Category Archives: The Fashion Business

The Fashion Business

The Zara Juggernaut – Australian Financial review

The Zara Juggernaut

AFR Magazine | April 2o11

by Marion Hume 

Spain’s remote corners are good at revolutions, from the gastrenomic one that began at a Catalonian country restaurant called El Bulli, to the fast-fashion phenomenon that sprang from the wilds of Galicia to conquer the malls of the world.

Given I have travelled across Europe to discuss a miracle, how fitting that the man I’ve come to meet is called Jesus. My pilgrimage has taken me to Spain’s North West, to Galicia, which is as far as you can go from the castanet cliche of the sun-backed south. For this is not the Costa del Sol, but the Costa del Muerte, the coast of death. At the very tip of the landmass, clinging like a barnacle to a rock and battered by sea spray, sits the little city of Coruna and just beyond it, along the rugged coast, Arteixo, a town of just 5,000 souls. Yet it is here that a global fashion phenomenon is headquartered.

If you track the markets, you may know of Inditex, which has experienced the kind of growth that makes you wish you could turn back time to the March 2001 IPO and scoop up some of the 40% equity floated on the Madrid Stock Exchange (60% remains with the founding family). Inditex, born in the late 1960s on an investment of just 30 euros (yes, E30, or 5,000 pesetas as it was in the old money) is now worth more than E 32 billion ($44 billion). So I’m looking forward to asking a man called Jesus Echevarria, the chief spokesman for the company, how that happened.

But first, I need to find him. The taxi arrives at a huge industrial estate. Sorry, what was that? Reception is across that courtyard, then down into the underground car park? When that turns out to be correct, the message is clear: no unannounced callers welcome here. Next, I take the lift up to reception, where a young woman in a headset greets me, then escorts me into a glass-sided lift. We rise up through blank, shiny floors that give no clue as to what happens here and then I wait alone in a boardroom, long enough to gaze out the window and realise that every 30 seconds, another huge truck pulls out from the loading bay down below and drives away.

“Hello! Sorry to keep you waiting. Coffee? I am Jesus,” says a man in a suit, bearing what is, in Spain, a relatively common name. He’s going to tell me more about a name that’s also pretty common, wherever you live in the world. If Inditex, which stands for Industria de Disena Textil might not mean much, have you ever heard of Zara? In the unlikely event you have not, brace yourself. The global fast fashion force is, at last, coming to Australia this month, a full decade after company scouts began arriving to study locations and logistics. The brand will open two stores, the first in Westfield Sydney with Melbourne to follow. “Thank God we won’t be a third world fashion country any more,” is how one Sydney fashion fanatic puts it.

Inditex is probably the biggest fashion company in the world; probably, because it depends on how you measure (there are mega retailers that sell lots of everything, including clothes, although this may not count as fashion). Inditex sells 700 million units per year globally. Within the empire, Zara is by far the most dominant brand (63.8%) and its sales for 2009 (the last full year available) were E7,077 millions. In 2005, Inditex overtook the Swedish fashion giant, Hennes & Mauritz (H&M); in 2008, it overtook the US one, Gap. Of the more than 5,000 stores Inditex has around the world about 1,700 of them are Zara boutiques. The parent company employs over 100,000 people belonging to more than 140 different nationalities.

The Zara name includes womenswear, menswear, children’s wear, homeware, accessories, perfume and now, zara.com. Yet the other Inditex brands are hardly tiddlers. These comprise Pull & Bear, Massimo Dutti, Bershka, Stradivarius, Oysho and Uterque, are names which don’t exactly trip off the tongue, but each does significant business around the world. Uterque for instance has some 80 stores in 16 countries. though heaven knows how people pronounce the names in any of them. In contrast, the name Zara works brilliantly because it is pronounced the same in every language bar one. (Ironically, that one is Spanish, where it is pronounced “Tha-ra”).

