Bernhard Willhelm ‘Karasaba’ Mini-Skirt | Source: Farfetch.com

LONDON, United Kingdom — Today, BoF can exclusively reveal that curated fashion marketplace Farfetch.com has raised a new $18 million round of funding from Index Ventures, eVenture Capital Partners and existing investors Advent Venture Partners, bringing the total amount of capital the company has raised to date to almost $25 million. The valuation of the company in this latest round was not disclosed.

Founded in 2008, the London-based Farfetch is an online marketplace for fashion that connects consumers with carefully selected product from a large global network of more than 100 independent boutiques.

“The online channel is growing tremendously, but it’s often difficult for small or even medium size businesses to create the teams and the platform to successfully reach a global online audience,” Farfetch founder José Neves told BoF. “I realised that the selection of these cutting-edge boutiques was really relevant to global fashionistas. You had boutiques such as RA in Antwerp stocking Meadham Kirchhoff, John Rocha or Rodarte which may have been sought by someone in Singapore or Sydney, but they were really constrained by geography.”

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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.

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