15-05-2025
Why China's giving Burberry a reality check
I once went to the world's biggest luxury watch fair, at Basel in Switzerland. The sellers were mostly European, the buyers mostly Asian. Some of the watches sold for many millions of dollars. The saleswoman for one brand introduced me to that year's signature model, 'the all-black'. As I peered at it sceptically, trying to distinguish the black hands from the black face and the black numerals, she admitted in charmingly accented English that 'it is not so useful for telling ze time. But for zat you always have ze phone.'
I thought of that conversation when Burberry, one of the big names in luxury, announced this week that it was cutting a fifth of its workforce. The luxury industry, Europe's most successful export
