Exceptional

Browns in South Molton Street, London
When we were in front of brands that didn’t have a website,
we could see that developing an e-commerce presence was
going to be vital for their survival.”
Neves realized that many luxury fashion boutiques
didn’t have the necessary resources and know–how to
set up a global e-commerce site. Armed with that insight,
he set about building the best possible platform for the
world’s best independent retailers.
The pitch to boutiques was simple: we will build the
front end and the underlying e-commerce infrastructure;
you add your brand inventory to our site to help Farfetch
achieve critical mass and become the leading global
destination for luxury fashion brands.
It was a great idea, but convincing exclusive boutique
retailers to join an online marketplace was Neves’ biggest
challenge. In 2007, with eBay and Amazon defining what it
was to sell online, why would Alexander McQueen — a label
that charged US$3,000 for a dress — want to be featured
alongside other brands on
a mass-market website?
“That was the big
barrier to entry,” Neves
recalls. “Those brands
didn’t see these platforms
as compatible with luxury.
It’s a little like asking:
‘Would you have a Prada
concession inside a Tesco
supermarket?’
“For them, the fear
was about their brand
being used incorrectly.
In our initial discussions,
they all used the same
rationale: we want to see
our brand represented
next to similar brands, at
similar price points, and
we want the audience
of these websites to be
our audience or even
Browns: an
experiment in retail
Last year saw another major milestone
in the Farfetch story when it announced
the acquisition of iconic London boutique
Browns. Neves said the deal was an attempt
to answer the question: how will people shop
for luxury fashion in 5 or 10 years’ time?
“It won’t be purely online,” he explained.
“The answer, we believe, will be a seamless
merger of a fantastic physical experience
with powerful yet subtle technology. Browns
is the perfect partner for this evolution.”
Browns is itself an entrepreneurial
success story. Joan and Sidney Burstein
launched it in 1970 as a small boutique
in South Molton Street, and as it grew,
it expanded through five connecting
townhouses. Browns developed a reputation
for discovering talented designers including
Alexander McQueen and John Galliano,
and was the first London boutique to stock
brands such as Calvin Klein and Armani.
Farfetch is using Browns to run a retail
experiment that may provide answers to
some tricky questions. “Look at consumer
analytics,” Neves says. “At the moment,
we have no visibility of what is going on in
the store. How many customers came in?
Were they women or men? What was the
sentiment when they came in and when
they left? What about customers who
started the journey online and then bought
in store, or the other way round?”
Farfetch is deploying its technological
expertise to address these questions, as
well as designing new in-store features.
“We will now synthesize all of these and use
Browns as our showcase,” Neves explains.
Exceptional February–June 2016
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