Farfetch: Post-Mortem

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Thank you for clarifying. Pre-pandemic, what was the largest source of supply to the marketplace? If you had to categorize it into different types of sources, we can discuss which ones were more important later, but just to understand how you viewed it.

Pre-pandemic, it's useful to break this down a bit more. In 2016 and 2017, most of the supply came from multi-brand partners or boutiques. Around that time, I can't specify exactly when, but brands started to grow. There was a very intentional decision by José and the commercial team to really expand the share of brands. Over the years, that share continued to grow. With the acquisition of New Guards Group (NGG) in 2019, which I guess was during the pandemic, there was also a huge commitment to growing the 1P stock from Browns.

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Yes, of course. In the end, we'll never know. So, the brands became a bigger part of the supply around 2016 or 2017. How would Farfetch typically work with a brand? I've heard stories of opening something for weekends or a full e-concession like with Kering. But in the beginning, how would a typical brand supply partnership work?

The bargaining power was much greater with brands. The conversations were more challenging, and more resources had to be allocated to serve those brands, both commercially and operationally. The commissions were significantly lower as well. In the end, concessions essentially allow those brands to connect multiple stop points to work through a single channel with Farfetch.

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Let's say I work with Gucci on an e-concession. Obviously, Gucci would accept a lower commission. I understand that, and you need more people to keep them satisfied. But what else would they ask of you? Would that mean restrictions on the boutique Gucci inventory you could show or how you would present it on the website? How would working directly with Gucci differ from working through a boutique?

From a sourcing perspective, commissions with brands were much lower than boutiques. However, their demands for a working relationship with us placed a huge burden on boutiques and impacted their performance. Essentially, there were two major drivers. One was what we call geopricing. Prices were set by the brands, and we tried to follow them. For example, in Europe, things tend to be cheaper than in Asia. So, if we were selling from a stock point in Europe to Asia, we would have to price it according to the price defined for Asia. This was not because it would give us a huge competitive advantage price-wise. We kind of survived that one, which was pre-pandemic, and it was fine, I guess.

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