The choice of this convenient four letter word is however entirely accidental. Back in the ‘60s, the son of a railwayman called Amancio Ortega teamed up with his brother and his brother’s wife and started a business manufacturing shirts and nightwear (the best seller was a pink bathrobe for women). The wholesale business boomed and, in what would prove a turning point, Ortega realised that control, though at this time, not necessarily easy money- lay in owning stores in order to oversee the complete vertical process.

Had the company remained a manufacturer, it would doubtless be out of business today, as others have pulled production out of Spain in search of cheaper deals in Bulgaria, Romania and beyond. Instead, in 1975, Ortega opened a little shop in La Coruna  – it is still there today – and decided to call it Zorba, as in Zorba the Greek. But the owner of a nearby bar of the same name saw the signage go up he protested. Ortega agreed to change it but, because you need costly moulds to make three dimensional store front lettering, he needed a name which could be made in the moulds already cast. So they repeated the “a” and Zara was born.

You are not about to meet  Amancio Ortega, because the 75-year-old founder has never given an interview. Thus the 9th richest man in the world is far less known than those who sit above him on the Forbes rich list, such as the Mexican telecom titan, Carlos Slim Helu, Americans Bill Gates, Warren Buffet and Larry Ellison, the steel magnet Lakshmi Mittal and LVMH’s Bernard Arnault. Before the internet and camera phones, Amancio Ortega was never even knowingly photographed, but then a few pictures appeared online and now Inditex provides an official portrait. Apparently, there’s no mystery  about why this twice married father of three doesn’t speak in public, he just doesn’t chose to. He didn’t even show for the Inditex IPO.

Although it has just been announced that he will move aside at the shareholders’ meeting in July 2011 and the current second-in-command, Pablo Isla Alverez de Tajera, will become both chairman and Chief Executive, Isla is unlikely to be much more available. “He does speak twice a year, at the AGM and the shareholders’ meeting. But no, we don’t expect him to do more,” says Echevarria, who remains the only company voice. So what is the secret of success? ““Maybe because we are on the edge, not at a crossroads,” he says. “We are here alone, which allows us to concentrate. But there’s more.”

A silent CEO is just one of the many ways in which one of the world’s most dynamic fashion forces is different. This is a story of going zig when others go zag. Beyond the obscure location on the edge of the Atlantic, and the odd fact that Zara spends almost nothing on advertising (most fashion brands factor in  a minimum of 4% of turnover a year), nothing Zara actually does is done how others do it, to the point that the company became a subject of a Harvard Business School study which could be titled “Doing everything upside down.” (In fact it is called something so boring, such as “Inditex case study,” that I didn’t write it down).

Most fashion companies work like this; there are the designers. They design. There is a show. Meanwhile fabric is ordered for those designs, takes ages to arrive and then factories start to make the designs; the designs are advertised and the customer goes into the store to find them. At Zara, however, the customer goes into the store, sees a white jacket and says she’d prefer it in cream. If a couple more customers do that, two weeks’ later (perhaps less) there it is. The store is the centre piece and constant drops of new fashion to keep the customer coming back to see what’s new.

There is no Zara “style”, instead there a multiple styles, all of which disappear fast, so you won’t find everyone else wearing them. If a look doesn’t sell, it is pulled. There is , however, an innate Spanishness, which is to say, Spanish women, whether Castilian from Madrid or Catalunyan from Barcelona or Galician from Coruna, tend to have a proud bearing which they want flattered by tailoring; thus Zara’s jackets tend to be somewhat sexier, curvier of cut than others at these prices.

Because the vast geographical spread of the 5,000 Zara stores, a small production run is 30,000 pieces, leading to both economies of scale and the guarantee that hardly anyone you will ever bump into will have what you have. Stores order twice a week and the logistics that make that possible are astonishing (Think factory floors the size of way too many soccer pitches, full of clothing items flying around on tracks suspended from the ceiling and then ending up in specific cardboard boxes on which the store destination is already encoded. Those working in the warehouses move about by bicycle because the distances are so huge.)

