Luxury-apparel etailer Net-a-Porter is entering the Chinese
market with the acquisition of Shouke.com, a Hong Kong-based
fashion website. The site will become a Chinese-language of
Net-a-Porter’s outlet arm The Outnet, trading as
TheOutnet.cn.
Part of its phased launch into Asia throughout 2012 and 2013, the
acquisition of Shouke sees the eCommerce platform’s founders Paul
Teague, Adrienne Ma, and Richard Chen join the core Net-a-Porter
leadership team in the region. The next step in Net-a-Porter’s
strategy will be the opening of a Hong Kong distribution centre
to better serve customers in the Asia-Pacific region. On opening
the distribution centre-the company’s third site-Net-a-Porter
will facilitate same-day delivery for customers in Hong
Kong.
Commenting, chief executive Mark Sebba said in a statement,
“Asia-Pacific is a core market for the Net-a-Porter Group.
As a global business, we have been retailing to customers in the
region and have built a strong customer base since launch in
2000. Like many businesses in the luxury sector, we have seen
huge growth in recent years. Our service offering remains key and
the opening of our third distribution centre brings us one step
closer to achieving our goal to deliver the best fashion
overnight to our customer wherever she or he may be in the
world.”
For the time being, Net-a-Porter will continue to fulfil from the
UK. Ultimately, it plans to ship products to mainland China from
the Hong Kong distribution centre and offer a simplified
Chinese-language website in due course.
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