British fashion brand Burberry has its check on the Japanese market and is aiming to boost its sales in the world's top fashion marketplace. In an effort to boost its business in Japan, Burberry recently opened a new store in Omotesando, Tokyo, focusing on the brand's imported products, its second flagship store in the country. Other stores around Asia offer both licensed and imported products while the new stores only boasts imported merchandise.

While licensed products have been selling quite well in the Japanese market, the brand has another dimension--high-fashion products imported from Europe, such as the Burberry Prorsum and London collections. With Burberry's sales in Japan accounting for about half of its worldwide sales--turnover was about 500 million pounds (about 100 billion yen) in the year to March 2002--O'Neill said Japan was the company's "single most important market."

However, O'Neill believes the firm still lags other global fashion brands. "If you compare (our sales) with our competitors, our competitors are much larger," he said. Nevertheless, O'Neill believes the company's diversification across Asia, Europe and North America will ensure its continued growth.

"We identify two markets in the world where we see significant growth over the next several years--they are North America and Asia," he said. "These are the two markets that we are concentrating so much effort and so much investment." Apart from increasing sales in Japan, Burberry is enjoying growing business in the rest of the Asia-Pacific region thanks to its marketing strategy.