As to why it has taken Zara so long to enter the Australian market, the company has been studying it for some time.  “For Australia, we had to be convinced we could give our excellent service to a customer in the Southern Hemisphere,” Echevarria says. “We have 250 womenswear designers specifically thinking of the Northern Hemisphere and then the others of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, where of course we have shared heritage and language (as for Brazil, Galego, the regional language of Galicia, has similarities with Portuguese). We knew we couldn’t do last season’s clothes later for Australia, so we have been sending the design teams many times so they know what will work and at the right moment. It has taken us a long time to be ready because we are Zara and we know people expect us to get it right.”

Fashion folk love Zara, for its style and its speed. (From factory to store in 48 hours and the aim is to do that even for Australia). For those of us who like to poke our noses into company CSR (corporate social responsibility), Zara and parent company Inditex are popular too.

More than 50% of its offering, comprising most of its fast-fashion pieces, are made in factories it owns in Spain meaning it can guard against the kind of scary labour practices that haunt fast fashion. But as with all fast fashion (not specifically Inditex), once offshore, things are harder to police, this compounded by shoppers having come to expect low prices. Generally, campaigners and trade unions are alarmed at the cost of workers of a decade of deflation in clothing prices. But all Inditex’s 1,237 contracted suppliers are governed by the company’s External Manufacturers and Workshops Code of Conduct and it has also forged strong partnerships with international union bodies.

As to its eco friendliness, the message at HQ is demonstrated by a vast wind turbine soaring overhead. Being fortuitously positioned in a place that is both windy and sunny means much of the energy needs can be generated on the spot. In addition, Echevarria in intent on showing me how energy that would otherwise leech out and be lost has been redirected into the steamers that iron every garment. He is especially proud of the battered state of the cardboard boxes packed with goods for stores all over the world. These are reused and reused before being eventually recycled, he tells me.

Commendably Zara has gone far with its store design. Not only does every store turn its lights off for Earth Day,  the latest opening, in Rome, aims to be the first ever fashion store to achieve the platinum standard certification, a seal of sustainable architecture that is one of the most demanding of its kind in the world. The company is working to make all stores eco efficient and older sites are being retrofitted. Echevarria is reluctant to let me take away a CSR report because it runs to 311 pages and this company hates to consume paper. Plastic bags are oxo biodegradable, meaning they break down to a small amount of biomass within two years, while traditional plastic bags take more than 400.

By studying the small print of  the 22 pages concerning Inditex and society, I learn that the company has made emergency gifts in the multimillions in response to the earthquakes in Haiti and Sumatra,  multiple gifts (of hundreds of thousands of Euro) to community and NGO projects in Cambodia, Morocco, Mali and beyond and that it builds some of its Spanish stores under its “for&from” project, which aims to make it possible for those with severe mental disabilities to join the workforce. So far, so good.

Where Zara does raise ire is when it comes to design, as in its appropriation of other people’s ideas. The model is only possible because both the design team and the customer is strongly inspired by the creation of others- who are neither acknowledged nor paid. While the likes of Topshop have overcome this criticism by supporting both London Fashion Week and British designers from deep pockets and H&M does high profile hi-lo collaborations with designers-most recently with Alber Elbaz of Lanvin- Zara does not.

Hussein Chalayan is just one originator who has seen the result of hours and hours of his labour hanging with a Zara label. Not that the fast fashion shopper, looking for something fabulous at a good price, cares a hoot. In the past, some designers actually used to be happy about Zara using their designs. Before the internet put every style on instant view, Inditex used to send teams around the world with a shopping spend that was legendary. I know of one French fashion label that used to factor in the Zara spend, not minding because Zara was mass and they were high end. Otherwise, designers have tended not to take on fast-fashion brands because altering a sleeve or changing a stripe tends to make clothing copyright cases notoriously difficult to prosecute. Not for nothing has Daniel Piette, then the fashion director of Louis Vuitton described Zara as *the most innovative and devastating retailer in the world”.

