Coach’s Big Store Move: Make You Forget You’re Shopping

[00:00:05] Phillip: Hello, and welcome to Future Commerce, the podcast at the intersection of culture and commerce. I'm Phillip.

[00:01:26] Brian: And I'm Brian.

[00:01:27] Phillip: Brian, today we have a very special guest because I think it was exactly about six years ago, I predicted the comeback of one of my favorite brands, one from when I was growing up. It was all the rage. And today it is all the rage again. It's a very special moment for us. Isn't that right?

[00:01:44] Brian: Oh, yeah.

[00:01:46] Phillip: Can't wait to get into it, because this brand is redefining how, not just Gen Z, but I think everyone is thinking about the online experience, offline fashion, and hospitality. So today we welcome a very special guest. He is the SVP of Global Visual Experience at Coach, and for nearly fifteen years, he's helped shape Coach's visual identity through immersive retail from Coach Play to Coach coffee shops and through new cultural frontiers, like some of our favorites, Roblox and Zepeto. He’s spent more than two decades in fashion across Europe, Asia, and the United States, and today he leads Coach's partnership with WindowsWear to mentor the next generation of visual experience talent. Giovanni Zaccariello, welcome to Future Commerce.

[00:02:29] Giovanni: Hi, everybody. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here and talking to you about Coach and what we're doing here.

[00:02:35] Phillip: Well, yeah, we're excited to have you. And, Gio, yeah, you've been there for quite a while. You've been in many roles throughout the years. Tell us a little bit about your current role and how you're creating incredible spaces and experiences.

[00:02:51] Giovanni: Hi, everybody. So I've been at Coach now for close to 15 years. I started my career at Coach based out of Hong Kong, actually, managing Asia Pacific, and was moved into a global role about 11 years ago, based in New York City. And since then, the role has become increasingly different, mainly because our consumer is moving differently. So I think this role has changed based on the consumer’s changing behavior. And right now, I manage all of global visual experience. What does that really mean, right?

So, first and foremost, the VM team is under my leadership. Anything to do with 3D design, which is all the things that you guys see, like pop-ups and experiential stores, the events team, the runway team, the production team, and not to miss the digital team that works on all things non-eCommerce digital — so thinking about AI experimentation, the world of gaming… and, as of the last three months, also taking a leadership role within the architecture function.

[00:03:55] Brian: Mhmm.

[00:03:56] Giovanni: So what we're doing there is kind of taking all the learnings from the Coach Play stores that you guys have seen and really thinking about the future of retail at scale. So I'm very excited to lead that team, and I think we're just at the start of what's to come, really.

[00:04:10] Brian: If this is just the start, I can't wait for where we're going. This is a lot. I mean, you're doing some truly experiential activations. Each of these Play stores looks incredible. And the restaurants — I mean, I think experimentation with food and bev, with pop-ups, with just every aspect of experiential is sort of incorporated into what you're doing.

And I'd love to hear a little bit about some of the reasons why you started to really invest in these more physical and deeply experiential type engagements, like the restaurants, like the coffee shops. What are some of the reasons why? And then, how did you take that to an expansion strategy? Because this is not just a one-time thing. You've been rolling these all out, kind of all over the world and all over the US. And I think that I fully believe in this. And you probably haven't read my article on food and bev, but I elevate it pretty high in the world of experiential retail. So I'd love to hear more about your reasons.

[00:05:21] Giovanni: Yeah. It's funny. I think the answer can be quite complicated, but also very simple. At the end of the day, we are focusing on the consumer. We're putting the consumer at the heart of the experience. So as a company, I think we're pretty consumer-centric, right? And I think we have been doing a lot of study around Gen Z and what ticks them, right? What can create that emotional connection with them?

