AT last I have a well-dressed fan. “Oh, I loved your book on entrepreneurs,”
purrs Natalie Massenet. “I used to read bits in bed to my husband and say
‘look, that’s us’. It’s so great to meet you.”
Massenet, 41, elegant founder of the Net-a-porter.com shopping website,
positively beams with admiration and goodwill. That, you swiftly discover,
is her default mode. In a fashion world notorious for its bitchy backbiting,
she is determined to be – in her own words – both ambitious and nice. “It’s
our mission statement here,” she says. And I think she means it.
It has certainly worked for her so far. Her business – set up seven years ago
as a designer womenswear etailer – is doubling in size each year and claims
to be the world’s first truly global luxury fashion retailer.
Though hardly huge – £37m sales, 290 employees in London and New York – its
clever mix of online editorial and expensive items to buy has got a lot of
people interested. Two years ago it moved into profit and since then
Massenet, a former fashion stylist, has reportedly turned down many millions
of pounds in offers for the firm. It is now one of the fastest-growing
private companies in Britain – ranked No 42 in the recent Sunday Times Fast
Track 100.
Offers from whom? Luxury-goods groups, big retailers, other etailers, venture
capitalists? “All of the above,” she grins. “I can’t reveal names. We have
been approached by a lot of people, but we are on such a high growth
trajectory that . . .”
She pouts. Los Angeles-born but brought up partly in Paris, Massenet mixes
Anglo-Saxon drive and Gallic style to powerful effect. Dark and slim, she
has an American accent and an elfin beauty, and it all helps, especially
when her business’s success depends on a global view of what makes women
look good each season.
Perhaps most remarkably, her vision for Net-a-porter – part-magazine, part
shopping site – has been realised without treading on the toes of those
vested interests that dominate the fashion industry, from global luxury
brands with their own retail outlets to media owners who might see her as a
rival.
Quite the reverse. Many have actively promoted Net-a-porter, and Net-a-porter
promotes them back, sticking to recommended retail prices and liberally
quoting the fashion media. From the outside, it looks like a big group hug.
Massenet wrinkles her nose. “We are about an edited choice and we want to be a
trusted partner,” she says. “And since day one we have probably been the
first online experience for many big fashion brands.”
On Net-a-porter, those brands include high-end names like Chloe, Jimmy Choo
and Marc Jacobs as well as a clutch of up-and-coming designers that Massenet
champions.
Items are swiftly delivered in swanky black packaging. Returns are just as
swiftly processed. The growing realisation that this efficiency has ensnared
a global clique of wealthy consumers – “the hedge-fund guys’ wives”, as one
associate jokes – means that Massenet, married to a hedge-fund manager
herself, has been swiftly elevated to front-row status at catwalk shows.
“We have 100,000 active customers,” says Massenet, sitting in Net-a-porter’s
offices above Whiteleys shopping centre in west London. “And 1m unique users
read the content two or three times a month. That’s up from 500,000 last
September.”
And let’s not forget the husbands and boyfriends who get e-mails from the
firm. “We call it the ‘Tell Santa’ service,” laughs Massenet. “You click on
the dress or shoes you want, and we e-mail your husband saying we know she
wants this. And you know,” she adds mischievously, “buying your wife patent
leather Christian Louboutin shoes will get you enormous doses of
appreciation.”
She laughs flirtatiously and suddenly the meeting room feels warm. Old friends
say you shouldn’t underestimate Massenet’s power to persuade. “Natalie’s
very driven, very focused, extremely hard-working, with real determination
to make her business work,” says Jo Allison, PR director at Chanel UK.
That persuasiveness, and her long-stand-ing contacts in the industry, helped
get the designers on board to launch Net-a-porter. But the key to the site’s
success, says its users, is that Massenet’s team takes the struggle out of
choosing what’s hot, and what’s not.
They also know how to present the clothes attractively on a web page. “What
people miss is that it takes journalistic discipline as well as a buyer’s
eye,” says Tyler Brulé, editor-in-chief of Monocle magazine and founder of
Wallpaper. “People who come from bricks-and-mortar businesses haven’t been
so successful.”
Massenet has presentation in the genes. Her mother was a British-born Chanel
model, her father an American journalist-turned-movie publicist. Born
Natalie Rooney – she uses her husband’s surname – she was brought up an only
child in Paris, then at 11 followed her father back to Los Angeles when her
parents split up. Like many only children from broken homes, she became
adept at building relationships to compensate – “I have sisters who are
amazing women friends” – and at recreating the bonds she missed. Massenet
frequently refers to her workforce as her family.