In February, Inditex brand Stradivarius was forced to U-turn after teenage style bloggers complained that images they had posted of themselves online had been reproduced rather too faithfully on the front of T-shirts. “It would have been no problem if they asked me,” one blogger told The Guardian. The article suggested that designers working in the vast studios at Inditex may be resorting to the internet to search out images of cool hipsters because of the pressure they are under to hit targets on the number of designs they produce each day. Zara alone is thought to produce some 40,000 designs a year.

While there’s a joke now that there’s a Zara opening somewhere every week, it was far from an overnight success. Ortega was 39 before he opened the first store, but after that it was as if he was making up for lost time. Stores opened at a heady pace, first in Spain, then Portugal. Location was always key – indeed the only Zara store not in a prime location is the first. The company launched itself in the US at a site bang opposite Bloomingdales on Lexington Avenue in 1989 and then on rue du Rivoli Paris in 1990.

The big question though- once Sydney and Melbourne are trading, once other sites across Australia are ear-marked for the Inditex brands as is also happening in South Africa- is where next.  There are already more than 150 Inditex stores in China. Central and South America are conquered and the company has posted its flag all over South East Asia. But once New Zealand gets Zara (no plans yet revealed) where else is left? Especially as the global shopper can go to zara.com?

The answer may well be hidden away in a secret bunker in one of the vast buildings at Arteixo. Echevarria escorts me past extra security and then we walk into a vast empty space, with a heavy industrial curtain to the rear. He pulls it back enough for us to pass through and there is a whole Inditex street, of fully kitted out stores, none like you have seen before,  including a whole new look for Zara women and Zara mens (think “more like Prada” and “more like Gucci” respectively).

But I suspect there is more. The night before my official meeting at Inditex, I have met up with an old friend who has connections deep inside the company. “There’s something completely new,” she tells me. So will the empire keep up the march, with another concept entirely. Tantalizingly, at the end of the secret Inditex street, there’s another curtain, but Echevarria steers me away. “We are thinking all the time of new concepts,” he says. But can’t he tell me more, given I have come all this, way? “We are always thinking,” he says, then adds “lunch?”. This being Spain, it’s past 3pm and I am, it has to be said, ravenously hungry. So Jesus and I head off for bread and fish and wine, Galician style. Whatever might be the next miracle, for now must stay  a secret.

Ethical Fashion, The Fashion Business

From waste to “want one” – Financial Times

From waste to ‘want one’
By Marion Hume

Can you be both glamorous and good? This was a constant refrain in the fashion world last year, as morality faced off against luxury, ethics against “it bags”. But while it is easy to ask the questions, it’s very hard to arrive at any answers.
What is ethical, anyway? Does it mean purchasing from marginalised communities keen to enter the fashion chain? But what about the carbon footprint? Perhaps it means that a percentage of production is done by those disadvantaged? But is that acceptable or cynical? Is it ethical to buy something that keeps artisans in work when a corrupt government is skimming a percentage off the top? To avoid that, should one shop local? But how far away is that? Help!