So we actually, back in the days when we launched our “expressive luxury” positioning, believe it or not, most of us and most of the organization traveled to consumer homes to really learn, not just what bags they were buying, but more around what their life was about — what are some of the things that they were facing. And I think what we learned, especially post-pandemic, was there was this need of going back into stores, right? Everybody was stuck at home for such a long time, and there was this need to go back. There was this need to build a better and stronger and deeper connection with other human beings and to create this idea of community.

It sounds simple, but it's actually more complex than you think because it talks to the consumer on a deeper level, right? And that's when we started to think a little bit about experimentation and test-and-learn. Of course, we have a lot of stores, so usually we do some tests before we roll things out.

[00:06:37] Giovanni: And I think what we learned was putting bags on shelves was no longer an option; it was not enough, because everybody during the pandemic — including my mom, who is 89 — now buys online, right? So they're coming to the stores and they want more. They are bombarded with millions of ads every single day, so I think we need to cut through. And I think that's why we started to think about Coach Play.

Basically, Coach Play, for people that are not aware of what it is, is a series of fully immersive, incredibly experiential concept stores. They're very localized. We have about 12 right now. We just opened one this week in Osaka, two days ago, and we continue to roll out. And I think what's special about them is that they really speak to the local consumer in a different way. They might look and feel the same around the world, but each of them connects to the local consumer on a deeper level.

And those stores have become a hub for community. They might come in and buy a Tabby bag, but they might just come in and hang out in the store. A lot of people are now talking about the “third space.” This was a little bit at the beginning of what that could be. And we have seen a huge reaction from Gen Z to this program.

[00:07:50] Giovanni: First and foremost, we have seen a higher number of Gen Z crossing the lease line and maybe actually being surprised. I mean, I've seen people saying, “Wait, is this Coach? Yeah. Wow, this looks different,” right? And I think they might not shop, but we've started to change their perception — “Coach is not my mother's brand anymore, it's my brand,” or “it's the brand for me,” right? And I think that, for me, was a sign of, “Oh my God, we’ve got something here,” when we started.

The second piece was when they are walking through the store, the dwell time is so much higher. It's about four to eight times higher than an average Coach store in Coach Play. So again, that was a little bit of “green shoots” that we kind of took. But again, it was all with the consumer in mind.

We traveled to those locations at the very beginning, trying to understand why they would stay there longer. And the reason was, there was stuff for them to do. There were not just shelves and racks with things on it, but there were ways for them to self-express and to be themselves without the pressure of having to buy, right?

So I talk a lot with the team about the balance of sales per square foot versus experience per square foot. And I think Coach Play is exactly that incredible blend of magic and logic — like left and right brain coming together.

[00:09:09] Giovanni: Because, of course, it's a commercial store, but at the same time, you can make memories. You can share experiences with your friends through it, and you can interact with our sales associates in a different way. So that's really what Coach Play is about. And we have a few more coming up across the world, and we continue to learn and refine the concept every step of the way. So that's, I guess, just one of the ways we've been putting the consumer at the heart of it.

And the first coffee shop that you mentioned was actually experimented in our first Coach Play store in Singapore. The Singapore shop has opened on a very popular street in Singapore where there were no other retailers. There were only coffee shops and WeWorks and restaurants. So it was the best opportunity for us to try F&B. And again, it was just a test. We saw green shoots, and now we're in a rollout plan around the world, across every region, including the US.

So again, Coach Play was really a laboratory for us to test, learn, and also get consumer reaction. There were a lot of things that did not work in Coach Play that now we're moving away from. But I think without testing, it would have been very hard for us to know how much faster the consumer was reacting to this new world of experience.

[00:10:29] Phillip: I have so many thoughts around — you said Coach Play, then coffee shop — and we'll talk a little bit about this hospitality mindset. I think that's sort of this emergent lifestyle, that people want to immerse themselves in a brand. They want to have every part of that brand, every touchpoint of an experience.

I think that we're seeing that a lot more outside of the US. I'm seeing that take place outside of the US quite a bit. You know, I go overseas and many more brands are activating in that way. I really am curious on your perspective on how those cultures are accepting or are demanding these types of experiences and how they pull the brand into these new experiences. How much do you feel like your innovation is actually just a representation of what these cultures around the world are really desiring from the brand now, in this modern era?

