Wacoal America is the intimates brand everybody loves and wears, but not everyone knows its name, according to CEO James Wheatley.
The executive has worked at Wacoal America — part of the Japanese intimates company Wacoal International Corporation — since 2019 and took over the chief executive position from predecessor Mitchell Kauffman in April.
Building more brand awareness is top of mind for Wheatley, in addition to continuing to serve the customers in retail channels it’s already well developed in.
“We've been here 40 years in the U.S.,” Wheatley told Retail Dive. “We don't have enough brand recognition, and we haven't invested in that.”
The intimates brand sells bras, underwear, shapewear and lingerie. Wacoal America already has a large wholesale presence at stores such as Macy’s, Belk, Bloomingdale’s, Dillard’s and more, in addition to lingerie-specific retailers, according to its website.
But to help garner more brand awareness, the company is looking toward an upcoming marketing campaign and leaning on its small fleet of stores. Wacoal America recently opened two stores in Ohio and South Carolina, bringing its total to eight locations, with more planned for the future.
The locations are mostly focused on outlet malls, and the channel continues to make up a small portion of the overall business as it’s more about brand building versus profit, Wheatley said.
Stores in general are the brand’s priority compared to digital sales, as the cost of customer acquisition with direct-to-consumer e-commerce has risen in the past few years, he said.
“You can see it in every category where the darlings of the direct-to-consumer model have kind of gone away and some have pulled back, but it's just very expensive to keep … finding a new customer,” Wheatley said. “It's not going to go away. I'm sure online probably will continue to inch up as a percent of the total, but we’re still placing our biggest bet on stores.”
The reflection on direct e-commerce comes about seven years after Wacoal International Corporation acquired the digitally native DTC intimates brand Lively for an initial price of $85 million.
Wacoal moved to acquire the intimates brand at a time when DTC companies were growing in popularity, with brands leaning on social media to drive brand awareness, according to Wheatley. "Lively was a bet on the future."
Lively was shuttered earlier this year, with the website now redirected to Wacoal’s B. Tempt’d brand. A company Instagram post from January of 2025 said Lively would merge with B. Tempt’d. Wacoal did not respond to questions about the exact timing of the winddown.
But that hasn’t stopped the company from making more DTC acquisitions. Wacoal International Corporation in April announced the purchase of DTC plus-size intimates brand Glamorise Foundations, which Wheatley says is very different from the Lively deal.
Glamorise offers some different sizing than Wacoal and also has existing relationships with a different set of retailers, leading to less overlap, the CEO added.
The brand also has a rich history in comparison: Glamorise has been in business since 1921 with a very loyal customer base, the executive pointed out. Additionally, the company’s culture is a fit with Wacoal’s, and the brands have been in conversations for several years.
“It's a profitable business today that we know when we're together, we can just make it even more profitable,” Wheatley added.
