Executive Overview
The luxury e-commerce ecosystem is undergoing a profound structural recalibration. As macroeconomic pressures, shifting consumer behaviors, and digital fatigue test the resilience of legacy platforms, industry leaders are abandoning blanket customer-acquisition strategies in favor of hyper-targeted retention models.
This transformation is acutely visible at LuxExperience, the parent company overseeing Net-a-Porter and Mr Porter. Following its acquisition by Mytheresa in April 2025, the combined luxury platform has returned to quarterly sales growth—a vital milestone signaling potential stabilization after years of operational turbulence. However, beneath the positive top-line metrics lies a calculated strategic pivot: rather than casting a wide net to capture volume, CEO Michael Kliger is deliberately allowing active customer counts to decline while laser-focusing on winning back ultra-high-spending VIPs.
Simultaneously, the secondary luxury market is scaling new heights. During London Fashion Week, eBay demonstrated how experiential retail, live-stream shopping, and cross-border logistics can converge to demystify archival fashion. By pairing physical showrooms in Milan and Paris with gamified, real-time digital broadcasts—such as its third-annual Endless Runway show—eBay is attempting to institutionalize secondhand luxury as a primary, borderless shopping destination.
This deep-dive briefing examines the operational mechanics driving Net-a-Porter’s return to profitability, evaluates eBay’s aggressive European expansion, and maps out the broader structural shifts reshaping the global luxury and resale markets.
Detailed Chronology: The Road to Net-a-Porter’s Rebound
The resurgence of Net-a-Porter and Mr Porter did not happen overnight; it is the culmination of a deliberate, phased operational overhaul initiated following Mytheresa’s acquisition of the platforms in April 2025.
Q2 2025 – Q2 2026: Operational Realignment
- April 2025: Mytheresa officially completes its acquisition of Net-a-Porter and Mr Porter under the newly consolidated umbrella of LuxExperience, inheriting platforms that had struggled with market share and margin compression.
- Late 2025: Leadership initiates backend technical integrations. Most notably, the company dismantles geographic inventory silos, allowing U.S. shoppers to access products stored in Italian warehouses, thereby drastically improving product availability metrics.
- Fall/Winter Buying Season (2025–2026): This season marks the debut assortment purchased entirely under the leadership of Brigitte Chartrand, Net-a-Porter’s chief buying and merchandising officer, pivoting the product mix away from the legacy strategies of the previous regime.
- June 30, 2026 (Q2 Close): The combined retailers post a net sales increase of 5.6% excluding currency effects—the first period of sustained quarterly growth post-acquisition. Adjusted EBITDA reaches approximately $8.5 million (€7.4 million), delivering a 2.7% margin.
[April 2025: Acquisition by Mytheresa]
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[Late 2025: Backend Technical Unification (Cross-Warehouse Inventory)]
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[FW 2025/26: First Assortment under Brigitte Chartrand]
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[June 30, 2026: 5.6% Net Sales Growth & Return to Positive Quarterly EBITDA]Supporting Context & Metrics: Decoding the Numbers
While a 5.6% net sales increase for the quarter ended June 30 is an undeniably positive signal, industry analysts emphasize that the underlying data reveals a more nuanced picture of corporate health.
The Paradox of Customer Metrics
- The 11.1% Decline: Over the preceding year, the combined active customer count for Net-a-Porter and Mr Porter fell by 11.1%. For a traditional e-commerce platform, this metric would trigger alarm bells. For LuxExperience, however, it is a byproduct of shedding low-value, high-cost acquisition traffic.
- The Power of the Top 4.3%: In fiscal 2026, a hyper-exclusive cohort of roughly 35,000 shoppers (representing just 4.3% of the total customer base) generated an astonishing 49.1% of the combined gross merchandise value (GMV).
- The U.S. Growth Engine: The United States market—which commands nearly 50% of the platforms’ combined sales—saw a stellar 15.1% year-over-year sales increase (excluding currency effects) in the June-ending quarter. This growth was fueled almost entirely by reactivating lapsed VIPs and encouraging existing high-spenders to increase basket sizes, rather than acquiring brand-new users.
