Return to growth for Burberry leathergoods
Luxury group Burberry has reported preliminary sales of over £2.3 billion for its most recent financial year, the period ending March 27, 2021. This represented a drop of 11% year on year.
Burberry attributed the fall in revenue to store closures and a decline in tourism because of covid-19.
Chief executive, Marco Gobbetti, said on announcing the preliminary results that the brand was on the road to recovery. He said comparable-store sales in the final quarter of the company’s financial year, which corresponded to the opening three months of the 2021 calendar year, had shown a year-on-year increase of 32%.
Although those comparable-store sales were still down by 5% compared to the figure for 2019, Mr Gobbetti pointed out that the recent improvement had come during a period in which more than 15% of Burberry stores had to remain closed owing to the pandemic.
It said its latest collections had “resonated strongly” with customers and that its “strategic pillars”, leathergoods and outerwear, had returned to growth. It said specifically that a strong performance in leathergoods has been supported by “new established shapes”, including the Pocket, which was the focus of its first bag campaign of the year.
It said there was more to come with another new bag, the Olympia, the focus of its campaigns in May.
Image shows Burberry’s Olympia bag.
