Checking Out: Giovanni Zaccariello

Giovanni Zaccariello
The head of Coach’s Global Visual Experience is innovative, chance-taking and soaring up, up and away.

Gio, how did this all start for you?
I was at Oxford University studying branding, marketing, economics and consumer behavior. And I had a part-time internship at Uniqlo. They had this multi-color fleece promotion, and I was able to put it all together in a short time, so they asked me to join the team. The day I finished my degree, they offered me a full-time job. From there, I followed a boss and moved to Mexx, followed another boss to Esprit, then I met others and moved to other things. I’ve never had to apply for a job.

Except you did apply for the Coach job.
Yes, though I wasn’t familiar with Coach because it hadn’t had much of a presence in Europe. When the opening came up, I told my boss about ‘this Coach job’ and she said, ‘Oh my god, you have to take it!’ I said, ‘Wait, I work for you. Do you really want me to go to another job?’ She said, ‘Yes, you have to go for it. It’s so much bigger,’ and a chance to move from high street to luxury. So, I took it and was sent to Hong Kong, where there was the regional Asia office. During my four years in Asia, we opened 200-plus and transitioned multiple markets from wholesale to retail.

PHOTO: COACH

Your beautiful balloon

I guess you’ll always be remembered as the guy who sent a Coach bag soaring into the air.
[Laughs] You mean the Tabby air balloon in Taiwan? It all started with sketching on a napkin. The Tabby is a quilted bag, and when I touched it, it looked and felt like a pillow, so my first idea was a pop-up idea for a giant bag that people could go inside and jump around in. From there came bigger ideas, eventually leading to the hot air balloon. If it’s remembered in a good way, that’s the essence of branding. Coming up with something integrally tied to the company product that people talk about and enjoy. Excitement, identification, creativity – that’s the essence of it.

It’s always interesting how things work out.
I don’t think I could have done what I’m doing today if I hadn’t had that full experience in both Europe and Asia. But in retrospect, I liked marketing in school. Now that I’m doing experience, I’m part of the larger marketing thing, so everything has come full circle.

This is much more than Christmas windows and seasonal promotions, isn’t it?
One of the things we’ve succeeded at with Coach is being able to move with the speed of the consumer, changing our focus, developing new products, being present in our consumers’ lives. Three years ago, we had this big market research project before our re-branding started. It involved meeting consumers in their homes and asking what Coach meant to them and about their lives in general. After that project, everything changed for us. When we started, we’d ask 18-year-olds about a Coach bag, and they’d say, ‘No, that’s for my mother.’ Now they say, ‘No, that’s for me,’ and actually go into their mothers’ closets to bring out an old classic Coach bag, which we love. It’s been five or six years of transformation, but it started with going into homes and having a conversation.