How Gen Z became Coach’s North Star

Coach’s strategy pivot came at the right time, as its target market of young consumers were stuck at home with money to spend. During the post-revenge spending era, though, things took a turn for luxury, and the slowdown commenced. So it’s a good thing Coach is straddling the worlds of luxury and accessibility, even if it doesn’t use the verbiage of the latter.

“The distance between us and traditional European luxury is that white space. [And it] is greater than any time in our history,” says Kahn, referring to luxury’s increasingly outrageous price hikes that have gone so high as to price many consumers out of the brands altogether. “Something maybe very American in us is [that] I don’t feel good about having someone save up three months of salary to buy a handbag.”

Coach’s triangle offense

Kahn didn’t just push for a change in terminology. The CEO also worked to shift the company’s ways of working internally, breaking silos and encouraging crossover between the creative and business teams.

He points to a typical formulaic approach to fashion: “You had a strong commercial leader, the CEO, and you had a very talented creative director. And there are many examples, Lew Frankfort and Reed [Krakoff] back in the first big heyday of Coach. But we’ve expanded that.”

To illustrate, he asks if I go to basketball games. A Chicago native, he’s a fan of the Chicago Bulls. I tell him I’ve seen The Last Dance (the Netflix sports documentary about the team’s 1997 to ’98 season, another Covid hit). Coach Phil Jackson had a ‘triangle offense’, which, Kahn explains, he’s appropriated for fashion. “When I look at the triangle offense, what I do is I put the consumer at the centre. So at the bullseye, everything we do touches on that timeless Gen Z consumer.” At the three points are commercial leadership (Kahn and his team), creative leadership (creative director Stuart Vevers and team) and storytelling leadership.

The storytelling point, which refers to marketing (though Coach avoids this term as, Kahn says, storytelling goes deeper, despite having a CMO in Sandeep Seth), is what’s new in how central and interrelated it is to the other two points. “When all elements of all sides of the triangle are very focused, and their muse is that timeless Gen Z, it becomes very powerful. And that is one of the reasons we’re seeing the success.”

Banking on Z

Coach may have the backend structures in place, but how does an 80-year-old brand establish such authentic success among a young, discerning generation?