The Coach / Kate Spade NOligarchy Profile
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Coach / Kate Spade — the luxury handbag and accessories empire operated by Tapestry Inc — earns a NOligarchy Score of 24.08 out of 100. In NOligarchy’s framework, a lower score signals heavier concentration of corporate power: more money channeled into political influence, more wealth extracted from workers and funneled to shareholders, and a weaker compliance record. At 24.08, Coach / Kate Spade sits at the bottom of its sector.
Current Pillar Scores
Political Access
45.9
Wealth Extraction
0.0
Playing by the Rules
100.0
Score history — 23 quarters
Tier bands show where each quarter's score falls — no numeric y-axis needed. The dashed ring marks the year-over-year comparison point. Tap any quarter but the first to see its pillar breakdown.
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Political Access Grade: 45.88/100. The brand spent $620,000 on federal lobbying from Q3 2024 through Q2 2026 (8 quarters — the two-year tracking period) and deployed a revolving door of former congressional insiders. No Political Action Committee (PAC) contributions were filed — but individual executive donations added another $4,555 to the political ledger.
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Wealth Extraction Grade: 0.0/100. A perfect zero — the lowest possible score — reflecting a CEO who pocketed 651 times what the median worker earned, and a company that poured $1.72 billion into stock repurchases in a single fiscal year. This pillar is where the real story lives.
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Playing by the Rules Grade: 17.15/100. The enforcement docket is no longer clean: $1.4 million in recorded regulatory penalties pulls this grade down sharply, placing it among the worst in its sector.
Coach / Kate Spade ranks 3rd out of 3 companies in the Jewelry, Luggage, and Leather Goods Retailers sector — dead last. The sector average NOligarchy Score is 55.8. Coach / Kate Spade trails that benchmark by more than 31 points, making it the worst-performing company in its federal industry classification. Because this score falls below 50, readers can find higher-scoring places to shop in the Better Alternatives section below.
The Bottom Line: A $1.72 Billion Play for Shareholders — and $26,657 for the People Selling the Bags
Coach / Kate Spade reported $7.01 billion in annual revenue — enough to make it the dominant force in its sector. Yet the sharpest choice visible in this data is the decision to pour $1.72 billion into buying back its own stock while the median worker took home $26,657 — a salary so low it falls below the federal poverty line for a family of three. The CEO’s total compensation reached $17.3 million in the most recent reported fiscal year, a gap of 651-to-one over the median employee. The company simultaneously paid $620,000 to lobby Congress on trade and tax policy that directly governs its profit margins. And regulators recorded $1.4 million in penalties against the company — a figure dwarfed by the shareholder payouts but still a mark on the public record.
Spending to Buy a Seat at the Table on Trade and Taxes
Coach / Kate Spade’s parent company, Tapestry Inc, channeled $620,000 into federal lobbying from Q3 2024 through Q2 2026 — opening at $100,000 per quarter through the end of 2024, then settling to a steady $70,000 each quarter from 2025 onward. That is not a large number by Washington standards, but it buys something specific: a consistent, professional presence inside the rooms where trade policy and tax law get written. Those filings reached three federal bodies — the House of Representatives, the Senate, and the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR).
FEDERAL CONTACT LOG
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
27
≈ every 19th business day
SENATE
25
≈ every 20th business day
U.S. Trade Representative (USTR)
1
≈ every 500th business day
3 federal bodies named in federal lobbying filings · 2024-Q3–2026-Q2
Between 2024-Q3 and 2026-Q2, Coach / Kate Spade was named in lobbying filings reaching 3 federal bodies — from HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES to SENATE.
