According to the World Apparel and Footwear Network, it is now 20 years since the American businessman Rose Marie Bravo drafted an agreement to transform the classic wearable trench coat into a world-famous British traditional luxury brand Burberry. Because of its iconic design, the plaid is worn by the British working class's “Chavs†and is arbitrarily smeared on cake molds, mats and aprons, and the brand value is severely diluted. In 2001, Bravo invited Tom Ford and Donna Karan designer Christopher Bailey to take charge of Burberry's creative power. In 2006, Angela Ahrendts was appointed as his successor, and Ahrendts and Bailey met when they worked with Donna Karan.
For the next eight years, Ahrendts and Bailey proved to be a pair of excellent power duo. They teamed up to clean up the business, repurchase licensing rights, and turn Burberry into a trusted luxury brand, some of which also include limiting the company's abuse of the brand. During their tenure, Burberry became a new star in the global luxury goods industry. As of 2011, Burberry's revenue reached 1.5 billion pounds, an increase of 27% over the previous year, with a market value of 5.8 billion euros, which is twice the revenue and market growth rate of Lu Wei Xuan Group (LVMH).
At the same time, Burberry's savvy digital strategy has also been recognized. The famous "Art of the Trench" plan became the street-style phenomenon that originated from the Internet in the 2000s - please come to the street blog The Sartorialist photographer Scott Schuman, for the consumer community wearing Burberry trench coat Shoot the shape. The brand is one of the first luxury companies to leverage social media and online community power.
Season after season, Burberry showed how to use the latest web technologies to interact with the outside world at the fashion show, from live streaming to Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat. This strategy is twofold. One can test a promising new communication strategy. Second, the brand can drive the public relations value by creating a “digital auraâ€. This also returns to Thomas Burberry’s own innovative spirit. It is considered to be the inventor of the brand's signature trench coat fabrics. The brand has thus added new excitement and energy, comparable to French and Italian fashion brands, although consumers can smell that Burberry is not a true luxury brand.
But this formula will inevitably be outdated, and the catwalk show seems to follow a strict template: the same trench coat, the same show in London Kensington Gardens, the same British independent music, the same model The same front row of spectators, even the final styling will fall the same truss roof.
Then, even the product is the same. Some observers believe that the “purification†action of the brand led by Burberry's leadership, despite its great success at some level, has hampered creativity and limited its ability to create novel and desirable products. Others say that focusing on digital innovation actually distracts attention. As other brands have launched their own digital products, Burberry's digital marketing brings diminishing returns.
In 2014, Ahrendts was hired by Apple to take charge of its retail plans, and the surprising move in the fashion industry and financial markets was Bailey's appointment as chief creative officer and chief executive officer. This proved to be unwise afterwards: on the one hand, this new dual role seems to undermine Bailey's ability to focus on products. Under his leadership, Burberry's revenue and profit growth both fell. In the fiscal year ending March 2017, the company's revenue fell 2% and operating profit fell 21%.
Despite this, under the dual role of Bailey, Burberry has made some progress: starting from the integration of the company's huge brand hierarchy and reducing costs in the second half of 2015, it began to transition to a new operational and creative model; Bailey took the lead in participating. The trend of “read and buyâ€, the major market players including Tommy Hilfiger and Tom Ford quickly followed the footsteps; in terms of creativity, he also switched to a new conference venue, and the fashion collection was also more esoteric, not Then commoditized.
But these changes still failed to meet expectations. This is back to Marco Gobetti, who officially became Burberry's CEO earlier this month. For a company that is proud of digital innovation, choosing Gobbetti as CEO is really inspiring – if not unexpected. Prior to joining Burberry, he and the young designer Phoebe Philo led the amazing transformation of the Céline brand, shaping the LVMH-owned fashion company into a top fashion brand. Interestingly, Céline is completely contrary to the digital road that Burberry advocates, even if consumers spend more and more time on the Internet with money and mainstream brands to capture the hearts of fans. But Gobbetti undoubtedly has a wealth of retail management experience, as well as a deep understanding of leather products - this is Burberry's current energy efficiency category.
To be sure, this brand, Burberry, which is almost identical to all the “British luxury goodsâ€, has a huge global potential. Unlike Dior and Chanel, which must take into account the Paris Haute Couture concept, or many of the many Milan luxury brands that must take into account the concept of “Made in Italyâ€, Burberry is a global luxury brand that competes with all of these brands. But what do Gobbetti and Bailey have to do now to realize the potential of the brand?
For Bailey, his focus must be on creativity, creating products that excite consumers. Although digital strategy has now become a key pillar of Burberry's business, and the company's advancement in this area is still beneficial to today's media reality, it cannot be at the expense of true product innovation. With the products that people really want, digital marketing can make a difference.
And now there is the first sign that Burberry may be overtaking to make up for the lack of creativity: Bailey announced an amazing collaboration with Russian designer Gosha Rubchinskiy, and Rubchinskiy's design inspired by the Eastern European youth/skateboard group It is correcting the stain of "British street punks" in Burberry history. Bailey now seems to go beyond the strict boundaries he once set himself.
In order to promote revenue growth, Burberry can also be firm in the “see-and-buy†strategy, “either big or go homeâ€, expand the media influence of this move, and create an inspiring moment that can really attract the full focus of Fashion Week. If Burberry will continue to hold a quarterly press conference, perhaps you can learn from the global show Tommy Hilfiger: after taking over the Santa Monica Pier in Los Angeles, this September will step into Burberry's backyard grassland - London.
The complementary skills and experience of Bailey and Gobbetti should give Burberry investors confidence. And now all they have to do is focus on what they do.
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