislative report.

Chrysler said Axium officials hope to begin the expansion within the next three weeks.

Axium, based in Mississauga, Ontario, manufactures plastic containers ranging in size from 0.5 ounce to 40 ounces for the food, personal-care, health-care and automotive industries.

Axium officials told City Council the company manufactured 1.6 billion bottles last year at the New Albany facility.

By Lori Wince
This Week Community News

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Vee Pak Ohio, one of the first companies to locate in the New Albany International Personal Care and Beauty Campus, is expanding.

Brandon Bayston, a controller for Vee Pak, said the company started a second shift in January.

Vee Pak officials plan to invest $8 million and add 60,000 to 70,000 square feet to the 105,000-square-foot New Albany facility.

The expansion would create 90 jobs with an estimated annual payroll of $3 million, said Jennifer Chrysler, New Albany’s community development director.

Daniel McCarthy, an attorney representing Vee Pak, said the family-owned company is based in Illinois and has 134 employees at the New Albany location.

McCarthy said the expansion should be completed by December.

Chrysler said the company has met its annual payroll benchmark of $3.8 million.

The company receives a 100 percent real property-tax abatement, which New Albany City Council on March 17 voted to extend by two years.

The abatement could be extended because the company will exceed $5 million in payroll after the addition is built and the new jobs are added, Chrysler said.

The abatement, initially approved in 2010, was extended from 10 to 12 years.

Chrysler estimated the expansion would generate $115,900 annually in income-tax revenue.

Per revenue-sharing agreements, each year the New Albany Community Authority would receive $40,000 for infrastructure-debt payments and the Johnstown-Monroe school district and the city’s general fund would receive $37,950 apiece from the income-tax revenue.

Bayston said Vee Pak produces lotions and soaps and one of its largest customers is Bath & Body Works, which is building a facility in the same business park.

By Lori Wince
ThisWeek Community News

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NiSource, an Indiana-based energy company and the parent company of Columbia Gas, recently signed a 10-year lease for an office in New Albany.

The company acquired 43,000 square feet on the third floor of the Water’s Edge building on Walton Parkway in the New Albany International Business Park.

NiSource spokesman Mike Banas, said 80 to 90 employees would move from the NiSource/Columbia Gas offices in downtown Columbus to New Albany by early July as part of the company’s plan to separate the Columbia Pipeline Group from NiSource.

The Columbia Pipeline Group spinoff was announced last year by company officials. “The actual lease was entered into by NiSource Corporate Services Co. but will be transferred to Columbia Pipeline Group once it becomes an independent entity,” Banas said.

He said moving the Columbia Pipeline Group operations and employees to New Albany would not affect the other 850 jobs in Columbus.

“I want to reinforce that after the separation from NiSource, we will still have 800 some jobs in downtown Columbus,” Banas said. “Columbia Pipeline Group is headquartered in Houston, Texas, and will maintain this office in New Albany to support the company’s corporate-wide services, including information-technology, finance, human-resources, legal and supply-chain operations.”

New Albany spokesman Scott McAfee said the company would employ 150 people at the site, including the 80 to 90 coming from the Columbus office. Another 60 to 70 are expected to be hired as needed.

McAfee estimated the New Albany location’s payroll at $15 million.

Banas said company officials looked at several sites in and around Columbus, but they chose New Albany partly because the space was vacant and ready for the company to occupy.

“Our decision to locate to this facility included a variety of factors, including timing of the facility, design for maximum suitability to our operational needs, parking, proximity to the airport, ease of access and community amenities,” Banas said.

McAfee said the Columbia Pipeline Group is not receiving any incentives from the city for the move.

By Lori Wince
ThisWeek Community News

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Axium Plastics is ready to expand for the second time in New Albany’s International Personal Care and Beauty Campus, company officials said.

Ven Bhindwallam, controller for Axium, said the company intends to add 90,000 square feet to its facility by December.

The New Albany City Council approved a 15-year, 100 percent property-tax abatement for the expansion on Feb. 24.

Axium Plastics, based in Mississauga, Ontario, manufactures plastic containers for the food, personal-care, health-care and automotive industries.

Axium built a 110,000-square-foot facility in 2011 and expanded by 90,000 square feet in 2012, said Jennifer Chrysler, New Albany’s community-development director.

Bhindwallam said Axium has more than 200 full-time employees on three shifts at the site, which operates seven days a week.

He said the annual payroll is $7.5 million.

By Lori Wince
The Columbus Dispatch

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NiSource Inc.’s planned spinoff of its pipeline subsidiary has spelled a new lease in New Albany.

