Handbag Designer 101: The Stories Behind Handbag Designers, Brands, and Industry Icons

Reimagining Leather: How Gen Phoenix is Transforming Waste into the Future of Luxury 🧪♻️| Emily Blumenthal and Elyse Winer

• Emily Blumenthal

Share episode

Join Elyse Winer of Gen Phoenix as she reveals the groundbreaking technology turning discarded leather waste into high-performance recycled materials used by Coach, Dr. Martens, and more. 🌍👜

Since 2007, Gen Phoenix has diverted over 10,000 tons of leather from landfills using a patented process that creates sustainable leather with 80% less carbon—without sacrificing durability, feel, or style. 💥💼

💡 Key Takeaways:
 🔹 Beyond the Green Premium: Why performance and price—not just sustainability—are key to changing the industry.
🔹 Next-Gen Materials: How GenPhoenix is reshaping what “luxury” means to younger, eco-conscious consumers.
🔹 Fashion Meets Circularity: Discover their bold mission to create fully recyclable leather with endless product life.

Whether you're a designer seeking sustainable solutions or a brand looking to stay ahead of consumer values, this episode is your essential guide to the future of fashion innovation. 🎧

🎧 Listen now! #HandbagDesigner101 #SustainableFashion #RecycledLeather #LuxuryReimagined #FashionInnovation #CircularDesign

Our Guest: Elyse Winer is the Head of Brand at GenPhoenix, the revolutionary material tech company transforming leather waste into a scalable, sustainable alternative embraced by some of fashion’s biggest names.

Host Emily Blumenthal is a handbag industry expert, author of Handbag Designer 101, and founder of The Handbag Awards. Known as the “Handbag Fairy Godmother,” Emily also teaches entrepreneurship at the Fashion Institute of Technology. She is dedicated to celebrating creativity, craftsmanship, and the art of building iconic handbag brands.

Find Handbag Designer 101 Merch, HBD101 Masterclass, one-on-one sessions, and opportunities to book Emily Blumenthal as a speaker at emilyblumenthal.com. 

Buy Emily’s Books: “Handbag Designer 101” & “Savvy Suzanna’s Amazing Adventures in Handbags”

Youtube: / Handbagdesigner101-ihda | Instagram:/ Handbagdesigner

TikTok: / Handbagdesigner | Twitter: / Handbagdesigner

Speaker 1:

these younger generations that you referenced celebrated different materials, different things. Like, rather than try to pretend it's leather, luxury can be more than one thing. Let's celebrate that it's different. Like does it have to perform as well as leather? Hell yeah, but can it be different than leather? Absolutely.

Speaker 2:

Hi and welcome to Handbag Designer 101, the podcast, with your host, Emily Blumenthal, handbag industry expert and the handbag fairy godmother. Each week, we uncover the stories behind the handbags we love, from the iconic brands and top designers to the creativity, craftsmanship and culture that define the handbag world. Whether you're a designer, collector or simply passionate about handbags, this is your front row seat to it all. Welcome, Elise Weiner of Jen Phoenix to Handbag Designer 101, the podcast. Welcome, we're so excited to have you, so excited to be here. Thanks for having me.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, this is a lucky overlap because I get pitched so often from people industry people and when I was looking what Jen Phoenix did and I said, oh my God, this is a fortuitous email that came through my inbox because I said this is something so many more people need to know about. Do you want to just go straight into what Jen Phoenix is and then we can back into how it works and so forth, Because it's so cool? Do you want to just go straight into what GenPhoenix is and then we can back into how it works and so forth, Because it's so cool.

Speaker 1:

Thank you, yeah. So GenPhoenix is a UK-based sustainable materials manufacturer and the company has been around since 2007. And they take leather waste that's bound for landfill at the tanning stage. So when leather hides are tanned they actually take on this blue color called wet blue and because of irregularities in the hide or kind of the end application needs for that hide, a good portion of the hide actually traditionally goes to landfill because it can't be used for the end application. Hide actually traditionally goes to landfill because it can't be used for the end application.

Speaker 1:

We at GenPhoenix rescue that leather waste and we've rescued over 10,000 tons of wet blue leather waste since the company's origination.

