Luxury handbag maker Mulberry is stepping up its global ambitions by poaching a new chief executive from French fashion house Hermes.
Bruno Guillon, currently managing director of Hermes France, has also worked for LVMH and Nina Ricci. He will join in March next year, with Mulberry's current chief executive and chairman Godfrey Davis becoming non-executive chairman after a three-month handover period.
Davis said the company had been looking for a new chief executive since the beginning of the year, and Guillon's experience would help Mulberry in its international growth plans. Ignoring the recent spat between the UK and France over the eurozone crisis, Guillon expressed his delight at joining a successful British business:
[Mulberry] is a great English brand with a unique heritage and an exceptional opportunity for growth.
Earlier this month Mulberry shrugged off the current economic gloom and worries about a slowdown in the luxury goods market by reporting tripled annual profits of £15.6m, with sales up 62%. The Somerset-based group, founded in 1971, has benefited from a string of celebrities showing off their £700 a pop bags, including Alexa Chung and Kate Moss.
But analysts said it had been under-represented abroad, and that is where it is now concentrating its expansion plans. It opened five new stores in the Asia-Pacific region in the first half of this year as well as a store in New York.
Commenting on the new chief executive Philip Dorgan at Panmure Gordon said:
The appointment of a new chief executive with the right global brand pedigree at this stage of Mulberry's growth cycle makes perfect sense to us.This should enable it to move on to the next stage of its development, which is to become a truly global brand with sales of over £1bn, rather than barely more than £100m. M. Guillon seems to have the perfect pedigree and he certainly has a magnificent opportunity to take Mulberry on to another level.With Godfrey Davis staying on as chairman, we think that the company is well placed to exploit its huge global opportunity. We remain buyers with a price target of £20.
The company's tightly held shares - controlled by Singaporean billionaire Christina Ong - have jumped 40p to £14.50
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