The Far Side Of Fashion

In a wide-ranging interview with Gulf Business, the founder, co-chairman and CEO of multibillion-dollar luxury e-retailer Farfetch, José Neves, reveals how the online giant is setting new rules for the sector, and why its next step is to break out of the digital realm.

- Varun Godinho

“FASHION exists because of two very human needs,” states José Neves – the founder, co-chairman and CEO of luxury e-commerce website Farfetch – when we meet at the company’s offices in Dubai Design District.

“One is the need to belong, and the other is to be unique. We want to be accepted by the community we live in, but then we also want to have those cool sneakers or handbag that will make us stand out. Fashion, therefore, is a part of human culture itself,” he explains.

And fashion is something the Portuguese national and British resident knows a thing or two about. Having started Farfetch in 2008, Neves has grown the online fashion platform to astronomic heights – boasting figures of 40 million unique visitors and 1.5 million active consumers across 150 countries.

The popularity and success of the website was put into stark relief when he listed the company on the New York Stock Exchange last year, selling 44.2 million shares, raising $885m, and enjoying a value of around $5.8bn – rising to $6.4bn when including employee share options. When the IPO took place in September, shares in Farfech surged by 53 per cent.

Neves’ positioning of fashion not as superfluous consumerism but something far more inextricable as a part of human culture itself, is clearly an idea that is winning.

Where it all began

Neves was born in Porto, Portugal, in 1974, and started programming computers when he was eight years old. The early 80s, as he explains, saw the rise of personal computers, and the epic battles between Steve Jobs and Bill Gates made a huge impression on him. He was certain he wanted to build his own tech business, but just what that tech business would entail wouldn’t become clear until much later.