With such a swell of greenwash to wade through, it’s easier to buy nothing at all. Yet that’s not the answer either, as it could have a devastating effect on those to whom fashion represents one of the few possible entrees into the world of global trade, as well as on those working much closer to home.
And so, starting now,­ this is our new year resolution: we’re going to take a clear, balanced look at luxury fashion from an ethical standpoint and try to assess how it stacks up, product by product, month by month. No handbag will be perfect but some will be more perfect than others, some will involve acceptable trade-offs and many may surprise you. To begin with, some ground rules:
1. Whatever is featured must be desirable. “Pity purchasing” is pointless if garments end up in landfill, those who made them abandoned by backers.
2. We will analyse products using the “measuring sticks” of the Ethical Fashion Programme of the International Trade Centre (a joint body of the United Nations and the World Trade Organisation, for which I am a consultant) which focus on “People, Profit, Planet”, ie workers’ rights and impact on the environment.
3. The place where an item originates – which is not the same as the “made in” line on the label – does matter. Components often cross countries.
4. The key to ethical behaviour is transparency, but we understand that fashion thrives on the idea of magic and there is a compromise to be reached between the two.
Exhibit A: The Hermès “Petit h” collection, including a leather necklace (€760) secured with a Kelly bag fastening and sporting hooks fashioned from teapot and coffeepot spouts, and a leather deer.
The brainchild of Pascale Mussard, who, as a member of the Hermès family, is both among the richest women in France and a proud skinflint (even as a child, her catch phrase was “ne le jetez pas, cela peut toujours servir” or “don’t throw it out, it might be useful”), Petit h is an occasional collection (from €56) of UPOs (Unidentified Poetic Objects) made by company artisans using materials otherwise rejected in Hermès’ quest for perfection. The dumbbells, for example, are weighted by crystal with little bubbles that for tableware would be unacceptably flawed; the jewellery hangers are perfect porcelain spouts from teapots with some microscopic non-conformity; the jewellery itself is fashioned by a saddler from the leftovers on his bench; and the deer is from Birkin bag offcuts.
Because Hermès is careful to maximise all materials, there is little “waste” to play with, so Petit h collections are rare. The next, launched this spring, is destined for Japan only, so a few lucky Tokyo residents will be able to bask in the warm glow thrown by lamps fashioned from a stack of coffee cups rejected for their slightly wonky handles but brilliantly repurposed.

The Fashion Business

Net-a-squillian -AUSTRALIAN FINANCIAL REVIEW

NET-A-SQUILLION
Net-a-Porter. Natalie Massenet
The AFR magazine December 2010
by Marion Hume

Ten years into the life of the web’s most successful high- fashion salon, former journalist Natalie Massenet’s Net-a-Porter is fast growing and fabulous

