EXCLUSIVE: Farfetch Reboots Under Coupang, With a Focus on Customers and the Marketplace

Yahoo

03-04-2025

LONDON — After a near-death experience at the end of 2023, Farfetch has been coming back to life under new owners Coupang with a customer-first strategy, a renewed focus on the marketplace model and a determination to hang onto its retail businesses Browns and Stadium Goods.
After months of stock market drama and questionable decisions by founder José Neves that eventually led to the company's collapse, the narrative is now one of sustainable growth.
More from WWD
Modes Enters Business Restructuring Mode, CEO Exits Role
Coupang Says Farfetch Turnaround Is Taking Root
Three Graffiti Artists Take Legal Action Against Vivienne Westwood and Farfetch
A little more than a year after Coupang purchased Farfetch out of administration, it has managed to resuscitate the once-ailing business at a difficult time for online luxury retail.
As reported, Farfetch achieved revenues of $1.7 billion in 2024, while losses narrowed to $34 million. In February, Coupang said the company was on a 'positive trajectory,' and turned a profit in the fourth quarter.
That compares with 2022, the last full year that Farfetch reported financials, when revenues were $2.3 billion and losses hit $98.7 million.
'We worked really hard over the last 12 to 15 months to stabilize the business financially, and we're in a great place. We are seeing green shoots,' said Stephen Eggleston, chief commercial officer of Farfetch, in an exclusive interview — the first since Coupang took over the business.
'And what makes me really proud is the way we went about achieving profitability. The focus has been on disciplined investment. We have prioritized the most important parts of the business, and made sure that every dollar we're spending is driving a beneficial customer experience, loyalty and retention,' he added.
Eggleston said that with gross merchandise value of $2.6 billion, Farfetch is the largest online luxury platform worldwide, and growing at pace. It is seeing double-digit growth in the U.S., its single-largest market, and Eggleston believes there is a long runway ahead.
'We're just at the start of the journey of driving this business forward,' said Eggleston, who joined Farfetch in 2016 from Qubit, which creates personalization tools for e-commerce companies. He is one of very few managers who has worked both with Neves, and the team at Coupang.
Coupang, a publicly listed Fortune 200 company with e-commerce operations and support services in markets including South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, China and India, has been taking a soft-touch approach to Farfetch, which operates independently and has its own management organization.
Coupang is also taking taking a very different approach than Neves, who stepped down as chief executive officer more than a year ago to head his namesake foundation, Fundação José Neves, based in Portugal.
Neves was all about growing Farfetch through acquisitions, building third-party websites and consulting on digital strategy for brands including Chanel and Harvey Nichols.
All of those strategies took Neves farther away from the original no-inventory, marketplace model he created for small boutiques around the world to reach an international, luxury-hungry customer.
Some would argue that Neves' buccaneering approach was suited to the times. For many of the 15 years he built Farfetch, luxury multibrand e-commerce was booming, while investors wanted to see growth — and weren't too worried about profitability.
Farfetch, which Neves launched in 2008, delivered that growth, becoming one of the U.K.'s few unicorns with a $1 billion-plus valuation which, as the years passed, hit $24 billion. But all that unraveled in the final quarter of 2023, leaving Neves, and his remaining investors, out of pocket.
In all that time, Farfetch never turned a profit, and spent most of its years hemorrhaging money.
Farfetch also fell victim to certain events beyond its control including Russian sanctions, China's long road out of lockdown, and spiraling inflation and interest rates.
Neves and some of his former managers are still in the midst of legal wrangling. Former investors, long-term bond holders and the company's liquidators Alvarez & Marsal are trying to understand how the business collapsed so quickly, and why it was sold to Coupang for $500 million in rescue funding.
Eggleston, who has been with Farfetch for eight years and whose background is in software development and e-commerce tech, has been helping Coupang write a new chapter for the company.
As part of those efforts he's been focused on the marketplace, which generates the majority of sales, and which has proven resilient despite the slowdown in luxury demand.
'We thought about what the mission was, and why we exist, and it's very much about going back to our roots, and to the marketplace,' Eggleston said.
He believes the marketplace model allows for 'freedom of fashion expression through boundless choice. Every piece of customer research we've ever done says our customer, whether they're top-tier or entry level, loves choice.'
Eggleston argued that customers click on Farfetch to find everything from the season's bestseller 'to pieces they can't find anywhere else. That's the purpose of Farfetch, and that's why we're really excited about reinvigorating customer choice, self-expression — and discovery.'
The Farfetch marketplace is now home to 1,500 brands, boutiques and department stores, and the latest brand campaign reflects the diversity of the offer. Set in Los Angeles, it features American singer Kelela, actor and filmmaker Luca Fersko and a cast of characters who all have a different approach to dressing.
Although Kering and Richemont pulled their brands off Farfetch after the Coupang sale, other luxury names including Prada, Brunello Cucinelli, Giorgio Armani, Valentino, Ralph Lauren, Jenny Packham and Erdem chose to stay.
Packham, who specializes in occasion, evening and bridal wear and whose clients include the Princess of Wales, Kate Winslet, Emily Blunt and Adele, said her relationship with Farfetch 'has continued to grow, and the change in ownership has not affected our successful partnership. We appreciate their global outreach, and [our] ability to curate the collection independently,' Packham said.
Some Kering brands, such as Balenciaga, Saint Laurent and Gucci, are available to buy pre-owned, or new through various boutiques on the Farfetch platform, or through its resale or concierge services.
Eggleston said the site has sourced and sold 50 Hermès bags already this year, while one client turned to Farfetch to help him order 100 pairs of made-to-order shoes.
