There's a couple of things worth mentioning here: - Burberry is both a wholesaler and a retailer, which can be quite rare for luxury goods. (most are wholesale

There's a couple of things worth mentioning here: - Burberry is both a wholesaler and a retailer, which can be quite rare for luxury goods. (most are wholesalers who focus on brand and let others handle distribution) I believe Apple shares roughly the same mix of wholesale/retail revenue streams. - Head of retail is very specific to well, uh retail, which means she'll presumably be focusing much more on distribution through Apple's multi-channel (B&M, e-commerce, mobile stores, etc). One should also presume this means she'll be focusing on how to get more devices to more people...globally. (and less about "what an iPad looks like on 28 year old women") - Burberry has been massively successful in recent years in the Asian market (the growth is very slow in US/EU) My armchair analyst conclusion is that this is a play to get more distribution to the Asian market. One thing I've noticed about the Asian markets (especially catering to the middle and upper middle class) is that they want to know what the trends are in the Western world. If they see rich western travellers buying luxury goods in their "rip-off" market they see those trends and mimic them (by buying the real thing). Burberry did one thing very well, which was set trends. That's something very difficult to do consistently, over a long period of time, and in your own wholly owned retail chain.