Strong Sales Spur Coach Growth

NEW YORK CITY-Strong quarterly and fiscal-year sales are pushing luxury-handbag retailer Coach’s new-store growth. Management is looking to expand the chain’s full-price format from its current store count of 259 units in North America to 500 stores in the next several years.

Same-store sales shot up 20.2% year over year in North America during the fourth quarter, which ended June 30. Full-price stores rose 16.4%, while the company’s 93 factory outlets soared 30%. For the full year North American same-store sales were up 22.3%.

During the current fiscal year, executives forecast 40 new stores in North America, 15 of them in the first quarter, and 17 in new markets for the chain. Coach plans to continue to expand through organic growth and is not strongly pursuing the acquisition of other chains, said Lew Frankfort, the company’s chairman and CEO, during the company’s quarterly conference call. “We’re not looking at anything at the moment,” he says of buyouts. “We’d be very cautious in this area.”