Natalie Massenet makes me feel like an idiot. Not because this woman who changed the way we shop isn’t charming. And heavens, she’s chic in her teeny white shirt layered over a long T-shirt and leather leggings, rolled up today because cropped is so this season. No, the reason is because she was so right and I was so wrong. You want some numbers on that? How about 3 million unique users, 171 countries, 1,000 employees, annual sales topping more than £300 million and – here’s the zinger – the company was acquired by Richemont, the world’s second-largest luxury group, in a deal valuing Net-a-Porter at £350 million. And it was me who thought, “I hope she doesn’t give up the day job.”
Massenet used to be a fashion editor. One morning more than a decade ago we were standing in the aisle after a Paris show and she told me about her notion to sell designer fashion over the internet, which sounded nuts because, of course, women always want to handle and try on the clothes first, don’t they? But what makes my own lack of vision considerably easier to bear is that, back then, Massenet was only looking for my interest, not my investment. Imagine how idiotic those who passed on that opportunity felt in April when the Richemont deal went through. As to those who did see the light, some were to be found packing boxes the day after multiples of millions hit their bank accounts. It was a Saturday, but staffers showed up anyway to prepare for moving offices. Massenet, who pocketed £50 million, was busy vacuuming.
But it should be remembered that in the run-up to Net-a-Porter’s launch in 2000, the appeal of a vast selection of skilfully curated designer pieces, available for purchase 24/7, and arriving at your door tied with a bow, did not seem the no-brainer it does today. The internet’s promise of low operating costs and high profits seemed so tricky to translate to fashion back then. When Massenet launched with an £850,000 war chest raised from friends and private investors, better funded start-ups were crashing and burning around her.
She succeeded because she understood that it was about indulgence and that geek side was nothing more than a sideshow. Although she is recognised as one of the world’s leading internet entrepreneurs, her big idea was a simple wish – that the things she loved in magazines could pop off the page and into her wardrobe. The beauty is that Massenet has always insisted hers is a service business, a fashion business, hence, from day one, packages done up like a special gift are part of the transaction. (Customers are able to request a discreet brown paper bag instead, where verbiage on the inside reads, “Psst… Your shopping’s safe with us”).
Today that shopping can also be less expensive, following the launch, last year, of the Outnet, which sells past seasons’ designer fashions. From January, the first global menswear online retail destination, Mr Porter, opens its virtual doors. with labels including Burberry, Ralph Lauren, Gucci, Lanvin and John Lobb. Add to this new technologies that mean no shopper has even to sit at a desk any more. Net-a-Porter’s sophisticated iPhone app means you can shop as you go about your day. For the iPad, there’s the interactive online magazine, updated every week, in which every item is available to buy.
Before Massenet and I meet up to chat during Paris Fashion Week, I head to west London to check out the new offices (she’s not there, she’s already on the Eurostar). Somewhat ironically, these are located on the top floor of a Westfield mall, thus right above the bricks and mortar competition. To say Net-a-Porter’s 3,000 square metre London HQ is impressive is to underplay the wow factor. You enter through vast black lacquer doors, so you feel literally as if you are walking into one of the sumptuous black boxes that are the brand’s signature.
Peppered over acres of dark carpet are white leather sofas; then there’s a gigantic video screen projecting the latest from the catwalk. And that’s all before a cheery, “Hello!” from a receptionist seated behind a desk so bristling with awards – ‘One of 100 best companies to work for’, ‘UK’s Top Places for Women to Work’, ‘Entrepreneur of the Year Award’ – that you can hardly see past them to her.Behind another black-lacquered door, battalions of gorgeous young men and women called ‘visual merchandisers’ scurry around with armfuls of clothes as photographers (plural) snap scores of treasures on both static mannequins and living models. The scene is intensely fabulous. But not as fabulous as what’s around the corner, where everything opens out into a vast open-plan cathedral, lit by natural light from floor-to-ceiling windows and a brace of truly splendid Murano glass chandeliers. Hundreds of people sit on Eames office chairs at white desks, including the tech team, who sit up in the mezzanine area. It’s all so 21st century.
Everyone, of course, is at a computer and some might just be shopping – come payday, apparently, the office is stacked with black boxes containing this season’s must-haves from Chloe, Rick Owens, Marc Jacobs, or packages containing last season’s ‘chiconomic’ finds from the Outnet. “How people multitask, and whether people [should be] shopping [at] work, it would be hypocritical for me to say,” comments Massenet when we meet up. (She even furnished her weekend cottage entirely online).
“People are on Facebook, they’re on mobile phones, they’re Twittering and carrying on 20 different conversations at the same time, and they’re shopping, and they’re getting things delivered to the office. But they’re getting the job done. So as long as the results are there, how they [personally] manage their time is up to them.” No wonder Net-a-Porter wins all those ‘cool place to work’ awards and that the HR department receives thousands of unsolicited resumés every month.
When Net-a-Porter first launched, every time something was sold, someone jumped up and rang a bell. Today, the item, and the location of the customer flashes up on yet another big screen, the images changing constantly while the ticker running underneath, when I glanced at it, read £455,443. Since when? “That’s what’s been sold this morning,” I’m told, and it’s still before elevensies. “It gets impressive once New York wakes up.”
