Fashion Farfetch Thriving, foreign media expose the gap to survive experience and tips

Fashion Electric Dealer is a beautiful and arduous business, individual fashion to show individuality shop and Web site because of the audience narrow and face growth bottlenecks, London's famous pioneer retail concept store LN-CC recently fell into bankruptcy dilemma is a vivid example. The Farfetch, which integrates the world's independent buying boutiques, is thriving, and the FT's report reveals their experience and knack for development.

Although Farfetch is a collection of high-end fashion boutiques around the world, but their employees are very simple to wear, a T-shirt, a washed jeans and a pair of sneakers is their most daily dress. Farfetch is in essence an internet company.

After nearly seven years of development, there are 300 of the world's fashion boutiques settled in Farfetch, the boutique located in all corners of the world from Sao Paulo to Italy Milan, their market scope has already extended to several major global markets, such as the United Kingdom, the U.S., Brazil, China and Australia and so on.

Farfetch's founder, Joséneves, was also a very random person, who felt much smaller than he was 39 years old, perhaps because he was dressed more in style, a white shirt, a pair of tight jeans and a design shoe, In fact, he said the clothes were purchased for the purpose of testing the service of the website. Neves said that he is a very rational consumer, his wife is also, will not be impulsive to buy some fashion items, and even if they are short of clothes, it is impossible for him to spend 2,000 dollars to buy a piece of clothing.

Fashion and internet concepts such as Farfetch are becoming increasingly popular in several fashion cities.

For example, Net-a-porter in 2000 on the main designer brand online retail concept, ASOS also use the same sales model for the mass market. And websites like EDITD are constantly tracking the most popular trends and stores and socializing fashion media.

In March 2013, FarFetch.com won a new round of 20 million dollars in investment, led by a group of the magazine's "Vogue" "GQ" and other magazines, such as the group's largest investment in electricity, front-wheel investors Index Ventures and Advent Venture There are also participants. So far, Farfetch has accumulated 44 million dollars in investment.

Farfetch 2013-Year sales revenue of 180 million pounds (about 300 million U.S. dollars), almost doubled sales revenue in 2012, entered the stage of rapid development.

Neves now flies to different parts of the world to meet new boutiques at least three times a month. The company is expanding so quickly that he cannot imagine, "We now have 380 employees, in London, Portugal, the United States and Brazil, and I always feel that there are only 80 people in the company but that's just my own guess." ”

Neves was born in Portugal's second-largest city, Porto, where the garment industry was particularly developed, and his friends and family were in this business, "my grandfather used to have a shoe factory, so I was influenced by my grandfather since I was a child." I am also very interested in computer, 8-Year-old will be programmed, my parents did not think they send a computer Christmas gift thought will let me play every day, instead of training my interest in computer knowledge. ”

Farfetch's idea appeared in the year 2007. Many of the offline boutiques are rarely advertised online, so why not set up a collection of sites that will allow these stores to be displayed? In the process, he also found his position, neither a pure online retail site like Net-a-porter nor a site like ebay, such as a bazaar, but a collection of these offline sites with physical stores.

"We are 0 in stock, and if we want to buy stock, we need to build a storage warehouse, which is for money," he said. And the purchase of new goods is also very risky. "Neves said.

Although Farfetch's office has extended from Porto to California's cerritos,neves, the reason for the company's success is that it occupies the European location. "Almost all of the fashion-creative electric business companies originate in Europe," he said. For example, Vente-privée and Net-a-porter in France, they are all pioneers in this field. Neves also praised the marketing of the Asos brand.

Farfetch's Next Web site program is to open Chinese, Japanese, and Russian websites. "London is a very global city with elites from all over the world and they have a lot of experience." ”

"90% of the company's employees are foreigners, which is very common in London, although in Europe, Berlin and Stockholm are also the most popular cities to start, but only in London to find more opportunities to contact investors and other networks to support." Although only 10% of sales now come from the European market, in the future I don't think Farfetch is a company with a stronghold everywhere. ”