coach
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Tapestry and the art of wanting less
After an $8.5 billion deal fell apart, the owner of Coach and Kate Spade had a smaller portfolio to work with. The interesting part is what happened inside it.
Emmanuel Ruelland and the art of making room
A French executive who started his career in Japan now leads Coach in North Asia. His work connects two deceptively simple questions: who feels welcome in a store, and who gets heard inside the company?
Joanne Crevoiserat and the value of a first impression
She entered retail for the chance to take responsibility early. Now Tapestry’s CEO is betting that a young customer’s first handbag can begin a relationship that lasts for years.
Heather Gruccio
Heather Salvatore Gruccio is Executive Vice President and Chief Merchandising Officer for Ann Taylor and Ann Taylor Factory, the KnitWell Group brands headquartered at 7 Times Square in New York. A Wake Forest communications graduate, she built her merchandising career over nine years at Coach, sharpened it in mid-luxury at Tory Burch, and joined Ann Taylor in 2016 as Senior Director of Merchandising for non-apparel. She moved up to Vice President of Merchandising in 2017, SVP and GMM in 2020, and was elevated to EVP and Chief Merchandising Officer in 2025 after leading a product-and-perception reset that turned a 70-year-old mall brand into a name fashion press started writing about again. Her thesis is unfussy: women still want to look pulled together, they just want to be comfortable while doing it, and heritage is an asset rather than a liability if you actually know how to cut a jacket.
Joon Silverstein
Joon Silverstein is the Chief Marketing Officer of Coach, the New York leather goods house inside Tapestry Inc., and the founder of Coachtopia, the circular sub-brand she launched in 2023 to build luxury products out of what the industry usually throws away. She trained first as a cultural anthropologist - a BA from Columbia, fieldwork as a Fulbright Fellow - then added an MBA from Harvard Business School and a stint at The Boston Consulting Group before leading change at Louis Vuitton and Victoria's Secret. She joined Coach in 2014 as SVP of Global Customer Experience and worked her way through digital, ecommerce, creative, sustainability and North America marketing before being elevated to CMO in January 2025. Her signature move is treating consumers as collaborators rather than targets: Coach's spring 2026 'Explore Your Story' campaign was co-created with Gen Z communities from the US to China, and the brand posted 25% revenue growth in fiscal Q2 2026 on the back of its strongest new-customer acquisition on record. She gave a TED Talk at TEDNext 2024 arguing that waste is a human invention, not a law of nature.
Coach
Coach is an American luxury house of leather goods and lifestyle accessories founded in New York in 1941. Known for its horse-and-carriage emblem and craftsmanship, the brand designs handbags, small leather goods, ready-to-wear, footwear, fragrances and accessories at accessible luxury price points. A subsidiary of Tapestry, Inc., Coach has re-energized around a strategy it calls 'expressive luxury,' winning a new wave of Gen Z shoppers with hero franchises like the Tabby and Brooklyn bags and posting strong double-digit growth across North America, China and Europe.
Leslie Riley
Leslie Riley is an Analyst at Right Side Capital Management (RSCM), a quantitative pre-VC investment firm in San Francisco that has made 2,000+ early-stage bets since 2012. She brings a rare combination: West Point grad, seven-year Army Aviation officer who flew CH-47D Chinooks over Kosovo and South Korea, then reinvented herself as a facilitator, keynote speaker, and leadership coach for Fortune 500s and federal agencies before landing in venture. She's also a published author, founder of The Penny Project (which has raised $4,800+ for charity), an ultra-marathoner, and creator of the Lead Like a Girl community for women in leadership.
Wes Bush
Wes Bush is the founder and CEO of ProductLed, the world's leading education company for product-led growth (PLG). Author of two foundational PLG books - 'Product-Led Growth: How to Build a Product That Sells Itself' (2019) and 'The Product-Led Playbook' (2024) - Bush has helped 400+ SaaS companies collectively generate over $1 billion in self-serve revenue. After being fired from Vidyard for advocating product-led strategies over sales-led ones, he turned that conviction into a global movement, building a 15,000+ member community and coaching SaaS founders to scale from $100K ARR to 8+ figures.