Farfetch
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| Industry | Internet |
|---|---|
| Founded | June 2007 |
| Headquarters | London, England |
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Key people
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Chief Executive & Founder: José Neves, CFO: Elliot Jordan, COO: Andrew Robb, Chief Marketing Officer: Stephanie Horton, CPO: Ephraim Luft, CTO: Cipriano Sousa, Chief Commercial Officer: Giorgio Belloli, Chief Growth Officer: Stephanie Phair |
| Products | Clothes, shoes, accessories, jewellery, designer |
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Number of employees
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1500 |
| Website | [1] |
Farfetch is a global luxury fashion online platform that sells products from over 700 boutiques and brands from around the world. The website was founded in 2007 by the Portuguese entrepreneur José Neves with its headquarters based in London.
The company operates bespoke, local-language websites and mobile apps for international markets in English, French, Japanese, Mandarin, Portuguese, Korean, German, Russian and Spanish. Farfetch offices are located in 11 cities globally and the business employs over 1,500 staff.
Farfetch was founded in 2007 by José Neves, a Portuguese entrepreneur who has been involved in the world of fashion start-ups since the mid-1990s, when he launched the shoe design business SWEAR. In 2001 he created B Store, a fashion licensing and wholesale company selling a niche range of up-and-coming designer labels in a physical boutique store. During a trip to Paris Fashion Week in 2007, when Neves was wholesaling for his B Store brand, the idea for a virtual boutique market-place came into fruition. A 2013 interview in The Daily Telegraph details the moment when Neves realised the need to give independent fashion boutiques an online retail presence: "Dozens of boutique owners had been through our doors and what they were saying was really sobering. Business was bad, they couldn't rely on local custom any more but they didn't have the experience to do e-tailing either. They had amazing taste levels but they were having to play it increasingly safe."
It was this reason that Neves decided to set up the Farfetch website, to enable small, independent boutiques to compete in the marketplace while retaining their 'bricks and mortar' stores and their own visual identity. A 2013 article in The Economist summarises this: "Farfetch emphasises its 'bricks and mortar roots," allowing independent retailers to "keep their identity, while boosting their position in the market."
Initially, the business secured $4.5 million in growth equity from Advent Venture Partners in July 2010 to help it expand its presence into Brazilian, North American and European markets.
A key milestone for the business was then reached in March 2015, when Farfetch gained a further US$86 million from an additional investment group led by DST. Former investors also contributed to this Series E funding round, which took the total investment pot to over US$195 million. Such investors included Advent Ventures Partners, Condé Nast International, Index Ventures, Novel TMT, eVentures and Vitruvian Partners.
Collectively, these additional investments resulted in the company being valued at US$1billion in March 2015. This led to the company being branded as a 'Unicorn' company by media commentators, which is a term used to denote highly promising start-up businesses.
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Wikipedia