Memo To the Design Department at Coach, Inc.
I received an email from your marketing department yesterday and the subject headline was “C The New Prints & Patterns". As a Coachie (or as my sister calls it, a Coach Hoar), I was excited to see the new prints and immediately opened the email. To my dismay, the headline of the email read: "We C You Love Prints. Our New Signature Could Be Yours" where the "new signature" was definitely the newer Optic Art C pattern. Can you tell I’m not a fan of the OpArt print? And why are they calling it the new signature print when the “signature print” has always meant the classic Cs print. This will definitely be confusing –especially to diehard Coachies like me who have been following Coach for many, many years. The newbies will be calling the OpArt pattern the signature print, while the oldies, err, diehards like me will be calling the classic C pattern the signature print. Either they didn’t think this one through, or they are going to phase out the classic C print completely. Nooooooooo!
I know Coach is trying to bring in the younger crowd with new styles and textures and colors and, and, and. That part I love –they are always coming out with new things and so often that I find myself browsing their website on a weekly basis to see what’s new. That’s truly effective marketing! Keep teasing me with new stuff so often that I have to keep checking in for new stuff and make me want it all. The part I don’t love is that they seem to be trading off their real signature print (the classic Cs that started it all) for the OpArt stuff they are pushing now. I admit that some of the OpArt is cute, but it’s not my favorite. The classic signature print is just that –classic. It’s fashionable for all age groups (whereas the OpArt is aimed at the younger crowd) and it has a strong presence.
Take a look around the Coach.com website and you will see what I mean. Out of the hundreds of styles of purses and other items they offer, only a fraction of them carry the classic signature print. This makes me sad. I visited a Coach boutique last month and was not only shocked at the very limited selection of items (for such a big store, shouldn’t there be more to choose from?) but also at the fact that I only saw three items with the classic C print. Only three. In the whole boutique!
The classic C print is the pattern that hooked me and the style and quality is what reeled me in. I love many of the new styles they have out now, but I hate the fact that they are only available in OpArt. The last purse I purchased was as a replacement for my Carly (which had to be shelved due to the fraying issue for which they are known) and since I’m very particular about the size, shape, and functionality of my purses, I chose the medium Leah in coated canvas. I love everything about the purse, except for the fact that it was only available with the OpArt print.
Oh, and to make it worse, it came in only three color choices: hot pink, lime green, and brown. Now what kind of adult woman over the age of 30 wants to own a hot pink purse? As odd as it sounds, I chose the green because it was more subdued than the pink and also the ugly brown. My purse is the perfect size, has the perfect shape, has enough pockets in all the right places for me, and is coated so that it’s waterproof, dirt proof, and is very durable. It’s just ugly as hell.
Now, there were a few Leah bags that came in the classic C signature print, but they were the big, huge purses and they were in the sateen fabric. I wanted the coated canvas for durability and I’m petite so I need a smaller bag. Which gets me to another point…
Why are purses so damned large now? A majority of all purses on the market now are big enough to carry an entire load of laundry plus the bottle of detergent! I see all these teenagers at the mall toting around purses as big as a garbage bag. It’s so out of proportion and I can only imagine how their back, neck, and shoulders feel after a day of slugging it around. I would love to see Coach offer a purse style in multiple sizes (large, medium, and small), colors, prints, and textures/fabric. Maybe they could offer a new feature to “make my custom purse”. I’d be all over that.
And while I’m at it, who thought it would be a good idea to design these big, open purses with only a few teeny pockets on the inside walls? Where are the dividers that split your purse into sections and allowed a bit of organization? I’m tired of rummaging through the endless pit of my purse to find my lip gloss or my keys.
So Coach, if you are listening –you may want to reevaluate your client base and start asking what we want –and listening to our answers. Lest we may get weary of all the games and venture over to Gucci, or Louis Vuitton, or Prada…
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