So incredibly wasteful!

I agree with the wicked wastefulness of it, but the stock that Burberry have destroyed is not worth millions.
If no one wants to buy it, it’s worth nothing.
If someone wants to buy it it a greatly reduced price, then that’s what it’s worth.
The cost to Burberry is only the costs of production and the costs of materials, which is a fraction of their products’ selling price when they are sold in upmarket outlets.
What they are selling is not clothing but snobbery.

I don't like Burberry anyway! It's a chav line is the view of the majority. Now this with the left over clothing just sums up the brand for me - no decent moral values, no conscience and no care.

After I'd posted upthread, I remembered the Burberry versus the Chavs controversy - thirteen years ago now - and the company's attempts to distance the label from "undesirables".

The story was covered by BBC2s Money Programme and used by the Open University in a course examining the importance of brand.

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4381140.stm

I wonder if their customers will boycott them?

Absolutely awful I understand (though don’t appreciate) them not wanting to ‘dilute’ their brand by selling on unsold stock to discounters. But there’s other ways they could dispose of it. Why not give to a charity or social enterprise that recycles in a creative way? The clothes could be taken apart, and the fabric used to make other items that could them be sold. Charities that work with women refugees, women in the criminal justice system etc would benefit hugely from a partnership with firms like Burberry. But just burning them? Wicked.

I’ve just bought these on line, second hand. I call it saving the world and saving money.
Why pay full price.
I’ll just go and find a Burberry!

A few years back I heard that one of these exclusive boutiques used to put their clothes in the skip behind their shop. Then some “Do Gooders” discovered, liberated the clothes and gave them to the homeless on the streets! Perhaps thats why they burn them. Although I wonder why no one wants to buy the stuff in their sales. I assume they do have sales?

Good post, MeltingMacaron

If you want to be exclusive, you don't make lots and then burn it. You just make less in the first place. That is the ultimate ecological solution.

You are right - it is sickening. I am so glad my DDs never got into designer labels etc.

A friend's DD became obsessed with all that stuff and chose her men on the basis of who might buy her the most expensive handbag - she is on her own and nearly 40 and beginning to feel that she has missed something in life. I am happy that my DDs have a different value system and have chosen relative poverty and happy relationships and children over "stuff."

A total disregard for environmental costs and human endeavour. Burberry and other companies are using diminishing global resources to overproduce goods and then burning the excess to keep prices high. The burning is done in a way that makes it "environmentally friendly"? Tosh. Other than the sun shining on a plant to make it grow there is no such thing as clean energy.

Economist Victor Lebow in 1955: “Our enormously productive economy demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction and our ego satisfaction in consumption. We need things consumed, burned up, worn out, replaced and discarded at an ever-increasing rate”.

Burberry are now taking this a step further by burning up goods before they are even consumed, actions which are as disgusting as they are immoral.

The Story of Stuff. www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GorqroigqM

It won't stop the cheap, chav imitations that so offend them.

The expensive designers have always done this to keep their lines ‘select’.

Personally I find Asda good for clothes.

I doubt if it is illegal at all.

Certainly a waste of resources, but if that's how they want to run their business it's up to them, really. If they're trying to re-establish themselves at the top end of the market they don't want all and sundry wearing their clothes...

Missed cheaply in their own outlet.

I read this too. It is incredibly wasteful. They said it was to prevent fraud or their goods being sold cheaply. I can't understand why they can't sell it themselves in an outlet of their own. I don't think I've expressed myself very well but you see what I mean.

Isn't it ridiculous? It makes me mad that people are so gullible as to fall for all this brand stuff. If you like what you have bought then it does not matter what brand it is - the whole brand thing is about showing off to others - the goods themselves are no better quality.

Pathetic I say.