Coach won over Gen Z in North America. Now it’s stepping up its focus abroad

Shoptalk // March 31, 2026 Coach won over Gen Z in North America. Now it’s stepping up its focus abroad By Allison Smith 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 sh