Luxury e-commerce destination Net-a-Porter launched out of the London flat of founder Natalie Massenet in 2000, a time when few thought $1,000+ dresses and shoes could be sold online in any significant volume. It was the tail-end of the dot-com bubble, and Net-a-Porter survived its burst, turning a profit for the first time in 2004, and selling to Swiss luxury goods holding company Richemont at a value of $533 million in 2010.
Alison Loehnis (pictured above) is the managing director of Net-a-Porter's flagship site, Net-a-Porter.com. She has been an integral part of Net-a-Porter's growth, both before and in the years following Richemont's acquisition, joining the company as vice president of sales and marketing in 2007 from LVMH, where she served as global sales and marketing director for Thomas Pink. In the years since, Loehnis has supervised a range of customer and brand touchpoints at Net-a-Porter, including (per her description) marketing, PR, advertising and publishing, customer care, creative, content and sales. She's also had a leading hand in the launch of Net-a-Porter's men's site, Mr Porter, and its discount site, The Outnet. She was promoted to managing director of Net-a-Porter.com in January 2012.
We sat down with Loehnis at Net-a-Porter's Manhattan office last week to discuss Net-a-Porter's past, present and future projects â€" including its growing advertising business and plans to explore new categories beyond beauty. An edited transcript of our half-hour conversation is copied below.
You're operating in an increasingly competitive space â€" Moda Operandi and Amazon Fashion, among others, want to become the destination for luxury fashion retail online. How do you maintain your current lead?
The businesses you mention are doing a different thing for the most part. We've stayed very true to our DNA â€" we are essentially a fashion magazine that you can shop from. We're not just selling [our customer] product, we're showing her how she can wear it, giving her styling advice, providing customer care and express shipping no matter where [she is] in the world. We're focused on having the best buy out there, offering amazing collaborations with our brands, and making service paramount.
You're about to list your most expensive piece ever: a $50,000 Dolce & Gabanna dress. Was that an anomaly, or a general move into higher price points?
It was a dress we were bananas about. We went to Dolce show, and all of us had stars in our eyes. It was a sleeting gray day in Milan, we were ushered in, and it was a magnificent show. And this one dress stood out for everyone. It happens to cost what it costs. If something is incredibly special, if we've never seen something like it, we know there is a customer for it.
You have a nascent advertising business, running ads on your site and even in your apps.
Everyone think it's nascent, but we launched advertising almost five years ago, very slowly. We have an incredible amount of traffic and a very qualified audience. It's sort of a no-brainer to monetize our business in that way. We're very selective with the advertisers we work with, [to ensure] they are complimentary businesses. And there is, of course, a strict editorial/advertiser divide.
You added beauty to your offerings recently. What other categories would you like to explore, one day? Travel? Home?
We will explore kids. We've had petite-a-porter.com registered for some time. I get asked about home all the time â€" I'll just leave it out there, say, 'watch the space.' Travel, we're not looking into. But you never know.
We've seen a number of e-commerce-native retailers â€" Warby Parker, Baublebar, Fab â€" set up offline showrooms and stores to serve customers. Is this in Net-a-Porter's future?
We never say never to that question, or to most questions. But we have no plans for it. It's not our business. We are an e-commerce business. The road map of all the stuff we have ahead â€" it's all product proposition.
You recently expanded logistics operations in Hong Kong. What other international markets are you currently targeting for growth?
Reason behind the Hong Kong investment was to extend distribution to that part of that world. We have a great Australian business [and a] big Singaporean business. Now it's about bringing the service, making delivery times even quicker, getting product out there faster. We're seeing growth in many different markets of the world: [Asia-Pacific], U.S., Europe, Russia, Middle East.
What else are you doing, perhaps under the hood, to improve customer experience?
We're always refining the logistics side of our business. We've been global since day one, offered express service since day one, and we're taking that to the next level. We like to be where our customer is, both geographically and by device. When we first launched an iPhone app, it wasn't about just creating an app. We kept hearing from customers that new items were selling out when they weren't at their desks. We thought, 'What if we can bring store to her?' Now she can shop from the back of taxi, anywhere. We'll soon be offering same-day shipping to Hong Kong, and expanding our New York same-day shipping service outside of the five boroughs and parts of New Jersey.
What do you look for in a new hire?
Clearly we look for experience, and expertise. In terms of personality, what we look for enthusiastic, energetic people who are smart, who are funny, who are nice, and really, really passionate about the product. That product could be technology, that product could be distribution. But most important of all, they're passionate about the customer.
Image courtesy of Net-a-Porter
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