THE ROAD TO CIRCULARITY
Making with waste: why checkerboard?
The story behind our signature Upcrafted™ leather—ingeniously made with leather scraps leftover from the production of Coach bags.
Where we started
In Coachtopia, as part of our circular mission, we’re working to harness Coach’s 80+ years of leather craftsmanship to transform waste into beautiful new materials—and to unlock ways to do this at scale. That way, we can make beautiful things while avoiding the creation of new materials—which accounts for 38% of the global fashion industry’s greenhouse gas emissions.*
Checkerboard Upcrafted™ leather
Our Checkerboard Upcrafted™ leather is a case in point. Though we love the way it looks, we’re even more proud of what it represents: a process of exploration, experimentation and collaboration with our global community that has resulted in a scalable solution to one particular problem—how to reuse the scraps that are left over from the production of Coach leather goods, which might otherwise go to landfill.
The problem of leather waste
To understand this problem—and the genesis of the Checkerboard design—we need to start by understanding where these scraps come from. In Coach, we seek to maximize the use of every leather skin through precision cutting; however, we can’t avoid the fact that leather skins are irregular and imperfect, which means there is always some wastage. What’s more, the offcuts that remain after we cut our bag patterns from leather hides are small, often stringy, unevenly sized and unpredictable—that is, highly challenging to use.
Testing and learning
When we first set out to utilize these scraps, we started with the processes we knew, looking to apply the existing patchwork techniques and designs we’d been using at Coach. However, these patchwork models were designed for a linear system—in which we would request colors and materials to fit a pattern we had already designed. Because the supply of scrap is unpredictable, we found that we often didn’t have the textures or colors we needed. We quickly realized, that in order to create a scalable platform for using an ever-changing supply of scraps, we had to create a new system—one that would leverage this changing supply of scrap as an opportunity, rather than a constraint.
Working together
Collaborating closely with our manufacturing partners—who are continually working with us to test and operationalize new craft techniques—our design team hit on a new system for reusing our production scraps: a two-tone patchwork pattern that, thanks to its simplicity and regularity, allowed us to apply structure to the chaotic nature of this particular raw material input, yet was flexible enough to leverage an ever-changing array of different leather qualities and colors, based on what is available in the moment.
A beautiful solution
And so, our Checkerboard system was born. Today you’ll see it in a range of products from our Ergo and Wavy Dinky bags to small accessories—always in a range of different colors that vary according to what scrap we have available at the time, and often in limited edition serendipitous color combinations. Though it’s become one of Coachtopia’s key signatures, it’s also just one of many ways in which we’re avoiding the creation of new materials by crafting with waste. You can learn more about our other materials on our About pages.
* Source: Fashion on Climate, McKinsey & Company, 2020
More stories
A World in Progress
Step into the circular future and explore the ever-evolving world of Coachtopia with our latest campaigns, product launches and events.
Meet the Community
Up close with the designers, thinkers and makers who are working with us to build a more circular future
How to Coachtopia
The tips, tricks and tutorials to help you get the most out of your Coachtopia products as well as our circular products