• The Wall Street Journal, Thursday, May 29, 2008 9:45 AM

Despite having increased its profit in each of the 31 quarters since it went public in 2000, luxury retailer Coach is projected to experience a slowdown in the coming months thanks to consumer cutbacks on spending. But rather than hunker down, Coach is expanding.

In this Q&A, Coach CEO Lew Frankfort explains why his company is planning to open 200 stores in the U.S. over the next few years, at a rate of about 40 per year, as well as push into China. The company is also bucking conventional wisdom by launching a series of higher-priced products in the coming months.

Coach has "decided to accelerate the level of innovation, compressing several years of innovation into one year," said Frankfort. "We want to be transformative in the way we look. You can't be iterative when the economy is tough."

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