Farfetch: Digital Transformation for Luxury Brands

Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 522-051. Farfetch, a global luxury technology platform and digital marketplace had been surfing the wave of digital transformation in the luxury fashion industry since 2008. While the company’s stock price and market valuation had fluctuated since its IPO in 2018, it had achieved profitability only recently. Now, CEO José Neves had to decide how to allocate company resources across the various business lines that had sprung up alongside Farfetch Marketplace, including Farfetch Platform Solutions (FPS), a modular set of e-commerce technology solutions and services for luxury retailers and brands, the Store of the Future initiative, a Luxury New Retail partnership with Alibaba and two of the largest luxury houses (Richemont and Kering), and investment in Farfetch’s own fashion brands. As the company expands into new business lines, it finds itself stewarding an increasingly complex and interdependent luxury ecosystem in which it could be perceived as both a collaborator and a potential competitor to its various constituents. How could Neves chart the best path to profitable growth while keeping everyone satisfied as competition heated up in the online and offline luxury retailscape?