How Natalie Massenet built Net-A-Porter by seeing five minutes into the future

Executive overview

Most retail buyers stocked shelves based on what sold last season, while fashion magazines were showing consumers things they could never buy. Natalie Massenet saw that gap in 1999 and built Net-A-Porter to close it — a shoppable fashion magazine delivered to your door.

The core challenge was not the idea but the execution: convincing luxury brands to trust a dial-up modem, building an e-commerce platform from scratch before Shopify existed, and surviving the dot-com crash.

The entrepreneur's edge is not a one-time prediction — it's a continuous scouting process that requires acting before the rest of the market catches up.

Spotting the opportunity

• Fashion magazines showed consumers items that were never available to buy ("stylist's own")
• Retail buyers stocked backward-looking inventory; brands were forward-looking
• The internet in 1999 was slow, unglamorous, and untrusted — especially for luxury goods
• Natalie framed Net-A-Porter as a "shoppable fashion magazine," not a futuristic tech platform
• Using familiar framing reduced resistance from both luxury brands and early customers

Building from zero

• Raised £10,000 each from 30 personal contacts; ran operations from her London flat
• Had to build the entire e-commerce platform from scratch — no Shopify, no plug-ins
• Convinced Tamara Mellon (Jimmy Choo) early; each brand that joined was a proof point
• Launched June 10, 2000 — days before the dot-com bubble burst
• Survived the crash by outlasting competitors; became profitable in 2004

The strategic investor mistake

• Took early investment from Richemont (luxury goods holding company) without proper legal review
• The contract gave Richemont first right of refusal on any acquisition offer
• In 2010, a competing buyer emerged; Richemont matched the offer and took majority control
• In 2015, Natalie proposed merging with Farfetch — Richemont instead sold to Yoox
• Natalie left six months after the sale; lesson: never give strategics first right of refusal

Staying ahead as the company scaled

• After profitable growth, Net-A-Porter kept innovating rather than defending the status quo
• Created The Outnet (outlet mall) after 2008 luxury spending decline
• Launched Mr. Porter in 2011 to capture rising men's online fashion spending
• Pushed the company toward mobile when internal teams resisted — echoing the same arguments department stores had once made against Net-A-Porter itself
• Built early infrastructure for shoppable social media; pitched Instagram's Kevin Systrom on making the platform shoppable — he declined

After Net-A-Porter

• Joined Farfetch as co-chair in 2017, backing the decentralised inventory model she had championed
• Co-founded Imaginary Ventures with investor Nick Brown (Warby Parker, Glossier)
• Focus: e-commerce brands led by diverse, next-generation founders
• Thesis: back new leaders, not experts in old ideas