[00:11:31] Giovanni: Yeah. Coach Play was designed with this global approach from the very beginning. We actually have two Coach Play in the US as well — one in Chicago, one in City Creek. So Coach Play, I would say, is maybe the most global program that we have built.

There is definitely higher sensibility to experiential retail outside of the US, to your point. But if I think about the rollout of the coffee shop, that's also global, right? So in the US, we're targeting, for example, outlet centers where today there is really no food and beverage, right? So it's really creating more of an experience that exists and is really adding value to what we already think is a good Coach experience, right?

So in the case of the coffee shop in outlet malls, for example, we do want to increase the traffic in our stores, right? That's the whole point of having a coffee shop next to us. We're not there just to sell the coffee. Of course, the coffee is a conduit to traffic, but also dwell time. And what we have seen is that the quality of the Gen Z traffic that we have is much higher in the stores where we open coffee shops. And at the same time, they're spending more time, whether it's buying coffee or whether it's buying coffee and then going to the store to buy the Tabby bag or play with the charms or the customization bar.

[00:12:48] Giovanni: So again, we're very early into this, but I think the opening is really adding to the brand experience of the store. We're not opening standalone coffee shops without a Coach store. That is not what we're here to do. We're here to really enhance the experience through what we call internally the five senses, and I think taste is just one of them.

In all those stores, we also like amplifying music in a different way, regionalizing the music in the store. So it's, I guess, part of a much larger multi-sensorial experience. But what we have seen is that amplifying the brand — pushing the brand beyond product, in this case food and beverage — is maybe giving a different access to Gen Z. If you think about it, the price of a coffee or a Tabby cake, which is our top seller, is way cheaper than the price of a wallet or a Coach sneaker. And I think having them interact with the brand at a young age is critical. And I think, again, it's changing the perception of a much bigger brand.

And this is not just a branding exercise, like a lot of brands. We are here to drive traffic into the Coach stores. So it's not just for PR, and I think that's maybe where we differ from some of the other brands. And I think that's a critical part of this conversation. We really want people to come in and spend time with us in a different way.

[00:14:12] Giovanni: So that's why even the cafés are laid out so we have places for people to sit. It's not just a come-and-go. And there is an entrance to the outside and there's an entrance into the store so that the flow can actually drive more holistically there as well.

And of course, this is not going to be everywhere, so we're being very critical about where they go, where they open. We really want the experience to be holistic with the rest of the store, and it needs to make sense in the center, right? So that's why you might see different iterations between what you see in Asia and what you see in the US.

But it's an exciting journey we're on. I'm excited — whether it's the design of the store, but also the design of the menu, which again is very fun. Every single item on the menu, whether it's a drink or it's a pastry, is incredibly curated, incredibly designed — even the packaging. I’ve not seen any customer walk in without pulling their phones out. It doesn't matter what age they are, whether they are Gen Z, whether they are the mothers, the fathers, family members — but everybody's coming in and just really having a good time with the brand. I think that, for me, goes way beyond sales and branding. We're really creating that emotional connection that maybe in the past was missing.

[00:15:33] Phillip: That was one of the questions I was going to ask. Beyond the typical — I'm sure there are all kinds of metrics for success in retail that you could look at. You mentioned dwell time a number of times. So we could talk about all the metrics for success over the long haul that make this a success from a retailer perspective, right? From a hospitality perspective. But as a creative, or as a person who's designing experiences that people want to be in, what are the softer ones? You mentioned people pulling out their phone. I'm sure that there have to be things that just sort of make you feel like you did the job, right?

[00:16:21] Giovanni: Yeah. I think on the harder side, for me, it's as simple as Gen Z acquisition, right? They're coming through the lease line. And whether they're buying a Tabby bag or they're just spending time in the coffee shop, they're crossing a Coach lease line, number one.

