https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Wexner 

Associations

• Jeffrey Edward Epstein (born 1953) 

• Robert Alan Meister (born 1941) 

• Kenneth Lipper (born 1941)   

• ....

2026-02-20-wikipedia-org-les-wexner.pdf

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Les Wexner

(Redirected from Leslie Wexner)

Leslie Herbert Wexner

Wexner receives Woodrow Wilson Award in 2004

Born

Leslie Herbert Wexner

September 8, 1937 (age 88)

Dayton, Ohio, U.S.

Other names

Les Wexner

Education

Ohio State University (BBA)

Occupation

Businessman

Political party

Republican (before 2018)[1]

Independent (since 2018)[2]

Spouse

Abigail S. Koppel ​(m. 1993)​

Children

4

Leslie Herbert Wexner[3] (born September 8, 1937) is an American billionaire businessman and political activist. He is the co-founder and chair emeritus of Bath & Body Works, Inc.[4] He has been the principal in Abercrombie & Fitch, Victoria's Secret and La Senza, amongst several other retail corporations.

Wexner is involved in politics. In 1991, with billionaire Charles Bronfman, Wexner formed the Mega Group,[5] a club of some of the country's wealthiest and most influential businessmen. As a pro-Israel lobby group, the organization is also said to have tried to influence US foreign policy in the Middle East. In 2003, it employed consultant Frank Luntz to help the group mobilize support for Israel.[6] The group is also said to have had contacts with the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad and to have served as a "vehicle for influence operations in the United States".[7]

Wexner retained Jeffrey Epstein as his financial manager from 1987 to 2007 and was initially the "main client" of Epstein's money-management firm, according to Bloomberg.[8] Epstein ran his business from a house Wexner owned and sometimes lived in.[9][10] On February 10, 2026, Representative Ro Khanna revealed that the FBI had named Wexner as an unindicted co-conspirator.[11] The following day, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio denied Wexner's motion to quash a previous subpoena, ordering him to attend a deposition in an Ohio State University case regarding abuse by former staff physician Richard Strauss, who was implicated in the Ohio State University abuse scandal.[12]

Early life and education

Wexner was born in Dayton, Ohio,[13] on September 8, 1937, to parents Bella née Cabakoff (1908–2001) and Harry Louis Wexner (1899–1975).[14][15] Both his parents were of Russian-Jewish origin.[4] His father was born in Russia and his mother was born in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.[4] She moved to Columbus, Ohio, as a toddler.[15] Wexner has a younger sister, Susan.[16]

Wexner attended Bexley High School and Ohio State University.[16] In 1953, he won a minor award for his essay, published in the Ohio Jewish Chronicle, titled "Why I Love and Respect Judaism".[17] He initially expressed an interest in architecture,[18] but graduated in 1959[19] with a major in business administration.[13] While a student at Ohio State University, he joined the Sigma Alpha Mu fraternity. Wexner served in the Air National Guard.[4] He briefly attended the Moritz College of Law.[16]

Career

Wexner began his retail career working in his parents' clothing store, "Leslie's", which had been named after him.[18] According to Wexner, he began working at his parents' store so they could take a vacation.[18] Wexner analyzed the sales and inventory, identifying the most and least profitable items. When his father refused to adjust the inventory, Wexner decided to open his own store.[20]

In 1963, Wexner's aunt lent him $5,000, which he combined with a matching loan from a bank in order to start The Limited.[16][18] The store took its name from its focus on moderately priced merchandise, such as skirts, sweaters and shirts, that sold quickly and quickly generated revenue.[20] Wexner opened the first store on August 10, 1963, in the Kingsdale Shopping Center in Upper Arlington, Ohio, a suburb of Columbus. One year later, Wexner's parents closed their store and joined their son in running The Limited.[15] He opened the second Limited store in August 1964.[18] He took Limited Brands public in 1969, listed as LTD on the NYSE.[18]

A. Alfred Taubman served as a mentor for Wexner, starting in the mid-1960s, and the two partnered on many deals involving Taubman's shopping malls.[16] In 1972, Robert H. Morosky, an active Catholic fund raiser, sold his house and moved into a small apartment in order to buy stock in The Limited and to serve as Vice Chairman of The Limited's board having full confidence and belief in Wexner.[14] Morosky resigned in 1987 and gave a number of interviews decades later criticizing Wexner's closeness with Jeffrey Epstein.[21]

