How Coach scaled from a single store into a global icon

Summary

Masters of Scale: How Coach Scaled from a Single Store into a Global Icon

Date: May 21, 2026
Host: Jeff Berman
Guest: Lou Frankfort, Former CEO, Coach

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Episode Overview

This episode of Masters of Scale features Lou Frankfort, the former CEO who transformed Coach from a $6 million New York pocketbook company into a globally recognized, multi-billion dollar icon. Drawing from his new memoir, "Bagman," Lou unpacks powerful insights on leadership, principled decision-making, brand building, and how “accessible luxury” was born. The discussion traverses Lou’s early days in public service, the pivotal moments at Coach, and timely lessons for modern leaders.

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Key Discussion Points

1. From Public Service to the Private Sector (03:43–09:41)

• Startup in Government: Lou began his career in city government amidst the idealism of the 1960s, working to reform NYC daycare and Head Start programs plagued by corruption and inefficiency.
  • “I'm a product of the 60s...I was looking to improve things.” (03:58)
• Turnaround Leadership: Lou built coalitions, overhauled systems, and led his team to national recognition for transforming failing programs.
  • “We got the programs to a place where no eligible child was denied service...Hew, which had identified us as the worst program in the United States, complimented us and said other programs should follow our example.” (06:54)
• Sticking to Principles: Passed over for a promotion by Mayor Ed Koch for being “too principled,” Lou recalls refusing to favor a failing program despite political pressure.
  • “You’re too principled.” (08:03)
  • “Based on measurable standards metrics, it was in the bottom 10% of all programs...” (08:04)

2. Joining Coach: The Origin Story (09:41–11:28)

• Transition via Serendipity: Lou heard about Coach through a chance cab ride with a friend, emphasizing the company sought a successor “with no fashion experience and good values.”
  • “He’s looking for a protege...one, they have no fashion experience. That was me. And the second was good values.” (09:41)
• Deep Customer Insight: As a newcomer, Lou conducted “undercover” research—posing as a reporter—to hear honest feedback about Coach’s following.
  • “I pretended to be a Business Week reporter and spoke to the buyer from Bloomingdale’s, someone from Bondwitz, someone from Macy’s, and went into a handbag store on 72nd Street...” (10:30–11:03)
• Brand Loyalty and Product Value: Recognized the emotional tie consumers had with Coach bags, especially their enduring, quality leather.
  • “Women are particularly loyal to bags...a vessel they open 50, 60 times a day...beautiful, natural leather that develops a patina over time, like a baseball mitt.” (11:30)

3. The “Accessible Luxury” Revolution (13:30–14:38)

• Vision Meets Market Opportunity: Inspired by European luxury brands, Lou saw space for democratized luxury in America—serving not the top 1% but the top 20–40%.
  • “In my mind’s eye, I saw a growing audience of a rapidly growing middle class population.” (13:35)
• The First Coach Store: The Madison Avenue store (opened 1981) was a watershed moment; the real-world launch validated Lou’s theory, with sales breaking $1M in the first year.
  • “That Christmas, we had lines out the door to the corner, and we did over a million dollars in year one. And I knew that there was something special.” (13:49)
  • “We ultimately did $10,000 a square foot in that space, which is a crazy number.” (16:08)

4. Scaling through Ownership Changes (16:36–22:59)

• Acquisition by Sara Lee: When the founder chose to sell, Lou negotiated with Sara Lee, focusing on the right cultural fit.
  • “If you stay through the transaction, I’m going to recommend you become CEO...but you’re not ready for this.” (16:36)
• Staying Principled: Lou resisted pressure to distribute Coach through ill-fitting mass retailers and held Sara Lee to a handshake agreement that rewarded growth with autonomy.
  • “I was prepared to have them terminate me rather than do things that made no sense.” (17:46)

5. Going Public and Global Expansion (21:49–24:24)

• Preparation for IPO: Lou focused on disciplined leadership recruitment, team alignment, and seizing the IPO window (2000), even as the dot-com bubble burst.
  • “We aligned as a team...it was clear to me...we were on the cusp of a breakout.” (21:49)
  • “We coined the term accessible luxury. And the business grew very, very rapidly.” (23:06)
• Asian Market Strategy: Coach's entry in Japan targeted young professionals, providing aspirational luxury at a fraction of European label prices.
  • “I went after the young female professional...offered her a bag at 40,000 yen while the European competitors were 100,000 yen.” (23:38)