Just like its competitor Mytheresa, which had GMV of 913.6 million euros in fiscal 2024, Farfetch generates a large slice of its revenue from a small percentage of EICs, or extremely important customers.
That EIC cohort has become ever more precious as aspirational shoppers continue to pull back on spending. Farfetch has been wooing them with dinners, special events and dedicated personal shoppers, who scour the international markets for rare, or custom-made pieces.
Farfetch has held parties and events for those high-spending clients with brands including Dolce & Gabbana, Brunello Cucinelli and Ralph Lauren during key seasonal moments such as Milan's Salone del Mobile and at the Cannes Film Festival.
They are certainly spending — and not just on fashion. The Farfetch marketplace, which stocks brands including Richard Mille, Audemars Piguet and Rolex, has sold 20 watches, each costing more than $100,000, so far this year.
In a few weeks' time, Farfetch will have to fight harder for those EICs after Mytheresa completes its planned acquisition of Yoox Net-a-porter.
Mytheresa's CEO Michael Kliger has said his aim is to create a 4 billion-euro online juggernaut with Mytheresa, Net-a-porter and Mr Porter operating under separate shopfronts. The discount businesses Yoox and The Outnet will be run separately.
As part of its comeback efforts, Farfetch has been polishing the machinery of the business as well, slashing clearance and markdown activity, and extending its free returns policy to 30 days.
It is also keeping a lid on costs and allowing brands and stores to supply images of their merchandise to the site. In the old days brands sent merchandise to be photographed in the U.K. and Portugal, where Farfetch had built state-of-the-art studios.
Although the marketplace is the star of the show, Eggleston said Browns, Stadium Goods and the resale service remain important parts of the business.
'Physical retail is a really important tool we can use to engage our top tier of customers,' he said, referring to Browns in London, which opened a high-tech store on Brook Street in Mayfair in 2021.
Browns was one of the first stand-alone businesses that Neves purchased. It was meant to fuse digital and physical retail and be a hub for personal shopping and immersive experiences. It also has a bar and courtyard restaurant called 123V Browns that serves plant-based sushi from the chef Alexis Gauthier.
Farfetch is backing Stadium Goods, too. 'Every tier of customer — and especially our top tier of customer and our collectors — are really going after incredible sneakers that are only available via businesses like Stadium Goods,' Eggleston said.
'It has been a really powerful contributor to our business and is absolutely something we'll continue to focus on to drive our marketplace business forward,' he added.
The resale business remains an important pillar as well, especially for the EICs.
In 2021 Farfetch acquired the resale platform Luxclusif, which helped it turbocharge the sale of pre-owned products across a variety of categories including eyewear, kids, watches and jewelry.
'Resale helps drive circularity and plays a really important part in helping us access incredible product. The category performed really well for us over the last year, and we continue to see great results. We are making sure that business continues to thrive,' he said.
New Guards Group, parent of European and U.S. contemporary brands that Neves acquired in 2019, is a different story.
The NGG acquisition was troublesome from the get-go, with analysts and industry-watchers asking why the Farfetch marketplace, which didn't hold inventory, wanted to become a brand owner with warehouses full of stock.
The answer was that Farfetch, which was quoted on the Nasdaq, was under pressure to show growth, quarter-after-quarter, and the acquisition of NGG was one way of getting there.
Last year, NGG, which was also the licensee of Off-White, sought Chapter 11-style bankruptcy protection in Italy two weeks after losing the license to distribute Reebok footwear and apparel in Europe.
Although NGG is still home to brands including Marcelo Burlon County of Milan, Unravel Project, Heron Preston, Peggy Gou, Ambush and There Was One, other brands such as Palm Angels and Alanui have been repurchased by their founders, or outside investors.
As Farfetch writes its new chapter there are opportunities galore, but big challenges remain as well. One of them is Kering, which pulled its brands off Farfetch in 2024, shortly after the sale to Coupang. At the time it described Farfetch as 'a small player for Kering, and not a strategic partner.'
Eggleston would like to see Kering return. 'We built a big, high-quality business together, which I am really proud of. I can't say why they exited, but I am 100 percent confident that Farfetch is stronger when it partners with the Kering brands,' and vice versa, Eggleston said.
'I would love for us to rekindle that partnership, although I know Kering is going through its own period of change. But Farfetch is here, with the door wide open, ready to welcome them back as soon as they are ready. Hopefully that will be soon. In the meantime, I'll continue to knock on their door,' he said.
It's doubtful that Richemont, which was poised to sell Yoox Net-a-porter to Farfetch and to work closely with the Farfetch white label service, will ever return. It cut all its ties immediately after the company was sold to Coupang, and eventually agreed to sell YNAP to Mytheresa. The deal is set to close in the next few weeks.
The Trump tariffs, which were announced late Wednesday, also present a challenge given the importance of the U.S. market for Farfetch.
Eggleston said the company has been working to ensure there will be no hiccups in terms of the shopping experience, and the priority is to support the customer — no matter what happens.
'We've also been speaking to the brands a lot. We know they're going through their own decision-making about what tariffs will mean from a pricing perspective, and how they might change their pricing architecture to accommodate them,' he said.
Whatever the future brings, Eggleston said Coupang's focus will always be on serving the Farfetch customers, brands and retailers in the fast-moving — and often unpredictable — world of luxury e-commerce.
Best of WWD
Stella McCartney: Championing Ethical Fashion with Feminine Elegance [PHOTOS]
Abby Champion's Style Through the Years: From Runway Model to Red Carpet Fixture With Patrick Schwarzenegger [PHOTOS]
Prosthetics in Fashion: 25 Years of Transforming Beauty Standards on the Runway [PHOTOS]