Restructuring events
European Restructuring Monitor (ERM)
The restructuring events database contains factsheets with data on large-scale restructuring events reported in the principal national media and company websites in each EU Member State. This database was created in 2002.
Burberry is an iconic British high-end clothing brand. Burberry is internationally recognised for its trademark check plaid. It is the most valuable British brand after HSBC according to the 2015 Interbrand index, and its brand value has grown significantly since 2011 to reach a value of 5873 million US dollars in 2015 (Interbrand 2015). Burberry has strived to realign its business towards a brand-led and customer-centric model, and to restore its corporate heritage and core brand values centered on Britishness. To this end, during the last few years, Burberry has enhanced the "Made in Britain" style and cleaned the brand through several progressive reshoring steps and avoiding any big shift all at once. This implies that it is hard to recognize which parts of production have been backshored from Asia to Europe or UK and when. In the most recent company reports Burberry declares that the majority of the production is now carried out in Europe, that Italy is the single European country with the highest production, and that the most typical Burberry product, namely the trench coat is produced exclusively in UK. Burberry is currently closing (2015/2016) a long term relation with the local company Sanyo Shokai that has produced and sold products with Burberry brands in the Japan market for the last 45 years. Although the royaltyes paid by Sanyo Shokay guaranteed good earnings to the British company, the profit was having an expensive price for Burberry in terms of brand image, due to several products sold for a relatively cheap price. In order to get full and direct control of the Japanese market, Burberry now sells in Japan its trench coat made in Leeds (UK) for 1800£, rather than Sanyo Shokai Burberry branded products such as baseball caps, dog clothes and Scotch whisky.
Eurofound (2015), Burberry, Reshoring in United Kingdom, factsheet number 165, European Restructuring Monitor. Dublin, https://apps.eurofound.europa.eu/restructuring-events/detail/165.