COAT OF ARMS | RETAIL ACQUISITION & BRAND TURNAROUND

project overview

Client: Coat of Arms, acquired by Aaron Hansen
Role: Owner, Brand Strategist & Operations Director
Timeline: February 2014 – January 2019
Project Type: Retail Acquisition, Brand Transformation, Market Repositioningg

I didn’t try to fix the store. I changed what the store was.

Coat of Arms was a struggling Manhattan streetwear retailer in a market that had already moved on.

I acquired the business, relocated it to Greenpoint, Brooklyn, and rebuilt it around a different idea: the store itself had to be worth visiting.

That meant changing the identity, product mix, private label, events and neighborhood positioning, while balancing established brands like Levi’s, Stussy, Thrasher and Champion with products that gave Coat of Arms its own point of view.

The move to Greenpoint was part of the strategy.

Before the neighborhood became the retail destination it is now, it gave us the space and cultural context to build something that felt connected to the community rather than another store competing for attention in Manhattan.

RETAIL IS A MEDIA CHANNEL.

The best-performing moments came when product, place and community worked together.

SIGNATURE CAMPAIGNS | LEVI’s skateboarding collection

For the Levi’s Skateboarding launch, we turned the store into a weekend-long event with customization, photography, skate donations and local food partners. More than 1,000 people attended, with complete daily sellouts.

signature campaigns | Champion

For Champion, I built a series of weekly Reverse Weave drops supported by photography rooted in Greenpoint. The releases sold out each week and produced the highest sales month in the store’s history.

signature campaigns | private label goods

The private-label program gave us another lever: instead of relying entirely on wholesale brands, we could create products, stories and margin that belonged to the business itself.

$100K → $750K

Over five years, annual revenue grew from approximately $100,000 to $750,000, a 650% increase. Then I exited the business.

That result didn’t come from discounting harder or carrying more inventory.

It came from making a better decision about where the business should sit, what it should stand for and why someone should care enough to walk through the door.

Sometimes the turnaround is a repositioning.

Coat of Arms taught me something I’ve carried into nearly everything since:

When an asset is underperforming, the answer isn’t always to optimize what already exists.

Sometimes the opportunity is to change the context around it until the value becomes obvious.