Upstairs parents-to-be are admiring the custom-made Burberry Silver Cross prams at £2500 each Yes Burberry

Posted by admin · · Jump to comments

Upstairs, parents-to-be are admiring the custom-made Burberry Silver Cross prams at £2,500 each Yes, Burberry is hot, hot, hot. This is a brand that is "to die for" among fashionistas such as Kate Moss and the newly Brit-friendly Madonna but which has also crossed over to achieve mainstream appeal.And yet it is not only a fashion revival It is a commercial success story. Yesterday Burberry reported trebled profits of £69.5m on almost-doubled sales of £425m. And the company's owner, the retail group Great Universal Stores, confirmed plans to seek a separate stock market listing for Burberry within the next 12 months.

The float should value Burberry at around £1.5bn.How did this revival happen? How did a brand synonymous with dire raincoats bought by Japanese tourists become the hot fashion choice of the glitterati? Much of the credit must go to Rose Marie Bravo, the 49-year-old fast-talking American appointed as Burberry's chief executive in 1997. She joined from Saks Fifth Avenue, the US retailer where she was the $1.6m-a-year president.Slim, elegant and wearing a crisply cut aubergine two-piece and wickedly pointed black shoes, she sweeps through the recovery programme breathlessly. "Burberry was basically a raincoat manufacturer primarily serving Asian clients," she says in a heavy New York accent. "It had a disparate network of licensees marketing Burberry around the globe It wasn't a coherent business Each country was representing its own version of Burberry Demand slowed The business needed a clean-up The brand was over-exposed and over-distributed. So we got ourselves into the right kind of stores and developed an expertise in a variety of new products beyond just raincoats Rainwear was the bulk of the business We wanted to get our share of womenswear. Accessories have the highest margin potential." Looking at the £45 ties and the £55 belts in the swish Bond Street store, she has a point.Ms Bravo recruited Roberto Menichetti as design director and his flair gave Burberry the catwalk cred that attracted the supermodel set. When he left earlier this year he was replaced by Christopher Bailey from Gucci.

The average age of a Burberry customer has fallen from 50-plus to mid-30s.A key part of Burberry reinvention was the extension of the product range Shoes, swimwear and jeans have been launched. And a Burberry Touch fragrance initiated last year has already achieved sales of £40m in nine months. Lotions and baby ointments are on their way, as is children's wear, where Ms Bravo has high hopes."We have an adorable children's line, principally for the under-twos," Ms Bravo says. "We tried a specially made Silver Cross pram with a Burberry design at £2,500 and there was a lot of interest in it That made us think we could do well with children. The brand is so elastic that we can go from baby to grandfather and everything in between Shoes are new, for example We did sneakers and then mules. Now we realise we have a real demand for shoes."Another central plank of the recovery has been the revitalisation of the store portfolio Burberry has 58 stores and is expanding fast.