Cambridge Satchel’s Head of Marketing and Ecommerce shares how the U.K. handbag brand uses stores as a marketing tool, plus how collections with the movie ‘Wicked’ and crystal brand Swarovski boost its sales and exposure in this Q&A.
Leather handbag brand Cambridge Satchel is putting the gas on its store strategy.
It accelerated opening new stores in 2025, plus Cambridge Satchel opened an international store in Paris in March 2025. This added to its two U.K. stores in Cambridge and London, and it closed the year with six stores, with locations in Windsor, Bath and Edinburgh, said Constance Aubry, Head of Marketing and Ecommerce at Cambridge Satchel.
What’s more, Cambridge Satchel is looking to open more international stores in 2026, including one in New York City, as U.S. shoppers generate roughly half of its online sales, Aubry said.
This is not the first time Cambridge has gone down the road of physical retail, as the brand operated several stores throughout the years that the brand has since closed.
Aubry shares how Cambridge Satchel is rethinking its store strategy, and how it is using local marketing and brand collaborations to build awareness.
Chief Marketer: Why are you trying to bolster stores and grow that channel when it seems like many retailers are trying to beef up their online presence?
Aubry: For us, it has always been something important in terms of having that physical presence. With something like leather goods, people do still very much appreciate having that contact with the product. We’re more in that premium, affordable luxury positioning. It’s still a product that people do tend to invest in. Not a lot of people just buy it on a whim. There is a little bit of a longer journey for it. We do notice that some people — that might be still even buying online — they do like to go to the physical store, try the product, touch it, have the feel of the leather.
Our parent company, called Chargeurs, they do feel it’s still very important to have that omnichannel approach to the brand.
Online is still huge and it allows us to actually connect with so many more customers internationally, and we see which markets we are already building that relationship with the customers.
Chief Marketer: How do you use that information?
Aubry: That’s how we are starting to look into that expansion. It is not just, let’s go to the city because it’s a cool city or because its a big city. But we’re trying to see, where are our customers? How would this help their experience with the brand? Then from a marketing perspective, it would be a nice channel of even building that relationship, engaging with the customer, and also building awareness when it’s in key places.
When we are looking at retail, we are very, very picky, on where we want our stores to be. So that we make sure that there is the right footfall, the right image for the brand, what fits with the brand, and that will feel right even for the customers to see the brand there.
Chief Marketer: What year was it that you started opening more stores than just the two in the U.K.?
Aubry: It’s been one year that it has accelerated. In the past, we had some stores that we closed for different reasons. During COVID, of course, the business was also hit by that, just like anything that was stores. But since last year, there has been really this acceleration in terms of opening new stores. Edinburgh, for instance, was a city that we used to have a store in and we reopened it this year in May. We opened in another location that made more sense and new refurbishment.
Chief Marketer: I’d love to hear more about the Edinburgh store. Can you explain what were you looking for when you opened the new store in terms of location?
Aubry: First, the store itself, it’s a really beautiful space. With the retail stores, definitely the space needs to feel right and at the right price, as well. It does come to that. The previous location was not too far from the new one, but there were a few changes needed. It didn’t feel right anymore. It’s not the exact same streets.
Right now, we have brands like Barbour that are also into that British heritage universe that attract similar customers. The store is in a lovely area where there are other streets and stores that are catering to a similar customer as us.
It’s also a lot about the store itself, the layout; It’s not necessarily the biggest store, but it is about having the best windows, the best neighbors next to us, and also the right layout. The previous layout just didn’t feel right for the brand, and the current one is much nicer space for it.
Chief Marketer: Can you share a little bit about what having a physical store in a market does from a marketing perspective and how does that increase your sales both in that region and in that region online?
Aubry: Definitely in Paris, we did see an increase of our French customers when we opened the store. But we also do have a lot of international customers. When we look at those stores in Paris, or even within the U.K., it’s not necessarily only locals, it’s a lot of tourists traveling. And we see a lot of American tourists, and this is also one of the reasons that we are really looking into the U.S., on top of the fact that online U.S. represents almost half of our sales, so it is a really growing market for us.
It definitely has an impact on the awareness. People might discover the brand through the store. In terms of marketing, we do have localized marketing for the store. We bring in local ambassadors, local influencers, invite them to the store to discover. Some know it already, but really get to actually go to one of our physical stores for the first time.
From an online perspective, we have been trying to adapt more to each market and have a bit of more of that local feel to it. Before we opened our French store, we did make sure we had a French version of our website. We started also working on having French newsletters.
We’re building a plan around, how do we do that for other markets in Europe where there are so many different languages. Because the U.S. in that way is easier. We already adapt to our U.S. market more in terms of what key dates are important. Thanksgiving, for example, that’s a moment that we do communicate in a different way to our U.S. customer or even 4th of July. And then when there is cultural moments happening.
We do try to adapt to our different markets because we are a global brand now. It’s not just a U.K. market brand, even if majority of our stores are there. There’s definitely a plan around it. And the more we expand, we will be doing more and more things.
The Wicked Collection
Chief Marketer: Can you share some of these global marketing initiatives?
Aubry: Last year we did also quite a nice press and influencer event in New York for our Wicked Collection for the first movie. We did that in London and in New York. So we’re starting to really focus on other markets than just the U.K. and what we’re doing marketing-wise. And also investing digitally through paid social and Instagram, TikTok, et cetera, in multiple markets as well. So in Asia, Europe, U.K., U.S.