On the softer side, for me, it's really about them thinking that Coach is a brand for them, right? So even if their purchase will come in a year or two years from now, they start getting to know Coach. Maybe they go home and they start searching for a Coach bag that they want for their first interview or their graduation or their first date. So I think, for me, it's more about changing perception. I think we've seen that happening in a lot of those experiential retail exercises that we have done.

And they naturally feel welcoming, right? That's one of the words that we use a lot internally. We are not a brand that is intimidating. We want to welcome you. We also want to have fun. Every single experience has a little bit of a twist of something fun and unexpected. We always mix the downtown with uptown. So there is this seriousness, but then at the same time, you have this high and low — whether it's a runway show, whether it's an event, whether it's a store design.

And I think Gen Z are reacting to that because when things are perfect, they look through that. You know, that's why TikTok is so popular — because everything is a little bit more raw than just a campaign that's ultra-designed, and they love shorter formats and a little bit more raw footage. And I think that's why Coach Play and the coffee shops are being very successful with Gen Z.

[00:19:39] Brian: I think you're onto so many things here. So first of all, you're talking from a contextual lens. So each door is working in the context that it's intended to be in, and you're thinking about more than just enforcing your product and, you know, rinse-and-repeat and tick the playbook. You're thinking about it in context of the moment.

You're also sort of like this interesting mix between what Marshall McLuhan, who's my favorite media theorist, calls hot and cool media. So you're imposing a very high-def experience, but you're leaving spaces for people to engage and have this sort of cool approach to, like, “Oh, I can take part in this. I need to fill in the gaps. I need to use my imagination.” Like you said, they prefer a little bit of that grittiness — gritty over pretty in some ways.

[00:20:35] Giovanni: I gotta use that.

[00:20:37] Brian: That's my friend Andrew's thing, so I gotta give him credit — Andrew McLuhan, actually. And you're also engaging all the senses. And I think this is also huge in an age where we're constantly extending ourselves completely digitally and we're living only in the digital world. We're actually often dulling our other senses in the process.

And so getting people in the store as your primary metric of success, or one of your key measures of success, I think is huge because it's reintegrating the senses when a lot of other brands are just trying to split them apart. And so I love all of those angles.

One of the things that's really interesting to me — and Phillip hinted at this — is you've got all of these incredible mechanisms to get people in store, to have them put their phones away, to get their heads up, look around, enjoy each other, get ahead of the experience, interact with your customer service — or your associates, I should say. These are all the right things, but you're doing it almost with the language and the mindset of digital first — like dwell time, conversion rates. So all this language that we've established in our digital worlds, you're bringing it to the physical. Talk to me a little bit about how that process works.

[00:22:02] Giovanni: Yeah. Brian, you're touching on so many great topics, but I wanted to maybe highlight two words that we use internally a lot, which are “co-creation” and “consumer participation.” I think all of those locations I've mentioned are designed with that in mind, right? This is not just a transaction anymore.

And I think if, in those stores and the coffee shop, we're not dedicating enough space to create participation and to create co-creation, it's never going to happen, right? Because then it's only in the hands of our sales staff, and that's not fair on them. I think we need to give them a space where they can actually create better interaction. And we have seen that when we dedicate space to that, participation is incredibly high. And then there is that connection with the brand. They start asking questions and then it gets into a deeper level.

And on the physical versus digital side, we do push digital, but digital should not come at the expense of physical. It's not one or the other, right? So I'm totally on board with what's happened since the pandemic about pushing e-commerce and all that, which I think is great. But this return to physical is critical in my eyes.

Maybe in the past it was more about, “Oh, digital is about having a gamification of the space.” Digital for us right now is a totally different frontier.

