Oh hey, remember a few months back when the Yoox + Net-a-Porter talks were in full force and ended in the deal that brought together two titans of industry in a very Voltron-esque merger? Well, The Cut went inside the next step for the new Net-a-Porter, which basically amounts to the company taking over the entire goddamn world.
At first glance, the marriage between the two online shopping giants is tough to digest and even make sense of. Yoox is an end of season sale discount galore, plus terrible product shot and styling beautiful storm, while Net-a-Porter is all about high-end presentation and a complete shopping experience, which includes creating its own content (i.e. Mr. Porter's The Journal). Both companies started at the same time, doing slightly different things and grew to become powerhouses, but now they're merging, with the deal expected to be finished in October. As the piece states, why would a luxury brand team up with a discounter? "Would Cartier merge with Swatch?" Now that's a fucking line for you to ponder.
Still, this look inside the soon to be empire is alarming and reminds me of the crazy atmosphere and power dynamics behind these huge corporations. It's cutthroat as hell, evidenced by the need to address whether Net-a-Porter founder and current chairman Natalie Massenet will stay on board. Meanwhile, I just get straight up fucking giddy when I hear that Net-a-Porter has a big board that shows what items are being bought and where they're going, noting that sales always spike at night, presumably when people are shitfaced. Obviously, I'm easily impressed by such things.
This is one of those industry events that we sort of brush off as business as usual. But with rumors that higher-ups wanted to form an even bigger shopping outlet on some real evil empire type shit, it really makes you think about where our goods are going to be coming from. And it's not that ludicrous to imagine that in the near future that's going to be all from a single place.
