Burberry Appoints Charlotte Baldwin as Chief Information Officer

New CEO Joshua Schulman Appoints New CIO as Sales Recovery Continues

The Chief Executive Officer of Burberry, Joshua Schulman, continues to build his senior management team with the latest addition of Charlotte Baldwin, who will step into the role of Chief Information Officer at the end of March. Baldwin will take charge of Burberry’s global technology team, joining the company’s executive committee and reporting directly to Schulman.

Baldwin currently holds a similar role at Costa Coffee, where she is Global Chief Digital and Information Officer, overseeing the company’s technology, digital, and data organization. Before joining Costa, Baldwin was the Chief Information, Digital and Transformation Officer at Bupa Insurance, part of the Bupa Group. She has also held senior roles at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, Pearson, and Thomson Reuters.

Schulman described Baldwin as “a highly experienced technology and digital leader with a track record of leading large-scale, digital transformation. I am delighted that Charlotte will be joining our leadership team, and look forward to working with her to advance our technological capabilities and drive our strategy forward.”

Since joining Burberry in July, Schulman has made a variety of new appointments across the organization. Among the noteworthy hires in September were Jonathan Kiman who filled the role of Chief Marketing Officer in London, and Laura Dubin-Wander who is now serving as the President of Burberry in the Americas, based in New York City. The board of directors at Burberry also welcomed new talent, with the appointment of Moncler veteran Stella King as an Independent Non-Executive Director, due to take up her role by April 1.

The new management team assembled by Schulman is joining at a time when sales at Burberry have started to show signs of recovery after a challenging year. In the third fiscal quarter ending December 28, Burberry’s comparable store sales fell 4 percent, outperforming analysts’ expectations of a 12 percent drop. Under Schulman’s leadership, Burberry was also successful in stemming the double-digit sales declines that the company experienced in the first half of the year.

In its January trading statement, Burberry hinted at an improved second-half performance which is expected to offset the first-half adjusted operating loss, despite a challenging macroeconomic environment. At the close of its fiscal year in March, the company reported a first-half operating loss of 53 million pounds, largely due to a 22 percent decline in revenue, which totaled 1.09 billion pounds. Also, comparable store sales in the first six months were down 20 percent, with all regions recording double-digit declines.