Columbia Pipeline Group signed a 10-year lease with developer Daimler Group Inc. and its partners to move into Water’s Edge III, a 43,000-square-foot, speculative office building in the New Albany International Business Park.

Mike Banas, a spokesman for NiSource (NYSE:NI), told me 90 employees will relocate from downtown Columbus this year when the Houston-based pipeline division is spun off into a separate public company, with plans to hire 60 more workers.

“We have to staff up,” he said Tuesday.

The New Albany offices will house the company’s corporate services group, which includes such activities as information technology, finance and supply chain – “services that go across the enterprise,” Banas said.

New Albany spokesman Scott McAfee said the city expects Columbia Pipeline’s annual payroll to total $15 million.

“NiSource is not getting any additional incentives over and above the incentives originally provided to the developer,” he said, referring to a 15-year, 100 percent property tax abatement for Daimler.

NiSource has had a big influence on the regional office market in the last several months. Its Columbus Gas distribution division moved to the Arena District in November after more than 30 years at 200 Civic Center Drive in downtown Columbus, although it still has 35,000 square feet on two full floors there in a short-term deal. The workers moving to New Albany will be from both locations, and the company said it still will have 800 employees in Columbus after the shift.

NiSource’s new master limited partnership, Columbia Pipeline Partners LP (NYSE:CPPL), raised $1.1 billion through an initial public offering in February and will become part of Columbia Pipeline Group after the spinoff from NiSource.

Daimler real estate agent Greg Weber represented the landlord. Continental Realty Ltd. agent Wayne Harer joined the Cushman & Wakefield office in Chicago in representing the energy company.

Daimler hasn’t indicated what it will build next in New Albany where it typically launches a new project soon after leasing out an office property.

“Not sure on the next plan of attack in New Albany,” Weber wrote in an email. “We are exploring several options.”

By Brian R. Ball
Columbus Business First

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Axium Plastics is ready to expand for the second time in New Albany’s International Personal Care and Beauty Campus, according to company officials.

Ven Bhindwallam, controller for Axium, said company officials intend to add 90,000 square feet to the facility by December.

He said the expansion is needed to store more materials for customers.

Axium Plastics, based in Mississauga, Ontario, manufactures plastic containers ranging in size from 0.5 ounce to 40 ounces for the food, personal-care, health-care and automotive industries.

Bhindwallam said the company manufactured 1.6 billion bottles last year at the New Albany facility.

He said called the site “strategic,” saying it is within driving distance of 40 percent of the population in Chicago, New York and New Jersey.

Bhindwallam said the company brought its pharmaceutical line to New Albany and continues to incorporate different lines at the location.

L Brands is building a facility in the same business park. Bhindwallam said Axium needs to expand to provide more products for L Brands because Axium produces about 70 percent of the bottles sold by Bath & Body Works.

He said Axium also works with Bocchi Laboratories, which is in the same business park.

Bocchi Laboratories, based in Santa Clarita, Calif., manufactures products for the health and beauty industries. It produces items for Victoria’s Secret and Bath & Body Works.

Axium built a 110,000-square-foot facility in 2011 and expanded by 90,000 square feet in 2012, said Jennifer Chrysler, New Albany’s community-development director.

Chrysler said the company has exceeded all the city’s benchmarks for the development.

Bhindwallam said Axium has more than 200 full-time employees working three shifts, seven days a week, at the site.

He said the annual payroll is $7.5 million.

New Albany City Council on Feb. 24 voted 5-0 to provide a 15-year, 100 percent property-tax abatement on the new expansion. City Council members Chip Fellows and Colleen Briscoe were absent.

New Albany spokesman Scott McAfee said city officials could not estimate the value of the incentive.

He said it is difficult to estimate how an expansion would increase the value of a building.

Chrysler said Axium is investing $10.4 million in the expansion and would create 20 jobs with an estimated annual payroll of $600,000.

Chrysler estimated the expansion would generate $95,100 annually in income-tax revenue.

Per revenue-sharing agreements, each year the New Albany Community Authority would receive $33,500 for infrastructure-debt payments and the Johnstown-Monroe school district and the city’s general fund would receive $30,800 apiece from the income-tax revenue.

By Lori Wince
This Week News

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NEW ALBANY – Pretty soon, all remaining unemployed Licking County residents could theoretically find a job in or near the New Albany Personal Care and Beauty Campus.

Half of the 14 companies already there or coming to the area north of the Ohio 161-Beech Road interchange, in Licking County, are expanding or building new facilities.

The growing companies will bring more than 1,700 jobs to Licking County, including about 600 new positions and 1,100 transferred from other locations. The growth will increase employment to about 3,000 in the beauty campus and nearby American Electric Power.

