Coach won over Gen Z in North America. Now it’s stepping up its focus abroad
During a customer research trip to Japan, Coach executives met a young woman who loved the color pink. Her apartment was filled with it, and she owned a pink jacket she liked. But she didn’t feel comfortable wearing it outside. She worried about standing out, even though she admitted she’d feel envious if she saw someone else wearing the same color in public.
As Jennifer Yue, Coach’s SVP of strategy and consumer insights, explained, what Coach learned is that “in Asia, in particular, there are guardrails around how far people feel they can go in order to self-express.” She told Modern Retail in an interview at Shoptalk Spring that “our job is figuring out how to help them navigate those boundaries and the things they are dealing with.”
That’s just an example of one of the insights Coach has gleaned through years of in-depth interviews and in-home visits with Gen-Z consumers. It is this type of customer research that has helped the luxury handbag company gain ground with younger shoppers in North America. Now, Coach is applying the same approach as it steps up its focus on Gen-Z consumers in Asia and Europe, while tailoring its marketing and partnerships to each market.
One way that shows up is through local partnerships. In Asia, for example, Coach recently partnered with Hong Kong streetwear brand Clot on a collection aimed at helping the legacy handbag maker reach younger consumers in the region who may not have previously considered the brand. One item in the collection is an oversized denim trucker jacket featuring both Clot’s logo and Coach’s “C” monogram. In 2024, Coach also teamed up with Seoul-based streetwear label Matin Kim for a collection.
Coach is tailoring its brand message for different markets by choosing ambassadors who resonate locally and adjusting how it talks about self-expression with younger consumers abroad. Yue said key growth markets for the brand include China and Europe, where Coach still has significant room to grow and currently reaches less than 1% of its potential customer base. Coach is seeing strong growth in those markets, with recent quarterly revenue rising 22% in Europe and 34% in China.
“We’re just scratching the surface,” Yue said.
The company is also working to build awareness among younger shoppers who may be less familiar with the brand. Yue said Coach’s unaided brand awareness — a measure of how many consumers can name a brand without any assistance, hints or prompts — was around 10% in China. Recent research in smaller cities also found that many young consumers had never seen the company’s campaigns. After being exposed to the marketing, some visited Coach stores for the first time and began to view the brand differently.
“They were like, ‘Oh my gosh, this feels like a brand for me,’” Yue said.
Coach’s Gen-Z-oriented brand campaigns in recent years have broadly focused on themes of self-expression. Its spring campaign this year, for instance, “Explore Your Story,” spotlights its Tabby bag — a favorite among younger shoppers — and a new collection of mini-book charms. The campaign’s tagline is, “Our stories give us courage.” The campaign brings together six brand ambassadors that reflect Coach’s global sensibility, including actress Elle Fanning, Korean singer-songwriter Soyeon and Japanese singer-songwriter Lilas. Coach also partnered with Penguin Random House in the U.S., and with independent publishers across China, Japan and Korea, to create the book charms.
Coach is continuing to interview young consumers in overseas markets. Yue said her team recently spent time with shoppers in Japan and China and plans to do more research in Europe as the company looks for ways to attract more Gen-Z customers there.
“We have done thousands of hours with our consumer, and it’s only adding up,” Yue said. “This is not slowing down.”
Inside Coach’s Gen-Z playbook
Coach’s customer research isn’t new. But the company changed how it conducts that research around 2022 as it looked to lower the average age of its customer base. From the beginning, the company focused that research on Gen-Z consumers globally, conducting interviews across North America, Europe and Asia to better understand the next generation of luxury shoppers.
Yue told Modern Retail that the company’s increased focus on Gen Z was driven in part by demographic data estimating that, by 2030, about 70% of premium handbag purchases would be made by either Gen Z or millennial customers.
“At that point in time, our average age was well outside of those age groups,” Yue said.
That realization pushed Coach to expand how often it conducted consumer interviews and how deeply it engaged with shoppers. Yue said the company now conducts these interviews at least quarterly around the world. Part of the change involved spending more time with consumers and asking broader questions. Previous interviews often focused more narrowly on shopping, with questions about what brands consumers bought and what trends they liked most. The company also began bringing more senior leaders into the process, something that hadn’t typically happened before when the work was largely handled by consumer insights teams.
“We started putting real decision-makers in those people’s homes,” Yue said. “Our chief marketing officer would go, our head of HR, our head of North America, Todd Kahn, our CEO, would go, and merchandisers and designers.”
Coach teams now spend two to three hours at a time with Gen-Z shoppers in their homes across the U.S., Europe and Asia, discussing everything from their personal goals to the pressures they face and how brands fit into their lives.
“We wanted to understand the full life,” Yue said.
Those conversations showed Coach that many young consumers want to express themselves. Yue said that insight helped shape the brand’s purpose around encouraging authenticity. The company’s messaging around “the courage to be real,” she said, is meant to give consumers “a platform to be able to self-express courageously,” after the company found many young shoppers lacked confidence to do so.
Coach has experimented with new store formats aimed at younger shoppers in the U.S. The company has opened “Coach Play” concept stores designed to encourage customers to spend more time in stores through customization stations, events and other interactive elements. Compared to typical Coach locations, these stores attract more Gen-Z visitors and keep them browsing longer, according to the company.
The company has also opened Coach Coffee Shop locations attached to stores. The cafes sell drinks and desserts inspired by Coach products and are meant to encourage repeat visits, particularly from Gen-Z consumers who may not yet be able to afford a handbag but could become future customers. Coach first tested the concept in Jakarta, Indonesia, a market with a large Gen-Z population, and has since opened 16 coffee shops across China, Japan, South Korea and the U.S., the company previously told CNBC. It plans to open additional locations in Massachusetts, California, Arizona and Texas, as well as parts of the Midwest.
A Coach spokesperson said locations with coffee shops have seen higher foot traffic and longer customer visits, with some stores posting double- or triple-digit comparable sales growth after the cafes opened. Following the first North American openings in New Jersey and Austin, the company also saw sales increases at those locations and lines forming outside the stores as shoppers came to experience the concept.
The focus on younger shoppers has translated into customer growth. Coach’s parent company said at an investor day in September that it has recruited more than 20 million new customers in North America over the past three years, while Coach alone added millions of new shoppers globally in recent quarters, many of them Gen Z. Tapestry executives have said younger Coach customers tend to have higher retention rates than the broader customer base. Executives have also said that about 75% of the company’s future customer growth is expected to come from international markets.
Coach’s revenue rose 25% in its fiscal second quarter of 2026, helping boost results at its parent company, Tapestry, according to its latest earnings report. The brand also increased its marketing spending by about 40%, compared to the prior year, as it looked to attract new customers.
“Our relevance with Gen Z is influencing all other generations,” Tapestry CEO Joanne Crevoiserat said on its most recent earnings call. “We’re driving healthy gains from existing customers, reflecting broad and increasing brand desire and reach.”
Jessica Ramírez, co-founder and managing director of The Consumer Collective, said Coach’s Gen-Z momentum reflects years of consistent investment in younger shoppers. She said the brand has been particularly effective at connecting with younger consumers through the right ambassadors and storytelling, while tailoring those efforts to international audiences.
“There are a few brands that are exceptional at localizing, especially when it comes to marketing, Coach being one of them,” Ramírez said. “There’s one part of localization where it’s having the right product for the right market, and it’s having the right experience for the right market.”