Federico Marchetti: Geek to the chic

Anyone seeking hints of the scale of ambition of Federico Marchetti, founder of virtual luxury retailer Yoox, need only check out his fashion sense.

Mr Marchetti, an Italian ecommerce pioneer, is partial to wearing a black turtle neck jumper - a look that has become part of the 21st century fashion canon thanks to it being the minimalist uniform of the late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs.

Yoox this week took over its bigger rival by sales Net-a-Porter to create the world's largest online retailer focused on luxury brands. The all-share deal, which Mr Marchetti called "the defining achievement of my career", will create an online luxury goods powerhouse listed in Milan with €1.3bn in sales and 2m customers. This is equal to a 15 per cent share of the global online luxury market, according to Italian luxury association Altagamma.

It has also confirmed the reputation of Mr Marchetti, who will be chief executive of the combined group, as an executive who saw that the future of luxury goods was online long before the big fashion brands that now line up to be Yoox's clients.

Mr Marchetti, who has called himself a "geek to the chic", earned a degree in economics from Milan's Bocconi University before going on to get an MBA from Columbia University in New York. After working for several years as a consultant to retailing chief executives and fashion designers in the US and Italy, he became convinced that luxury had a future online.

He founded Yoox in 2000, the same year that entrepreneur Natalie Massenet founded London-based Net-a-Porter. Even as the internet bubble burst, Mr Marchetti stuck to his idea of putting together brands from his native Italy with the web to deliver style to shoppers around the world.

Today, Yoox is a blue-chip on the Milan stock exchange. It runs ecommerce sites for more than 30 brands including Giorgio Armani, Valentino and Ermenegildo Zegna, along with the brands of the Kering group behind Gucci and Bottega Veneta. Yoox also has its own multi-brand sites that sell fashion, art and design. Mr Marchetti is the biggest shareholder with an 11 per cent stake.

A native of Ravenna, the Italian eastern coastal town famous for its Byzantine mosaics, Mr Marchetti has called the merger of Yoox and Net-a-Porter a "mosaic" too, combining two business models that though similar have little overlap. Yoox sells off-price on its multibrand sites, Net-a-Porter full price. Net-a-Porter is strong in the US and UK; Yoox is strong in continental Europe, Asia and the US, but not the UK.

The deal sees Richemont, the owner of Net-a-Porter since 2010, take 50 per cent of the shares but 25 per cent of the voting rights in the combined group to protect the independence vital to Yoox's dealings with other fashion groups. The structure recalls a deal Johann Rupert, Richemont's chairman, agreed in 1999 when his Rothmans group merged with British American Tobacco.

The deal will also bring together Mr Marchetti and his longtime rival Ms Massenet, who will be executive chairman of the combined group.

Ms Massenet, a glamorous publicity-friendly figure and chairman of the British Fashion Council, will look after editorial content, corporate branding, and image and social media. These are "very important responsibilities that she does better than me", Mr Marchetti says. "She is a visionary founder. I am super, super, super excited to get started."

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