Mulberry: Can Johnny Coca save it?

“I have always liked a challenge,” said Johnny Coca, the new creative director of Mulberry, as he sipped a green tea last week, deep in the heart of the brand’s headquarters on Kensington Church Street in London.

It’s lucky he feels that way. Mulberry is in the midst of one of the biggest turnaround efforts in British fashion history. Coca’s first mainline collection, to be unveiled on Sunday at London Fashion Week, is also the brand’s first major show in 30 months, after facing a share-price collapse and a string of unfashionable profit warnings.

The worlds of fashion and finance are both looking at the 40-year-old Coca, the brand’s creative director since July, to see what he can deliver.

“Five years ago, two British luxury labels ruled the roost: Burberry and then Mulberry, its cooler, quirkier and less intimidating little sister,” said Richard Gray, the Sunday Times Style magazine fashion director.

“It had carved out a distinct and lucrative identity for itself before it all went horribly wrong,” Gray said. “It will be a very big ask to get Mulberry back to the position it had in the handbag market before. Two and a half years out of the game in the fashion world is a very long, long time.”

Despite the mounting pressure surrounding his debut, Coca, the one-time LVMH wunderkind, appeared sanguine.

“I’m not nervous,” Coca said, resplendent in a black and white kilt, oversized knit, large silver hoops and spectacles. “I don’t get nervous. It’s important that I stay calm, both for me and my team.”

Still, he was not an obvious choice for the role. Coca, a diminutive Spaniard with a shy yet relentlessly cheerful mien, was educated in Paris at the ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts and ecole Boulle and began his career designing store windows for Louis Vuitton.

Then came stints in the design studios at Bally and, most recently, Celine, where he was in charge of accessories and created such “it” bags as the “trapeze”, garnering a reputation as a behind-the-scenes hit maker.

Mulberry will mark not just Coca’s first step into the spotlight but also his first venture into ready-to-wear. And although other accessory designers have successfully made the transition (Alessandro Michele at Gucci, for example, and Pierpaolo Piccioli and Maria Grazia Chiuri at Valentino), success is not guaranteed.

“The truth is that sometimes I like to take risks and to push myself,” Coca said. “I don’t always want to work in a company where there is no improvement to be done and where everyone is on cruise control. I don’t see myself as a star. But I do like the process of making things right.”

Mulberry was founded in 1971 in Somerset, where it still has its two factories. It has endured a stormy few years.

Five years ago, the fortunes of Mulberry, Britain’s largest luxury leather-goods manufacturer, were buoyed by booming sales of its high-quality accessories at accessible luxury prices, bags swinging from the arms of a cool coterie of British “it” girls. The oversized Bayswater tote, favoured by Kate Moss, became a fashion status symbol while the Alexa satchel — named after model and TV presenter Alexa Chung — was a runaway best-seller.

But a disastrous push upmarket led by Bruno Guillon, a new chief executive from the French luxury house Hermes, began in 2012. The company cut out wholesalers, rolled out flashy flagship stores and hiked prices, alienating its core customer base, particularly in its crucial domestic market.

Creative director Emma Hill quit in 2013; sales collapsed, and Mulberry was forced to repeatedly issue profit warnings before parting company with Guillon.

“They got stuck in the middle: too expensive for their former clients, not credible enough for the clients they aspired to,” wrote Luca Solca, chief luxury goods analyst at Exane BNP Paribas, in a report after Guillon was ousted. “What a pity Mulberry went on an overambitious journey to nowhere while the accessible handbags market was booming.”

After reversing the missteps, the chairman, Godfrey Davis, started looking for Mulberry’s saviours, finding them (after a protracted search) in the form of Coca and chief executive Thierry Andretta, the former chief executive of Lanvin and Buccellati, who arrived in March.

And the tide appears to be turning. In December, the company announced it had returned to profit, making 100,000 pound (Dh529,125) — or about $143,000 — in the half year to September 30, 2015, versus a loss of 1.1 million pounds (nearly $1.6 million) in the same period a year earlier.

“We know exactly what we need to do from this point on,” Andretta said, “and I am positive that we will do it.”

First moves are a revised retail price of 500 pounds to 995 pounds (about $717 to $1,425) for handbags, featuring both old favourites and new products, and a focus on the British market (which still constitutes over half its sales).

Last week, in a move that suggested Mulberry sees growth potential beyond its core product line, the company announced a new manufacturing and licensing deal with the Onward Luxury Group — a Japanese-controlled, Italian-based company — for worldwide distribution of its ready-to-wear and footwear collections.

Lastly, digital platforms are a priority. Mulberry has been trailing snippets of the coming collection on Instagram and Snapchat in the run-up to its debut. As for Coca, he pointed to Britain’s punk and rock scenes, weekends in the country and traditional floral prints as inspirations.

The coming collection, Coca said, would have a foundation in a strong and classic palette of khaki, navy, burgundy and black, with silhouettes occasionally broken by pops of bright orange and pink.

Florals would be a recurring theme, he said, as would signature military finishings and hardware, especially poppers, which would provide a dash of 1980s King’s Road punk attitude.

“It’s about capturing an attitude that exists here, a fusion of tradition, modernity and underlying rebellion that is palpable when you walk around,” Coca said. He harked back to the original Mulberry logo and brand font after discovering it in the archives, a nod to both the company’s ‘70s roots and its fresh start.

“I am not interested in change for change’s sake,” he said, “but I also want us to be distinguishable from the rest of the market. This is an important chance to prove that, in my eyes, product does not have to be expensive to be luxurious. This is not couture. I am making products for people that they can use every day. If you understand the proportions and technicalities of accessories inside out, it will help you elsewhere and make you a success.”

The truth of that statement will be put to the runway test on Sunday.