Burberry, the upmarket British fashion label, destroyed unsold clothes, accessories and perfume worth £28.6m last year to protect its brand. It takes the total value of goods it has destroyed over the past five years to more than £90m. [...] The FTSE 100 company said last year was unusual as it had to destroy a large amount of perfume after signing a new deal with US firm Coty. As Coty would be making new stock, Burberry had to dispose of £10m worth of old products - largely perfume.
— Read more at Burberry burns bags, clothes and perfume worth millions at BBC. Hat tip to David!
Ugh. So much waste.
It’s awful. I wonder how often this happens with other companies.
Probably more than we want to think about. It seems the height of cynicism to me to enact so much waste and destruction in the name of “protecting the brand.”
Hard to see how it protects anything when so many people are up in arms about it? Or why anyone would think you represented luxury if you had to burn products to keep your prices high. But I guess it must work on some level since the article says they’ve done it before.
All that waste to protect their – frankly – boring tartan check?
I don’t consider Burberry ‘upmarket’ at all! When they first became fashionable, as opposed to traditional, & had a shop on every high street, general perception was that a section of the population then known as ‘chavs’ were wearing their ‘Burberry check’ products- football (soccer) fans/hooligans. z-list celebs with more money than sense or indeed taste would dress their small children from head to toe in such garb etc. Their target market has changed greatly, hence the part of the news article that mentioned stock was destroyed “to stop it falling into the wrong hands”…
My best friend’s late mother, who was a real character from a working class background & not in any way a snob, would describe their 1980s & 90s fans as being ‘all fur coat & no knickers’ – always made me chuckle!
Capitalism totally works, though. Totally.
“Burberry said that the energy generated from burning its products was captured, making it environmentally friendly.”
Hahahahahahahaaaa NO.
Fragrances have high levels of alcohol, so perhaps Elon Musk or some bright entrepreneur could modify gas powered engines so they could run on old perfume.
I wonder if Chanel does this too? Their brand does seem much more protected than even Burberry.
I’ve heard Chanel and Lancôme do this too, destroy unsold product.
We live in a very toxic society, zero respect for burberry but they aren’t the only ones. I wish I had the discipline to buy everything second hand and not feed into this destructive industry.