Chief Marketer: If you don’t have a store in New York City, where did you even host that “Wicked” event?
Aubry: We have a showroom office in Chelsea (New York City.) We hosted it there because it’s a very beautiful loft space. And we had Paul Tazewell, “Wicked” Costume Designer, as our special guests as well. We had some of the costumes there.
“Wicked” is one of our big collaborations from the past year. We had it in 2024 and 2025 as well, a second collection. The bag is in the actual movie, so in the first movie. This is the binocular popular pink bag that Ariana Grande wears in the movie.
Chief Marketer: How did you land that?
Aubry: Universal actually reached out to us about the bag. Then when they told us they decided to have the bag in the movie, we decided to then work with them on a collaboration and build a whole collection around it. The first collection was in 2024 when the first movie came out, and then we had a second collection, so a continuation, this year for the second movie.
Chief Marketer: Has that been your top collection ever?
Aubry: It’s definitely up there. We had other collections that were extremely successful even in the past years, like the Hello Kitty collection. But “Wicked” in the past year, it has taken the world. It has been everywhere. And the binocular pink bag has really been our top bag this year in 2025. And the U.S. has been the strongest market for its demand, so a very successful collaboration.
Chief Marketer: How does having a high profile product placement like that contribute to your sales year?
Aubry: It definitely does influence. We did also do quite a lot of marketing around it. And we had a lot of opportunities in terms of even co-marketing. The bag was even on Times Square through a Google Android ad.
It does open certain opportunities when there is strong placements like this to then do amazing co-marketing. And we had lots of different activations around it, also influencer. People really want to work with you because of that placement. It definitely has a very positive impact, but it has been a very successful collaboration.
It has also its timeframe. Last year and this year themselves had so much marketing that it was amazing to have served that wave. It is one of the things that has driven this end of year Q4 for us because of it being so strong. We did see amazing sales from it during the month of November.
Chief Marketer: Can you share how the collection did sales-wise compared to a different collection?
Aubry: It’s almost the same level as a collection like Hello Kitty. That was also one of our most performing collections, over $1 million in sales over that collaboration. And “Wicked” is not too far off that either. Still not there, but might hit it.
We have other collections that have been strong, but not yet as strong, like our Miffy collaboration.
It depends on how the collaborations are approached. Swarovski is not a collaboration, but it is more of a capsule collection. So that won’t grow as much as a full-on collaboration because it has a different strategy and a different approach to it. It’s more about desirability and that moment.
At Swarovski, it is about festive. It’s still going to go on probably at the beginning of the year for the winter months, but it is a capsule collection. It is limited edition. It’s not a full-on collaboration that would be going on for a year or two, for instance.
The different types of collections have different approaches and different objectives to them. It’s not necessarily always which one is going to grow the most. Even if we do a limited edition, it does help build the strategy for the future on, okay, what do we want to do next? How do we want to grow? At the end of the day, we do want to create something that our customers do want and that also would attract new customers.
The Cambridge Satchel and the Festive Collection with Swarovski Crystals
Chief Marketer: What is the strategy with the Festive Collection with Swarovski? I know it just debuted for the 2025 holiday season.
Aubry: The Swarovski collection is quite different. It’s a collection that we thought was really good in terms of the season, of course, and bringing something a bit different while still having some of our bestseller bags. We have the Mini Sophie from their soft edit in two different colors, which when we do collaborations to our small capsule collections, we do try to have the Sophie because it is one of our bestseller bags, even though it’s one of the highest price points.
It actually is doing extremely well at the moment. We have been seeing that trend and we have actually been sold out in quite a few colors of it, which is great, but also frustrating what it happens right before Christmas. You wish you had made a bit more stock there.
Chief Marketer: How did you market the collection?
Aubry: We launched a collection (at the beginning of December). We did it first as in- store exclusive to bring a bit of that excitement to our stores. This was basically U.K. and France exclusive for a couple of days. We did a full takeover of the stores with our windows, light boxes, et cetera. But then launched it online.
We are trying to bring in a little bit of that sense of importance to our retail stores. And it made a lot of sense as well because we did launch this at the beginning of December, which is still also Cyber Week for online. So from a marketing perspective, we also did not want to dilute either of those moments being the Swarovski moment and Cyber Week. From a purely tactical perspective, we did think this is the perfect opportunity to give a little bit of that exclusivity to our retail stores while so giving room for online to launch it properly.
Chief Marketer: Is Thanksgiving and the accompanying Cyber Week sales a big deal in Europe and the U.K.? Enough to delay an online launch?
Aubry: Yes, this is one of the biggest things we have been seeing year on year. Every year we see this growing in terms of Black Friday and Cyber Week, people are shopping more and more for Christmas gifting.
U.S. still extremely strong for those promotional weeks, but UK is really catching up on it as well. Less so in European markets, but we still did see a big appetite for it.
We also have a Japanese website, which we did not run with the Black Friday and Cyber Week because it is not a thing generally in that market, but we did see people actually contacting us about it and reaching out or even buying from one of our other international stores to get access to those promotions. It’s quite interesting how it’s becoming very international and everyone is starting to tap more into those periods.
