Chanel is the latest luxury fashion house to have stuck a partnership deal with Farfetch, just a week after a deal was inked with Burberry.
According to Business of Fashion, the tie-up will see Chanel investing in Farfetch and using the London-based online retailer’s fledgling Augmented Retail programme to deploy its “operating system” for physical retail to enhance its boutique experience.
The French luxury house said that the deal does not mean they will start selling ready-to-wear and handbags online.
“We are not starting to sell Chanel on the Farfetch marketplace — I want to be very clear on that,” Chanel’s fashion president Bruno Pavlovsky said.
“Our position on ecommerce is the same. We want to connect our customers with our product and our boutiques are the best way to do so.
“We are very consistent in our strategy, but we are using Farfetch’s know-how to accelerate this.”
Farfetch founder and chief executive José Neves added: “The mission of Farfetch is to reinvent the luxury shopping experience online as well as offline.
“Fashion cannot be digitised like music. The physical experience is going to continue to be where the majority of the action takes place.”
The terms of the transaction between Farfetch and Chanel were not disclosed.
The deal is the latest in a series of recent moves by the Farfetch, which connects consumers from 190 countries with a network of over 700 boutiques and brands.
Last week, it announced a partnership with Burberry which will allow it to extend its products online to over 150 countries and making it the first time in the British label’s history that its entire global inventory would be available for purchase online.
Just days prior to that, reports emerged that Farfetch was reportedly preparing for a stock market float on the New York Stock Exchange with a valuation of $5 billion (£3.59 billion).
Farfetch has also announced partnerships with Chinese online retailer JD.com, Conde Nast’s Style.com, The Chalhoub Group in the Middle East, a 90-minute delivery service with Gucci, and a digital customisation service with Fendi.
Click here to sign up to Retail Gazette‘s free daily email newsletter