Wexner expanded The Limited considerably in the 1970s, having opened the 100th store in 1976.[16] He took on significant debt in 1978 to purchase the importer Mast Industries, which provided him with essential business advantages over competitors.[16][22] In 1982, Wexner spent $105 million to purchase the much larger Lane Bryant retail chain of plus-sized clothing which came with $30 million in debt[22] and acquired the lingerie business Victoria's Secret from Roy Raymond for an undisclosed amount of stock, and $1 million[23][22] with Raymond later describing Wexner as "very guarded", stating, "When I met him, it was as if he met the devil."[18] Six months later, when Raymond was facing bankruptcy, he contacted Wexner and offered to sell Victoria's Secret.[18] By 1992, Victoria's Secret was worth an estimated $1 billion,[23] and became known for the use of supermodels featured in an annual fashion show, overseen by Ed Razek.[23] In 1993, Wexner hired Len Schlesinger, a Harvard Business School professor, whom he later appointed as a company director, to advise him.[24][25]

Over the years, Wexner built L Brands, a retailing and marketing conglomerate that included Victoria's Secret, Pink (Victoria's Secret for teens), Bath & Body Works, Henri Bendel, The White Barn Candle Company, and La Senza. Previous brands that were spun off include Lane Bryant, Abercrombie & Fitch, Lerner New York, The Limited Too (now Tween Brands, Inc.), Structure 9, Aura Science, The Limited (which closed its brick-and-mortar stores while retaining its online presence), and Express (which closed its Canadian stores and hundreds of its U.S.-based stores). In 2012, CNN Money described Wexner as the longest serving CEO of a Fortune 500 company.[26] He was on Harvard Business Review's Top 100 Best Performing CEOs in the World, ranked number 11 in 2015,[27] and number 34 in 2016.[28] In February 2020, Wexner announced that he was transitioning from CEO of L Brands into the role of chair emeritus.[4]

Corporate board memberships

Wexner was on the board of directors of Banc One from at least 1986 to 1991.[29] Until 2002, he also sat on the Board of Directors of Hollinger International together with Henry Kissinger.[30] He also served on the board of Sotheby's, American Ballet Theatre and the Whitney Museum of American Arts.[14]

Controversies

This "criticism" or "controversy" section may compromise the article's neutrality. Please help integrate negative information into other sections or remove undue focus on minor aspects through discussion on the talk page. (February 2026)

Shapiro murder investigation

In 1985, Arthur L. Shapiro was a lawyer and partner at Columbus law firm Schwartz Shapiro Kelm & Warren,[31] assigned to represent The Limited account.[32] Shapiro was to appear before a grand jury to testify about an illegal tax scheme that he had been involved in.

Days before his testimony, Shapiro was assassinated in a way that witnesses described as similar to a Mafia hit. Because of a potential nexus between Shapiro, Mafia, and Wexner, as part of the police investigation, many people and entities connected to Wexner were looked at for any connections to the mob. This was detailed in a police report, later dubbed "The Arthur Shapiro Murder File", which found some tenuous connections between Wexner and the mob, in some of Wexner's businesses such as a trucking company. A local police chief said the report's theories were highly speculative and not based on hard evidence. The main suspect in Shapiro's murder remained Shapiro's business partner Berry Kessler – no connection to Wexner – who had a history of murdering his (Kessler's) business partners by contracting Mafia hit men. Kessler was involved with Shapiro in the illegal tax avoidance schemes, had a motive to silence him, had a history of knocking off business partners, and was seen giving someone a lot of cash the day after the murder, who matched witness descriptions of the killer. Kessler died in prison in 2005 for a different murder, and never admitted to the killing. The Shapiro murder was never officially solved.[31][32][33]

Jeffrey Epstein association

It has been suggested that this section be split out into another article titled Relationship of Les Wexner and Jeffrey Epstein. (Discuss) (February 2026)

Wexner hired Jeffrey Epstein as his financial manager from 1987 to 2007.[34][35] He was the primary client of Epstein, who claimed to only work with clients with a net worth of one billion USD or greater. Wexner purchased his New York property, the Herbert N. Straus House, in 1989 and sold it to Epstein in the mid-1990s following Wexner's marriage to Abigail.[34] In July 1991, Wexner granted Epstein power of attorney[9] and also instated him as a trustee on the board of the Wexner Foundation.[36] In the 1990s, Les Wexner and Jeffrey Epstein were involved in relocating Southern Air Transport (a CIA front organization with ties to the Iran-Contra affair and alleged CIA drug smuggling) from Miami to Columbus. Southern Air transported goods related to Wexner's businesses, but in 1996, Customs agents found a hidden shipment of cocaine on one of the planes. Southern Air was shut down in 1998 after Wexner had received federal aid for the relocation of the airline, just weeks before the CIA Inspector General released its official findings on Contra cocaine trafficking allegations.[37]