All but about 100 of those jobs have been created since 2011. More than 9,000 people work in the 3,000-acre New Albany International Business Park in Licking and Franklin counties.

Licking County, with a steadily decreasing unemployment rate at 4 percent in November, has 3,400 people looking for work and without a job.

“We assist a lot of companies in the beauty park with their recruitment,” said Windy Murphy, supervisor of business services for OhioMeansJobs/Licking County. “We really try hard to include the names of the employers in our job fairs.”

Of course, applicants must either have the jobs skills or be able to acquire the skills to get hired. And transportation could be an obstacle for some to make the 20-minute drive from Newark.

But with job creation soaring and unemployment decreasing, opportunities appear plentiful for those looking for work.

“The drive really isn’t that far, especially with the (highway) improvements that have been made,” Murphy said. “We don’t have a lot of people that say it’s too far.”

The seven expanding companies will make a combined investment of $264.7 million during 2014 to 2016, adding almost 1.4 million square feet of manufacturing space.

The 14 New Albany companies in Licking County represent close to $400 million in private investment on about 1,000 acres in Licking County.

Pending annexations will increase the business park to 4,000 acres, with almost half in Licking County.

L Brands, AEP

The largest Licking County developments are L Brands and AEP.

L Brands, parent company of Victoria’s Secret, PINK, Bath & Body Works, La Senza and Henri Bendel, is building an 860,000-square-foot facility, including a distribution center opening late this year and an office section opening in 2016.

“Adding a third campus in New Albany will complement our operations in Reynoldsburg and on Morse Road and will support our goals of doubling the size of our business and continuing our international growth,” said Tammy Roberts Myers, L Brands’ vice president of communications.

The L Brands complex will include about 500 employees transferred from the Reynoldsburg distribution center and about 100 new employees, Myers said.

AEP, one of the largest electric utilities in the country, based in Columbus, announced it will build a 195,000-square-foot transmission headquarters just west of Beech Road next to its transmission operations center.

The AEP headquarters will bring 660 employees from Gahanna and Columbus, in addition to the 140 employees already at the operations center.

The $39 million facility will be completed in 2016.

Bocchi Laboratories, a California-based contract manufacturer of health, beauty and personal care products, will employ 300 after it completes its 130,000-square-foot facility at the beauty campus in 2016.

KDC

Knowlton Development Corp., which manufactures personal care products, will spend $16 million to add 59,000 square feet to its existing 250,000-square-foot facility in the beauty campus, just east of Beech Road.

“We’ve seen a great opportunity to expand our business,” Division President Ian Kalinosky said. “Our setup in New Albany has been a great success for the company.

“The beauty park concept and the key suppliers right down the street really helps. The business climate is very supportive and friendly. It’s a fantastic opportunity to expand into different areas.”

The additional space will allow KDC to enter the market of fine fragrances and perfumes, Kalinosky said.

KDC opened in New Albany in 2012. It also has a facility in Virginia and two in Canada. The expansion will add 60 jobs to the existing workforce of 300.

Exhibitpro

Exhibitpro, which provides custom and modular trade show exhibits, opened its new 54,000-square-foot multiuse facility a year ago on the northeast edge of the beauty campus.

The company moved its operation from the Polaris area. The location is further away from some clients, but the move to the beauty campus has been worth it, Vice President Greg Lindsey said.

“We looked at a lot of different areas,” Lindsey said. “You don’t have to navigate through a town or city to get to the office park. If this concept were not here, I don’t think we’d considered New Albany.

“It’s worked out even better for us than we had anticipated. All of the feedback from clients and employees has all been positive.”

The $3.5 million facility includes a showroom, design department and fabrication area. Exhibitpro is a contract vendor for Bath & Body Works and has done small projects with other clients in the beauty park.

“It certainly has really helped us,” Lindsey said. “We didn’t have a staging area (at Polaris). This is climate-controlled. We know 99 percent of this is show ready before it leaves.”

Anomatic

Anomatic, a Newark-based provider of metal packaging components for cosmetic industry, will complete a 70,000-square-foot addition to its New Albany facility later this year.

Nearly all of the additional space will be for manufacturing, allowing the company to add a high-tech process of vaccuum metalizing, a way of giving a metallic appearance to glass or plastic, President and CEO Scott Rusch said.

“It’s a very efficient machine we will be purchasing and installing,” Rusch said. “The latest and greatest of technology.

“We see this having great application for shaped parts. It’s difficult to make out of aluminum, but it can be made out of injected molded plastic.”