The dominant focus — appearing in 16 separate filing entries — was trade, with lobbyists repeatedly citing the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP), a federal program that eliminates import tariffs on goods from developing countries. For a luxury accessories brand that manufactures handbags, wallets, and leather goods overseas, GSP is not a policy abstraction — it is a direct line item on the cost of every product that crosses the border. Losing GSP coverage, or failing to get it renewed, raises the price of imported materials and finished goods, squeezing margins. Filings also cited the reconciliation legislation known as H.R. 1, “An act to provide for reconciliation pursuant to title II of H. Con. Res. 14” — enacted as Public Law 119-21 on July 4, 2025 — three times in connection with trade and tax monitoring.
The second largest focus was taxation, with eight filing entries referencing corporate tax matters and the implementation of H.R. 1. For a company carrying over a billion dollars in unremitted foreign earnings and reporting a U.S. pre-tax loss while booking substantial foreign pre-tax income, how Congress writes the corporate tax code is not a peripheral concern — it is central to how much of its global profits Tapestry keeps.
Lobbyists also tracked foreign relations through two filings monitoring the activities of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, citing the “Share the Savings with Seniors Act” (H.R. 5376, 118th Congress — currently referred to the House Subcommittee on Health) twice in connection with those filings. Separately, two filings addressed Federal Trade Commission (FTC) competition policy — a live concern for a company that attempted a major acquisition of rival Capri Holdings before the FTC moved to block the merger in 2024.
The company engaged two outside lobbying firms. Both are shared: Sorini Strategic Advisors also works for Carter’s Inc, and OGR also represents AT&T and Bath & Body Works Inc — giving those firms a cross-sector reach that extends well beyond luxury retail.
Shared Lobbying Exposure
Coach / Kate Spade
client
OGR
lobbying firm
AT&T
also a client
Bath & Body Works Inc
also a client
SORINI STRATEGIC ADVISORS F/K/A SORINI, SAMET, & ASSOCIATES, LLC also lobbies for Carter's Inc
Why it matters: the same firm argues Coach / Kate Spade’s case and its rivals’ — one hire buys a web of shared access that can’t be seen from outside. This network worsens Coach / Kate Spade’s political-access score (see methodology for the exact factor).
The company’s 15-person lobbying roster included two former government insiders who moved directly from Capitol Hill into paid advocacy work. Jennifer Daulby served as Chief of Staff and Staff Director to Representative Rodney Davis, Legislative Counsel to Representative Steve Chabot, and Associate Counsel to Representative Bob Goodlatte. Stanton Bullock served as Chief of Staff to Senator Daniel Moynihan. These two bring relationships forged at the center of congressional power directly to bear on the trade and tax fights that determine Coach / Kate Spade’s bottom line.
No PAC contributions were filed during the two-year period. Individual executive donations via Federal Election Commission (FEC) records totaled $4,555 — a modest but consistent trickle from company leadership into the political system.
$1.72 Billion for Shareholders, $26,657 for the Median Worker
The starkest numbers in this entire profile are not the lobbying totals — they are the ones that describe what Coach / Kate Spade chose to do with its cash once the sales were rung up and the profits counted.
Start with the person at the top. According to the SEC DEF 14A, the CEO pay ratio at Tapestry is 651:1. The CEO’s total compensation in the most recent reported fiscal year was about $17.3 million. The median employee compensation — the number that represents the worker exactly in the middle of the company’s entire 20,100-person workforce — was $26,657 a year. That is roughly $512 a week before taxes. For a company selling $400 handbags and $250 wallets under aspirational brand names, the gap between the person signing off on the product line and the person standing behind the counter to sell it is not just wide — it is structurally embedded in the business model.
Then there are the buybacks. According to SEC 10-K filings, Tapestry executed a deliberate reduction in shares outstanding that inflates per-share metrics and triggers executive performance bonuses — spending $1.718 billion in fiscal year 2025 on stock repurchases, representing 24.5% of annual revenue. In fiscal year 2024, buyback spending was zero, making the fiscal 2025 figure a deliberate burst of concentrated shareholder enrichment rather than a steady-state program.
