In a sector where profitability is elusive and most players are slumping, Mytheresa has a winning hand.
“Four percent of our clients actually generate 40 percent of our business,” said Francis Belin, the new chief executive officer of Mytheresa. “They’re consistently the fastest-growing part of our business. This is where we generate the most growth.”
Belin is divulging Mytheresa’s secret sauce.
He emphasizes simplicity in the offering, customer-centricity and efforts to obsessively serve top-spending customers — the 4 percent of Mytheresa’s customers spending “north of four digits” annually.
“They’re most loyal to Mytheresa. There’s an emotional bond, and a commitment by us to always [provide] the best brands they want to shop, but with a limited assortment, just 250 brands,” he said. “Products must arrive on time. The attention to service is phenomenal, and with this all working well, we can add more experiences and more of an emotional dimension. We do amazing events cohosted by brands and by our team of personal shoppers around the world. We have a team of less than 100 and it’s a team we will continue to build and develop.
“The emotional relationship and the personal touch we bring to the conversation is absolutely crucial,” he said.
That relationship keeps customers engaged. On average, people have been shopping the website for seven-to-eight years, which executives say is considerable, partially because the website hasn’t been around as long as some others and isn’t as widely recognized in the U.S. and Middle East as it is in Europe. Susanne and Christoph Botschen founded the luxury website in 2006 as an extension of their Theresa luxury store in Munich, which opened in 1987.
Belin has been Mytheresa’s CEO for about six weeks, after serving as Christie’s president for the Asia-Pacific region, overseeing luxury and Asian art. He played a key role in securing some of the auction house’s most important collections and works of art, and in several important initiatives, including the acquisition of auto auction house Gooding & Co.
Prior to Christie’s, Belin worked at Swarovski where, among other accomplishments, he turned business around in Japan, added jewelry to the assortment and expanded the business in China from about 100 to 400 stores. He also worked at Richemont and started his career as a management consultant at McKinsey & Co.
“The first thing to do when you join a successful team is nothing,” Belin said. “You don’t come in the first week and say, ‘I want to change everything.’ That’s not right. That’s not what I’m expected to do and not what I have the intention to do. I see a very successful business with solid, capable teams. I have also started to see areas where we can continue to grow and focus our energy.
“Mytheresa is a developing story.”
He said Mytheresa can sustain its growth rate in the U.S., which has been in the 20 percent range for the past four or so years. The U.S., he said, could be Mytheresa’s largest market in three to five years.
In Europe, Mytheresa’s largest and most mature market, he said, “We can’t grow at the same pace as we do in the U.S. or Middle East, but we see opportunities to further extend our offering.”
Belin sees growth in the Middle East, off a base that’s smaller than in the U.S. Clients there have “great appetites” for Mytheresa’s luxury offering, he said.
In Asia, “We have to see what we can do. We have prioritized the U.S. over Asia, which is the right thing to do. But then the question is, ‘Do we have an opportunity to do more there?’ And my assumption is, possibly, yes.”
Category expansion is on the agenda, particularly in menswear, which accounts for about 10 percent of Mytheresa’s annual sales. Last year, the platform’s top line rose 8.9 percent to 916.1 million euros.
Fine jewelry, home and kids are also opportunities. “While our core is womenswear, there are other categories we can push and develop,” Belin said. “It’s all about the editing.”
Additional “money can’t buy” experiences are also on the agenda, particularly those enabling the VICs to get immersed in a brand story through access to designers, archives and dinners — from a private dinner with Aquazzura in Rome or a boat tour and pool party with Missoni in Ibiza. “These are very intimate and community-driven,” Belin said. “I attended a number of events with our clients. People make friends. They talk about their holidays or what they bought on Mytheresa. They just like to get together. That’s part of our DNA.” So are exclusive capsule collections and pre-launches, which the platform has done with Chloé, Missoni, Alaïa, Bottega Veneta, The Row and many others.
He said Mytheresa does use AI to make better use of data, optimize marketing investments and personalize the website, but cautions: “We will never be a tech company. I’ve joined a multibrand online retailer that is passionate about customers, loves the personal touch and uses technology to enhance this. That’s great. Using technology to replace [people] will be going completely against the DNA of Mytheresa.”
Belin said he decided to take the job when he saw he’d be jumping into an industry that was changing and consolidating, but with sustained demand for multibrand online shopping posing more opportunities for Mytheresa.
Fashion e-commerce players including Yoox Net-a-porter, Farfetch, MatchesFashion, Ssense, Saks.com, have been turning in lackluster to poor financial performances while Moda Operandi has recently been stabilizing. “Fundamentally, we’ve managed to make a successful business where a lot of others are trying to or have given up,” Belin said. Fashion websites and apps are typically “cluttered” with items, he said. “We simplify things. We don’t make things complicated. The less that we bring you is still the best you can get.”
Balin reports to Michael Kliger, CEO of LuxExperience, who was CEO of Mytheresa for 10 years until the business acquired Yoox Net-a-porter in April and Kliger became CEO of the combined enterprise. Operating under the umbrella of a larger business will enable Mytheresa to obtain better terms and rates with group-wide services such as payment, insurance and carriers.
Asked if he envisions management changes at Mytheresa, Belin replied: “There’s no need to do so. Michael has built a very strong team. He trusts the functional leaders we have, the buying team, the tech team, the marketing team and so on. And rather than pick someone to be the new CEO from one of these areas, I think he felt more comfortable picking someone who had nothing to do with it, which is me. I don’t have a background in fashion or e-commerce, but I do have understanding of what top customers want and how they behave and think. They’re looking for the best products and the best brands.”
Whenever competitors can’t offer the newest and best products right away, luxury clients won’t wait and will go where they can find them, Belin said. “It’s an opportunity for us in the U.S., where we still enjoy strong growth, but we have to work on our brand awareness and ability to be present. For a number of [competitors] in the U.S. it’s been quite difficult. It’s an opportunity for us to recruit new clients. It’s also an opportunity for existing clients to shift their share of wallet. With a lot of brands, we do pre-launches and exclusive capsule collections. So when people wake up in the morning and check Mytheresa, they often see we’re the first to have styles online — and that matters to them.”
Working at Christie’s and then Mytheresa is not a career stretch, Belin suggested. At Christie’s, he connected sellers with buyers for the best collectibles in the world across a range of categories. At Mytheresa, he’s connecting the best fashion brands with fashion buyers. In both cases, it’s been a matter of selling top clients. “From the perspective of coming into a multibrand fashion business online, it’s a captivating change for me, but I wouldn’t say it’s a stretch.” If there was ever was one, it happened before, when he sold $100 fashion jewelry at Swarovski then shifted to selling $100 million paintings in Asia for Christie’s. “Mytheresa is an interesting extension of what I’ve been dealing with in my past 25 years of corporate life. There are similarities.
“We serve clients who are not simply passionate about fashion,” he said. “We serve clients who come again and again to buy new things as the seasons change, as fashion changes, and it’s time to build their wardrobes. That’s key to what we do and who we are. Wardrobe builders come back to you more often than if you are just someone shopping for a handbag.”