The company, which employs 580 people in Newark and 120 in New Albany, will add 70 employees to the New Albany operation.

“We’ve had some success out here,” Rusch said. “Business has been growing the last few years. I think (business) is very much influenced by being in this park.”

Magnanni

Magnanni, a family-owned company producing fine men’s dress shoes for more than 50 years in Spain, moved into its 15,000-square-foot beauty campus facility in December.

There are 10 employees at the facility and a couple more may be added within a year.

After moving its U.S. headquarters from Dallas to Akron to Columbus to New Albany, Chief Financial Officer Paul Roehrenback said the sales and distribution center will be a permanent site.

“This will be long-term, with an opportunity to expand the warehouse portion,” Roehrenback said. “It’s been wonderful. We’ve organized ourselves better and are more efficient.

“It’s a very convenient location for distribution purposes and travel purposes. Everything is very convenient from here.”

The company, which also makes belts and wallets, does business with Nordstrom, Neiman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue.

By Kent Mallett
From the Newark Advocate

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The billionaire who single-handedly changed how America shops has an inner sanctum as enigmatic as he is: the corner of a nondescript office building in Columbus, Ohio, across the road from a garbage dump, behind a security gate festooned with “Do Not Enter” signs. While the communal spaces are properly blinged-out with pink walls, lacy bits of lingerie and a big screen rolling endless tape of nearly naked supermodels, the chamber itself is a confused mess of binders and papers straight out of The Absent-Minded Professor. Nearly every surface is devoted to knickknacks–a 3-foot-long pencil here, an Ohio State Monopoly board there–or stacks of books.

The irony seems lost on Leslie “Les” Wexner, who built Victoria’s Secret, Pink, Express and The Limited into one of America’s alltime great retail fortunes. “When I was a kid, before my first store, they talked about stores as theater and retail as theater. It still is,” says the 77-year-old, attired casually in gray slacks and a blue oxford. “Retailing is a free form of entertainment.”

Yet this impresario shuns the spotlight. He’s the CEO of a large publicly traded company, yet he rarely speaks on earnings calls. One of the legends of his industry, yet he almost never speaks to the press. Wexner is so elusive that most assume the brains of Victoria’s Secret is surely some female visionary in the mold of a Sara Blakely or Tory Burch, or else a Hugh Hefner lothario type.

In reality Wexner–net worth: $6.2 billion, good enough to make No. 80 on The Forbes 400–is an introspective guy who has been questioning his every move for decades. His professional success results from a compulsive restlessness and dissatisfaction that steer him away from the herd. His first great insight was focusing on a few products (The Limited) at the apex of the department store age. He expanded nationally when the biggest retail stores were regional concerns. When most competitors rushed overseas, he held back. And in his biggest score of all, he reimagined the lingerie business as a wholesome enterprise that could thrive next to the food court and the multiplex, rather than the boudoir and the peep show.

Being a chronic contrarian is not easy. About to open his first store at age 26, Wexner woke up screaming every night. In his 30s he was a distraught millionaire, searching for a purpose greater than adding more zeroes to his net worth. The money came easier than the fulfillment, and by his 50s he was running more than a dozen businesses, five of them doing sales of $1 billion or more. Then, characteristically, he decided he had it all wrong and from 1998 to 2007 spun off or sold The Limited, Limited Too, Abercrombie & Fitch, Express, Lane Bryant and Lerner New York. He kept Victoria’s Secret, betting that the brand’s emotional resonance would support higher margins in an increasingly commoditized apparel space.

“What I worry about is a fear that you won’t have the idea or that you have figured it out wrong,” he says.

Wexner now owns the only three bra labels that matter: Victoria’s Secret, Pink and La Senza. Together they make up 41% of America’s $13.2 billion lingerie market. Their next closest competitor, if you can call it that, has a 1% market share. Bath & Body Works, the world’s largest beauty retailer, is his, too. He holds all of them under his thriving parent company, L Brands.

L Brands’ 2,949 wholly owned stores sell over $11 billion worth of bras, panties, soaps and other such products a year. Same-store sales have increased in each of the last 19 quarters. Brilliant marketing, especially the annual Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show , accounts for some of this success. But in the disembodied era of e-commerce, hands-on customer service matters, too. Shoppers can buy quality T-shirts and pants from a multitude of different retailers, both online and off, but bras are different. Eighty percent of women in America wear the wrong-size bra. Computers can’t measure them for a proper fit, and employees at, say, Target won’t. But Victoria’s Secret workers do, and women pay the company back with loyalty. Ninety-nine percent of L Brands stores turned a profit in 2013, and Victoria’s Secret’s operating margins are 17%, triple the industry average. In defiance of e-commerce evangelists, he opened 50 new locations in the last year. His online business is not the focus, but it’s doing just fine, accounting for $1.5 billion of his annual sales.