6. Leadership Lessons: Magic and Logic (24:24–27:39)

• Magic & Logic: Lou’s enduring framework for Coach’s culture—a blend of belief and vision (magic) with rigor and measurement (logic).
  • “Magic is having belief, having vision, seeing something that doesn’t exist...and another aspect...is using instinct and intuitive. And on the logic side...build a greater good mindset.” (25:00)
• Culture of Integration: Warns of the dangers of corporate inertia, silos, and lack of entrepreneurial spirit in large companies.
  • “You need an entrepreneurial mindset...they won’t speak truth to power because they don’t want to jeopardize their jobs.” (26:15)

7. Legacy and Modern Brand Relevance (27:39–29:31)

• Coach’s Gen Z Moment: Lou celebrates Coach’s resurgence, attributing it to stewardship by current leaders with shared values.
  • “They feel they’re stewards of the brand...they have temporarily in charge of the brand and that it belongs to the investors, employees, community...” (27:56)
  • “Coach is truly a legacy brand...it will be here in the next century.” (29:31)

8. On Principled Careers and Advice for Rising Leaders (29:50–31:58)

• Consistent Integrity: Lou’s refusal to compromise is a career throughline, from public service to defending Coach’s strategy.
  • “Do your best to find something that has purpose, where you can be authentic...you will feel fulfillment and you will be able to grow and thrive.” (30:21)
• Career Guidance: Seek purpose-driven organizations, nurturing cultures, and mentors with emotional intelligence.
  • “Look for a culture that is affirmative and that encourages curiosity and openness...look for a boss who you believe can be a mentor.” (30:21)

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Notable Quotes

• “You’re too principled.” – Mayor Ed Koch to Lou Frankfort on passing him over for a city job (08:03)
• “Magic and logic is now language we continue to use at Coach. Magic is vision; logic is discipline.” – Lou Frankfort (25:00)
• “I was prepared to have them terminate me rather than do things that made no sense.” – Lou Frankfort (17:46)
• “Coach is truly a legacy brand. It lives in the hearts and minds of consumers and can withstand the ups and downs of times. It will be here in the next century.” – Lou Frankfort (29:31)
• “Do your best to find something that has purpose, where you can be authentic. That’s so important.” – Lou Frankfort (30:21)

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Important Timestamps

• 03:43: Lou’s early days in government and drive for reform
• 06:54: Leadership in public sector turnarounds
• 09:41: The serendipitous introduction to Coach
• 11:30: Customer insight and product loyalty
• 13:30: Conceptualizing accessible luxury
• 14:38: The impact of Coach’s first Madison Avenue store
• 16:36: Sara Lee acquisition: risks, rewards, and holding firm to principles
• 21:49: Going public and Coach’s breakout as a global brand
• 25:00: Magic and logic—Coach’s cultural DNA
• 27:56: Coach’s Gen Z resurgence and enduring brand stewardship
• 30:21: Lou’s advice for rising leaders and finding purpose

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Memorable Moments

• Lou disguising himself as a Business Week reporter to get candid reviews of Coach.
• Turning down Sara Lee’s request to push Coach into inappropriate retail channels, risking his own job.
• Describing the first Madison Avenue store’s success as “a magical moment” (13:49).
• Emphasizing that the stewardship mentality—believing the brand belongs to everyone—is what keeps Coach relevant through generations.

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Final Reflection

This episode is a must-listen for anyone interested in brand building, ethical leadership, and scaling companies with purpose. Lou Frankfort’s story is one of combining curiosity, consumer empathy, and unwavering values to create a new category—and a beloved legacy. His “magic and logic” mantra is as salient today as ever, pointing the way for founders and leaders in any field.

