Burberry is first luxe fashion label to sponsor Tour de France team

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Jun 25, 2021

Burberry is continuing to tick a number of firsts off its bucket list and the latest is the announcement of a partnership with Team Qhubeka NextHash. It makes the British brand the first luxury fashion brand to partner with a Tour de France team.

Qhubeka NextHash is a multicultural, diverse team with bases in South Africa, the Netherlands and Italy. It’s a purpose-led, high-performance UCI WorldTour cycling team that competes to raise awareness and funds for South African not-for-profit organisation Qhubeka.

Formerly known as NTT Pro Cycling, it became the first-ever African cycling team to gain a UCI WorldTour license in 2016. It’s also partnered by Swiss cycling apparel manufacturer ASSOS.

Burberry’s support starts with the race on June 26 and continues throughout 2021. Its logo and the Thomas Burberry Monogram will feature on Team Qhubeka NextHash’s cycling jerseys and tour vehicles.

The team’s name means “to move forward” in Nguni and the charity enables people to earn bicycles through its not-for-profit programmes. This will also be supported by a donation from Burberry. The end result of all this is that it helps students travel to school, healthcare workers access more patients and first responders transport life-saving equipment to those in need.  

It’s part of a wider move that sees fashion labels diving ever deeper into good causes as part of a response to consumers who expect them to do good in the world and their own staff who also expect such moves.

The firm’s marketing chief Rod Manley said: “We were inspired by [Qhubeka’s] ethos of uniting a diversity of cultures and backgrounds to focus on high performance while having a meaningful positive impact on the communities around them”.