[00:23:22] Giovanni: It's two different customers, right? And in some cases, even more Gen Alpha than Gen Z, and we are creating a full experience for that consumer. That's why I think I keep going back to putting the consumer at the heart and trying to understand what she’s going through in her life, what her lifestyle looks like. It's critical, and we cannot generalize. And I think that's why I appreciate the work that we're doing at Coach about deep-diving into this consumer journey before we design.

So again, I’m obsessed with digital, but I think it cannot come at the expense of physical. I know that's a big statement, but I think that's why there has been a lot of push at Coach about experiential retail. And to your point, the digital piece is important, but it's a little bit of a separate experimentation.

And I love that you mentioned Roblox because it's incredible. Think about it — the Tabby bag. People can buy the Tabby bag for their avatars, and it's another form of self-expression that you cannot do in a store. So it does not come at the expense of the other, which I think maybe we did in the past, or some of the other brands do. So I don't know if that answers your question, but I could talk about this topic for an hour.

[00:25:59] Brian: The one last thing that I want to kind of pull out a thread on is, a lot of the way that you're talking about physical reminds me of the way that we talk about digital. I think that we didn't use to have quite the tool set that we do now, or the language that we have now, to talk about how people engage with their stores and the physical locations and turn that into a dashboard.

It's something that you can now look at and be like, “Here's exactly how long people were there. Here's how they moved around the store. Here's how they engaged with associates.” We have it all as data in our system — it's all ready to go — and you can actually analyze and assess how your stores are performing. And to me, it feels like you're using some of the same language that we use to measure a digital experience. So I was curious: do you see that world of the digital sort of influencing how you approach measuring your physical experience?

[00:27:10] Giovanni: Absolutely. I think the only piece that, for me, the physical experience has more of — or that we do a lot of — is more qualitative research, right? So, for example, before and after we open a Coach Play store, we travel to the location, we talk to the store manager.

I mean, for example, for Chicago, before we designed the space, we spent two days in the store, on the street, trying to understand what consumers were doing, asking questions like, “Hey, if the customer is coming, where are they going for coffee after? Are they spending time in the mall? Are they spending time on the street?” And I think it's hard to do that on a digital activation, right? Because it's on mobile.

For me, the physical is a combination of quantitative data, but also qualitative data that we get. I think that, for me, is incredibly important because, think about it, each Coach Play is in a different country, in a different city. So I think trying to understand — even in, for example, Japan, we have multiple Coach Play. One is in Tokyo, one is in Osaka — two different cities in the same country. So I think, to be able to get the nuance there, you have to be there. You have to talk to the store team. You have to understand the consumer — how different are they?

So I think it's about investing time to learn about the consumer and putting them at the heart of it. I'm not saying it's impossible in digital, but maybe a little bit harder. And it's a little bit more quantitative in digital. But both are positive — I think both are good. So we kind of blend both, but I think your instinct is right.

[00:28:38] Phillip: Before we move on — because I really do want to get into talking a little bit about the innovation mindset, and I want to talk about that — I do want to just plant a seed quickly, because I said at the top of the show that we sort of called the Coach… the “Coachissance,” if I may dub it. Can I give it a word? The Coachissance?

You know, we called it six years ago, and I think I saw it in 2019 or so when there was a Naruto capsule with Michael B. Jordan. And I saw that as an early sign to me that, okay, y’all get it. There’s like a trio of things that you were doing. I think you were doing a lot of in-store customization too with, you know, sort of maybe an early test of… you know?

Exactly. And I think that co-creation sort of led us to what we called “the multiplayer brand.” We have a whole book on that that we wrote. But when I see that, I don't think you get to Coach Play without the early investments to figure out, “Okay, well, what are the steps that we take to understand this new consumer or the way that we interact with these new consumers?”

And so I just think laying the groundwork in a brand — it's always test and learn.

[00:30:04] Phillip: I think it's always that. And I think many people just look at, “Oh, it's one campaign,” or “it's one innovation,” you know, “we have one thing that just happened that we happened to invest in that happened to pop off.” I think it's just a constant mindset of “good work begets good work,” and it builds over time.

