A Portuguese shoe designer saw that the best fashion boutiques in Paris, Milan and Tokyo could not reach shoppers outside their own streets. José Neves built Farfetch to give them all one shop window. The boutiques kept their stock. Farfetch took the orders, handled the website, and earned a commission on every sale. By September 2018 luxury was finally moving online, and Farfetch came to New York to raise money for the shift.

Boutiques Without Borders

Neves founded Farfetch in 2007 and launched the site in 2008, with offices in London and engineers in Portugal. The bet was that a marketplace would beat a store. Farfetch held almost no inventory of its own. It connected small boutiques and big brands to shoppers in nearly every country, and charged them a cut. As luxury houses grew more comfortable online, Farfetch also sold them its technology to run their own sites.

From $28 to a Rescue

Farfetch priced at $20 a share on September 20, 2018, above its range, and raised $885 million. It opened on the New York Stock Exchange as FTCH and closed its first day at $28.45, up 42 percent. Big acquisitions and steady losses followed. By late 2023 the company was running out of cash. South Korea's Coupang stepped in with a $500 million rescue, and Farfetch's shares left the NYSE in early 2024.

Cover: The Milliner, Renée Vert, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for a milliner in her shop (boutique fashion).