Burberry

Burberry
legal form	Public Limited Company
ISIN	GB0031743007
founding	1856
Seat	London , UK
management	Sir John Peace, non-executive Chairman (since 2002) ; Riccardo Tisci , creative director (since 2018) ;
Number of employees	10,604
sales	2.8 billion £ (2016/2017)
Branch	Luxury goods
Website	www.burberryplc.com
	As of March 31, 2014

Burberry (until 1999: Burberry ) is a 1856 by the British called Draper Thomas Burberry launched fashion brand in the upper price segment, which today especially for her trademark protected check - check pattern is known internationally.

Under the name Burberry , besides high-priced clothing for women, men and children, leather goods , shoes , accessories , watches , jewelery , perfume and cosmetics are offered through its own boutiques and upscale retailers all over the world . The company Burberry Group PLC is on the London Stock Exchange listed company and a member of the FTSE 100 Index .

history

Burberry lettering used until 2018

former Burberry catwalk logo with knight

The Burberry Check Pattern

Burberry ladies handbag in typical pattern

In 1856 the textile merchant Thomas Burberry (1835–1926), who grew up near Dorking (Surrey) , opened his first textile shop in Basingstoke , Hampshire . In 1880 he introduced the gabardine fabric he had invented , a very robust, waterproof and breathable ( cotton ) fabric in twill weave , in which the yarn is impregnated before weaving. Previously, the word gabardine had simply referred to a light men's cloak that had been known for centuries. Burberry patented the gabardine fabric in 1888. A few years later, Burberry began international wholesale of gabardine fabrics and Burberry items.

Burberry's store, which opened in London in 1891 on Haymarket shopping street near Piccadilly Circus , served as the company's flagship store and headquarters until 2007, when it was sold. In 1901 Thomas Burberry be created logo , a late medieval Knights (Equestrian Knight) in tournament armor on a galloping horse, a lance flag with the inscription PRORSUM ( lat. :; Bears "forward" with respect to Burberry's innovative fabrics and cuts).

The first store in Paris opened in 1910, and items were shipped to Japan for the first time in 1915 . Burberry was listed on the London Stock Exchange as early as 1920 . In 1924 the famous check pattern, the Burberry Check (or Haymarket Check and the later variations Nova Check , Mega Check and House Check ), which initially only served as a sample of the lining and was later registered as a trademark, was used for the first time.

Burberry became famous for the development of the trench coat , which he designed for the British military administration, and which enjoyed great popularity as officers' clothing for the British army during World War I. From the first model called Tielocken from the year 1895 1909 was the addition of epaulettes , belt and D-rings of the well-known today trench coat, sold by the Burberry over half a million pieces to the army. Burberry jackets were also used on the Antarctic expeditions of Robert Falcon Scott , Ernest Shackleton and Roald Amundsen in the 1910s.

In the 1930s, business in America expanded. For example, Audrey Hepburn wore Burberry trench coats in Breakfast at Tiffany's in 1961 and Peter Sellers in The Pink Panther in 1963 . From the 1960s, the portfolio , which until then mainly consisted of trench coats, raincoats and outerwear, was expanded to include numerous accessories. In 1981 Burberry's first perfume, Burberrys for Men , was launched . In 1988 a Burberry children's collection was launched. By the late 1980s, trench coats and raincoats only made up 40% of Burberry's sales.

The House of Burberry has been the royal British purveyor to Queen Elizabeth II since 1955 and to the Prince of Wales since 1989 .

Corporate development

the Burberry (s) logo used until 1999

In 1955, the privately owned company, previously owned by Thomas Burberry's sons, Thomas Newman Burberry and Arthur Michael Burberry, was taken over by the British retail company GUS (Great Universal Stores). CIS brought Burberry back on the stock exchange as the majority shareholder in 2002 and sold its shares again in December 2005. Since then, major shareholders such as BlackRock , JPMorgan Chase & Co. , Schroders , Fidelity Investments , Legal & General or Capital Group Companies have been influencing the company, even though more than 50% of the shares are in free float .