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Transcript

[Jeff Berman]

Hey, folks, Jeff Berman here. Exciting news. Applications are now open for the Masters of Scale Summit. It's happening October 20th through October 22nd in San Francisco, and it is a really special event. Please join our curated community of founders, innovators and leaders shaping the future. Expect ideas that challenge your assumptions and connections that move your business and and maybe even your life forward. It's an experience that can change literally everything. Apply [e-mail] apply 26. That's mastersofscale.com apply 26.

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[Jeff Berman]

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[Lou Frankfort]

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[Rana El Kaliouby]

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[Lou Frankfort]

He said, well, I have a friend from childhood who has a small pocketbook company called Coach. It's $6 million in sales. He's 60 years old and he's looking for a protege. And he's looking for someone who has two qualifications. One, they have no fashion experience. That was me. And the second was good values. And I said, well, I got good values, I think.

[Jeff Berman]

What did you join Coach as? What was your role coming in?

[Lou Frankfort]

Effectively, as an assistant to the CEO, I got the title VP for marketing and special projects.

[Jeff Berman]

I mean, titles are free. Isn't that free? This is Masters of Scale. I'm Jeff Berman. Your host today on the show, Lou Frankfort. Lou spent decades as CEO of the iconic brand Coach. When he started there, the then small New York City handbag maker was doing about $6 million a year in sales. Under Lou's leadership, Coach grew into a billion dollar brand and an international icon known for a new category of accessible luxury. In his new memoir, Bagman, Lou reveals fascinating insights about how to scale, and he shares some of those insights with us. Okay, Lou, welcome to Masters of Scale.

[Lou Frankfort]

Delighted to be here with you, Jeff.

[Jeff Berman]

One of the many reasons that I've been looking forward to sitting with you is you and I have a couple of things in common. I'll flatter myself, and one of them is we both started our careers meaningfully in public service. And I'm curious just how you got started in government.

[Lou Frankfort]

I'm a product of the 60s, and I came of age thinking that my generation would create a better world. John Lindsay was mayor, and he was recruited including young people, idealistic people who wanted to go on the journey with him. And after one year, I decided I was either going to leave city government because I was surrounded by people who were looking to just get to Friday or get to vacation. And I was looking to improve things. So I thought I would take a chance with one more job. So I looked for. For a mentor who really wanted to make a difference, and I found that person.

[Jeff Berman]

How did you go about seeking a mentor?

[Lou Frankfort]

I networked in city government and asked about who's smart, who cares, and who can get stuff done. And there were two people that were mentioned at the time. One was this guy, Herb Rosenzweig. And I reached out to Herb and he hired me, and I went with him as he moved to different positions. And ultimately my profile was high on enough so that when the city was looking for someone who might be able to go in and try to fix the daycare and Head start programs in 1976, when it was the poster child for inefficiency and corruption, people thought of me.

[Jeff Berman]

What attracted you to the challenge of reforming these massive and massively important programs?

[Lou Frankfort]

I really believe in daycare and Head Start services. I believe in creating as much opportunity as possible for the underclass, an essential fabric of who we are, not just then, but today. Our country is based on immigrants, and we may be third generation or second or first or tenth, it doesn't matter. We need to welcome them and we need to create opportunities. And the program was really in danger of collapsing.

[Jeff Berman]

Why was it at risk of collapsing?

[Lou Frankfort]

Because it was not administered well. So when audits occurred, they found in many instances only half the kids were eligible. And they found this community based program frequently run by people for their self interest, not for the greater interest of the community. So they employed unqualified relatives. They, in many instances, sadly, were also corrupt. And it made headlines.

[Jeff Berman]

So this was a turnaround. I mean, really, it was a turnaround.

[Lou Frankfort]

Turnaround, right.

[Jeff Berman]

And so you're coming and you're dealing with incompetence, you're dealing with corruption, you're dealing with bureaucracy. And one of the challenges of these situations, unlike particularly a smaller private company that's a turnaround, is you don't fully control it. I mean, you've got to deal with a lot of people, a lot of systems, a lot of laws, a lot of regulations. How did you attack the problem?

