Interesting News at the Outlets today!

[simplyparticula]

Circling back to the original post and the new policy, I can attest that they are enforcing it, for now. The Niagara Falls Ontario outlet ALWAYS had retail items transferred from Toronto boutiques. Even when the Niagara Falls US store has them put away for deeper discount weekends. (The Niagara-on-the-Lake outlet store has never had retail any time I’ve been there). This has been great for me to view bags - my local boutique and dept stores carry very limited selections.

When I stopped in last Wed, NF ON had nothing retail out - the usual section was filled with a weird assortment of MFF clearance - mostly SLGs and small bags. They clearly cleared out the back because there was some old stuff like WOZ mini Sierras. When I asked, I was told they had to ship most retail SKUs back, and would not be getting transfers going forward. I didn’t think to ask where “back “ was. Toronto stores? A Canadian warehouse? JAX?

Both the Coach and Kate Spade US outlets haven’t had retail out for several months, at least anytime I’ve been there back to school shopping. And it’s always put away on holiday weekends with the bigger discounts.

 

[lucydee]

Lucydee, I go in and out of buying the brand for the same reason you state above. Now, I'll only buy on the online Coach outlet or perhaps ebay if I want a vintage find, and I never will buy from the full priced Coach store no matter how much I like the bag. I buy other brands as well, and I assume that my bag will not hold any sort of resale value because of how heavily Coach devalues their own merchandise by wholesaling it lol, so I make sure I really really want it before I buy it even at online outlet prices.

Yep, I agree with you!
Remember when the Coach Gathered Leather Sophia and Lindsey where priced at top dollar in resale. Now if you want to sell one your lucky if you get 60 bucks for a bag that you paid 300 and up for.
I still have all my gathered leather bags in mint condition and rather than give away I will pass them on to my family.

 

[ltbag]

Yep, I agree with you!
Remember when the Coach Gathered Leather Sophia and Lindsey where priced at top dollar in resale. Now if you want to sell one your lucky if you get 60 bucks for a bag that you paid 300 and up for.
I still have all my gathered leather bags in mint condition and rather than give away I will pass them on to my family.

I ended up giving away my Dakotahs rather than try to sell them at a fraction of what I paid for them. I gave them to friends and family and moved on. Now I buy only a couple of Coach bags a year and only at the online outlet. I won't drive anywhere to buy a coach bag. That being said, I love my Rogue 36 bags that I bought on the online outlet store and think they are absolutely top quality, so Coach still makes good bags, they just don't know how to keep their bags from devaluing. In fact they cause the devaluing themselves by their crazy outlet policies.

 

[Lake Effect]

My interest is in vintage so I rarely buy a retail bag, but since I have been on the forum for a few years, I have noticed that Coach puts out a mind boggling number of bags in an equally mind boggling choice of styles with variations in size, material, color etc. And a lot ( most? ) get discounted. Maybe a contributing factor of devaluing is also due to the sheer number of bags Coach churns our and the ease at which they can be found, retails stores, malls, department stores, online, etc etc. As a vintage afficianado, I am curious about this big reboot of vintage styles coming out in the spring.
Beautiful bags made 10, 15 years ago now compete on the resale market with beautiful bags made 3 years ago. I was able to buy a Ace satchel in Cornflower /Flax in excellent condition for $80 plus shipping! And her starting bid was $50 and she took my BIN offer immediately. From reading posts on the Ace thread, the bag went outlet . Was she willing to take that offer because she bought it deeply discounted at an outlet ? Who knows.
I don’t think Coach will ever care about the value of a bag after the sale is made, that’s the nature of corporate profits. They want to sell the consumer more, and in this case, their next bag.
When I started consigning clothes back in the 90’s, I was told that they were priced at about 1/3 of full retail. Then you got your cut from the shop owner. I have seen Coach in local shops and that appears to be in force still.