In a conversation presented by Google, Kevin Fried, managing director of retail at Google, and Sandeep Seth, president of international and chief growth officer at Tapestry, sat down with Evan Clark, deputy managing editor at WWD, to chat about the future of growth through a customer-first approach, leaning into innovation and being in tune with culture.
Tapestry still has an old-world approach when it comes to consumers — the multinational fashion corporation meets with consumers in person and spends as much time as they can with them to get a full 360-degree view of who they are as people.
“We’re in their homes, talking to these consumers,” Seth said. “The idea is to understand their life. The key is to find out how Coach fits within their lives. Their likes, dislikes and not just from a category point of view but from a life point of view. How do they make their choices and how do these choices fit into their self-expression?”
Coach is also looking to play a role in building confidence for consumers. Leveraging that with its proprietary first-party data with partners is then turned into action — and helps to define its product strategy, media strategy and social media strategy. Data is a loop, Seth explained.
Today, fashion and tech are still not fully aligned — “when I think about tech, we do data, speed and scale incredibly well,” Fried said. “When I think about everything happening in fashion with brands, they do creativity and heritage in ways that we can’t even pretend to understand.”
Fried explained that when the two worlds can come together to “obsess” over the consumer, the end result is “magic.” He said that both sides need to lean into what they’re good at and rely on the other side to home in on their strengths.
The common grounds between fashion and tech industries, Seth said, are consumer behavior. Google has deep behavioral insights that, in turn, help Tapestry shape its overall strategy. When Google and Tapestry meet, they’re looking at what’s changing, how it’s changing and what’s at the forefront of culture.
“Today’s tech companies that are doing well are at the core of consumer understanding,” Seth said.
Moreover, Seth said that while there are tons of data out there, search has played a key role for Tapestry and Coach. It has helped the company find out the why and who of consumers and informs them of the emerging trends consumers are seeking out. He also said that the why then informs the storytelling aspects of the content.
“We start with an open mind looking at what is the behavior and what is the data indicating. There’s certain behaviors that remain unchanged along a long period of time. Those are the core parts of the category that we need to stick to. And there are certain emerging trends — the trick is how do you balance between those, and not get carried over by every trend that’s out there.”
Google helps brands use data intelligence to inform product decisions, merchandising decisions and creative decisions. Fried said that if you continue to use the data in meaningful ways, brands can create repeatable and predictable growth in the business — driving new customers.
“We want to help to build better businesses, not just run better ads,” Fried concluded.