[Lou Frankfort]

First thing I did was look to recruit a coalition of leaders who felt purpose, who had similar values as me. I wanted to maximize the number of children that would be able to stay in care with quality service. So I brought in what would be called a rainbow group of staff. We work 24 7. And we got the programs to a place where no eligible child was denied service, where we were able to manage to a lower budget, improve the quality of care. And ultimately hew, which had identified us as the worst program in the United States, complimented us and said other programs should follow our example at. Koch was mayor at the time, and he passed me over for a job that I felt particularly qualified for. And when I met with him, he said to me, lou, you're too principled. And I knew exactly what he meant.

[Jeff Berman]

What did he mean?

[Lou Frankfort]

Well, three years earlier, when he was a congressman in Manhattan, he came to my office, the only congressperson that came to my office to ask me to save a program outside of his district and did not want to know why they were being defunded and expected that based on our meeting, I would just save this program. And I knew he was coming. It was the one call I got from City hall where they said, you must meet with Congressman Koch. He's very influential. And they gave me a heads up on the program and I said, I'll meet with him. But based on measurable standards metrics, it was in the bottom 10% of all programs, only 15% of children were eligible. Out of every 115 had income low enough. The other 85, they didn't provide standards or they had higher income. And Mayer said this to me when he was a congressman. And I said, congressman, I'm not sure there's anything I Can do. And he said, you know what I want? I said, I understand. And of course, I went on to defund the program.

[Jeff Berman]

So basically, he came around a few years later as mayor and said, you know, you're not my guy. After that run in with Mayor Ed Koch, Lou knew it was time to move on from city government. Luckily for him, it was pre Uber. And he shared a cab with exactly the right friend one dark night.

[Lou Frankfort]

And he said, well, I have a friend from childhood who has a small pocketbook company called Coach. It's $6 million in sales. He's 60 years old and he's looking for a protege and his children aren't going into the business. And he's looking for someone who has two qualifications, which I asked. He said, one, they have no fashion experience. That was me. And the second was good values. And I said, well, I got good values, I think. And four interviews later, I gave notice and joined Coach.

[Jeff Berman]

What did you join Coach as? What was your role coming in?

[Lou Frankfort]

Effectively as an assistant to the CEO, I got the title VP for Marketing and special projects.

[Jeff Berman]

I mean, titles are free. Isn't that great? Titles are free.

[Lou Frankfort]

What I did in considering Coach was to do a deep search as to what is Coach. And I went to the end user and what I learned in my interviewing process, where I pretended to be a Business Week reporter and spoke to the buyer from Bloomingdale's, someone from Bondwitz, someone from Macy's, and went into a handbag store on 72nd Street, I learned Coach had a cult following and people loved Coach.

[Jeff Berman]

And you were pretending to be a reporter because you were worried that they wouldn't tell you the truth if they knew.

[Lou Frankfort]

If I identified myself as a reporter from Business Week, I would have access to most people, divisional managers, GMs, maybe even presidents.

[Jeff Berman]

Yeah.

[Lou Frankfort]

So everyone took my call and I asked for meetings and I was writing an article about this small private company, Coach.

[Jeff Berman]

And so what did you learn?

[Lou Frankfort]

One, I learned that women are particularly loyal to bags because it's a very personal object. It's a vessel they open 50, 60 times a day. And in the case of Coach, we had a beautiful and still do natural leather that develops a patina over time, like a baseball mitt. So over time it would never wear out. It would wear in and the bags would sturdy and well made, durable. And I thought great value. And people love their Coach.

[Jeff Berman]

So take us on the journey from this tour as a posing BusinessWeek reporter. And the insights that you're getting to then, how you deploy those insights against the Business to begin to grow it.

[Lou Frankfort]

The first notion I had was that we had a loyal consumer base. I then went to look for models outside the United States, where handbag manufacturers were also selling directly. And in Europe, there was a very well established luxury group of brands led by Louis Vuitton. It was a relatively small brand, and I admired them because they control their destiny. They only sold in their own stores at one price, Controlled the merchandising, the staffing, the service levels, all the policies. And when I looked at Louis Vuitton as a luxury brand, I thought to myself that coach could become one day a democratized luxury brand. And rather than being accessible to the top 1 or 5% of the population, we could be broadly accessible to the top 20 to 40% of the population because we offered a product that was unique, had a lot of grit, very much American natural leather. We coined the term 20 years later. Accessible luxury.