So I'm curious. You've talked at length — I think I saw an NRF interview that you did — talking about a 70-20-10 strategy for innovation. Give me a little bit of your mindset there about experimentation and how you bring that sort of magic-and-logic balance to Coach.

[00:30:47] Giovanni: Yeah. It's funny. This is the million-dollar question, usually. But it's key, I think, to talk a little bit about what we do. And I think one thing that's led us here is the culture that we have at Coach. And I think innovation and experimentation have been part of the culture for the past six years. Also, our strategy has not really changed for the last years, right?

So I think in the past, if we were trying one thing and it wasn't working, we were moving on to the next. I think now, being able to experiment, learn with it, and roll out things you're learning has been part of our process. So testing and learning is now our DNA, right? Whether it's Coach Play, whether it's food and beverage, whether it's product, whether it's store format, whether it's digital gaming, whether it's integration of AI — all kinds of things, right? It's across the portfolio, really.

When it's there, taking risk has been a big part of this. And also it's about bringing people along the journey internally. It's not just about taking risks for the sake of taking risks. It's all in light of the strategy, right? It's all about the strategy of, “We want to acquire more Gen Z. We want to be part of their lives.” So if the experimentation is part of that and is bringing some of those Gen Z through the door, let's go ahead and try.

[00:32:11] Giovanni: But if it's about a different strategic intent, then we will not proceed, right? So innovation doesn’t just mean, “Oh, do whatever you want.” It's really more about having guardrails through it, because otherwise you're basically wasting time and resources on things that are not gonna drive the growth that we need.

One thing which I also think has been incredibly valuable at Coach is, we are doing less and going bigger. We're not doing a lot of little things anymore, and I think maybe you've seen a change over the past ten years. For example, we have been doing Tabby pop-ups now for the last four years. We have not changed the focus for the last four years. In the past, every season would be a new concept, a new idea. “Oh, it's spring, it's summer, it's fall.”

At the end of the day, our iconic bag is Tabby, so we want to celebrate it every single season. As much as we think everybody owns a Tabby, that’s not right. We have millions of Gen Z that still don't own a Tabby bag. And I think, of course, we have evolved the concept, but you start seeing a sense of continuity.

And I say to the team all the time, repetition is king. We see it all the time because we are internally in the brand, but the consumer might not even have seen Coach or Tabby yet around the world.

[00:33:20] Giovanni: And I think that's a hard thing to do, right? Because as a creative, you want to come up with a new idea every month, every season. And I think the discipline of innovation has been key to what we have been able to do. And, to be honest with you, it was the hardest thing to do. It was hard to bring the creative team along this journey.

But once you start seeing the success and once you start seeing Gen Z reacting to it globally, then you have something to look back to and say, “Oh my God, that's working,” right?

But I cannot stress enough the level of importance of discipline in this idea of consistency and really doing less. If you think about it, how many ads, how many pop-ups does a consumer see on a daily basis — whether it's physical or on Instagram? Millions. If they see Coach doing ten different things every month, they're gonna get lost. They don't know what we stand for, right? So I think really standing for less, and then going deeper into it, has been part of our innovation roadmap. You still see innovation is there, but it's within a different framework than just, “Oh, let's just try new stuff.”

[00:34:29] Phillip: I think it's easier than ever to do the — you know, not to say that brands don't run ads. I mean, plenty of brands run ads and do performance marketing and creative.

[00:34:40] Giovanni: Yeah.

[00:34:41] Phillip: It's never been easier to enter in as a brand and play in that space. I think where we're starting to see brands that have legacy and heritage — and let's say brands that have this legacy that they want to live at a larger scale — they're doing the hard things that no one else could possibly do. And I think that is… they're not pushing easier buttons so much.

What do you think? Is there a split between — you didn’t say “fewer, better,” but maybe it's “fewer, harder.” I'm not sure. What is your sort of calculus internally on measuring how few, how difficult, how much to invest? How do you make that calculus of where to place your innovation dollars and, for lack of a better word, your bets?

