Today, most people are bored by Aesop’s fables.
They regard them as too childish, they think they have nothing to learn from them.
Around 600 BC, the fable of the dog and the bone appeared.
A dog is crossing a bridge with a bone in its mouth, it looks down and sees its reflection.
The dog thinks the reflection is another dog with another bone, the dog wants the other bone as well.
So it opens its mouth to bark at the other dog, as it does so it drops the bone it’s holding into the water.
Now it has no bone at all.
The moral of the story is about greed, in the search for an illusory second bone, the dog lost what it had and ended up with nothing.
That story was retold in Greece around 500 BC.
In India around 300 BC.
In Rome around 50 BC.
In England around 1200 AD.
It was written in French in 1547.
In German in 1564.
In Latin in 1583.
You’d think everyone would have learned that lesson by now.
But apparently not.
Mulberry was founded in 1971 as a leather goods company.
They grew steadily until 2007, when they brought in a new creative director, Emma Hill.
She wanted to keep Mulberry’s British image, but a different sort of British: not old-fashioned, but fun, eccentric, whacky, creative.
She began appealing to younger British designers and also fashion icons:
Lily Cole, Claudia Schiffer, Alexa Chung, Lana Del Rey, Kate Middleton.
Mulberry bags had always been well made, now they became fun and fashionable, and affordable.
Emma Hill said “As a designer, the secret is not to look at the figures too much.
I’ve always believed that if you come up with a great design it will sell.
I think what Mulberry should be, is affordable luxury.”
In the six years she was in charge, the share price increased more than tenfold, from 111p to 1,600p.
At which point the dog looked in the water and saw its own reflection.
80% of Mulberry’s business was in the UK and Europe.
But, looking at the bone they didn’t have, Mulberry’s management decided to expand into Shanghai and New York, the richest 1%.
They hired a new CEO, Bruno Guillon from Hermes, the company that sells handbags for up to £10,000.
In that market, customers want handbags made from ostrich skin.
So Mulberry put its prices up, and up, and up.
Mulberry aspired to be a serious fashion statement, not fun anymore.
So the 80% that used to buy them couldn’t afford them anymore.
Emma Hill, the creative director, resigned.
Sales plummeted, so did the value of the company.
It was £1.5 billion when Bruno Guillon took over, he lost £1.1 billion in value taking it down to just £400 million two years later.
In 2014, Guillon left Mulberry having seen the share price drop by 67%.
In Feb 2020, Mulberry was forced to sell 12.5% of the company to Mike Ashley, founder of Sports Direct.
In trying to chase what it didn’t have, Mulberry lost what it did have.
It lost its affordability, it lost its point-of-difference, it lost its sense of fun, it lost its creativity.
All by chasing something that wasn’t there anyway.
Very similar to Aesop’s fable.
Which perhaps isn’t quite so childish after all.
In the late 70s Richard Clayderman, the French pianist started getting popular here. At first, it wasn’t quite mass appeal, so only those who saw themselves as more educated went for him. But over time, his music was blasting all over – from community centres to neighbourhood discount shops and even those who regarded themselves as gangsters. That was the beginning of the end for poor old Richard. Many clients (and even ad agencies) want to be all thing to everyone.