Speaker 1:

And what we do is through a patented technology process we break that waste down to the fiber level and then use the power of super high pressured water to re-entangle those fibers back together, resulting in almost like a recycled leather hide that can then be finished and processed and used for applications like mass transportation, seating, but in our discussion today really a focus on consumer leather goods handbags, accessories and footwear.

Speaker 1:

And because the company has been around for so long, they've created an incredible state-of-the-art manufacturing facility that has the capacity to manufacture 6 million square meters of this recycled material to really meet the needs of some really large brand partners that we brought on in that consumer category in the past couple of years, which include Coach Doc Martens as well as investment from the parent company of Coach Tapestry Doc Martens themselves and then Jaguar Land Rover's investment arm in Motion Ventures in motion ventures.

Speaker 1:

So we're expanding into these kind of consumer and automotive categories after having been for close to 15 years supplying recycled leather material to the aviation and mass transportation seating space. So very exciting time in the company and just a really cool material that today uses that kind of wet blue leather waste. But what we're working on right now is actually taking finished leather waste, either at the factory floor level or at the end of a product's life cycle, back through the exact same process to create fully circular recycled leather material which is truly like the holy grail as it relates to circularity in the kind of sustainable materials category.

Speaker 2:

Oh my God. So many questions and just quietly, you sound like you have told this many, many times, so I used to be an investor, so I'm used to hearing pitches and now giving pitches.

Speaker 1:

So yeah, it's in my DNA, I guess.

Speaker 2:

That leads me to another question. Considering you were on the investment, investor side, was this strange to go to the client side? And what kind of adjustments did you have to make? Because you know, my background 100 million years ago was in media and I really, really wanted to get to the sales side because I saw they were the fun ones. They got to do things, they got to be innovative as opposed to okay, now what? And a very wise woman said to me who was at ESPN. She took me to lunch. I will never forget this and she said you would never open up a clothing store if you did not know how to shop. So it's really funny. I'm like I know how to shop. She's like, no, no, shop specifically for your client, for your customer, for your demographic. So was it an odd transition, all of a sudden being like, oh wait, a second, I perhaps don't have the resources I had before, or you're working under constraints that you didn't have before, totally.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I think you know. So my background is as a marketer in kind of material science space right running marketing for startups, mostly in the Boston area, and I joined the world of venture capital because one of the chairman and the board of one of those companies actually was starting his own fund and he said to me you know, I totally see your process. You love joining a company and building a brand and launching product for the first time and then you get bored and you move on to the next startup and want to do it all over again. What if you could do that in a more scalable way across a portfolio of investments? You know, traditionally at Material Impact, which was the venture fund that I came from, we had invested in extremely early stage companies that typically are like you know and you come from the professorship world. These are like postdoc PhDs out of you know leading universities that have an incredible technology but have no idea how to develop a business.

Speaker 2:

Those are the scary ones.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, go to market strategy or you know, really think about product market fit and build a position in the marketplace and a brand for the first time. And so I was almost an atypical venture partner in that I really was operational in these companies. I would jump in, serve as interim CMO, get the brand off the ground, hire my replacement and move on to the next company. So when Jen Phoenix came along and this was in an area that I was extremely passionate about, had been looking at kind of the leather alternative, sustainable material alternative market for quite some time in the fashion and footwear space, and we were looking at all kinds of really incredible technologies but most of them were very early stage and unable to really meet kind of the price and the performance and the scale requirements of big brands. Right, when you have something at a lab scale, it can be super exciting, but that there's a whole host of challenges that come with trying to scale it up, to be price competitive, to be performance competitive to the market. And what have we learned?

Speaker 1:

Consumers will not pay a green premium, like they will not pay more for a more sustainable product. So was like clean tech, you know, 1.0, the bubble burst. What was it in the early 2000s, because it was like you could have this product. It's greener, but it doesn't work as well and it's going to cost you more. It's just never going to work. So GenPhoenix came along and they had to enter the market, creating a material that wasn't. They weren't selling a sustainability story. When they came into the market, they had to compete on price and performance because at the time, particularly in like the aviation category, sustainability was not front and center in decision making for materials for seating. It had to last a long time, it had to be lightweight, it had to perform and stand up to the rigors of 24-7 wear and tear and use.

