Will Farfetch Be The Next Overlord Of The Fashion Business?

The rising star Farfetch will be

Will the electricity supplier be the next leader?

According to the world clothing shoes and hats net, luxury fashion business platform.

A long term partnership with Kangtai Nash group has bought the group's flag.

The domain name and intellectual property rights of website Style.com.

Style.com ceased operation today and redirected to Farfech.com, and Jonathan Newhouse, chairman and chief executive officer of Kangtai Nash group, will join the Farfetch board.

This cooperation aims to combine the media resources owned by Style.com with the technologies owned by Farfetch and user resources, and the final result will be "seamless connection between editorial content and shopping experience".

The magazine of Kangtai Nash group will give priority to the products of Farfetch website, while Farfetch will provide Style.com users with 9 language choices, more than 500 brand products and 10 delivery services on the same day.

"We have always thought that text content is a natural part of any luxury shopping experience.

We associate consumers with the best brands and boutiques in the world, "said Jos e Neves, founder and chief executive of Farfetch.

|Style.com failure to enter the electricity supplier

In September 2015, Style.com ceased to update. The original content of the fashion show, street photo and lifestyle editor were all moved to Voguerunway.com. Style.com was pformed into a shopping guide platform, with the intention of providing users with a new shopping experience.

In September 2016, Style.com was launched in the UK as an e-commerce and multi-channel shopping platform. The website does not hold any inventory, and the contracted brands are self financing.

When the website was online, Style.com President Franck Zayan was optimistic about the future of the e-commerce platform, and plans to expand the website to Europe and the United States after being launched in the UK.

August 31, 2015 is the world's top fashion website style.com as the last update of media attributes.

But the pformation of Style.com has never been optimistic. Analysts have questioned how Kangtai Nash, who has little experience in the field of electricity, competes with luxury retailers, such as Net-a-Porter, and how to make the fashion editor of the website possess business thinking.

Many industry sources pointed out that Kangtai Nash group is a publisher rather than an online retailer.

After being launched in the UK, Style.com's us online time is postponed indefinitely.

Many important brands, including the brands of LVMH group, have not signed a contract with Style.com. They originally planned to sign 300 brands but actually had less than 100 brands.

Recently, LVMH group's self built 24S vres has increased its Style.com rival camp.

Yoox Net-a-porter.com, Matchesfashion.com, Farfetch, MyTheresa.com and other fashion retail business competition is entering the white hot, and began to try to add editorial content to the website to enhance communication with consumers. Yoox Net-a-porter.com already has its own The Edit.

Style.com's test of water in the electronic business field is not successful. From the current market environment, there is hardly any chance of success from scratch.

However, Kangtai Nash has invested $20 million in Farfetch in 2013, and has become an early investor of Farfetch with Advent Venture Partners, Index Ventures and E.ventures. Therefore, it has a deep relationship with Farfetch. It is also reasonable to abandon Style.com and turn to Farfetch.

Farfetch has been playing a lot of action recently, and is now challenging Yoox Net-a-Porter. It is becoming the most promising fashion retailer in the future.

No inventory of fashion business new retail Farfetch

Farfetch was founded in 2007 by Portuguese entrepreneur Jos e Neves. Since 1990s, Jos Neves has been actively involved in the development of fashion start-ups.

In order to make more small boutiques accessible to global consumers, the Farfetch website uses a special buyer shop mechanism to gather more than 400 buyers in more than 40 countries. The website gains profits from the double digit percentage of the paction amount, and the goods are sent from the third party retailers, while Farfetch does not keep its own stock.

This can significantly reduce management costs on the basis of maintaining buyer shop entities.

At present, Fartech website supports 9 language versions, and sells more than 1000 brands. It has offices in 11 cities including London, Tokyo and Losangeles, with more than 1200 employees.

The founder and CEOJos e Neves has been expanding the multi line business while operating the electronic business platform, and further developing itself into a technology provider after positioning Farfetch as an innovative fashion business.

On the basis of Farfetch website, Jos Neves expands the Farfetch Black&White business segment to provide key technology and business solutions for brands and retailers.

In this section, Farfetch is committed to building special services such as single brand e-commerce platform for brand customers.

Earlier, Farfetch and Manolo Blahnik jointly launched the latter's self built electronic business platform manoloblahnik.com, and also worked with the famous shoe shoe brand Nicholas Kirkwood to provide customized services for the brand classic Beya happy shoe slippers by digital technology.

In addition, Farfetch has always advocated the concept of full channel, advocating integration between online and offline. Part of the reason comes from the experience of Jos Neves herself who founded the entity buyer shop B Store early.

Respect for the entity stores also contributed to the Farfetch website's special mechanism based on entity buyer's shop. According to an article published by foreign media in 2013, "Farfetch emphasized its" entity foundation ", allowing independent retailers to maintain their identity and helping them improve their position in the market.

In May 2015, Farfetch announced the acquisition of Browns, a landmark retailer in London.

At present, Browns is independently run by Farfetch, and the newly appointed Browns CEO Holli Rogers took office in July 2015. Holli Rogers was once the fashion director of Net-a-Porter, a luxury retailer.