The Herbert N. Straus House on the Upper East Side

Wexner has been accused of failing to take action when complaints were raised against Epstein, after executives of L Brands reported in the mid-1990s that Epstein was abusing his power and connection to Wexner by posing as a recruiter for Victoria's Secret models.[9] Maria Farmer contacted local and federal authorities about an assault she allegedly endured by Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell while working as an artist-in-residence on Wexner's Ohio property in 1996. Within a year of Farmer's complaint, actress Alicia Arden filed a police report in Los Angeles detailing that Epstein had misrepresented himself as a recruiter for Victoria's Secret prior to another alleged assault.[9] In early 2006, Epstein was charged in Florida with "multiple counts of molestation and unlawful sexual activity with a minor."[9] The New York Times reported that 18 months after the charges were filed, Wexner cut his ties with Epstein.[9]

In July 2019, Wexner was included on a list of Epstein's "10 co-conspirators" within an FBI email, alongside Ghislaine Maxwell, Darren Indyke, Richard Kahn, Jean-Luc Brunel, and Leslie Groff, though Wexner continued to deny involvement.[38] In August 2019, following Epstein's second incarceration and prior to his death, Wexner addressed the Wexner Foundation, releasing a written statement that his former financial advisor, Jeffrey Epstein, had "misappropriated vast sums of money" from him and from his family.[39] Wexner retained the services of Debevoise & Plimpton criminal defense attorney and former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Mary Jo White.[40]

L Brands shareholders filed a complaint in the Court of Chancery of Delaware on January 14, 2021, stating that Wexner, among others, created an "entrenched culture of misogyny, bullying, and harassment," and was aware of abuses being committed by Jeffrey Epstein, which breached Wexner's fiduciary duty to the company and devalued the brand. The complaint also names Wexner's wife, current chair Sarah E. Nash, and former marketing officer Ed Razek, whose "widely known misconduct" was allegedly allowed at the company.[41] On July 30, 2021, L Brands agreed to a $90 million settlement to resolve derivative lawsuits stemming from claims that combine Ohio and Delaware actions.[42]

Wexner being deposed by the House Oversight Committee on February 18, 2026.

Following the passage of the 2025 Epstein Files Transparency Act, Wexner faced additional public scrutiny.[43][38] In January 2026, Wexner was subpoenaed by the US House Oversight Committee of Congress to sit for a deposition.[44][45] On February 10, 2026, U.S. Congressman Ro Khanna, on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives, read the names of six prominent men that he said he had seen in the unredacted versions of the Epstein files, whose names had been redacted in the versions of those files that were released to the public by the U.S. Department of Justice. (On the previous day, the Justice Department had allowed selected U.S. Congresspeople to view the files, in a closed room, without any recording device.) Congressman Khanna said Les Wexner is listed in the files as someone considered an Epstein co-conspirator by the FBI.[46][non-primary source needed]

Ohio State University trustee, donor, and Strauss, MD scandal

Wexner served on the Board of Trustees of Ohio State University from 1988 to 1997. In December 2005, he was appointed to his second term and was elected chair in 2009. It was announced in June 2012 that his chairmanship would end eight years before his term expired.[47] On May 11, 2004, Wexner received the Woodrow Wilson Award for Corporate Citizenship at a dinner in Columbus. The award was presented by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. [citation needed] On February 16, 2011, Wexner pledged a donation of $100 million to Ohio State, to be allocated to the university's academic Medical Center and James Cancer Hospital and Solove Research Institute, with additional gifts to the Wexner Center for the Arts and other areas. This gift is the largest in the university's history.[48]

Through the L Brands Foundation, Wexner and L Brands contributed $163.4 million to the Columbus Foundation.[49] On February 10, 2012, the Ohio State University board of trustees voted to rename the Ohio State University Medical Center to the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, commemorating "Mr. Wexner's indelible, lifelong legacy of leadership at Ohio State," according to university president E. Gordon Gee, during over 30 years of "ardent support" of the institution.[50][19]

