Luxury fashion house Tapestry is making its high-end catalogs available for purchase directly within Google’s rapidly expanding artificial intelligence shopping ecosystem, marking a major shift in how consumers discover, browse, and buy iconic accessories from brands like Coach and Kate Spade.
The strategic integration places coveted designer items—including Coach’s signature leather goods and Kate Spade’s playful handbags—right at the fingertips of users interacting with Google’s AI-powered tools. As technology companies and major retail brands race to capture consumer attention during the earliest moments of online inspiration, this collaboration represents a significant step forward in conversational commerce.
Tapestry is purposefully leveraging artificial intelligence to carve out yet another vital pathway to reach modern shoppers. This digital initiative seamlessly complements the company’s existing brick-and-mortar storefronts, traditional e-commerce websites, and wholesale channels, creating an omnichannel shopping experience tailored to modern consumer habits.
"Our goal is for shoppers to find and engage with our brands at the moment when inspiration strikes, whether it be when a consumer passes by one of our stores, peruses our websites, or chats with AI," Joanne Crevoiserat, chief executive officer of Tapestry, said in a public statement regarding the integration.
Google has steadily built out its comprehensive artificial intelligence shopping offerings over recent years to appeal to both everyday consumers and massive global retailers. Last year, the tech giant debuted its advanced AI Mode, an innovative feature that effectively merges Google’s Gemini artificial intelligence architecture with its expansive Shopping Graph database. This powerful combination allows shoppers to virtually try on products, discover the lowest available prices across the web, and receive hyper-personalized product recommendations tailored to their unique preferences and style queries.
Tapestry certainly is not alone in its ambitious decision to collaborate with Google on artificial intelligence commerce. Major players across the retail sector are racing to integrate their inventory into Google’s ecosystem. Similarly, beauty giant Ulta Beauty recently added its extensive product assortment to Google’s AI Mode and the standalone Gemini app, empowering shoppers to seamlessly view curated product recommendations, compare multiple beauty products side-by-side, and complete transactions directly through Google’s interface.
In a similar vein, retail titan Walmart enabled shoppers to discover and purchase merchandise directly from both Walmart and Sam’s Club through the Gemini app, signaling a broader industry trend toward conversational and AI-assisted shopping.
As more retailers rapidly integrate their proprietary inventory into third-party artificial intelligence platforms, however, some industry analysts and supply chain experts have issued warnings. Critics caution that outsourcing the shopping journey to third-party tech platforms risks widening the physical and digital distance between retailers and their core customers. Without direct, uninterrupted contact during the initial discovery phase, retail brands risk losing valuable customer data and meaningful direct interactions that are critical for long-term brand loyalty.
Despite these widespread industry concerns, Tapestry leadership insists that the collaboration does not negatively impact the relationship the company maintains with its clientele. According to Yang Lu, Tapestry’s chief information and data officer, there is no substantial or disadvantageous change in the data Tapestry receives from customers who choose to shop via Google’s artificial intelligence platforms.
Because consumers ultimately place their final orders through Tapestry’s proprietary brand properties, the corporation continues to receive the exact same robust data stream it would normally receive if a customer had shopped directly on its traditional e-commerce websites, Lu explained in an email to Retail Dive.
"Tapestry’s launch of UCP is about staying close to the consumer and building an infrastructure that is flexible and ready for wherever our customers are discovering and shopping for products," Lu added, emphasizing the company’s commitment to customer-centric technological flexibility.
This digital expansion arrives on the heels of positive financial results for the parent company. In its most recent earnings report, Tapestry’s fourth-quarter revenue rose 9% year-over-year to reach $1.9 billion. Furthermore, the company reported a net income of $347.8 million, marking a dramatic recovery compared to a net loss of $517.1 million recorded in the same period during the previous year.
Performance across individual brands varied, however, highlighting the importance of new revenue streams like artificial intelligence integration. Coach’s fourth-quarter revenue jumped an impressive 15% from a year prior to hit $1.6 billion, serving as a primary driver of the corporation’s financial health. Meanwhile, Kate Spade reported a 7% drop in quarterly revenue down to $235 million, underlining the potential value that emerging discovery channels like Google’s AI ecosystem could provide in revitalizing sales for the brand moving forward.