Speaker 2:

Because the material performed so well and was priced so competitively, it became the market leader in the category Do you think sorry to interrupt, do you think the man who invented this product, this process, understood the business to price it correctly? Because with all the designers and all the small businesses and so many brands I've worked with, it's fascinating that so many create this incredible product but because they've priced it incorrectly or they don't understand that, in order to be competitive, that they need to work on a smaller margin, which most brands don't want to or don't know how to. So I find it intriguing that said inventor knew how to do that.

Speaker 2:

And you know if you're getting all of these skins and they need to be made into one sheet, because when leather is sold, it's sold per square foot, but when you buy other materials it's sold based on yards. So one's a skin like an animal and one is something that's been manufactured. So that is a fascinating process, because if you're doing something hypothetically for automotive or for airplanes, there can't be any deficiencies within the skin. So this is a really interesting process, because how would one know how to compare prices? Like are you comparing it to you? Are you comparing it to square feet on leather? Like, this is how do you look up a word if you don't know how to spell it?

Speaker 1:

Right, well, and I think there's a lot of different factors that come into pricing. At the end of the day, though, our philosophy is the material has to be price neutral to the consumer and margin neutral to the brand. It's a non-starter otherwise, and so you know. But if you look at, there are certain elements of our product that add a lot of value to what the incumbent solutions are. So we're sold on a roll, and so if you think about the operational efficiencies of dealing with materials that are on a roll versus traditional leather, you're dealing with less waste. There's kind of some operational improvements that go with processing a roll versus hides, right.

Speaker 1:

But also, I think, when we entered the market and our inventor, chris Bevan, really decided to go after the aviation seating market when we entered, we had to offer something above and beyond what existed today, and at the time there was leather and fabric. That was it. Today you see all kinds of to your point, pu synthetics right in the marketplace, but at the time those were the only two solutions, and it was almost like he stumped. You know, I think Chris Bevan saw all this waste in the world Like there's value, there's beauty, there's utility in this leather fiber that's just being thrown into landfill. How do we harness? You know, leather is an incredible, sustainable, durable product because it lasts so long right.

Speaker 2:

Can I ask you a question though? Yeah, within all of the leather wastes, right? Yeah, like cow has a pebble grain, it's obviously much bigger. Lamb is softer and much more lightweight, you know. Then, once you mix it up to goat, even ostrich or camel, how are you able and again, obviously this is proprietary I'm just intrigued as a brand owner, designer, as someone who would potentially have other people listening that would want to be part of this how are they able to merge skins together of different animals? Is that done? We only work with bovine leather, gotcha, okay, that's okay. Cow for the win.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, cow for the win. And I think you know obviously you need to. With any sort of technology like this, you have to kind of be able to control your input, to control your output, if you will. So yeah, there's.

Speaker 1:

Obviously our technology has the capability to fiberize. Like anything that can be fiberized we can create material from. So we've actually experimented with plant-based feedstocks, textile waste, experimented with plant-based feedstocks, textile waste. If it can be broken down to the fiber level, we can create a base material out of it. Which is really what while all those partners I mentioned who come in as investors are so excited about us, is we don't?

Speaker 1:

You know, today we work on recycled wet blue leather waste, but tomorrow we can take back a coach handbag, adopt Martin's boot when it's no longer needed and give it as many lives as possible because it can be put through the exact same process. And that full circularity story is what's really exciting. But at the end of the day, that product the recycled wet blue product, the aviation seating material it's got to stand up to all the performance specifications, got to be priced competitively. So you're not paying a premium for something like us. And it has to offer not just like an incremental sustainability benefit, but a major sustainability win for the brand. So our material is at least 80% lowered carbon footprint than traditional leather and it's made from waste. So if you think of ESG commitments that are really focused on waste mitigation and also carbon reduction, we're helping brands who adopt our material at scale, and the key to unlocking scale was that price and performance that I described really make progress towards our goals and, in some case, hit their goals, because they can integrate our material with such confidence.

