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Ecommerce giant Farfetch, founded in 2007 by José Neves as a virtual aggregator of physical boutiques based around the world, has signed a deal with the Korean Coupang Group that will pay half a billion dollars in emergency financing by taking over the business and assets of Farfetch holdings, which include Ngg-New guards group (Off-white c/o Virgil Abloh, Marcelo Burlon county of Milan, Palm Angels, Heron Preston, Alanui, Opening ceremony ), Farfetch platform solutions and the Browns British physical stores.
A direct consequence of this agreement – which for the London-based group is a literally life-saving deal – should be the cancellation of the acquisition of the majority share of the Ynap-Yoox Net-a-porter group from the Swiss conglomerate Richemont, announced last summer and by then remained “in the balance” given the economic conditions of Farfetch (which came close to being taken into receivership).
«Farfetch is a point of reference in the luxury landscape and has had the strength to demonstrate that online luxury is the future of luxury retail», declared Bom Kim, founder and CEO of Coupang. “Farfetch will rededicate itself to delivering high levels of experiences for the world‘s most exclusive brands, while pursuing steady, thoughtful growth as a privately held company. We also see huge opportunities to redefine the customer experience for luxury customers around the world,” said the entrepreneur.
The rumors preceding today’s news had spoken of José Neves engaged in the search for a “white knight” who could save his entrepreneurial creation, listed on the NYSE since September 2018 but which has lost more than 90% of its value since the listing and has reached a capitalization of 226.7 million dollars. Today it is confirmed with the note from Coupang, a company also listed in New York and active in food delivery, video streaming and digital payments.