After college, she worked for the movie producer John Hughes, then at Women’s
Wear Daily in New York and Tatler in London before growing disenchanted with
the cutthroat environment of magazine journalism. She had noted, however,
that there was a “disconnect” between people seeing the latest designs in
glossies and finding them in the stores. “We’d get calls saying we can’t get
them. I thought, wouldn’t it be great if there was a link between impulse
and getting it delivered to your door?”
But running the business after launch was something of a high-wire act. She
told a magazine last year that she started with a group of friends who have
now left. “Mixing friendship with work was a painful lesson.” She won’t talk
about it now – that group-hug vibe is too strong, perhaps, to dwell on any
difficulties.
And since getting its initial stock on sale-or-return, Net-a-porter has had to
buy goods in advance – a capital-intensive process that meant Massenet had
to refinance the firm with new backing every year until it became
profitable.
So far it has worked but it has left her with just a 17% stake. “Friends,
family and management” hold another 15%, with two other significant
investors holding 28% each – Bay-winds, a Venezuelan firm, and Richemont,
the owner of Cartier, Dunhill and Montblanc. About 40 private backers make
up the rest.
And no plans for a float yet? No, she smiles. She can finance all the
expansion she needs. And as her French husband works for hedge-fund firm
Gottex, we can presume she gets good advice.
Last year that expansion included a new depot outside New York so Net-a-porter
could guarantee same-day delivery in Man-hattan. Another depot in the Far
East should follow. Massenet wants more editorial product, too, including a
quarterly diary-style magazine sent to regular buyers, and more technology:
films and videos.
Beyond that, she is cagey. Will she start taking advertising? “We’re
considering all kinds of things,” she says.
Will she launch other shopping sites? “We’ve registered Petit-a-porter.com and
Net-a-beaute.com.”
And a men’s fashion site? No, she says. She has enough to do selling to women.
But the competition is hotting up and others think she will soon be made an
offer she can’t refuse – if not by Richemont, then by Gucci-owner PPR, Louis
Vuitton’s LVMH or an American store group such as Barneys.
But what kind of price do you put on a profitable dotcom like Net-a-porter?
£10m? £100m? “That’s a bit low,” she says, flashing another Audrey Hepburn
smile. “After all, we have a relationship with the best demographic of
female consumers available online.”
So she has thought about it? “There’s always a price but in terms of what it
needs to become and deliver, we have only just started.”
Should we mention the fact she has also had two babies since launching the
busi-ness? No, enough. She copes by prioritising, she says, and by being an
optimist.
“My Dad raised me with the belief never to be afraid of what’s on the other
side of the mountain.” She pauses and adds that her father, now dead, is her
“publicist in the sky”. Looking down, he must be pretty pleased.
NATALIE MASSENET’S WORKING DAY
THE Net-a-porter founder wakes at her home in Notting Hill at 7am. “Or earlier
if my 14-month-old daughter Ava has anything to do with it,” says Natalie
Massenet. She breakfasts with Ava and older daughter Isabella and husband
Arnaud, “listening to annoying French news radio”.
After dropping the children at school, she is at her desk in Net-a-porter’s
open-plan office above Whiteleys in Bayswater by 9am. “I check daily sales,
and the biggest sellers, then there is a barrage of calls and meetings.” She
lunches at her desk and works until 7pm. “I do as little socialising as
possible in the evening so I can see the children before bed.”
VITAL STATISTICS
Born:May 13, 1965
Marital status:married, with two children
School:St Bernard high school, Playa del Rey, Los Angeles
University:UCLA
First job:selling men’s clothes in the Beverly Center, Los Angeles
Salary package:undisclosed
Homes:Notting Hill and Paris
Car:black LPG Smart Car
Favourite book:The Great Gatsby, by F Scott Fitzgerald
Favourite music:Led Zeppelin, Aerosmith
Favourite film:When Harry Met Sally
Favourite gadget:Apple Macbook Pro
Last holiday:Greece
DOWNTIME
“MY best form of relaxation is obsessively looking for country houses on
Primelocation.com,” says Natalie Massenet. “I know every house for sale in
Wiltshire and Somerset. In fact, if there’s anyone out there . . .” She also
reads the property glossies: Elle Decor, House & Garden, World of
Interiors. “It’s my sanctuary, my escape and my porn.”
Otherwise she likes entertaining at home with friends, and shopping online,
and watching American Idol and X Factor on television. “I love shows where
people win things and biographies where people become successful. It’s a big
running theme in my life.”
