Net-a-porter Doubles Down on Directional, Colorful Fashion for Spring – WWD

LONDON — Luxury retailer Net-a-porter has undergone a “brand rationalization,” according to market director Libby Page, who laid out the retailer’s strategy for spring 2024 on Wednesday.

The company is doubling down on brands that perform well and trimming those that don’t align with Net-a-porter’s goal of “curation and content” with a project titled New Luxury, where the company focuses on investing in luxury brands with sustainability and craftsmanship as the main pillars.

The first edition of New Luxury launched in September with the likes of Liberowe, Sasuphi and Veronica De Piante — they were all packaged and launched together with unique content created for each brand to help Net-a-porter’s customers understand why they were chosen.

The retailer’s EICs, or VIPs, make up 2 percent of the customer mix and account for 42 percent of sales. The EICs had a two-week preview of the collections before everyone else. Later, the data showed that for those three brands, 80 percent of the customer mix consisted of EICs.

For spring 2024, Net-a-porter has increased the collective buy for Liberowe, Sasuphi and Veronica De Piante by more than 150 percent.

In January, Róhe, St. Agni and Bettter will be added to the roster of New Luxury brands with Salon 1884 joining the lineup in February.

Net-a-porter is also expanding its offering of major luxury brands such as Gabriela Hearst, Burberry, JW Anderson and Loro Piana.

“Now we’re balancing this desire for new luxury with tried and trusted brands that our customer loves by bringing them new runway collections first through our early access initiative,” said Page, nodding to the new collections of Proenza Schouler, Valentino, Versace and Gucci, which will be delivered to customers one week ahead of any other retailers.

“We first launched this initiative in August with a phenomenal response. We offered our customers early access to six looks from Khaite’s runway collection and it drove an uplift of plus 437 percent in sales for the brand versus the previous week,” she added.

The four big pillars at Net-a-porter for spring 2024 are the themes of “the extraordinary everyday,” “chic sportif,” “primary palette” and “the new new romantics.”

Maximilian’s tailoring at Ferragamo has made an impression for the luxury retailer, which increased its buy by 25 percent versus last year. 

“Sales of flat shoes are up by nearly 20 percent versus last year,” said Page, adding that the search for Adidas Sambas have increased by 80 percent with multiple reorders taking place.

In the handbag category, the anti-gym bag takes precedence with tote, weekender and mesh bags, including Bottega Veneta’s luxurious basket bag retailing at more than 10,000 pounds and Balenciaga’s top-handle bag coming in at 3,300 pounds.

Searches for the color red increased by more than 70 percent as the retailer pivots from its all beige signature buys and heads into the color category with new shades such as cobalt blue, mustard yellow and green.

Since fashion month, searches for pastel dresses have increased by 125 percent; miniskirts by 50 percent, and brown miniskirts have surged 800 percent.