Natalie Massenet is 45. She was born in LA to a former Chanel model from Britain and an American journalist father to whom, she says, she owes her independent spirit. An only child, her parents split when she was 11 and, unusually, she was raised by her father. Data seems to be emerging to suggest entrepreneurs are often oldest children; often an only child, and the majority have witnessed their parents divorce. “I guess all those experiences have added up to make me the person that I am,” shrugs Massenet, “although, of course, I can’t tell you how I would have turned out differently.”
While Massenet’s young years included time spent in Paris and Madrid, where her father was a foreign correspondent, he scraped together the finance to send her to a smart private school in LA in her teens. There she witnessed how casually girls could spend and determined to be the architect of her own financial fortune. Her first summer job, before going to UCLA where she studied Japanese, was at a mens clothing store in the Beverly Centre, LA, where the other shop assistant was Lenny Kravitz.
After entering fashion journalism, Massenet moved to England for love, having met a French financier called Arnaud Massenet, who spent a decade building stock at Lehman Brothers only to see it disappear overnight when the firm went belly up in September 2008. The couple’s two daughters were born at the busiest possible times; Isabella, now 11, arrived during the first round of funding for Net-a-Porter, her gestation roughly equal to the time it took the geek-squad to prove that, technically, Massenet’s idea could work. Ava, who is now four, came along as the American launch was rolling out. When asked by other women for advice about setting up their own businesses, her prepared answer is this: “Find a husband who supports you; a perfect nanny and forget about any social life.”
By now we’ve found time to get together, just before the Valentino show, to talk business. So onward to the Outnet, which in just one year matched figures it took Net-a-Porter five to achieve. “It’s a different customer,” explains Massenet of a woman who wants, but perhaps cannot afford, this season’s designer clothes. “The Outnet is not saying ‘Come and get this stuff because it’s cheap’. We’re saying, ‘Come and get the most beautiful designer clothes from previous seasons that still have relevance’. We’re educating a new consumer who, instead of buying high-street knock-offs, can get the real thing at a quality that’s going to last.”
To expand its reach, the site recently hosted an anniversary sale where everything was £1 or $US1, “which was absolutely crazy. It was a meltdown all over the world with people posting themselves on YouTube and going into a panic.” The Outnet’s in-house fashion team scour the world for the coolest clothes at a price.
As for Mr Porter, what it won’t be when it launches in January is Net-a-Porter for men, because Massenet’s belief is that while women usually love to shop, men usually hate to. “Yet they want to look good; they want approval; they want their colleagues and friends to know they’re wearing the right things. But they don’t shout about it.” Massenet promises Mr Porter will be “a very private experience. And the fact that the internet is so systematised, and its functionality, speed and efficiency allow you to transact all over the world; it’s about service, and it involves a computer.” At this, she allows herself the faint smile of someone who knows it will be a sure-fire hit. As for the equivalent of Net-a-Porter’s black box and tissue paper? “You’ll have to wait.”
The deal with Richemont, whose especial strengths lie in menswear (Dunhill) and watches (Jaeger-LeCoultre, Cartier, Baume et Mercier, to name a few) may appear to give a nice synergy to the upcoming Mr Porter. But Massenet insists independence will be maintained. “If Dunhill were no longer interesting, we wouldn’t be carrying it,” she says boldly. But, on the distaff side, surely alignment with Richemont means that the other luxury giants, LVMH and Gucci Group, many of whose brands are sold on Net-a-Porter, are less than pleased? “We are enormous partners [with them],” she counters. “If anything, it strengthens our relationship as the business is growing; our audience is growing; our buying power is growing and they’re very happy to know that I’m not going anywhere.”
What is moving is fashion itself. Massenet senses an ‘end of an era’ moment, given, “the consumer is now watching all the shows; they’re just not being let in the front doors. It’s like Bastille Day; they’re going to come and burn down the gates and it’s really exciting. Retailers moan about consumers not going into shops. Well, invite them to the show and they’ll shop right then and there! Look at Burberry selling straight from the runway, as we started with McQueen, with Halston, with Roland Mouret.”
Where it is certainly going to get tougher is staying ahead of the game. When Massenet set out on her online journey, she was speaking a new language. Now, her four-year-old is learning how to spell on an iPad. “A website is to e-tailing what a bricks and mortar store was to retail 10 years ago. If we don’t diversify, we’re going to fall off a cliff,” Massenet acknowledges. “Our customer has already moved away from her desktop. She’s in the back of a cab, on her mobile phone. In a few years’ time, if she has some sort of holographic projection in her bedroom, that’s where we need to be.”
Massenet admits her personal challenge is to be fast enough, but not too fast. “I’ve learned to respect pace and do things beautifully and I realise that not everyone within an organisation wants to operate at the speed of light,” she says, before quickly changing tack. “We’ve got plans stacked up for the next 10 years. I’m thinking of five right now and one of those is an entirely new business.” For one terrifying moment, I think she’s going to tell me more. I’m relieved that she doesn’t for, to paraphrase Oscar Wilde, to fail to get one great idea may be regarded as a misfortune, to fail to get another – well, you’d have to be an idiot, wouldn’t you?