Burberry, baby. What is you doing?
Understandably, high-end brands want to keep their cache (and fashion plagiarism is a very real thing), but the British luxury retailer Burberry has taken protecting their brand to new extremes, reportedly burning over $33 million in unsold merchandise rather than sell it at discount or donate it. This is odd, since Burberry outlets do exist, and their products can regularly be found on discount at the outlets of upscale retailers like Nordstrom, Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus.
But according to ABC7 Chicago, clothing, accessories and perfume all ended up on the pyre, as “Burberry believes the method is a way to control brand authenticity.”
It sounds incredibly wasteful and carbon-emission producing to us, but not to worry: Burberry also says it “saves the energy captured in its massive product burns.” How, we don’t know, and for what, no one has said.
Presumably, it’s more of a waste to see your product worn by people who can afford it at 60 percent off. We’ll have to wait until the smoke clears on this one, but the mere thought of all that wasted luxury makes us want to burn it all down.