[Jeff Berman]

Well, and I think this concept of accessible luxury wasn't even really in the marketplace at the time.

[Lou Frankfort]

So in my mind's eye, I saw a growing audience of a rapidly growing middle class population.

[Jeff Berman]

With the benefit of hindsight, when you look back on it, Lou, what was the inflection point?

[Lou Frankfort]

The magical moment occurred in 1981. So I was only a coach 24 months, and I convinced the founder, or I convinced the founder's wife, to allow me to open a coach store on Madison Avenue. The first Christmas we opened in October of 1981, 450 square feet, so narrow, 11ft wide, 40ft deep, cost us $50,000 to fixture the store. We needed to do $300,000 to basically break even. That Christmas, we had lines out the door to the corner, and we did over a million dollars in year one. And I knew that there was something special.

[Jeff Berman]

Why did you have lines out the door? What happened?

[Lou Frankfort]

Well, I had started a catalog business 18 months earlier. And it was clear, based on my early marketing, in terms of speaking with consumers, visiting with consumers, looking in their closets about what bags they carried, how many bags did you have in your closet? What role did Coach play? What would encourage you to buy a second bag? It was clear to me that if we were able to put our entire assortment in one place and have seasoned salespeople in our store, the aroma of leather, natural leather, permeated the space. So people went into a bespoke environment. There was nothing. Cookie cutter Miles and I designed the store ourselves and was uniquely coached. By that time, we had a file of about 100,000 people through our mail order business that I Had catalog business, and we invited 20,000 of them to the store. They lived within 100 miles. We had special events, and they came because they believed in love.

[Jeff Berman]

Coach, I feel like this is such an important point to drill down on, because you didn't just say, well, we think we have a brand. We think we have a story to tell. We've got a theory of the case in terms of Madison Avenue and accessible luxury. So we'll open it, and then we'll hope it works. You already had built. I had.

[Lou Frankfort]

I had real clarity. It would. It would be successful. I never dreamt from the start would be as successful as it was. It was. We ultimately did $10,000 a square foot in that space, which is a crazy number.

[Jeff Berman]

I mean, that's. That's a Tiffany's number. I mean, that's a ridiculous number, even today. So you launched the Madison Avenue store. It's doing a million dollars in a business that was only doing $6 million top line two years earlier. What's the next step in the evolution of Coach?

[Lou Frankfort]

Well, by the spring of 1984, we were $20 million, and the channels that I started were about 50% of the business. The founder, Miles, decided that I'm going to sell the business, Lou, rather than make you and the others my partner. And if you stay through the transaction, I'm going to recommend that you become CEO, because I'm going to leave the day of the sale. But I want you to know, Lou, between us, you're not ready for this. And I said, I understand, Miles. So there was several groups interested, and I was able to negotiate the best price from the group that I thought would be the best for the future of Coach, which was a big conglomerate called Sara Lee.

[Jeff Berman]

What did Sara Lee do right both in acquiring Coach and integrating Coach into Sara Lee? And what did it get wrong?

[Lou Frankfort]

They got everything right at the beginning. First was building a team. They were really focused on making sure that I had the right people in the right places.

[Jeff Berman]

What did they get wrong?

[Lou Frankfort]

Well, along the way, they unsuccessfully tried to use the power of Coach to help get brands into locations where they wanted to open shops. I remember once they came to me when JCPenney was still a very strong mass brand, eating department stores lunches. JCPenney wanted to bring Coach in, and our customers candidly weren't shopping there. At least not yet they weren't, and I declined. At the same time, Sara Lee wanted to open Hanes and Champion Shops and JC Penney. And they said, if you get Coach to come in, we'll open the shops. And so they came to me to push me to do that, and I of course declined. I was prepared to have them terminate me rather than do things that made no sense, summarizing many discussions over time, but there was a handshake between me and the CEO chairman of Sara Lee that if I could get them a billion dollars, they would give us freedom.