[00:35:52] Giovanni: Yeah. First of all, it's an evolving conversation that we keep having. So, believe it or not, we have discussions at the beginning of the year with a plan, then things literally change because the consumer is changing faster than brands — mainly because of, even sometimes, socioeconomic situations or what's happening in the world.

So in most cases, as much as the strategy is the same globally, we do take different approaches by region, whether it's in the world of Play, hospitality, innovation, or even gaming, for example. We know that in the US and China, we have millions of Gen Z on gaming, so we're approaching that. That might not be the case in other parts of the world, so we are focusing more on physical experiences there.

So I think really starting with the consumer and data has been part of the process of how we place our bets. And in most cases, those bets literally evolve over time — which, again, I know for creative people is hard. But if we know the bet is gonna work, in most cases, some of it is data, but some of it is also gut feeling, right? You know deep down whether they're gonna love it or not, and then you might need to validate it with your data. But I think it's, again, where the blend of magic and logic comes in. But again, it's never a black-and-white answer.

[00:37:10] Brian: Having people that have a certain type of intelligence, where they have the ability to kind of look at a situation and get a gut feel on it — and they're right — is talent identification and talent growth and improvement and education.

How has Coach sort of — you've been there for fifteen years, you've been in multiple roles — how has the development of that skill set applied within Coach?

[00:37:37] Giovanni: Yeah. You know what? I think a lot of brands are moving into this experiential world organically because that's where the world is moving. I think initially the team was really much more of a visual merchandising team, which is more basically product handling and visual merchandising — which, for me, is only the foundation of this world, right?

Because we have that strong foundation in VM, I think we've been able to then push the boundaries around experience by layering in different teams under one umbrella. I also feel having all the functions under one leader is just easier because then you have one consistent message, whether it's a store, whether it's anything to do with the five senses, whether it's a game.

Of course, there is a really strong connection with our marketing and our Chief Marketing Officer, and we both work very closely with Stuart. So it's very cohesive when you look at it from the outside. And I think that consistency of message, for me, has been our focus. It doesn't matter what it is — whether it's a campaign, whether it's an Instagram post, whether it's a press release, whether it's a pop-up, whether it's a showroom setup or a runway show — when you see them all side by side, they all feel the same. They emanate the same type of energy.

And I think the main reason is because our strategy is so consistent, right? And there's been less change over the years around, “Oh, let's try this, let's change that.” You know, we know who we're going after. We know we're going to recruit Gen Z. We know we have our number one bag, Tabby. And we know our focus is around North America and China for now. So I think it does give us some parameters about also where we would try and when we would innovate, for example. So I think having that consistent strategy, for me, has been part of really creating a stepping stone for us to change and continue to innovate. So I'm grateful that we've been consistent internally.

[00:39:29] Brian: You've had vision, I think. I think that's something that's really essential in this time. You have a purpose for existence and a mission for what you're doing, I think. And that consistent strategy has been clear. I think Phillip, you caught a whiff of it way back in 2019, saw that there was a vision ahead. And I love that. I think that's incredible.

[00:39:59] Giovanni: And, [?? Ginwa], one of the things that you mentioned as well, which again — it's good to see all the success, but there were a lot of things that did not work, right? So I think it's important as a creative team, and also as a brand, to recognize areas where we learned, or areas where some of the things we are not moving on from.

Even some of the initial campaigns when we launched Expressive Luxury — they were good, but now we're doing great campaigns. And I think we did not give up because the first one was not there yet. Same with Coach Play. The first Coach Play is very different from the Coach Play today, but we had to get it done. We had to learn. We had to have the consumer vote, right? And we had to get that feedback on board.

I think sometimes when things don't work, we just move on. And I think at Coach we have created this honest feedback loop where we learn from things. And I think that's been such a big breath of fresh air for me and the team, because then, if we don't learn, what's the point of testing and learning? Then it just becomes like a bureaucratic jargon that does not allow us to learn and keep improving on ourselves. So I would say that's maybe at the heart of the experimentation. And again, we're still learning. I don’t think this is ever gonna end.

