How Burberry developed its iconic brand over time
If you can identify a certain British brand by simply looking at the pattern on a scarf, then Burberry has achieved its goal.
The iconic fashion company has had its share of issues, including a recent hard hit caused by the uncertain global economies that have affected most luxury goods, but it also has 160 years of retail experience from which to draw.
The company was founded in 1856 by Thomas Burberry, who opened a drapery business in Hampshire, England when he was just 21 years old.
A decade and a half later, he was selling outdoor wear to local farmers and hunters. He experimented with various fabrics, and in 1879, he invented gabardine, a waterproof and breathable fabric.
Burberry opened a store in London in 1891, and his products gained fame a few years later when mapmakers on an expedition to the Arctic Circle wore the company’s gabardine coats.
Burberry’s business grew as more adventurers clothed themselves in the fabric. By 1910, it was selling its products in France and the U.S. Its reputation was cemented during the First World War when the company was commissioned to provide coats for British officers on the front lines.
The design, incorporating epaulettes and metal rings, was subsequently dubbed a “trench coat” for the front-line battle fortifications. After the war, the company trademarked a camel-colour check pattern and used it as coat lining.
Burberry went public in 1920, with Thomas Burberry’s two sons named as joint managing directors. It was sold in 1955 to British retailer Great Universal Stores, which would retain majority ownership until 2005.
The company’s fortunes rose in the 1960s with the popularity of its timelessly-styled trench coat. Movie stars and public figures wore it, and the company received a Royal Warrant to supply the Queen with it.
In North America, the music-centric British Invasion, the “Mods” style, and superstar model Twiggy all drove the popularity of U.K. fashion, and Burberry quickly became a contender in a market that had previously belonged almost entirely to the fashion houses of Italy and France.
A store window display featuring the trademark check pattern, still used only as a coat lining, garnered such a response that Burberry applied it to a line of scarves and umbrellas that quickly became the company’s best-selling products. These helped lead a push
into Asia in the 1970s as that region became an increasingly important global market for luxury goods.
It seemed that high-flying Burberry could do nothing wrong, but eventually, it did.
The company first introduced lines of casual wear priced as much as 30 per cent lower than its classic products. That might have been acceptable by itself, but by the mid-1990s, Burberry was licensing its name to a large number of outside manufacturers.
The trademark plaid started showing up on such mass-market products as boxer shorts, throw pillows, dog coats, toys, and even cookie tins.
Burberry had always aggressively protected its trademarks — it has even sued American retail giant JCPenney for selling knock-off products — but now its name was legitimately on products that often looked like the counterfeits it fought so hard to shut down. Those items cheapened the brand. Few people wanted to spend thousands of dollars for a coat and then see someone else wearing an inexpensive Burberry T-shirt.
The company was already an older brand competing in a youth-driven market, and it was a serious misstep.
This, coupled with economic downturn in the late 1990s in the Asian markets where it did much of its business, Burberry’s sales and profits fell.
The good news was that Burberry learned from its mistakes, although getting back on track was a long and sometimes painful process.
Hired as CEO in 1997, and with a background in brand management, Rose Marie Bravo put the focus back on core products and concentrated on stronger markets in Europe and the U.S. She closed three production facilities in the U.K. as well as some unprofitable stores, eliminated the downscale licensed items, and increased advertising, including a new campaign with model Kate Moss.
Sales rose and the company was listed on the London Stock Exchange in 2002.
Two years later, Burberry went digital, and for the first time, you could buy its products with the click of a mouse. It might have seemed counterproductive, given that exclusivity was a key point of the turnaround, but it worked.
Since Burberry products were no longer available in a large number of department stores, the site appealed to customers who were willing to pay the prices but who weren’t close to one of the smaller number of exclusive outlets.
It didn’t stop there.
Last year, Burberry partnered with Apple’s music service to provide a branded service showcasing British artists. It also worked with Google to create “Burberry Kisses,” which allowed users to send virtual kisses worldwide through an interactive map, and “The Burberry Booth,” which used real-time video stitching technology to capture images of customers and put them into a 15-second film, which they could then share on social media.
Burberry still has many challenges ahead of it, as do many luxury goods retailers in uncertain times. Its CEO took a huge pay cut this year following a slump in sales, and the company has eliminated jobs and merged its product lines.
But it is also fine-tuning its sales approach, expanding its digital presence, and attending to underserviced markets like Japan, where demand for the label is expected to grow.
More than a century and a half after its founding, Burberry still intends to stay relevant.
