Farfetch boss hails US$397m tie- up with JD.com, says partnership will speed up luxury fashion portal’s growth in China
Chinese e-commerce giant seeking to move up quality chain and FarFetch, online middleman between customers and luxury brands looking for better China market access, announce strategic partnership
Other Chinese e-commerce companies have bought or invested in fashion e-tailers – Alibaba (which owns the South China Morning Post) led the way in 2015 when it invested US$100 million in China’s leading flash-sales fashion platform Mei.com, launched in 2009 by Thibault Villet. But the Farfetch-JD.com partnership is the first coming together on such a big scale of a Chinese e-commerce giant and a major Western luxury fashion e-tailer.
“We’re just scratching the surface of China’s US$80 billion luxury market,” says Jose Neves, Farfetch’s CEO and founder, by phone just after the announcement. “In China, there’s a huge movement from offline to online [shopping] and there are millions of new millennial luxury shoppers who live their lives digitally.”
Under the partnership, JD.com will leverage its financial resources, China logistics reach, technology and marketing capabilities to give impetus to the Farfetch platform. Unlike e-tailers such as Net-a-Porter and Shopbop, Farfetch doesn’t hold any stock itself but instead serves as a portal for customers to peruse the collections of brands around the world and order from them.