Tapestry, Inc. (NYSE:TPR) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Todd Kahn: And Dana, I’ll just add on the wholesale, if you take Europe, we’re really growing our wholesale business in Europe in a very productive way. I feel very good about that. And that benefits from a local consumer as Joanne said, but as we see China opening up more, there will be more — if there is an inbound of PRC in the rest of Asia and in Europe, that will benefit us. And then in North America, again, Coach is 96% direct-to-consumer. So we have a much greater connectivity to our client in that area. That said, we always believe in the wholesale channel. We want to win in that channel. We’d love to see many of our wholesale partners create higher service levels in those channels that will enable us to do that and we’re working with them on that.

So overall, we feel good about our positioning. We feel good about controlling our own destiny, but there is tremendous opportunity. And I will say not just in handbags, but for the Coach brand, we see further opportunities with footwear, particularly in wholesale.

Dana Telsey: Thank you.

Scott Roe: And let me jump in here — sorry, Dana. I’m just going to jump in. I was looking through my notes, and I don’t think we fully answered one of the questions that Mark laid out. And I just wanted to get it out there for the group. It was specific on what we saw in AUR at Kate Spade. And we grew AUR across both retail and outlet in the fourth quarter in Kate Spade. So that focus on quality and while we’re not chasing the last dollar focus on fundamental and long-term brand health, that was evident in the quarter that we just reported. So I just wanted to get that out there.

Dana Telsey: Thank you.

Operator: Your next question is from Oliver Chen of TD Cowen.

Oliver Chen: Hi. Thanks a lot. As we look forward to holiday, what are your thoughts in terms of the inventory as well as planning around gifting and also you’ve been on a great journey to make the inventory breadth more efficient. And a follow-up question, would love you to talk to us a little bit about the approval process or major hurdles or catalysts ahead. And also, how you thought about the differences and the opportunity of the Michael Kors brand given that you have so much research — consumer research there. We’re looking at cross-product elasticity and diversion ratios, just to understand the relationships between the two brands and the big opportunity, financial and strategic? Thank you very much.

Joanne Crevoiserat: Well, maybe I’ll pass it to Todd first to talk about how we’re excited about holiday. We are in a great position to your point on inventory. Our inventory is down 8% versus last year, actually a better position than we were expecting coming out of the year. So that puts us in — it gives us a great opportunity to ensure we have the right product at the right time for consumers. Todd, do you want to put a little color on that?

Todd Kahn: Yeah. Hi, Oliver. And I kind of was hoping you were going to ask me a Coachtopia question, but we feel very good about holiday. You’re going to see clarity of products, building on our really significant platforms with Tabby. We’re going to be launching starting in the fall, which will lead into holiday, and I won’t give too much away on the holiday campaign. But our Shine campaign, which again is a further extension of connecting product with purpose (ph). We feel very, very good about that. We feel like we done a good job, but there’s always room to improve on the animation of both the product and how we look at holiday. So I’m very excited for the holiday quarter. I think both in brick-and-mortar offerings as well as our digital offerings.

And I will say, even though you didn’t ask me, we are very excited about where we are with Coachtopia and as Joanne said, while still relatively small at the year ahead of where we thought we would be, more importantly, I’ll quote Scott here. It’s hitting above its weight class in terms of being a driver of younger consumers creating interest in the brand. So you’ll see Coachtopia play really a significant factor as we start expanding the product offering and start putting it in more doors right around that holiday gift-giving period. So we’ll have something for everyone at Coach and I know the same is true at our sister brand.