[Jeff Berman]

Not bad given when they bought you, you were hoping to get to 25 in revenue, so they paid 30 million. Okay, it's a pretty good return on investment. Not bad. Still ahead, How Lou Frankfurt blended magic and logic to Scale Coach to New Heights.

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[Lou Frankfort]

hey listeners, Bob here. If you listen to Rapid Response on Masters of Scale, you may be missing half the show because every Friday we release a second Rapid Response exclusively in the Rapid Response feed. The guests and topics are just as compelling and timely, from Ford CEO to NASA's administrator to the lessons from the Delta Devil Wears Prada. It takes about 10 seconds to find. Just search Rapid Response wherever you listen to podcasts and hit follow to make sure you never miss an episode. I hope to see you there.

[Jeff Berman]

Welcome back to Masters of Scale. You can find this Conversation and much more on our YouTube channel. And be sure to check out the show notes to find a link to our newsletter. So how did you get it to a point where you could spin it out of Sara Lee?

[Lou Frankfort]

First, I recruited the right business leaders. Second, we aligned as a team on what we needed to do to prepare to go public. And third, we went about doing it in a very systematic way. And by the time 1999 rolled around, it was clear to me through the green shoots that we had measured that we were on the cusp of a breakout. And I wanted to get out as quickly as I could before the numbers grew so that the benefit would accrue to the Coach shareholders, not to the Sarah Lee shareholders.

[Jeff Berman]

Right. There's a sweet spot.

[Lou Frankfort]

There was in the spring of the year 2000, we agreed that we were going to go public. We engaged with Goldman Sachs, and even though the market went through a dip in the middle of the year and there was some discussion of pulling the ipo, I was able to deliver numbers that gave Goldman confidence that they could take us public successfully, which we did.

[Jeff Berman]

Well, one of the interesting things about the timing is as the dot com bubble is bursting, you are very much not a dot com stock.

[Lou Frankfort]

And the other thing was we needed to develop storytelling that would make sense. And we coined the term accessible luxury. And the business grew very, very rapidly. We revamped our entire supply chain. We broadened the personality of Coach. We introduced major new collections that had very broad appeal in Asia on bags. In Japan, they spent at the time six times as much as the average American spent.

[Jeff Berman]

Wow.

[Lou Frankfort]

And why? Japan has an X shaped economy, Particularly back then, everyone was middle class and the number one possession was a European luxury brand. I didn't go in to target the European luxury brands. I went after the young female professional who was looking to be emancipated, not get married right away, but travel, be independent, break the glass ceiling. And I was able to offer her a bag at 40,000 yen while the European competitors were 100,000 yen. And she could save that 60,000 yen and go to Korea for a weekend hotel and airfare.

[Jeff Berman]

Lou, I want to focus in on some of the leadership lessons from your career. One of the things that strikes me, you got a lot of companies right now that will tell you that they're data driven. At our company, one of the things we talk about is being data informed, not data driven. Because data can't be everything.

[Lou Frankfort]

Of course.

[Jeff Berman]

Well, you say of course, but there are a lot of people out there who will tell you look at the numbers and you act on the numbers. Help us understand how you've approached integrating data and logic and sort of, you know, traditional left brain with vision and creativity and imagination, more traditional right brain.

[Lou Frankfort]

I coined the term magic and logic and it's now language we continue to use at Coach. My successors use it today. And it's part of embedded in our culture, magic is having belief, having vision, seeing something that doesn't exist, curiosity that you're going to probe and learn. And another aspect of magic is being adaptable and nimble. And lastly is also using instinct and intuitive. And on the logic side, the hardest things from a culture perspective in my mind is to build a greater good mindset where you bring people together towards a purpose. They're in service of something. And we built a culture with everyone in mind that we wanted to build a powerful franchise. We wanted consumers to love us, to believe in us at its essence. That's what great brands do. People have belief in them.

