The Business of Fashion
Agenda-setting intelligence, analysis and advice for the global fashion community.
Richemont has agreed to sell its ailing e-commerce business Yoox Net-a-Porter (YNAP) to luxury online retailer Mytheresa, ending a years-long slog to offload the loss-making YNAP.
The luxury conglomerate has been searching for a new buyer for the division since a deal with Farfetch collapsed in the wake of the e-tailer’s bankruptcy-averting sale to Coupang at the end of last year.
Under the terms of the transaction, Richemont will transfer YNAP to Mytheresa with a cash position of €555 million ($603 million) and no financial debt. It will also provide YNAP with a €100 million revolving credit facility. Richemont will take a 33 percent stake in Mytheresa.
The transaction is expected to close in the first half of 2025, subject to regulatory approvals. It is not subject to approval by either company’s shareholders.
ADVERTISEMENT
The deal will create a luxury e-commerce business with combined sales of €3 billion, nearly tripling Mytheresa’s size overnight. In its 2024 fiscal year, the company reported €914 million in gross merchandise value (the total value of goods sold via its platform).
“This transaction creates one of the leading luxury platforms in the world in terms of scale and global reach,” Mytheresa CEO Michael Kliger said in a call with media Monday. The company aims to grow to a €4 billion business by 2029, Mytheresa CFO Martin Beer said on the call.
Mytheresa’s shares rose nearly 8 percent in early trading following the news, as investors appeared to buy into its vision to turn around YNAP’s struggling operations. Richemont’s shares also inched higher. The conglomerate expects the transaction to result in €1.3 billion writedown, adding to a tally that already amounts to billions of euros.
The deal is the latest consolidation play in a luxury e-commerce sector under pressure from high customer acquisition costs, major brands prioritising direct-to-consumer channels and a broad slowdown in demand for luxury goods. Last December, Farfetch was rescued from near bankruptcy, MatchesFashion was
acquired by retail giant Frasers Group which put the e-tailer into administration three months later.
Amid the upheaval, Mytheresa has emerged as a rare success story, delivering profitable growth it believes it can build on with its YNAP acquisition. The deal will create three luxury e-commerce storefronts for the combined group: Mytheresa, Net-a-Porter and Mr. Porter. In doing so, it will expand Mytheresa’s depth and reach, Kliger said, highlighting the complementarity of Mytheresa’s ultra-luxe positioning and Net-a-Porter’s more accessible range.
“Selfridges and Harrods are in the luxury industry, but in clearly differentiated positions,” said Kliger. “It’s the same for Mytheresa and Net-a-Porter.”
The deal will also give Mytheresa a more global footprint, expanding its reach in the key US and China markets where Net-a-Porter has stronger penetration and operates local distribution centres.
ADVERTISEMENT
After the deal completes, YNAP’s unprofitable off-price business will be separated out from the luxury brands and its white label business will be discontinued. Net-a-Porter and Mr. Porter, both of which Beer said are profitable, will be integrated onto Mytheresa’s newly-built proprietary tech platform, a move the company says will solve back-end problems that have plagued the businesses.
“We are one of very few, if not one of the only digital platforms that has been able to grow profitably, and we’ve done this on the basis of proprietary tools and tech infrastructure,” said Kliger. “We bring unique assets that no one had before in the attempts to restructure and re-energise the YNAP business.”
Additional reporting by Malique Morris.
