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Keywords
Premier brands, Brand management, Fashion
Abstract
The performance of the British fashion brand Burberry has been determined largely by the adoption of business models which, on occasion, have been detrimental to the company's performance. For the financial year ending 31 March 1998, Burberry saw its annual profits drop from £62m to £25m, leading financial analysts to describe it as "an outdated business with a fashion cachet of almost zero". However, from 1997, at the instigation of a newly appointed chief executive, Rose Marie Bravo, Burberry has radically re-aligned its business model and has enjoyed, as a result, significant improvements in its business performance. Drawing from extensive documentation that was published by Burberry in support of their initial public offering (IPO), this paper will provide a review of the history of Burberry; evaluate Burberry's re-positioning strategy as defined by the firm in their IPO prospectus; and critically delineate Burberry's current business model.
Introduction
The viability, or otherwise, of a fashion brand is dependent upon the efficacy and appropriateness of the decisions of those responsible for its management. There are numerous examples of brands that have prospered and/or withered as a result of the business models that management have deployed in order to achieve their strategic (or not so strategic) objectives. Gucci, the Italian luxury brand is a case in point. In the 1950s the brand enjoyed significant success. It was the status brand of choice for Hollywood film stars and European royalty. However, just over a generation later, the brand suffered a loss of cachet and the once profitable business made significant losses. The adoption of a business strategy (which sacrificed management control over product development and distribution in favour of seemingly indiscriminate licensing agreements), undermined the credibility of Gucci as an exclusive and aspirational fashion brand (Jackson and Haird, 2003).
Tom Ford's arrest of Gucci's decline in the 1990s has been well documented (Moore and Fernie, 2004), and has been attributed to his adoption of a business model that maximised internal controls with respect to product sourcing, brand communications and distribution. Ford's legacy has been the implementation of an integrative business model which maximised "back-end synergies" in relation to logistics, fiscal planning and real estate management for the purposes of cost management and...