IF YOU’RE A white, middle-class (or above) woman born between 1970 and 1990, it’s likely you have a Vera Bradley bag in your closet.
The Fort Wayne–based brand of handbags and accessories was a fixture at upscale malls in the aughts and teens, and the quilted and patterned purses and totes were on arms at sorority houses, country clubs, and the dropoff and pickup lines at tony private schools across the Midwest and East Coast.
It’s just as likely that while you have a fond, nostalgic view of the company, you’re not seeking out a new Vera Bradley today. That’s not just speculation: The CEO of the publicly held company told shareholders in June that its sales were in a steady, downward slide. The same day, she announced she was departing the company after three years in the position, as did its chief financial officer. The losses were dire enough that they spurred a September class action lawsuit from shareholders who claimed the company had misled the investing public.
Allegations of Wall Street misconduct are a far cry from the company’s origins. It was 1975 when Patricia Miller moved to the Wildwood Park neighborhood of Fort Wayne, and, eager to meet her neighbors, knocked on the door of Barbara Bradley Baekgaard’s home. Baekgaard was in the middle of a wallpaper hanging project, and Miller lent a hand, a collaboration that developed into Up Your Wall, a home decor business. That begat a small clothing line the pair sold in small, intimate trunk shows—and while traveling for that business, the duo bemoaned the lack of appropriately feminine luggage and overnight bags.
This was 1982, when French textile company Pierre Deux and the French Provençal style of home decor was all the aspirational rage, so the pair invested in fabrics reminiscent of that company’s floral patterns and commissioned a seamstress to make some quilted travel bags. The prototypes generated enough interest that they started selling the bags, naming the company after Baekgaard’s mother and running it from her basement. Initially, the bags were made in local factories and sold in small boutiques and the Marshall Field’s department store chain. As demand increased, the company opened additional factories in the U.S., and Bradley-branded shops moved into malls from coast to coast.
In 2004, the company entered the world of online retail, opening its offerings up to anyone with a credit card and an internet connection. This new level of accessibility ushered in a Bradley boom. In 2010, the company went public under the stock symbol VRA. It was initially priced at $16 a share. The price shot up to $52.25 by May of 2011.
“I was Vera Bradley’s target audience at a key time for the brand,” says longtime customer Becky Duffett. Though born and raised on the West Coast, she attended a Connecticut boarding school, graduating in 2004. “I was the captain of the varsity equestrian team, and our staple brands were Ralph Lauren and J.Crew; but the paisley floral girls were into Lily Pulitzer dresses and Vera Bradley bags. That was the look, worn with printed belts from Vineyard Vines.”
It was the same when Duffett headed to Stanford University, where she graduated in 2008. “It was especially a hit with the Hamptons girls and the Southern girls,” Duffett says of her college classmates. “And the Texans really loved it, too.”
Carissa Newton, a marketing executive and business professor at the University of Indianapolis, got her first Bradley bag when she graduated from college. The 55-year-old has been a loyal customer over the years, even introducing her daughters to the brand when they were young.
“They had to have Vera Bradley backpacks for school,” she says. And when they joined the Zeta Tau Alpha women’s fraternity at Illinois State University, they even invested in a specific pattern associated with the house. “But I don’t know that Vera Bradley would be our first pick anymore.”
The company appears to be hustling to answer that query. A representative for Vera Bradley declined to provide comment for this report, saying the company has “changing resources” that made an interview out of the question. As of this story’s writing in October 2025, a new CEO had not been announced—instead, longtime Coach executive Ian Bickley continues as interim CEO, a role he’s occupied since June. Bickley provided the company’s latest earnings report in September, saying, “We are implementing a comprehensive strategy to revitalize our market position by leveraging our brand’s proven emotional connection with consumers.”
“We are in the early stages of making meaningful adjustments to our product design and assortment, driving innovation back into our core DNA and what made Vera Bradley successful,” he added. That day, the stock, which had opened at $2.49, closed at $2.10, which suggests shareholders were not particularly convinced.
In fact, some shareholders have been so skeptical of messages coming from the company’s C-suite that in September, they sued. In a complaint against the company, as well as now-departed CEO Jackie Ardrey and CFO Michael Schwindle, a class action group of stock owners claims the company “overstated the extent to which it was making improvements to its business” in a March message to shareholders. When Vera Bradley next reported earnings in June, the financial picture had not improved the way leaders had assured it would, the lawsuit says, which caused stock prices to drop precipitously. As a result, the complainants suffered significant losses, the suit claims. That case is currently winding its way through the Northern District of Indiana’s court system.
Newton says many of Vera Bradley’s struggles reflect a company that has stumbled as it tries to scale. “For the last few years, I think the strategy at Vera Bradley has been to keep throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks,” she says. “That’s part of the erratic nature of going public—suddenly, you’re not working to please customers. You’re working to please stockholders, and you have to get financial results.”
“They can’t do that and also keep being the Vera Bradley that we all knew.”
A turning point for the company was the decision to outsource production. The same year the company went public, “Made in China” tags started appearing in Vera Bradley bags; by the mid-2010s, the company had shuttered its U.S. factory. Those who follow the brand say a significant decline in quality followed.
Sara Baldwin, the founder of Indianapolis vintage shop Lux & Ivy, says she can tell instantly if a Vera Bradley bag she encounters was made before or after the company’s IPO. “The short answer is that if it’s still in good shape, it was probably made before 2010,” she says. “After that, things get rough. The fabric quality is different. So is the stitching.”
“Vera Bradley used to feel exclusive,” Newton says. “But now it’s at outlet malls. That was the wrong play.”
It’s also at Target and, for a time, Urban Outfitters—for which the company issued new bag shapes in some of its classic patterns. “They need to do more of that,” Baldwin says. “Keep one foot in what people loved, and take another step forward.”
Connersville-raised costume designer Daniel Lawson, who outfits actors on The Good Wife, The Good Fight, and Elsbeth, has used Vera Bradley bags for decades when outfitting attorney Elsbeth Tascioni, the totebag-laden lawyer played by 58-year-old Carrie Preston. “The colors are so incredible,” he says of Bradley’s design choices. “And it’s got so much moxie, the same way all the best women in the Midwest do.”
He was surprised when I told him the company seemed to be struggling to find its footing. “Well then, they need to focus on what made them Vera Bradley—these bags and those incredible patterns,” he says.
Newton agrees. Citing the company’s forays into licensing the Vera Bradley name for other products, the purchase and then sale of bracelet company Pura Vida, and the luxury hotel the company opened in Fort Wayne in 2021, she says the company’s more ambitious efforts hurt way more than they helped. “They just need to get back to basics if they want to survive.”
According to Baldwin, it’s easier than ever for a brand like Vera Bradley to transcend trends. “The cycle has gotten so fast now that it’s almost like there are no more fads,” she says. “People are hungry for legacy brands and classics.” In Baldwin’s mind, it’s Bradley’s game to lose—or win.
But if the company gets back to its roots of classic quality, customers like Duffett are ready. “If someone invited me to a weekend in the Hamptons tomorrow, I would 100-percent pull out my Vera Bradley, throw on an oversized Ralph Lauren Oxford, channel Ina Garten, and get on that plane.”
