Throughout 2023, expansion was in the air at Tapestry. In August it was announced that the luxury group’s family would be adding more members as they… Competitors take over Capri Holdings and with it its range of premium brands – namely Michael Kors, Versace and Jimmy Choo. And it wasn’t just the portfolio that grew.
Tapestry opened at the beginning of last month new logistics center in North Las Vegas, Nevada, a facility designed to complement its center in Jacksonville, Florida, while better serving customers on the West Coast. The opening comes as Tapestry looks to position itself for the future, knowing that there is a renewed need to maintain multi-brand fulfillment given the company’s remarkable development.
Speaking to FashionUnited, Coach CEO Todd Kahn, one of Tapestry’s core brands, explained: “As Tapestry grew, we saw the need to expand our service center. Our Jacksonville facility has been the primary fulfillment center since 1995, and as we entered the pandemic era and experienced a tremendous increase in demand from our digital business, we saw an opportunity to expand our overall operational capacity to meet the needs of our customers to fulfill it in the best possible way.”
The center’s mission is primarily to strengthen the company’s omnichannel capabilities, particularly with a view to improving sales. For both retail and e-commerce, for example, the facility is expected to deliver 22.2 million units annually and maintain an additional four million units of inventory.
Consumers are the focus
“This project was more than just the construction of the new Las Vegas location – it represents a complete shift in Tapestry’s business practices and a change in the way we view our fulfillment processes. Now that we have multiple hubs across the U.S., our operations have changed from a planning and allocation perspective, allowing us to house multiple brands under one roof,” explains Kahn.
Central to the project is Tapestry’s commitment to putting consumers at the center. This is evident in the location’s proximity to affluent areas of the West Coast, where it hopes to better serve its clientele following, as Kahn said, “the demand from digital business [des Unternehmens] has increased during the pandemic.” According to the managing director, the location will reduce inbound and outbound transport and shorten delivery times from five to seven days to two to three days.
Tapestry’s focus in this area coincides with a modest financial recovery in North America. While other luxury conglomerates continue to suffer from dampened consumer confidence and reduced budgets, Tapestry achieved this first quarter of fiscal year 2024 Almost unchanged sales in the region despite what it describes as a “tough” and “difficult” consumer environment.
Corporate culture and ESG factors
It’s not just consumers who play a crucial role in the center’s existence. According to Tapestry, the facility is expected to create more than 400 full-time jobs by 2029, a mission that Tapestry says only reinforces its “commitment to investing in people and community.” Such a sentiment is also supported by Kahn: “The incredible team we are assembling reflects the culture of this company and our commitment to investing in the North Las Vegas community, and we look forward to growing together for many years to come. “
The opening reflects the efforts of the two pillars “Our People” and “Our Communities” in Tapestry’s corporate responsibility strategy. This annual report, first launched as a sustainability-focused publication in 2013, outlines the performance and future goals of the company as a whole, including details of supply chain efforts and workforce development. The third pillar, “Our Planet”, which is of course linked to the theme of sustainability, sets out the goals that Tapestry has proposed as the basis for a more responsible business model.
Many of these goals are already embedded in the foundations of the Las Vegas logistics center, as noted by Kahn, who said the group has “consistently analyzed its environmental footprint in terms of emissions, water use and waste, as well as the adoption of renewable energy” to create a more resilient one reach supply chain.
One of the company’s central goals in this area, for example, is to reduce water consumption in its own operations by 10 percent by 2025 compared to 2018 and in the supply chain compared to 2020. Toward that goal, Kahn noted that the new logistics center will utilize “innovative landscaping to minimize water use,” while other tasks will be accomplished by incorporating energy-efficient lighting and electric vehicle charging stations.
Looking ahead, the next steps for Tapestry are not yet foreseeable. With the Capri acquisition expected to be completed towards the end of 2024, the group also expects a more positive financial outlook for the financial year, with revenue expected to rise slightly to $6.7 billion. When asked if there were any future plans or potential expansions to support this growth, Kahn said: “While we don’t have any specific plans, we are constantly improving our processes and systems along the supply chain to ensure we are moving at the speed of the Consumers can keep up.”
This article originally appeared on FashionUnited.uk. Translated and edited by Simone Preuss.