Buybacks vs. Workers
What the buyback spend could have meant for 20K employees
Spent on buybacks
$1.7B
directed to shareholders
÷ 20K
workers
Per-worker raise
$85,507
per employee, 2-year total
Spread over those 2 years, that's a 160% annual raise on the median worker's $26,657 salary — money the company chose to send to shareholders instead.
The company made a deliberate choice. The money spent on buying back its own stock could have instead handed every single one of its 20,100 workers a $85,507 raise, spread across the last 2 fiscal years. Spread evenly across those two years, that works out to a $42,754 annual raise the company chose not to give — an amount that would have more than doubled the median worker’s $26,657 salary.
Coach / Kate Spade did not abandon traditional dividends in favor of buybacks — it ran both simultaneously. According to SEC 10-K filings, dividends paid totaled $299.3 million in fiscal 2025 and $321.4 million in fiscal 2024. The data shows this company did not have to choose between its investors and its workforce — it generated cash at a scale that could have served both. It simply chose not to extend that generosity downward.
The executive bonus angle is direct. When a company executes a deliberate reduction in shares outstanding that inflates per-share metrics and triggers executive performance bonuses, earnings per share rises automatically — not because the business earned more money, but because the denominator got smaller. With a CEO compensation package of about $17.3 million tied in part to per-share performance metrics, every dollar spent shrinking the share count is also a dollar spent boosting the earnings of the executives who approved that spending.
On taxes: Coach / Kate Spade’s parent company paid an effective tax rate of 15.2% — 5.8 percentage points below the 21% federal statutory rate that Congress set.
Statutory federal rate
21%
This company
15.2%
Coach / Kate Spade's effective federal tax rate was 15.2% against the 21% statutory rate — 5.8 percentage points drained away.
The company’s 10-K discloses that for the most recent reported fiscal year, the largest single item cutting the effective rate was “effects of tax credits, acquisition costs and reorganization costs,” which slashed the rate by 44.2 percentage points — a reduction worth $95.5 million. Partially offsetting that were the non-deductible Kate Spade goodwill impairment charge (+23.7 pp, $51.3 million) and the effects of foreign operations including Global Intangible Low-Taxed Income (GILTI) (+9.2 pp, $19.8 million). Share-based compensation deductions cut a further 3.6 percentage points from the rate. The filing also discloses that Tapestry maintains foreign partnership interests and a permanent reinvestment position on foreign earnings — keeping a portion of overseas profits outside the reach of U.S. tax until, or unless, they are ever repatriated.
Tapestry chose to pay 5.8 percentage points less than the rate Congress set. That gap is not an accounting accident — it is a structural decision that shifts real tax burden off Tapestry’s balance sheet and onto everyone else. On top of that, Tapestry holds Unrecognized Tax Benefits equal to 50% of its pre-tax income — contested deductions it has claimed on its taxes that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has not yet agreed are valid.
$1.4 Million in Penalties on the Public Docket
Over the two-year tracking period from Q3 2024 through Q2 2026, public records show $1.4 million in total regulatory penalties recorded against Coach / Kate Spade. That is not a catastrophic enforcement number for a company doing $7 billion in annual revenue — it amounts to roughly two-hundredths of one percent of sales — but it marks the end of a clean-record period and places the company firmly in the bottom tier of its sector on compliance.
The available public data does not break out individual case details for these penalties — the total is what the record currently shows. Readers seeking the fuller enforcement history, which extends well beyond this two-year window, can consult the source database directly. No government subsidies — grants, tax credits, or other public payments — are recorded during the period.
What the $1.4 million penalty figure does not do is rewrite the wage and shareholder payout story documented above. A company can minimize its regulatory fines while still choosing to pay its median worker $26,657 a year and hand $1.72 billion to shareholders in a single fiscal year. Compliance with the law and equitable treatment of the workforce are separate ledgers — and on the latter, Coach / Kate Spade’s choices are written in nine-figure sums.