Jose Neves, Founder and CEO, farfetch.com
LONDON, United Kingdom — Everyone now acknowledges the importance of online retail in fashion. But how does a small fashion boutique, with limited resources break into the e-commerce game? The costs of building and maintaining a top-quality site can be prohibitive, not to mention the operational challenge of managing deliveries and returns. What’s more, with everyone piling in to the fashion e-commerce game, there is so much product out there, on so many niche sites, that it can be tough for small retailers to attract traffic.
Enter farfetch.com, the brainchild of José Neves, a serial fashion entrepreneur who is also an owner of B-Store, Swear and SIX, a manufacturer and showroom for shoes by Opening Ceremony, Ksubi and Surface to Air. Through these myriad experiences, Neves identified an opportunity to support independent fashion boutiques and designers so that they can compete in the burgeoning online retail space with the same level of resources and customer service the big guns.
I caught up with José to learn more about the farfetch model and his plans to take the business model to the United States and Brazil.