Wexner faced additional public scrutiny in late 2019 and early 2020, when a group of wrestlers who are survivors of the Ohio State University abuse scandal publicly called on state and federal officials to conduct further inquiry into Maria Farmer's allegations of sexual assault at the Wexner property.[51][52] The wrestlers called for accountability for the Wexner family's alleged involvement in Epstein's abuse and raised the issue of the continuing influence of Abigail and Leslie Wexner serving as the "biggest and best-known benefactors" of the university.[52]

Fallout from the scandal continued into the 2020s with particular focus paid to the part played by Wexner and his association with Epstein. Former wrestlers and their supporters criticized the university's board for failing to look into Wexner and in their opinion covering up the matter. Wexner's legal team had been stalling efforts by victims to subpoena Wexner. Former wrestlers and their supporters noted that board chair John Zeiger was a close friend of Wexner and that his daughter and law partner was Wexner's attorney. Zeiger did not recuse himself from matters regarding Wexner.[53][54][55] On February 11, 2026, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio Judge Michael H. Watson denied Wexner's January motion to quash a previous subpoena, ordering him to attend a long-avoided deposition in a case regarding abuses by former Ohio State University staff physician Richard Strauss, who was implicated in the Ohio State University abuse scandal, before committing suicide in 2005.[12]

In popular culture

In 2022, he was mentioned in the pop song "Victoria's Secret,"[56] for profiting off women and contributing to their toxic body ideals.[57][58] When Jax sings that "I know Victoria's secret, and girl, you wouldn't believe. She's an old man who lives in Ohio making money off of girls like me", she is referring to Wexner.[citation needed]

Wexner's relationship with Epstein was one of the subjects of the 2022 Hulu documentary Victoria's Secret: Angels and Demons.[59]

Philanthropy

In 1989, Wexner and his mother Bella were the first to make a $1 million personal donation to the United Way. Both of their names were inscribed in marble and are on display in the lobby of the United Way Headquarters in Alexandria, Virginia.[60] Wexner was listed by Forbes in 2017, the wealthiest of seven billionaires from Ohio who made the list.[61] He was a major funder of the Wexner Center for the Arts at the Ohio State University, which is named in honor of his father.[62] Wexner said that because "growing up, my folks moved around a lot, and I never got a good Jewish education", he felt unprepared to take leadership roles in his Orthodox Jewish community.[14][63] So, in 1985, he joined Rabbi Herbert A. Friedman to establish the Wexner Foundation's first core program, aimed "to educate Jewish communal leaders in the history, thought, traditions, and contemporary challenges of the Jewish people."[63]

Study group

In 1991, with billionaire Charles Bronfman, Wexner formed the Study Group, more widely known as the Mega Group,[64] a loosely organized club of some of the country's wealthiest and most influential businessmen who were concerned with Jewish issues. Max Fischer, Michael Steinhardt, Leonard Abramson, Edgar Bronfman, and Laurence Tisch were some of the members. The group would meet twice a year for two days of seminars related to the topic of philanthropy and Judaism. As a pro-Israel lobby group, the organization is also said to have tried to influence US foreign policy in the Middle East. In 2003, it employed Republican political consultant Frank Luntz to help the group mobilize support for Israel.[6] Under the name MEGA, the group is also said to have had contacts with the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad and to have served as a "vehicle for influence operations in the United States".[7]

In an April 1998 group meeting, Steven Spielberg spoke about his personal religious journey.[65] The Study Group, which Wexner co-chaired with Charles Bronfman, went on to inspire a number of philanthropic initiatives such as the Partnership for Excellence in Jewish Education, Birthright Israel, and the upgrading of national Hillel.[64]

Personal life

In a 1985 article, Wexner discussed that he had trouble sleeping which he attributed to his dybbuk spirit that he dubbed "terminal shpilkes" (shpilkes being Yiddish for "pin", as in "on pins and needles"), "the demon that always wakes up in the morning with Wexner and tweaks and pulls at him".[14] He noted it had been intermittently appearing since childhood, and attributed his driving, his bachelor lifestyle and his business drive to trying to escape the anxiety it caused, always having music playing as he could not stand the sound of silence.[14] One girlfriend converted to Judaism and changed her name to "Cohen" after a year of dating Wexner.[14] On January 23, 1993, Wexner married Abigail S. Koppel, an attorney.[66] The couple has four children.[67]

