Mobile is a "key" focus for Yoox Net-A-Porter, the boss of the newly combined group told CNBC, as it bets on an explosion in high-end customers buying luxury goods on their smartphones and tablets.
Federico Marchetti, CEO of the luxury online fashion retailer which sealed the deal on its merger Monday, said that mobile commerce will become an increasingly more important driver of sales.
"What we see in the future that this migration to the mobile. We started in 2006, working on…mobile at Yoox with a taskforce. Currently we see over half of our traffic is coming from mobile and we expect this growth will continue especially in the combined group," Marchetti told CNBC in an interview.
"So mobile will definitely be a key priority for us."
Yoox and Net-A-Porter announced the merger earlier this year and was finally completed on Monday. The combined group is listed in Milan. As well as Net-A-Porter and Yoox.Com, the company also runs other online sites including Outnet and The Corner, giving it a strong digital presence in the luxury space.
Marchetti will be hoping its high-end customers, which he says spend between 300 euros to 500 euros ($338 to $563) per order, will embrace shopping on their mobile devices. Online sales now make up 6 percent of all luxury goods sales, up from 2 percent in 2009, according to McKinsey & Co. This figure could go up to 18 percent by 2025.
Synergy forecast ‘conservative’
Richemont, the parent company of Net-A-Porter, has a 50 percent share capital of the combined entity's listed parent company, it said. Based on Friday's closing share price of 28.06 euros for Yoox, Richemont is expected to receive a "significant one-off, non-cash, accounting gain" of between 610 million-670 million euros. This will be reflected in Richemont's financial statements for the full-year ending 31 March 2016.
In March, Yoox said the combined group with Net-A-Porter would create 60 million euros of synergies in the third year. But Marchetti told CNBC that it is now likely to be more.
"After six months I do confirm this number and actually we were probably being…conservative," the CEO said.
