Frasers Group said to be mulling YNAP bid

Is Frasers Group lining up another surprise buy in luxury e-tail? Perhaps. It has reportedly approached the investment bank handling the sale of Richemont’s struggling online business Yoox Net-A-Porter (YNAP) with a view to buying it.

The ever-acquisitive UK retail group is said to have spoken to Goldman Sachs as it considers snapping up YNAP with Retail Week saying the pair are working on a non-disclosure agreement around the deal.

On Tuesday Richemont had reported another revenue fall for the YNAP unit that has been struggling for years. It had previously struck a deal with Farfetch to take it on before the latter’s own problems scuppered that prospect. It has been working on offloading it since then with the business still listed as a discontinued operation in its accounts. 

And while YNAP is a huge business in total that in better times would have been expected to fetch a hefty price, its long-running problems mean Richemont could be ready to sell the operation for a negligible price.

However, there are concerns that this could mean Frasers might take it on and shut down big chunks of the business that includes luxury outlet e-stores Yoox and The Outnet along with big-name in-season webstores Net-A-Porter and Mr Porter.

Frasers has a history of such an approach. It had acquired Matches for a little over £50 million late last year but three months later put it into administration and Matches has now closed for good.

The company also recently acquired Coggles from THG as part of a long-term partnership deal with the latter and it’s still unclear what the future might hold for the acquired operation.

But looking on the plus side, YNAP overall is a much bigger and more prominent business than Matches was and the THG link-up means Frasers has access to the advanced fulfilment technology that THG’s Ingenuity arm offers. YNAP would also come with some major behind-the-scenes tech.

Frasers already has a presence in outlet sales via its acquired MySale operation and an in-season business like Net-A-Porter is a key name in global luxury e-tail — much more so than Frasers’ own Flannels.com luxury operation.