At the same time that it’s gearing up for its 100th anniversary in 2028, Cole Haan is adapting its marketing and product playbooks to fit in with today’s more hybrid and more flexible workforce.
Although Cole Haan launched in 1928 as a men’s dress shoe company, the brand is trying to be more of a lifestyle brand attuned to the post-pandemic era. In 2021, Cole Haan expanded into performance golf and tennis shoes. Now, it continues to offer footwear and accessories that fall into a number of buckets (from dressy to casual to outdoors) and can be worn in all types of settings (from office meetings to retreats to dinners).
Moving forward, Cole Haan wants to be the brand for “the nine to five and five to nine,” Cole Haan’s Brand President David Maddocks told Modern Retail. “Wardrobes were less going from uniforms to individual pieces that can be pulled together depending on the occasion,” he said. “People didn’t have hard lines between different pieces in their wardrobes, so we knew that that had to happen in footwear, as well.”
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