Speaker 2:

If you ever wanted to start a handbag brand and didn't know where to start, this is for you. If you had dreams of becoming a handbag designer but aren't trained in design, this is for you. If you have a handbag brand and need strategy and direction, this is for you. I'm Emily Blumenthal, handbag designer expert and handbag fairy godmother, and this is the Handbag Designer 101 Masterclass. Over the next 10 classes, I will break down everything you need to know to make, manufacture and market a handbag brand, broken down to ensure that you will not only skip steps in the handbag building process, but also to save money to avoid the learning curve of costly mistakes. For the past 20 years, I've been teaching at the top fashion universities in New York City, wrote the Handbag Designer Bible, founded the Handbag Awards and created the only Handbag Designer Podcast. I'm going to show you like I have countless brands to create in this in-depth course, from sketch to sample to sale. Whether you're just starting out and don't even know where to start or begin, or if you had a brand and need some strategic direction, the Handbag Designer 101 Masterclass is just for you. So let's get started and you'll be the creator of the next it bag.

Speaker 2:

Join me, emily Blumenthal in the Handbag Designer 101 Masterclass. So be sure to sign up at emilyblumenthalcom slash masterclass and type in the code PINECAST to get 10% off your masterclass today. So I know you had mentioned coach slash, coachtopia. You know, the funny thing about that is that it didn't seem like it was new when it came out. It's like, well, this has been around for ages, but it hasn't. And I think, and when I spoke to Todd Kahn, aka Coach Captain, coach King, he had said to me we are so laser focused on this 17-year-old, 16-year year old customer. And I've had some interesting guest speakers who, interestingly enough, recently said that the junior in high school is the plum target because they still have enough decision making capability, they're creating their own trends because by the time they become seniors, their minds are so focused on trying to become an iteration of a new person.

Speaker 2:

Minds are so focused on trying to become an iteration of a new person. Yeah, I will, and it's really interesting. But in taking this material, especially the tabby which made a huge comeback, being on Bella Hadid, which my students said that was the hook as to getting everybody back interested in the brand, and I completely agree with you that nobody cares about sustainability to pay a premium for it the brands that I've consulted for I've said do your best, try to have one product within your assortment that's potentially sustainable, that you can speak to and then say that it's party for your mission. It's interesting, though, within Coachtopia which correct me if I'm wrong is pieces of leathers kind of woven together patchwork? No, it's not. It's not.

Speaker 1:

In some cases it is, and in some cases you know so. Coachtopia integrated our recycled leather material across this entire range, so no bag is the same.

Speaker 1:

No, I mean the bags are. There is consistencies across the collection. We are found as the liner material throughout the entire collection. So that's a hydro entangled, recycled leather product, right? That's not like scraps woven together, that's our kind of regenerated, circular leather product. And that was like step one in working with Coach was. Coach Topia was the perfect platform because, like an incubator within Coach, you know their whole motto is progress over perfection, like, let's try new materials, let's try new design philosophy and let's get things out into the market and learn, and then take those learnings and pass them over the fence to the larger Coach brand, which is exactly what we did with Coachtopia. That product, which is the liner, is uncoated. We had never made an uncoated version of our product. Right, because it's soft and it has, like that suede kind of supple texture to it. We'd never done anything like that and in under a year we collaborated with Coach to create this material that would be found across the entire Coach range.

Speaker 1:

What I loved about the Coachtopia range, what I loved about Coachtopia, what they learned, was that these younger generations that you referenced celebrated different materials, different things like, rather than try to pretend it's leather, luxury can be more than one thing. Let's celebrate that it's things Like, rather than try to pretend it's leather. Luxury can be more than one thing. Let's celebrate that it's different Like. Does it have to perform as well as leather? Hell yeah, but can it be different than leather? Absolutely, and that was a really important learning that I've seen a lot of brands who are embracing sustainability now are trying to learn. I think in the past it was let's just swap it in and not tell people about it, and now it's no, let's call it something different. Let's show you how it's made. Let's celebrate its uniqueness, one of the unforeseen things we learned through our Doc Martens collaboration and our collaboration with coaches.