[Jeff Berman]

And so many companies work in silos, right? They build things that are literally called divisions. Right. Rather than figuring out the integration, the

[Lou Frankfort]

reality is that larger companies, they don't have the right people with the right mindsets. You need an entrepreneurial mindset. You can't just create a new projects division within a company. And the reality is that most of the people in these large companies, perhaps not the CEO or the number two, but often, yes, they have grown up in this company or grown up in the industry. So they are used to a certain way of working. They want to meet their plan, they want to get their bonus, they want to go on vacation. When they want to go on vacation, they won't speak truth to power because they don't want to jeopardize their jobs. And they may not want to work 24 7. And so many companies, whether it's American Express 30 years ago under Ken Chenault or Disney, they have to be reinvented. You got to throw it up in the air. And it's not a surprise to either of us when you talk about a founder. Sometimes the second generation built it and the third generation ruins it. And while they may not ruin it, among very large companies, when you have scale and you have process and you have protocols and it's very tough to move things.

[Jeff Berman]

Lou, Coach is having a real moment with Gen Z right now. It feels like every couple of weeks I see some news where Coach is breaking through, where it's popping on TikTok. What is it like not being in the business day to day, but Being so inextricably tied with Coach, seeing what's happening with the brand right now, it's

[Lou Frankfort]

very rewarding for me, particularly because I know the leadership team and I know their values. And the two people who lead Coach, Todd Kahn, the CEO and Stuart Vevers, both of whom I recruited, are not only very good people, they feel they're stewards of the brand. They feel they have the temporarily in charge of the brand and that it belongs to the investors, it belongs to the employees, it belongs to the community that uses it. And as stewards of the brand, they have really leaned into the zeitgeist and are very forward minded. And for me, seeing Coach reach all time highs. We're in our ninth decade now and under my watch we peaked at $20 billion in market cap and it took 10 years after I left to get back to 20 and surpass us. So I can honestly say that Coach is truly a legacy brand. It lives in the hearts and minds of consumers and can withstand the ups and downs of times. It will be here in the next century.

[Jeff Berman]

Well, it feels like the companion to magic and logic is tradition and innovation. There's a real legacy there and also not a fear of trying new things.

[Lou Frankfort]

Yeah. And understanding your DNA. And so I'm wildly proud of the team and love the product that's coming out since my retirement. I've not been as engaged as I have been since Todd became CEO now six years ago.

[Jeff Berman]

I'm also just struck, Lou, by the extent to which your principles run through your career, both in terms of the decisions you make about where to go work and what to do and how to approach the work. But Ed Koch passes you over for a job that you're passionate about doing in your public service because you're too principled. Sara Lee's asking you to do things that you just don't think are right. You don't do them. What's the advice you're giving to people who are coming up in their careers about when to toe the company line and do what they're asking you to do and when to stick to your guns?

[Lou Frankfort]

It depends on where you are on your journey and where you are on Maslow's hierarchy if you're in a place where you are fortunate enough to have discretion. I encourage people to be mindful of where they are working, where they're looking to work. So I encourage people to look for organizations, whether it's service or product, where you believe in the purpose. Second, to look for a culture that is affirmative and that encourages curiosity and openness, something that is not heavily siloed or hierarchical, where you are able to see people rising quickly if they perform. And look for a boss who you believe can be a mentor. It doesn't mean in all areas, but where you can learn from and who has reasonably high emotional intelligence. Because if you don't, you could get into a situation where you don't respect your boss. Do your best to find something that has purpose, where you can be authentic. That's so important. And while you may not find your best destiny in that first role, there's a much better likelihood that you will feel fulfillment and you will be able to grow and thrive.

[Jeff Berman]

The book is Bagman. It is a riveting and rollicking tale. I encourage everyone to pick it up. Lou, thank you so much for being on Masters of Scale.

[Lou Frankfort]

It's been a joy.

[Jeff Berman]

Masters of Scale is a Wait. What? Original Our Executive producer is Eve Tro. Senior Supervising producer is Tricia Bobita. Associate producer is Masha Makatanina. Video editor is Noah Wahlstein. Senior Talent Executive executive is Stephanie Stern. Mixing and mastering by the Audio Boys, Aaron Bastinelli and Brian Pugh. Original music by the legendary Ryan Holiday. Our head of podcast is lital molad. Visit mastersofscale.com to find the transcript for this episode and to subscribe to our newsletter. And be sure to check out her YouTube channel.