SPAIN: Burberry shifts women’s line from Corte Ingles amid weak sales

By just-style.com | 13 April 2006

Burberry has shifted its key women's line outside El Corte Ingles' wholesale distribution system into its own retail arm, a company spokesman said Wednesday, dismissing reports that the British retailer had completely removed the line from Spain's biggest department-store network.

"We have not pulled out of El Corte Ingles," the spokesman said, adding that the high street global retailer pursues similar strategies in other markets where appropriate.

The spokesman added that Burberry will keep selling the line in El Corte Ingles, its biggest distributor in Spain.

The strategy will give Burberry greater control over its most profitable collection at a time when the retailer's sales are slumping in Spain, a market where Burberry has made fortunes in previous years.

Burberry reported an 8% sales drop to GBP156m (US$273m for the fiscal year ended 31 March, a performance which reports blamed on weak sales in the department store circuit.

In Spain, Burberry saw department-store profits decline 12% in the second half of last year compared with a 27% gain in its own stores, Spanish financial daily La Gaceta reported, citing unnamed sources.

By Ivan Castano

Sectors: Apparel, Retail

Companies: Burberry