Speaker 1:

Our material just like takes very well to printing and embroidery even better than leather we never like really anticipate and it's lighter weight. So there's certain design opportunities that are opened up because the material is different that designers are excited about and want to run with, and it's those styles that are leading with. This is new and this is innovation and this is different, and that this opens up design possibilities. Oh, and guess what? It also happens to be sustainable. That is the unlock we found in exciting younger generations who are very much aligned with values around sustainability, but still want something new, different, special and innovative. And so today, what we've launched, todd and I launched at CES, is a material that we call New Gen, which will now be an outer material for coach bags and that is going to be hit stores in the fall of 2025. So just around the corner, and it will be different than leather. It has a name that's different from leather it's new gen, it's a new generation of material.

Speaker 2:

And it's proprietary to Coach slash you. Yes, yes exactly, but as.

Speaker 1:

Todd says I mean Todd will say it and he said obviously we want a head start. But this, we hope the industry adopts and embraces this new material because it's so exciting. It enables us to really make a dent on climate change and really kind of find solutions. For, you know, decarbonization as it relates to the leather industry. For you know, decarbonization as it relates to the leather industry, but Coach is a leather legacy brand. They're not moving away from leather, they're just supplementing their portfolio with materials that they feel, you know, appeal to younger generations of you know, very eco-conscious customers who are just open to embracing new things.

Speaker 2:

I mean, obviously I love this and I'm snitting with this and what it is and what it represents, and I'm not surprised that Coach was the pioneer of this. Yeah, it's very interesting because obviously, like people say, you know nobody's shopping, retail is dead, but retail is just different. People are shopping differently. Shopping retail is dead, but retail is just different. People are shopping differently To the point we had discussed earlier. The number one bag you can find at any thrift store or vintage shop is an old coach bag, because that baseball mitt leather will last a lifetime, almost to Coach's detriment, that they would render themselves no one needing a new bag, and I know they're going back to their archives in terms of silhouettes and so forth. I think this is really exciting to see how this is being integrated into the brand, into the handbag world, especially with Coach, and I love that there will be a new material Just to confirm because you said so, new gen is for Coach only, or other people will then theoretically have access to new gen.

Speaker 1:

Well, you know new gen and the name and, like the material that we co-created for Coach, obviously is exclusive to Coach for a period of time, but we are working with other partners and other brands on collaborating with them to create recycled leather solutions for their own leather goods and accessories and footwear applications. So we make recycled leather. The version of our recycled leather that we collaborated on with Coach is for Coach, but there are other versions of that recycled leather that we collaborated on with Coach is for Coach, but there are other versions of that recycled leather that we collaborate on with other brand partners.

Speaker 2:

Can I ask you a stupid question. Once people purchase this, the raw materials, they are the ones who then dye it or stamp on it or embroider it. You don't do anything. You supply the material off, you go.

Speaker 1:

No, it actually depends. So, like in the case of Doc Martens, we actually finish the material in-house. We have finishing capabilities because, as I'm sure you can imagine, in transportation we've had to finish all of those materials. But we also have kind of collaborated with tanneries and other channel partners in the ecosystem who might have expertise in different finishing capabilities, and we found that that's. You know, we are fiber science, circular materials experts.

Speaker 1:

We are not finishing experts in the way that you know tanneries, who've been doing this kind of work for decades, are. So you know, we are very open to partnerships to be able to kind of, you know, go and experiment with all different types of finishing capabilities. But we do have the capability in-house as well. So what's really cool is we really do own like our full supply chain and it's all based in the UK, which is, in today's world, you know, a great competitive benefit that we probably never foresaw. But we also are open to having partners finish our material as well. It's almost like we ship the hide, if you will, the recycled hide that can be finished and processed in the same way that a leather hide can.

Speaker 2:

This is so interesting, real quick, is this one of these things? Things, though, and we had spoken about it, with other brands reaching out and saying, okay, we want to develop something specific to us or this is our brand's DNA. I assume that's part of what your marketing strategy is to make this democratizing this material per se, to make it available for people who want to try. And you know like it's very interesting if you talk to people who know, or think they know, because PU or PVC, polyvinyl chloride and everybody calls it vegan leather, and anybody who deals with leather knows there's nothing really vegan about it. It's chemically made, it's plastic, it is plastic, and, over time, you know, the raw materials of whatever's left either must be burned or it goes into a landfill or it becomes corroded and you know whatever gases, blah, blah, blah, come from that and I applaud obviously what Regen is doing.