Formerly of the Bexley area, Wexner now lives in New Albany, a community northeast of Columbus. He owns a 30-room, $47 million, Georgian-inspired estate, on nearly 336 acres (1.36 km2), that was built in 1990. The estate was, for 20 years, the location of the Annual New Albany Classic Invitational Grand Prix & Family Day (an equestrian show) benefiting The Center for Family Safety and Healing. In February 2018, Abigail Wexner announced the end of the event, citing the growing number of equestrian competitions.[68] Wexner has owned the mid-18th century Foxcote House in Warwickshire, England, since 1997.[69] Wexner was inducted as an honorary member of the 104th Sphinx Senior Class at Ohio State University on May 7, 2010.[70]

Political activities

George W. Bush appointed Wexner to serve in the Honorary Delegation to accompany him to Jerusalem for the celebration of the 60th anniversary of the State of Israel in May 2008.[71][72] Wexner hosted a fundraiser in 2012 for Mitt Romney,[73] and also donated $250,000 to Restore Our Future, Romney's super PAC.[74] In 2015, Wexner donated $500,000 to the Right to Rise USA super PAC that supported the 2016 presidential campaign of Jeb Bush.[75] The Columbus Dispatch reported on September 14, 2018, that Wexner had renounced his affiliation with the Republican Party, which he had been supporting since his college days, due to changes in its nature.[76][77]

See also

• List of billionaires

• Mega Group

References

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66.  "WEDDINGS; Abigail Koppel, Leslie Wexner". The New York Times. January 24, 1993. p. 10.

67.  "Paid Notice: Deaths KOPPEL, YEHUDA". The New York Times. September 27, 2006. p. 14.

68.  Wilhelm, Jim (February 14, 2018). "Growth in elite equestrian competitions ends New Albany Classic after 20 years". The Columbus Dispatch. Archived from the original on 2021-01-16. Retrieved 2018-03-09.

69.  Luck, Adam; Mendick, Robert (October 24, 2015). "Billionaire tycoon behind Victoria's Secret 'keeps his multi-million Cotswolds estate away from prying eyes'". The Telegraph. Archived from the original on 2022-01-12. Retrieved 2015-11-12.

70.  "SPHINX Senior Honorary – Ohio State". sphinx.org.ohio-state.edu. Archived from the original on 2014-10-24. Retrieved 2017-03-15.

71.  "Statement by the Press Secretary". georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov. Retrieved 2017-12-27.

72.  Lake, Eli (May 13, 2008). "Bush Visit May Boost Olmert". The New York Sun. Retrieved 2017-12-27.

73.  Hallett, Joe (June 19, 2012). "Wexner to host fundraiser for Romney". The Columbus Dispatch. Archived from the original on 2013-12-01. Retrieved 2013-12-01.

74.  Silva, Mark (June 29, 2012). "Romney's Victoria's Secret: It's Out". Bloomberg. Retrieved 2013-12-01.

75.  Bender, Michael C. (July 31, 2015). "Six-Month Total for Pro-Jeb Bush PAC: $103,167,845.83". Bloomberg. Retrieved 2023-02-19.

76.  Goldsmith, Suzanne (September 14, 2018). "Les Wexner renounces Republican Party affiliation after Obama stops in Columbus". The Columbus Dispatch. Archived from the original on 2018-09-15. Retrieved 2018-09-15.

77.  Porter, Tom (September 15, 2018). "Billionaire Les Wexner Renounces GOP Membership". Newsweek. Retrieved 2022-10-15.

Further reading

• Sherman, Gabriel (July–August 2021). "The mogul and the monster". Vanity Fair. Vol. 730. pp. 60–65, 133–134.

1991 (June 3) - NYTimes : "Chronicle"

By Susan Heller Anderson   /   June 3, 1991   /  Saved as PDF : [HN02O6][GDrive] 

Mentioned : Robert Alan Meister (born 1941)   /   Jeffrey Edward Epstein (born 1953)   /   Kenneth Lipper (born 1941)  /   Leslie Herbert Wexner (born 1937)    

2003 (Sep 01) 

https://web.archive.org/web/20140403132148/https://money.cnn.com/magazines/fsb/fsb_archive/2003/09/01/350795/

2003-09-01-money-cnn-com-from-web-archive-20140403132148.pdf

2003-09-01-money-cnn-com-from-web-archive-20140403132148-img-1.pdf

Les Wexner Limited Brands

By Carlye Adler; Leslie H. Wexner VICTORIA'S SECRET, THE LIMITED, HENRI BENDEL: HOW I CONQUERED THE WOMEN'S RETAIL CLOTHING INDUSTRY (AND AN EARLY ULCER).

