Burberry, Kering executives say the industry's 'reset' years are over

Senior North American executives from Burberry and Kering said the luxury sector has moved past a three year period of anemic growth and is now building strategies for expansion. The comments came at a Luxury Executive Roundtable hosted by Boston Consulting Group last Thursday at its Hudson Yards offices in Manhattan.

BCG senior adviser Robin Mitchell, who moderated the panel, told attendees the industry is "sort of past this reset stage where there was anemic growth." The event opened with a presentation from BCG managing director Beatrice Lemucchi drawing on the BCG and Altagamma annual survey of 12,000 luxury consumers.

What Burberry's turnaround looks like now

Laura Dubin-Wander, president of Burberry in the Americas, said the company's Burberry Forward strategy rests on four pillars: brand, client, product and distribution. She said the company is moving away from the transformation phase itself and is now "laser-focused on a growth mode."

Dubin-Wander said Burberry already has strong brand awareness and is instead chasing "brand heat and desirability," which she said comes from leaning on talent with global reach rather than relying solely on British faces. The house has signed NBA players including Carmelo Anthony, who wears the clothes and appears at Burberry events.

She called the athlete strategy "a game changer" in menswear. On the women's side, she pointed to high-touch pop-ups in the Hamptons, Palm Beach and Aspen, alongside what she described as Burberry's core competencies, including dedicated trench destinations and scarf bars built into stores.

Dubin-Wander said Burberry is also recalibrating its United States store network, with some locations being downsized or exited. On price, she pointed to the brand's $400 polo shirts as an accessible entry point, arranged in dedicated "polo galleries" meant to start customers on a path toward other Burberry categories.

She said Burberry's womenswear athleisure line has been "reignited" because the category fits into a broader lifestyle proposition rather than standing alone. Inside the company, she said artificial intelligence is advancing at a "meteoritic pace" but remains largely back of house, applied to data analytics, IT systems and supply chain management.

Burberry is the last major British luxury house still independent, listed on the London Stock Exchange with no family or conglomerate holding control, as we have reported. That structure lets chief executive Joshua Schulman move fast on a reset built around outerwear, scarves and cost cuts, but it also leaves the company with no parent to absorb a downturn.

Kering's approach to luxury and aspirational buyers

Ewa Abrams, president of Kering for the Americas, said her company is building a technology platform designed to create synergies across functions and speed up decisions. Kering owns a portfolio of houses including Gucci, and we have previously mapped how those brands are inside the wider group.

Abrams described a split in how Kering treats two customer groups. High-net-worth clients want "high-touch personalization, experiences, things that money can't buy and surprise and delight," while aspirational shoppers respond more to cultural relevance, particularly artists and musicians.

She said aspirational customers do not commit to categories as deeply as wealthier clients, so Kering works to draw them in through lower-cost entry points such as eyewear or fragrance rather than ready-to-wear. That mirrors a broader push across the group's houses toward accessible categories as a gateway to full-price purchasing.

What the wider data showed

Tim Chai, head of product strategy at TikTok Shop, said luxury shoppers on the platform want personalization and authenticity rather than polish. He called Burberry an example of a brand that keeps a distinctly British, heritage-driven identity while presenting it in a more playful, fast-paced way with what he termed cheeky British humour.

Lemucchi's BCG and Altagamma data forecast global luxury growth of between 2 percent and 5 percent this year, driven by 8 percent growth in North America tied partly to artificial intelligence and technology-created wealth. Europe is expected to stay roughly flat, up at most 1 percent, while China is forecast to recover with growth of 2 percent to 3 percent.

The Middle East is forecast to fall by double digits because of the war in the region, according to the presentation. Lemucchi also cited a rebound among aspirational shoppers, who she said had either stopped engaging with the market entirely or spent less during the recent downturn.

Even the wealthiest luxury shoppers remain price-sensitive, Lemucchi said, with about 70 percent reporting they had skipped a purchase at least once because of a price increase. When that happens, she said, spending usually shifts to another category such as beauty rather than disappearing altogether.

Luxury has adopted artificial intelligence more slowly than other industries but has accelerated sharply over the past 12 months, Lemucchi said. Ninety percent of consumers surveyed said they now engage with AI tools weekly or daily, mostly for product discovery, recommendations and comparing prices, and trust those tools more than social media or influencers.

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Image: Burberry