Coach’s efforts towards a more sustainable world within fashion have come to life with Coachtopia, a “new sub-brand focused on circular craft and collaborative creativity, catalyzing the brand’s progress towards a fully circular business model.” The use of the word circular rather than sustainable is strategic positioning. Rather than just saying they are working towards sustainability, Coach has created a program to show action to their words by using materials that are usually thrown out and wasted. The lifecycle of a Coach bag is being reimagined from end to beginning, creating low-impact and long-lasting products. “Circularity is about reimagining not just the product lifecycle but the relationship between brand, planet, and consumer,” says Joon Silverstein, the SVP of Global Marketing and Creative and Sustainability at Coach and Head of Coachtopia, via a press release. “That’s why we’ve created Coachtopia as both a discovery lab to pioneer circularity in fashion and a collaborative platform for change.”
Coachtopia is also catered to Gen Z, a generation that is proving itself to be highly aware of the planetary and political issues that affect their everyday lives. In fact, Silverstein has invited Gen Zers through its program that is encouraging and building up the next generation of talent to join the Coachtopia Slack channel to collaborate and consult on designs, ensuring that these consumers get to see exactly what they are buying. Transparency is one of the most important things to a Gen Z consumer, and Coachtopia is building a community based on that foundation. “It’s a bigger, bolder step forward in realizing our vision for sustainability at Coach, where we prioritize experimenting and learning and ethical design intentions over cookie-cutter perfection,” says Stuart Vever, Coach’s Creative Director, in a press release. “Coachtopia takes this to a new level by challenging us to ‘design in reverse,’ with the end goal of circularity top of mind, in collaboration with the next generation and their optimistic vision for tomorrow.”
Coachtopia’s program to create circular design pathways includes customers being able to give Coach any Coachtopia product to find new ways to reuse, restore, or recycle them. Customers can get store credit depending on the condition and original price of the item. This will ensure that those pieces will have multiple lifespans and will even have a digital passport to track their journey. Coachtopia’s leather is made of 50% recycled scraps; its items are made of 70% recycled plastic waste turned into resin, and 75% of packaging is recycled.
You can shop for a better tomorrow now at coach.com/shop/coachtopia. Prices range from $75 to $350 for clothing and accessories.