September 1, 2003

(FORTUNE Small Business) – When Leslie Wexner was in college, he really wanted to become an architect. His father, however, didn't think that was a good idea. As it turns out, sometimes fathers do know best. Following his dad's advice--and his footsteps--Wexner opened a women's clothing store called the Limited in Columbus, Ohio, in 1963. Unlike his father, whose shop went bankrupt, Wexner aggressively grew his own into an empire that today includes such brands as Victoria's Secret, Bath & Body Works, Express, Limited Stores, Henri Bendel, and more. Wexner--who as a kid hated the very idea of retail--now oversees some 4,000 locations and a staff of more than 100,000. Revenues last year were $8.5 billion, and Limited Brands was voted Most Admired Specialty Retailer in Fortune's 2002 rankings.

Wexner's stores pretty much ruled the suburban shopping malls until the 1990s, when the company was criticized for losing both direction and profits. In an effort to streamline the business, Wexner made major changes--selling off faltering brands like Lane Bryant and Lerner New York and buying back the previously spun-off Intimate Brands (made up of Victoria's Secret and Bath & Body Works). "As an entrepreneur," says Wexner, who's been self-employed since age 9, "you work out solutions." From Limited Brands' corporate headquarters, which he designed (he says he still wishes he'd become an architect), Wexner talks about the family of brands he created. --CARLYE ADLER

"Growing up, I knew you were supposed to have a profession--and something better than being a shopkeeper, which is what my parents were. I didn't want to go into the retail business. I hated it. My father had been a store manager at a small chain of specialty stores, and when I was 15, he took his life savings and invested it in his own women's clothing store. My parents named it Leslie's, after me. They worked 80-hour weeks to scratch out a living, but they never made $10,000 a year.

When you grow up in a family like that, if you want another pair of jeans or a bike or toys, you have to work for it. An allowance was out of the question, so I always had jobs. My first one was cutting grass and shoveling snow when I was 9 years old. When it snowed, I was happy because I could work--not because I could go sledding. If it rained in the summer, that was good because the grass would grow and I could cut more lawns. It meant money. As I look back it seems kind of Dickensian, but it didn't feel that way to me at the time.

After college I decided to go to law school. I still wasn't interested in retail, but I'd take study breaks from some boring case and, just for amusement, draw designs for stores and storefronts. Some people made erotic drawings or wrote their girlfriend's name--I did stores.

Before long, I dropped out of law school; I hated it because it wasn't creative enough. My dad asked me to hang around the store for a few months to learn how to take the money to the bank and close each night so that he and my mom could take a vacation. They hadn't taken one in ten years. I learned how to run the store and take the money to the bank, and they spent a week in Miami. While they were gone, I started some simple accounting to see what categories and goods made the most money. It was just curiosity, but I figured out pretty quickly that my dad made money selling skirts, sweaters, shirts, and blouses--typical sportswear separates--and he lost his ass selling dresses and coats. When my father came back, I asked him where he made money. He said dresses and coats.

Then we got into a typical father-son wrangle: "You're not going to tell me how to run the business," he said. "I worked my whole life. Get a job. You don't know anything about retailing." He was right, I didn't. But I did know a little about accounting, and I decided to prove that my theory was right and that he had it wrong.

When I first thought about the store I wanted to create, I called it Leslie's Limited. It was to be my limited store--meaning it would have a limited assortment, and I would sell only women's sportswear separates. Besides what I learned from my parents' store, the idea of specialization was very popular at the time. My friends were going to be doctors, but they were going to be specialists, not general practitioners. Lawyers were going to become tax lawyers. I began thinking about the business being a specialist--it was the only way I thought I could compete against the department stores that were dominant at the time.

I had a spinster aunt who loaned me $5,000 to get started, and on top of that a bank loaned me $5,000. I was on my way: I figured out a lease, designed the store, and built it myself. But in the seven months before it opened, I'd wake up in the middle of the night screaming. I had a recurring dream that I was opening a store, and I can remember going to the door, unlocking it, and seeing people standing with their noses pressed to the door--but no one walked in. It was a terrible nightmare. About two weeks before the store opened I called my family doctor and told him my stomach hurt after I ate. The doctor said, "You're too young for an ulcer." (I was 26 years old.) Then they took an X-ray of my stomach, and I had an ulcer.