In 1965, in Spain an independent Burberry Branch ( Burberry Spain ) built, designed their own collections exclusively for the Spanish market and sold. The Spanish business was bought back in 2000. From 1980, the brand expanded in the United States, while it lost its success in Europe, where it was considered a bit “out of date” and had the image of a “narrow-minded coat and handbag manufacturer”. Due to the Asian crisis and the high value of the pound , the company's exports, which at the time made up up to two thirds of total sales, suffered. In 1988 the young Thomas Burberry collection was introduced, which was 30% cheaper than the main line and aimed at young customers with fashionable sportswear. Under the leadership of New Yorker Rose Marie Bravo , the Burberry brand was made socially acceptable again in 1997 in the luxury segment, production and sales were concentrated, licenses were dissolved, brand rights were bought back and the women's collection was further expanded. It was not until the creative director Roberto Menichetti , who turned the famous checkered lining material on the outside, and under whose direction the Prorsum catwalk collection was launched, that Burberry experienced a renaissance from 1998 onwards, thanks to the association of celebrities such as David Beckham and Liam Gallagher with the brand was supported. Model Kate Moss has been associated with the Burberry brand through advertising campaigns. During this time the brand name was also renamed from 'Burberrys' to 'Burberry' and a jewelry collection and an extremely successful swimwear line were launched.

Part of Burberry's foreign strategy was to have collection items manufactured under license in areas that went beyond the raincoats, knitwear and, in some cases, sportswear made in England, and then sold through fashion agencies in the respective countries. For the German and German-speaking markets, licenses for women's and men's outerwear were granted to Eduard Dressler ( Großostheim ) from 1971 , to Kaufmann & Sachs ( Bielefeld ) from 1994 for shirts and blouses , and to Blicker GmbH from 1996 for sportswear and coats ( Karlsruhe), 1997 for the Thomas Burberry label also to Blicker and the company von Daniels ( Frechen ), from 2000 to Seidensticker for men's shirts and to Cantarelli ( Arezzo ) for fashionable women's outerwear . In 2008, Burberry canceled its license for women’s and men’s clothing and announced that the collections would again be produced in-house in the future.

In 2007 the company came under public criticism when u. a. prominent (elected) Welshmen such as Tom Jones , Ioan Gruffudd or Irvine Welsh spoke out against the closure of a Burberry production facility in Treorchy in Wales that had been in existence since the 1930s in favor of relocations to China. The factory closed in mid-2007. In 2009 another 540 jobs were cut in the UK and Spain. Burberry employs around 2000 people at six production sites in the UK. In the 2008/09 financial year the company had sales of 1.3 billion euros. Net income for the previous year was £ 135.2 million. Well-known models for Burberry campaigns from the late 2000s onwards are Rosie Huntington-Whiteley , Cara Delevingne , Eddie Redmayne , Emma Watson , her younger brother Alex Watson and Jamie Campbell Bower .

Business organization

From 2001 to 2018, the British designer Christopher Bailey was responsible for the Burberry design as the successor to Menichetti, for which he was named 'Designer of the Year' in 2005 and 2009 and as 'Men's Fashion Designer of the Year' at the British Fashion Awards in 2007 and 2008 has been. Bailey cut back the excessive use of the Burberry check in collections, popular in the 1990s, and made a name for himself with modern interpretations of classic Burberry elements. In 2009 he was named the company's chief creative officer .

In 2006 Angela Ahrendts replaced Rose Marie Bravo, who had been hired in 1997, as CEO. According to the unanimous opinion of the business press, their task was to restore the brand's image of exclusivity without losing the mass market. One of their first steps was to discontinue 30 percent of all products. In the 2010s, the Burberry pattern graced less than 10% of Burberry apparel.

The company's headquarters, Burberry Global Headquarters, is located in Horseferry House, London , and was inaugurated by Prince Charles in November 2009 . Burberry Americas has an office on Madison Avenue in New York City , and the Asian region is controlled from its headquarters in Ginza , Tokyo .

The company foundation , Burberry Foundation , founded in 2008 , supports young people with creative talent together with charitable partners. In 2010, Christopher Bailey launched Burberry Acoustic . In cooperation with up-and-coming British music artists and bands , they record their pieces exclusively for Burberry. The first CD called Burberry Acoustic - The Collection with 18 tracks was released in September 2010. The 2011 version of The Feeling track Rosé from Abbey Road Studios was used by Burberry for the Burberry Body Perfume campaign with Rosie Huntington-Whiteley .

On May 1, 2014, Bailey was appointed CEO of Burberry in addition to his role as creative director, succeeding Angela Ahrendts, who moved to Apple for over $ 60 million . At Burberry PLC's annual general meeting in July 2014, 53% of shareholders voted in a non-binding vote against the proposed compensation package from Bailey, which, including shares and bonuses , was estimated in the press at well over £ 20 million. Mid-2016 announced Burberry that Bailey in September 2017 by the former Givenchy and Céline would be replaced manager Marco Gobbetti, where Bailey Creative Director and President of Burberry remain. At the end of 2017, Bailey announced that he would leave Burberry as chief designer in March 2018 and leave the company at the end of 2018. He dedicated Bailey's last collection (Fall / Winter 2018) to the LGBT community.