Jos e Neves believes that online and offline convergence is the inevitable trend of the market.

At present, the electricity market accounts for 15%, although the development speed from 0 to 15% has a great impact on the real economy, but analysts speculate that the electricity supplier will touch the ceiling when expanding to 25% or so, and the main consumer behavior of the future consumers will still take place in the physical store.

But the trend in the future is to make better use of online services for offline entities to achieve the "post full channel" and "enhanced retail" era. This view coincides with the "new retail" proposed by Alibaba.

Farfetch new business of "future store" announced in April this year

Based on the two concepts of the full channel concept and the technology provider, Farfetch began to prepare a new business named Store of the Future.

In April this year, "FarfetchOS Technology Fashion Festival", Farfetch officially launched the "future store" test version.

This "future store" is located in a brick wall built in the basement of London's ha Ni Ni, with the core operating system developed by Farfetch, and the advanced technology including hanger and smart racks.

Customers enter the store to log on to the Farfetch account. The built-in sensing device on clothing can track and track consumers' browsing records, automatically fill in the wish list, and check the merchandise inventory on the interactive screen of the fitting mirror.

After selecting the commodity, the consumer can open the fitting mirror to get the goods automatically delivered by the track.

Consumers do not need to queue up for payment, but can pay directly by mobile phone.

When consumers' browsing records are saved to the database, stores will further establish further contacts with consumers.

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At present, the "future store" technology at the testing stage will not only be realized in Farfetch's own store, but also be tested in the Thom Browne New York flagship store and its Browns boutique in the second half of this year, and it is expected to provide technical support for more luxury brands.

In a media interview, Jos e Neves said that "future stores" did not plan to embrace software and hardware, but developed an operating system similar to applications, and collaborate with hardware companies to produce smart fitting mirrors and other hardware.

Farfetch has independently developed several applications and is available for download at AppStore.

The "FarfetchOS Technology Fashion Festival" also unveiled the F90 project of Farfetch and Gucci. The project provides 90 minutes' arrival service after the order, which has been launched in 10 cities including Paris, London, Tokyo and New York to further improve the efficiency of logistics and provide consumers with more sophisticated shopping experience.

Despite the comments that the gimmick of the project is too large, the 90 minute express delivery of this highly efficient new service is a connivance to the current "impatient culture".

But there is no doubt that Farfetch is actively promoting the pformation of fashion business and fashion industry with the advantage of technological innovation and mode innovation.

Valuation 5 billion accelerate IPO

Jos e Neves said in an interview recently that IPO will be the next step for Farfetch.

Although no specific time was disclosed.

It is reported that the estimated value of Farfetch's public offering is $5 billion after 18 months.

If successful, Farfetch will become one of the most valuable start-up companies in the UK.

In July 2010, Farfetch received $4 million 500 thousand from Advent Venture Partners to help expand its business in Brazil, North America and Europe.

In March 2015, Farfetch's additional investment group led by DST further gained $86 million in business.

Early investors also invested in the E round, with a total investment of more than 195 million dollars, so that Farfetch went directly from a start-up to the 1 billion Unicorn business club.

Last May, Farfetch received $110 million F round of financing, Temasek, IDG Capital Partners and Eurazeo leading, Vitruvian Partners and IDG, valued at about $1 billion 500 million.

At present, in the ranking of Alexa, ComScore and SimilarWeb, Farfetch is the highest priced original luxury shopping website.

Although Farfetch is still not profitable, its sales in Farfetch in fiscal year 2016 exceeded $800 million, a sharp increase of 70% over the same period last year, and the growth rate in the fourth quarter was 75%.

The company expects to be profitable at the end of 2017.

Although Farfetch's biggest competitor, Yoox Net-a-Porter, still ranks first in the industry, according to its 2016 earnings report, group sales increased by 12.4% to 1 billion 871 million euros, but net profit plunged 36% to 34 million euros.

Farfetch's crazy growth rate will pose a direct threat to Yoox Net-a-Porter, and Farfetch's various innovations that may lead to new industry models will make Yoox Net-a-Porter at a disadvantage.

Today, Farfetch is working with publishing giant Kangtai Nash to strengthen its content competitiveness after its active initiatives in technology and channel.

This had to worry more about Yoox Net-a-Porter, which was originally combined with editorial content and shopping.

By the end of February this year, Net-a-Porter founder Natalie Massenet joined Farfetch, a non executive joint chairman, and added an important weight to the future potential of Farfetch.

Some analysts say that NatalieMassenet's joining Farfetch will help Farfetch speed up the IPO process.

In Net-a-Porter, executives are constantly jumping to Farfetch, including the former Net-a-Porter fashion director, the Holli Rogers, the chief executive of Browns, and Stephanie Phair who worked in Net-a-Porter. She is currently serving as Chief Strategic Officer of Farfetch.

Will Farfetch be the next overlord of fashion business? The answer is not clear yet, but the problem is exciting.

One thing is for sure, the future electricity market will be a fierce competition for the ultimate shopping experience.

More interesting reports, please pay attention to the world clothing shoes and hats net.