The first store opened in Columbus on Aug. 10, 1963. First-day sales were negligible, $473, but that was still amazing to me. By January, after the fall and the holiday season, I was pretty sure I'd had a good idea. First-year sales totaled $160,000--I did more business and made more money than my dad ever made in a year. And in the second year it tripled.

I opened the second store in August 1964. (I'd leased the second store before the first one opened, so if it had failed, I would've been in a hell of a mess.) When my dad found out that I was going to open a second store, he quit talking to me for almost a year. He thought I was crazy. I respected my dad's judgment, but he was always cautious. He came to this country from Russia when he was a teenager. He was immensely proud and very conservative. When I had two stores, he said, "You're winning, take it to the bank." At four stores, he said, "You're winning, take it to the bank." When we had six stores, I decided I wanted to become a public company, and he thought I was totally insane. Everybody did. They said, "Your friends and acquaintances will buy stock, and then everybody will wallpaper their johns with it." In 1969 we went public with an intrastate offering, so the only people who could buy stock were residents of Ohio. We were too small for an interstate offering, too small for the SEC. It's unheard-of today.

Over the 20-year period that Jack Welch ran GE, the Limited was one of the few companies to increase its share price faster than GE. People retired from very simple jobs here--distribution-center workers, maintenance associates--who made millions of dollars.

We had stores in San Francisco, and that's where I found an interesting little lingerie store called Victoria's Secret. It was a small store, and it was Victorian--not English Victorian but brothel Victorian, with red-velvet sofas. There wasn't erotic lingerie, but there was very sexy lingerie, and I hadn't seen anything like it in all my travels.

Victoria's Secret was started by a fellow named Roy Raymond, who created the business as an MBA project while at Stanford. I was curious to learn more, but he was very guarded. When I met him, it was as if he met the devil. We were this big company with dozens and dozens of stores. He had three stores. Nothing happened from the meeting, but six months later he called me and said he was going to be put into bankruptcy that week. He'd rather sell the company to me than go bankrupt.

I got on a plane to San Francisco that day, and within 24 hours we negotiated the purchase. The idea was to buy the business and park it. I didn't know anything about the lingerie business, but then I began thinking--as a bachelor. (I got married later in life.) Most of the women I knew wore underwear, and most of them would rather wear lingerie. I thought maybe we could reconceptualize it into a business--instead of selling underwear, we could market and position it as lingerie. I thought if we could develop price points and products that had a broader customer base, it could be something big. It's our most profitable business today, but it didn't take off like a rocket. We just got better and better at it, and understood it more and more.

Pretty soon Abercrombie & Fitch and Lerner New York came along. We also acquired an Henri Bendel store in New York, and opened Limited Too, fashion for girls, and opened our first men's store, Structure (now called Express Men). Acquiring businesses pretty much carried us through the 1980s. By the early '90s we were a multidivision company. We had a lot of businesses. But I started to ask myself, How do you control these businesses? How do you run them? I came to the conclusion that we were more like a venture capital company than a multidivision company. We didn't have the systems, processes, organization, or leadership for any kind of central organization. Every day I came to work and felt as though it was a zoo. All the cages were open, and the animals were running around. It all culminated one day when I met Jack Welch of GE. He told me the way he thinks about managing the top talent in the business. I was sure that I knew and influenced the top people, but then I found out we didn't even know who the top people were. We didn't know how many officers there were in the different businesses. And we certainly didn't have the discipline to oversee it all; I learned that somebody had made their administrative assistant a vice president.

It was as if one day the emperor realized he had no clothes. We didn't have any real organization. We spent the next year reading and understanding what multidivision companies are like at their center. I decided that we needed to imagine ourselves as a very complex organism, or an animal with a central nervous system. We needed a center to help us grow it into the future and develop the appropriate processes and procedures that a large multidivision company should have. It was tough because everyone kind of liked it the way it was--the lack of discipline and the ability to make very decentralized decisions--because everyone saw himself or herself as an entrepreneur.

A woman at the Limited once asked me, "Why do you work?" She said, "You made a lot of money as a young man, so why are you still working?" I had never thought about it before. Forced to consider it, I told her, "You know why? Because I think that if you stop to smell the roses, you'll get hit by a truck." Sometimes I wish I lived more in the day, but I'm happier thinking about tomorrow or the day after. The way I see it, there's always a new or next thing."