In early March 2018, Burberry announced that the position of creative director had been filled with Riccardo Tisci . Tisci had the Burberry logo, used since 1999, changed by graphic designer Peter Saville into straightforward Franklin Gothic lettering, which was criticized by consumers, and a logo made up of the intertwined letters 'T' and 'B' (for Thomas Burberry) create. The Equestrian Knight as the Burberry logo was abandoned. Tisci's first collection for Burberry was presented in a women's and men's fashion show during London Fashion Week in mid-September 2018.

The corona pandemic has also hit Burberry hard. Revenues fell 48 percent in the second quarter of 2020. The company had sales of just £ 257 million for the quarter. The board then pulled the ripcord and cut 500 jobs to save £ 55 million.

Collections

Burberry Black Label and Burberry Blue Label (both Japan, discontinued in 2016)

Until 2016, Burberry offered different collections, each for women and men:

Burberry Prorsum - catwalk collection in the upper price segment (since 1999)
Burberry London - main line and traditional business clothing in the upper middle price segment
Burberry Brit - youthful, casual second line in the upper middle price segment, under whose name there has been a perfume line since 2004 (since 2009)

In addition, the Burberry Sport collection with functional leisure fashion was introduced in 2007, although it disappeared from the brand portfolio in the early 2010s. The women's collection from the top Burberry Prorsum line was presented twice a year at London Fashion Week , while the Prorsum men's collection was presented during Milan Fashion Weeks .

With a resolution passed at the end of 2015, the division into three brands was abandoned in mid-2016. Since then, only the high-priced Burberry main line has existed for women and men. As part of the London Fashion Week for women's fashion in September 2016, the designs for the women's and men's fashion of the new Burberry main collection for the autumn / winter 2016/2017 season were presented in a joint fashion show (instead of the collection for summer 2017 like the other designers to show). In addition, the models could be purchased on the Burberry website immediately after the show. Burberry wants to interrupt the current fashion rhythm, according to which customers have to wait at least six months before catwalk models are available in stores.

In addition to accessories (scarves, bags, shoes, umbrellas, etc.), glasses, watches and fragrances, there is also a Burberry children's collection.

The Thomas Burberry collection, established in 1988 as a young second line , for which there were separate shops, was discontinued at the beginning of 2009.

Exclusively for the Japanese market, the casual Burberry Blue Label collection (initially only women’s fashion, at times also men’s fashion) and the more elegant Burberry Black Label collection (initially only men’s fashion, finally also women’s fashion) were launched in 1986 in cooperation with the Japanese textile manufacturer Sanyo Shokai , which acted as a link between Prorsum and Brit in the upper middle price segment in Japan from 2009 . Sanyo Shokai had these Burberry collections produced mainly in China and operated over 500 stores of their own for the two brands in Japan. Both license collections were discontinued in autumn 2015 after Burberry terminated the license agreement. Sanyo Shokai had also imported and distributed the higher-priced collections ( Prorsum , London , Brit ) for Burberry in Japan . Burberry began setting up direct store operations in Japan in 2009, and since late 2015, all Burberry Japanese stores have been controlled from London.

In addition to general Burberry boutiques (in Germany: Berlin, Hamburg, Düsseldorf, Frankfurt am Main and Munich), there were also special Burberry London and Burberry Brit stores from the 2010s , as well as their own stores around the world, which exclusively offer the children's collection or accessories . In 2009, Burberry operated 122 of its own stores, 255 shops-in-shops, 47 outlets , 90 franchise shops and an online shop for 25 countries worldwide .

image

The boom in the mass market also brought negative effects such as the association with the Chav culture or with football fans, because the Burberry pattern has also been popular there since the 1970s . A drug scandal surrounding Burberry model Kate Moss influenced the brand's image. This is seen as an image problem for Burberry, for example, from 2004 the checkered baseball caps were removed from the range. Since autumn 2006 Burberry has been the target of an international campaign run by the animal rights organization PETA , in which the house is criticized for its continued use of fur. From the beginning of the 2000s, the company successfully re-established itself in the luxury segment through a brand relaunch. In mid-2018, the company came under fire when it became known that it destroys its own goods worth 32 million euros every year in order to maintain the exclusivity of the brand. Burberry announced in September 2018 that it would no longer process fur or destroy unsold goods.