Fashion powerhouse Burberry has announced plans to move into the skincare arena by 2015.  According to WWD , the British fashion house in fact has supersize plans in beauty – notably a Beauty Box retail concept in Asia, a fragrance for ‘midteens’ launching in September, and rather excitingly, a brand new skincare offering.

Fresh faced complexions backstage on the Burberry beauty campaign (Burberry)

Why would Burberry break into skincare? Well it’s not just because its Midas touch has worked so well for its fragrance and make-up offering, but also because, as Burberry chief operating officer John Smith explains, “£26 billion of the £60 billion pound beauty market comes from skincare alone.” Like I said, ‘big’ plans.

Moving into skincare is also an exercise in customer relations; skincare “drives loyalty over time,” says Smith. But while Burberry obviously fancies its beauty chances (it has just taken its fragrance business in-house) it also knows that skincare loyalty doesn’t come easy – whatever its 2015 offering, Burberry has to compete with an already pretty saturated market, and an extremely technically advanced one at that.

So the team are looking out-house and calling upon the experts. “We are talking to a range of possible partners about a range of possible relationships,” Smith explained. It has to – Bloomberg reports that the brand is “seeking to become a top-10 beauty brand”.

With beauty wholesale revenue set to grow by 25 per cent in the next 12 months globally, “it’s a prize worth pursuing,” adds Smith. And if Burberry can perfect a moisturiser the way it does a trench, then I expect a prize product too.