Speaker 2:

I just have one more question in terms of have you received any pushback leather out of like oranges, apples, potatoes, mushrooms and prickly pear and I'd say banana skins I'm not really sure it's like a fruit salad and obviously the fronds of the pineapple, and anybody who thinks they can make a product exclusively with that is completely misinformed, because you will need a glue, you will need something interior. There must be something to hold that bag together.

Speaker 1:

And.

Speaker 2:

I have found that a lot of people are kind of moving away from those unique materials because it's cute, but it's just not enough to move the needle to develop a collection that's sustainable truly sustainable.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and as now putting my investor hat on, you know that was something we were seeing, I think.

Speaker 1:

Even if you look back two years ago, there was an explosion of vegan, plant-based leather alternatives hitting the market with a lot of exciting potential. Unfortunately, a number of those startups and technologies shut down because of an inability to scale. That doesn't mean that that space doesn't hold a ton of potential and promise as it continues to become more kind of price and performance, competitive right or an off shoe was because it was too expensive and it fell apart, or it just wasn't able to, kind of, you know, meet the performance expectations of the customer or the brand itself. And that's where that whole price performance planet equation is, you know, super important. I think another big learning is, you know, and one that we've really, I think, successfully demonstrated with this Coachtopia to Coach collaboration, is brands, particularly leather brands. Like they do things a very specific way. They're steeped in heritage and this is how you create product and get it to market. When you introduce innovation, something new, it's very disruptive to the season over season process of designing and manufacturing product in the market. So, you know, I think, the fact that at Coach we had this Coachtopia incubation model, where we started with a liner right, we didn't start with the outer.

Speaker 1:

In some cases, we work with brands who are interested in like, okay, let's start with trim or let's start with this component of a shoe, right? So it's like we get to know each other. We're working together, you know, we're testing something, and then that allows brands to have the confidence to once they've recognized that the material stands up and can be competitive and can be embraced by consumers, which we're really excited to have seen happen now with Coachtopia and with Doc Martens. All right, now we're ready to go full steam ahead, right? So, doc Martens, we started with three styles. Now we're on our fourth season with them and every season has grown exponentially, and so I think it's like there's a start small and work together, get outside your normal development cycle, embrace and having buy-in and sponsorship from the top, like you're seeing Todd, captain Todd on stage and talk about this and why it's important and meaningful for the future of the business and the brand. Right, you need that if this goes. You know you really need that kind of that buy-in and support.

Speaker 1:

And I think the last ingredient has been we opened our factory doors to these partners and they opened the doors of their factories. We worked shoulder to shoulder with them on getting the material right Like I said, we're the fiber science transportation product and evolve it to have the hand feel and the body and the suppleness of a luxury leather good. That was like the what I call kind of like the last mile innovation that had to happen before this could actually go into the marketplace. If we had just passed our material over the fence to Coach, it would have never gotten to the point where it is. So it's true partnership that really unlocks innovation in the sustainable materials category, but it's hard, it's hard to do, it's outside of the typical design cycle, but it can be done and now we have a blueprint for doing it and we're bringing that to other brands because you know, they see this success story of Coach and they want to embrace that for themselves.

Speaker 2:

I mean, this is such a similar story to how Lucite made it to handbags, but not the same, because Lucite became like a little bit toxic, a little bit, a little bit heavy the whole thing. But if you look at any Lucite bag, it's still around because it came from leftover materials from World War II. Go figure, Wow, I know Everything's circular. Exactly, Elise. Thank you so much for joining us today. How can we find you? Follow you? Get more information about this product?

Speaker 1:

Sure, yeah, just visit jenphoenixcom. You can reach out to me on LinkedIn under Elise Weiner, but we're really excited to speak with brands who are, you know, looking for sustainable alternatives and excited about the scale and the performance and the price capabilities of GenPhoenix. And thank you, emily, for the time. It's a pleasure, as always, speaking with you and, yeah, I hope you have a great rest of the day.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I'm a super fan, thank you. Thank you, and yeah, I hope you have a great rest of the day. Yeah, I'm a super fan, thank you. Thank you, bye. Thanks for listening. Don't forget to rate and review, and follow us on every single platform at Handbag Designer. Thanks so much. See you next time.

People on this episode

Head Shot

Emily Blumenthal

Host