Burberry has been hard hit by luxury’s slowdown, with sales down 15 percent year on year in the 12 months through March 2025. But the British trenchcoat maker has nonetheless been the object of investor euphoria, with the brand’s share price more than doubling from September 2024 to October 2025.
What’s got markets bullish on Burberry? Simply put, confidence — that after years of “square peg, round hole” turnaround plans aimed at transforming Burberry into a top-end, fashion-forward leather goods house, new CEO Joshua Schulman’s more pragmatic approach to branding, pricing and more will pay off.
Schulman joined Burberry in July 2024 following a transformative tenure at Tapestry’s Coach and a stint leading Michael Kors. Since his arrival, Burberry moved to swiftly clear inventories to make room for new collections, refreshed to include a greater share of accessibly priced options and more identifiable branding.
Hero bags priced around £2,000 (approximately $2,661), tartan scarves for £420 ($559) and staples like polo shirts with touches of Burberry check were a focus. Raingear has been front-and-centre in campaigns referencing iconic British films, featuring globally recognised British talents like Kate Winslet.
With Burberry’s assortment, pricing and marketing reworked, Schulman is looking to get the brand back on the track to growth.
BoF: What was your initial analysis of Burberry when you first joined the company last year?
Joshua Schulman: I’d been following the brand for 25 years. What Rose Marie Bravo and Christopher [Bailey] created — and then when Angela Ahrendts came and further amplified the brand — had a huge impact for me. Since then, there has been a lot of change at Burberry in terms of logos and brand expression — and individuals, frankly, who took the brand in different directions.
It was clear to me that the brand was not performing at the level it should be. In some ways, we had lost our way. We were focussing on categories that weren’t our historic core. Burberry has authority, heritage and legitimacy as a leader in outerwear and scarves, but we had adopted a handbag-first approach.
It looked from the outside that Burberry had the most opportunity where it had the most authenticity. Almost from the moment I walked in and shared that with the teams, that idea resonated across the company.
BoF: The brand’s marketing message has shifted since your arrival, with campaigns full of cinematic references starring British actors like Kate Winslet and Olivia Colman. It seems the company is recalibrating its approach to ‘Britishness.’
JS: Our brand expression had gone with a very niche view of British luxury rather than a globally recognised view. The wonderful thing about Britishness is there are so many stories to tell, whether it’s country houses or Carnaby Street. I think what’s important is that they be recognisable and globally understood views of Britishness. Daniel [Lee] has shown that he has a broad repertoire, and I look forward to seeing how he interprets them going forward.
BoF: Brands across the luxury industry have struggled to justify price increases. How are you adapting Burberry’s approach to pricing?
JS: It’s about having a pyramid of pricing with [options for] good, better, best. We had previously pursued elevation at the expense of our core. We were abandoning customers who came to us for the ‘good’ and ‘better’ parts of the pyramid.
For example, a £600 polo shirt with a boxy, oversized fit is very different from our £300 Eddie polo shirt with a check placket, which for many years had been a core opening-price product. We brought back the Eddie polo and it became a bestseller again. We can still sell the £600 polo, but it will have less demand.
It’s been a lot of those types of decisions. Bags were almost entirely over £3,000, with some prices going up to £5,000. We had walked away from where we have our core strength, which is broadly speaking around £2,000. So last year Daniel introduced B Clip bags priced just under £2,000, and those are selling very well. They had the look of a fashion luxury bag, but also an identifiable brand signifier, a check-trim strap.
It’s all about balance. Burberry is a luxury brand with broad universal appeal. The top five luxury brands all have different access points to come into the brand. Chanel has an amazing beauty business. At Burberry, we provide access into the brand through things like polo shirts and scarves. We have legitimacy at the top of the pyramid with our runway, but we got out of whack for a few years because we were buying into the runway as if it were the core.
BoF: How was the company able to implement these changes while managing high levels of pre-existing inventory?
JS: The sell-through on the seasonal collections had been tough. We took decisive action to do pretty deep markdowns, even during the festive season, with the goal of finishing our last fiscal year with flat inventory. We were able to finish our fiscal year with 7 percent less inventory. That allowed us to invest more in the new.
BoF: You’ve used the word decisive. One thing you’ve really been heralded by the market for was bringing a renewed sense of urgency, after years of maybe focussing too much on medium- and long-term strategic plans. How do you strike the right balance?
Long term, Burberry should be a top-five luxury brand. The goal is still to sit among the pinnacle brands. But being an independent, publicly traded company, looking at the financials there absolutely was an urgency to get back on track.
We cleaned up the inventory. Over many years we had built up a level of operating expenses which were misaligned with the size of the business. So we took fairly decisive action there as well. This was as much about the [operating expenses] as it was about our way of working. We had a structure in which you had a lot of the decision making happening far away from the customer, and a lot of barriers between the executive committee and the customer.
Instead of a chief commercial officer, now the regions report directly to me. We also looked at the way our regions were set up, realigning them to have a Greater China organisation that oversees the Mainland, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan. These are examples of how we were able to get closer to the customer while improving our [operating expenses].
BoF: There have also been quite a few job cuts.
JS: That’s one of the hardest parts of the job, frankly, because it’s never easy to say goodbye to valued colleagues. But the team has really appreciated the sense of urgency, also the transparency around what was happening in the business.
As we reorganise it’s really with the idea of how do we continue to have the funding to reignite desire, which means investing in design, merchandising, marketing. Investing in what the consumer will see. It’s competitive out there and we need to break through.
BoF: What’s the role of Burberry’s runway show? Where does that collection and the innovation we might see there fit into Burberry’s strategy?
JS: The show is a tentpole moment for us. It’s where Daniel has the opportunity to celebrate Burberry’s codes. I couldn’t be more excited by the evolution of what he’s doing over the past year. Shortly after I joined we had a discussion around Burberry check: it’s a cornerstone of the house. He’s using the check in both more overt and subtle ways.
The runway is a laboratory for ideas that get cascaded through the entire range. The B clip bag with a check strap, which debuted in September 2024, has become a very important part of our business since it shipped in February.
BoF: In addition to Britishness as an idea, Burberry also has ‘made in Britain’ as part of its message, even if many products are made elsewhere. Have you explored ways that you could retool the supply chain to take more advantage of British craft and industry?
JS: Our pinnacle trench coats continue to be made in Castleford [England]. We also have another tentpole product — our scarves — where we have a very long-term partnership with a manufacturer in Scotland. But this is an area we can explore further.
BoF: You’ve spoken about polos and scarves. There also seems to be a renewed focus on outerwear on the runway and in Burberry’s marketing.
JS: Great businesses have a strong core and great businesses know their own strengths. The brands that are succeeding are the ones that forge their own path and [are] not taking a formulaic view of luxury. Handbags are a great business, and they’re a really great business if you’re born with legitimacy as a handbag brand. Outerwear is also a great business if you’re born with legitimacy as an outerwear brand. The more we tap into our authenticity, the more we tap into who we are, the more we will succeed.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
This article first appeared in The State of Fashion 2026, an in-depth report on the global fashion industry, co-published by BoF and McKinsey & Company.
