Coach History

A little bit of a history lesson for all you Coach Fanatics.

Coach was founded in New York City around the mid 1940′s. They were one of the first American Luxury Leather companies in business with a production line that consisted of but not limited to ladies’ and men’s handbags, as well as items such as luggage, briefcases, wallets and other accessories belts, shoes, scarves, umbrellas, sunglasses and key chains.

They started as a family run leather company of six leatherworkers till a couple who owned a leather bag business joined the team. Lillian and Miles Cahn were the leather workers who eventually took over Coach in the 1950′s all business aspects and product designs were solely based on their decisions.

The company flourished through the years and remained a relatively small company until the 1960′s when the Cahns hired Bonnie Cashin a New York City designer who was well known and respected. Bonnie blew the Coach brand up and revenue sales were up from the 1970′s to 80′s. By 1986 Coach was sold to the Sara Lee Corp for $30 million dollars seizing all of its’ assets and taking over the entire company. Sara Lee Corp has taken Coach to new levels of success with “boutiques” opening in Denver, San Francisco area.

Around 1985 Sara Lee hired Lew Frankfort as president of the Coach, he took this opportunity to transform Coach into a world wide brand we know today. The gap between very expensive and very expensive knock offs during that time was slim, but luckily Lew had managed to fill the gap with Coach a luxury affordable brand of leather goods.