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The future of fashion is made-to-order, according to Farfetch CEO José Neves

On the heels of his company’s recent IPO, Farfetch CEO José Neves talks about personalizing fashion, the industry’s problem with waste, and the unexpected benefits of a global recession.

The future of fashion is made-to-order, according to Farfetch CEO José Neves

[Photo: James Hartley]

BY Amy Farley6 minute read

In September, a decade after he began knitting together an online marketplace for independent boutiques across the globe, Farfetch founder and CEO José Neves took the company public. It’s now worth more than $7 billion and encompasses the original platform (which sells items from more than 980 stores and brands), white-label e-commerce services for designers such as Thom Browne and Derek Lam, and even physical retail.

Fast Company: You launched Farfetch two weeks after Lehman Brothers collapsed in 2008. What was it like to debut a company that championed luxury fashion at such a moment?

José Neves: Starting a company is already scary. Starting a company in the middle of a financial storm was terrifying. There was this fear of Armageddon in the [fashion] industry. And here we were trying to start a very ambitious project: to create a platform for boutiques and brands. But there was also collateral beauty in the financial crisis. I’d been a shoe designer since the age of 22, and I knew the industry moved very slowly. I had wondered how open people were going to be to the internet—to a new concept and to [Farfetch’s online] marketplace model. [During the crisis] people were very open to new [sales] channels, new opportunities. There was less to lose.

FC: There are growing concerns today that we may be heading into another financial crisis. Do you have any lessons from 2008 for navigating that?

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Amy Farley is the executive editor at Fast Company, where she edits and writes features on a wide range of topics including technology, music, sports, retail, and the intersection of business and culture. She also helps direct the magazine’s annual Most Innovative Companies franchise More


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