A sensible line for trying times?

Display windows for the Coach department, The Hudson's Bay Company, Granville and Georgia, Vancouver, BC

Display window for the Coach department, The Hudson's Bay Company, Granville and Georgia, Vancouver, BC (Detail)

Coach produces some good looking bags. The quality is reasonable and the brand, started in 1941, actually does have a bit of genuine heritage.

The display windows look very good. The windows above are the new Spring 2016 windows at The Hudson's Bay Company store in downtown Vancouver.

The problem for Coach, and lots of other mid-market brands, is that the mid-market seems to have disappeared. The brands at the top end; Dior, Gucci, Hermes, Prada, Louis Vuitton etc., don't seem to have any trouble selling their bags, regardless of how many thousand dollars they cost.

But the mid-market continues to struggle. With cheap knockoff from below, and the real luxury brands above, are there still customers for the middle ground?

It will be interesting to see if Coach can survive.