New Coach Retail Concept is a Technology Lab

Coach Inc. (New York) has reopened its Manhattan flagship store after three months of construction and renovation.

The new store, an elevated retail experience that the luxury brand says will be the model for its stores going forward, is being called “a lab” in which Coach will experiment with all details of product, design, architecture and display.

“People are shopping a lot more online — that’s real,” Francine Della Badia, Coach’s president of North American retail, told Women’s Wear Daily. “So when they come to the store, they want the experience. They want the connection. They want to be able to touch and smell and see. So how do we think about next-generation design in retail?”

The goal of the 3720-square-foot store on Fifth Avenue at 16th Street, she said, “is to elevate and make the area more elegant and sophisticated, but still really warm and approachable.”

WWD reports that the new look of the store, formerly open, white and sparse in the manner of 1990s-style luxury retailer, aims for a more intimate, luxurious feel with an emphasis on technology. To that end, all employees carry mini-iPads and there are no cash registers.

“The store speaks to the larger brand transformation effort, which is to take those things in our DNA and bring them forward,” Della Badia told Women’s Wear. “We’re taking the essence of the brand and thinking of it in a more modern, elevated way for this first lab.”