Those numbers have translated into huge gains on the stock market, where L Brands shares have shot up 11% in the last year, twice as much as the S&P retail index. Over the last five years L Brands shares have returned nearly 500%, more than almost any other retailer in North America (the two exceptions: Under Armour and G-III Apparel). “They’ve done such an unbelievable job dominating the market,” says Wells Fargo retail analyst Paul Lejuez. “I can’t think of anyone who has been more successful.”

And there are billions more waiting for Wexner outside of America’s borders. Victoria’s Secret is already famous around the world, not because of its stores but because of its scantily clad models, who hail from every continent except Antarctica. Viewers tune in from 192 countries around the world to watch the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show on TV each year.

Yet Wexner has barely begun expanding Victoria’s Secret stores worldwide. “Our priority is our domestic business, but we could see that our international business could be as big or even bigger,” Wexner says. In 2012 Victoria’s Secret expanded its wholly owned stores beyond North America, opening two locations in London. Five more stores have since popped up in the U.K., and together they’re already grossing over $100 million.

Wexner is also taking the brand into Asia and the Middle East through a new franchise model, with virtually no risk for L Brands. Wexner has more than 600 franchised stores around the world. L Brands invests no capital in the stores and is virtually guaranteed to turn a profit from day one, charging an outsized royalty of between 10% and 15%. The opportunity is big enough that, for the first time ever, Wexner is moving the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show outside of the United States, taking it to London this December. “They’re only scratching the surface of international expansion,” says Matthew McClintock, retail analyst at Barclays, who envisions a $10 billion business overseas within a decade. “It’s a gold mine.”

WEXNER’S REFLEXIVE questioning drew him into retail in the first place. After getting his undergrad degree at Ohio State in 1959, he dropped out of its law school and returned home to help around the small family store, Leslie’s, named after him. When his father left on vacation, Wexner tried to solve the riddle of why his dad had always worked so hard but never made any money. He found a stack of invoices, and on a piece of scrap paper began tallying the cost and profit from each item in the store.

The numbers added up to a counter-intuitive conclusion. Although big-ticket items like dresses and coats looked like they had huge margins, they actually made no money because they sat on racks forever. All of the store’s profit came from less glamorous items like shirts and pants. Wexner’s parents returned home to find that their son, with nearly no professional experience, thought he could run their store better than they could. Wexner told his dad to take out the coats and replace them with more blouses and pants. His dad told him to get a job.

He did, founding a rival store to his father’s with a $5,000 loan from his aunt in 1963. He put a limited selection of clothing in the store–only the shirts and pants that flew off shelves–and named the place The Limited. Wexner signed a lease for a second store before even opening his first, convinced that if the idea worked in one store it would work in another. Before selling a single shirt, he already owed his landlords $1 million. He had nightmares every night and eventually started getting belly pains. The doctor told him he was too young to have a stomach ulcer, but the X-ray clearly showed the hole that fear had eaten through his stomach.

He made $20,000 of profit in his first year, twice as much as his dad’s best. The secret was his focus on only a few products, a revolutionary idea at the time. Wexner says that Steve Jobs (or presumably it was Jobs–”what’s-his-name from Apple,” Wexner says off-handedly) was one of many to credit The Limited boss with inventing specialty retail. “Probably did,” he shrugs.

Curious about how far his idea could take him, Wexner bought a U.S. map and a compass. He drew a circle to see everywhere he could get from Columbus in a day. Commercial airlines had just started using jets in the 1950s, significantly extending the radius of Wexner’s compass and bringing 70% of the U.S. population within two hours of headquarters. Leveraging his centralized location and jet travel, Wexner decided he could build a national chain. By 1973 Wexner was well on his way, with 41 stores selling $26 million worth of pants, skirts and blouses.

Having proven that narrowly focused stores appealed to female customers, he set about creating new companies, built in The Limited’s mold. He launched Express in 1980, targeting younger women with more colorful, casual clothes. And he also got curious about a small chain of lingerie shops he had seen in San Francisco called Victoria’s Secret. He never could find out much about them because their owner, Roy Raymond, clammed up every time Wexner started to ask questions. But in 1982 Raymond called up Wexner and finally wanted to talk. Raymond was on the verge of bankruptcy and was hoping Wexner would buy his six stores before the sheriff took them. “I literally flew out that afternoon and met him in the evening and bought the business,” says Wexner. “I didn’t know anything about it.”

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