[00:41:17] Phillip: There's so much more that I feel like I want us to get into. I know this is the first time we've had you on. I hope it's not the last.

When we're looking toward the future of the consumer — which is, I think, what we spend a lot of time thinking about — I'm curious what your outlook is on the future of the consumer. You talked about seeds that you are sowing for the future. Roblox and Zepeto, I think, are two digital channels. What are some of those goals for the future? Obviously, we're coming up on holiday right now. Give us a little bit about the near future and maybe what 2026 might hold, and then what you see in the next five or so years that you guys would have to overcome to be successful in your goals there at Coach.

[00:42:06] Giovanni: Yeah. So, short term, of course, holiday is around the corner. We have actually just launched holiday worldwide. And fun fact — we have had the same holiday concept in Coach stores for the last five years, for people that don't know that.

During COVID, I think we had so many discussions about windows, and there was so much waste, right? So many brands do windows four times a year. And then what happens with the windows? They get thrown away. So what we did — we actually removed windows from our stores, all our 3D windows. We opened up stores with glass so you can actually see through, made the store more accessible. And believe it or not, our holiday tree is now the same for the last five years. So it's creating so much less waste. And we have the same tree in all locations, all channels, and all points of distribution. So we're now leveraging, of course, all of those savings as well to build into the community.

So that's, for me, short term — I'm really proud of what the team was able to do with the holiday concept. We have designed an iconic holiday tree. I mean, holiday is holiday, right? There's not much to change there around the world. So that's one piece for holiday. We have, of course, different tiers by flagships and mall stores and outlet stores, but one unified concept across all channels.

[00:43:26] Giovanni: What's coming next? I'm really keen for us to keep experimenting into the third space and how to better build this community hub that we're thinking about. So there are a lot of projects coming up in the next twelve to sixteen months, which are even beyond Coach Play — or maybe, let's say, “Coach Play of the future” — that bring Coach Play to even more locations in different parts of the world, with this idea of an even stronger balance between sales per square foot and experience per square foot. I think that's a big part of our strategy there.

And then in the digital world, it's really more about continuing to experiment with maybe new platforms and also a new way to recruit Gen Z there. And maybe there could be an opportunity to better merge the two, but not to create a mobile version of the physical — really a proper convergence of the two spaces, which I think is something new that we're talking about.

And what you're also going to see over the next year is the rollout of the coffee shop, which I know you alluded to, especially in North America. We have a lot more coming up — again, worldwide, but mainly in North America outlet stores. So I'm excited for all of you to visit at least one shop soon to taste our coffee and maybe have a Tabby cake in your hands.

[00:44:50] Phillip: I could do you one better. I've got a long list for Christmas of stuff to—

[00:44:54] Giovanni: There you go. There you go. There you go. Yeah. And I think, you know what? I think the next few years are gonna be years of what I call “experience maximalism,” where, literally, “new things” is going to be mundane, because I do feel especially consumers are so much more connected now on social. And I think they see what's going on, and they talk to each other. There are mini-groups, subgroups, micro-communities, and my goal is to tap into those communities and really be part of cultural conversations — where maybe the consumer is talking to us instead of Coach talking to the consumer. It's a much deeper dialogue. I think that's hard to crack, especially knowing every region has got different cultural nuances. So I think that, for me, is a little bit of a personal goal.

[00:45:46] Brian: The lore of Coach continues to grow. I think when you have your customers telling stories back and to each other, that's how you build a hundred-year brand.

[00:45:56] Phillip: Yeah. Well, fantastic. Gio, such a pleasure to have had you here on the show. Can't wait to have you back. And congrats on all the success so far.

[00:46:06] Giovanni: Thank you so much, and thank you for having me. Thanks, everybody.

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