Financial Health and the Tariff Factor
The reported adjusted EBITDA of $8.5 million requires financial contextualization. Chief Financial Officer Martin Beer noted during an earnings call that tariff refunds accounted for a significant 250 basis points of the quarter’s margin. Without these refunds, the segment would have remained only slightly positive, following an adjusted EBITDA loss of approximately $6.9 million (€6 million) for the full prior fiscal year. Nonetheless, management projects that operational efficiencies will sustain adjusted EBITDA profitability through fiscal 2027.
Official Statements and Strategic Insights
Leadership from both LuxExperience and eBay have offered candid assessments of their respective operational strategies during this pivotal transition period.
Michael Kliger on "Right-Sizing" the Customer Base
Addressing the conscious drop in active users, LuxExperience CEO Michael Kliger was unequivocal about his priorities:
"I’m comfortable with the minus 11 [percent customer count], but I’m not comfortable with the amount of top customers we have. They once had Net-a-Porter or even Mr Porter as a trusted source for fashion and styling. It’s easy and fast to lose customers. It takes a bit more time to bring back customers."
Kliger noted that the goal is not to replicate the exact operational playbook of Mytheresa, despite shared foundational principles. While Mytheresa leans heavily into intimate, hyper-exclusive dinners, Net-a-Porter possesses a unique multimedia advantage: the ability to anchor massive cultural events around its proprietary Porter magazine, leveraging editorial covers featuring global icons like Serena Williams and Cindy Crawford. Furthermore, Kliger pointed out that customer overlap between Mytheresa and Net-a-Porter remains remarkably low at just 12%, justifying distinct brand identities and event strategies.
Kirsty Keoghan on Borderless Resale and eBay Live
Shifting to the secondary market, Kirsty Keoghan, eBay’s general manager of European fashion, emphasized the psychological barriers that experiential retail and live-streaming can dismantle for high-end buyers:
"The best wardrobe actually already exists. You can talk to the condition, you can talk to the history and the provenance of all these items. That is what is so amazing about eBay Live."
By pairing digital broadcasts—which during London Fashion Week attracted hundreds of concurrent in-app viewers and drove real-time sell-outs of archival pieces like Alaïa skirts—with upcoming physical showrooms in fashion capitals like Milan and Paris, eBay is attempting to bridge the trust gap inherent in online luxury resale.
Future Outlook: What Lies Ahead for Luxury and Resale
As the retail calendar moves past Fashion Month, several key structural themes will dictate market winners and losers over the next 12 to 24 months.
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
FUTURE STRATEGIC PILLARS
├──────────────────────────────┬──────────────────────────────┤
│ NET-A-PORTER / MR PORTER │ EBAY EUROPEAN RESALE │
├──────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────┤
│ • Reactivate 3,000 lapsed │ • Launch physical showrooms │
│ VIP shoppers │ in Milan and Paris │
│ • Optimize cross-border │ • Scale eBay Live streaming │
│ inventory visibility │ across 180 global studios │
│ • Deepen editorial-led │ • Explore operational │
│ brand experiences │ synergies with Depop │
└──────────────────────────────┴──────────────────────────────┘1. The Battle for the Elite Shopper
For Net-a-Porter and Mr Porter, the near-term objective is clear: add approximately 3,000 former high-spenders back to the active VIP roster. Achieving this requires flawless execution across technical infrastructure (such as seamless cross-border fulfillment from Italy to the U.S. and improved email deliverability) and creative direction under Claudia Plant and Brigitte Chartrand. If Kliger’s team can elevate the platform from "position five to No. 1" in their target shoppers’ mental rankings, long-term profitability will follow.
2. The Institutionalization of Luxury Resale
eBay’s dual-pronged approach—combining rigorous authentication frameworks (now expanded across France and Italy) with high-touch physical showrooms and immersive live commerce—signals that secondhand luxury has outgrown purely transactional marketplaces. As integration conversations surrounding eBay’s recent acquisition of Depop take shape, the focus will likely shift toward global scaling and cross-platform authentication standards.
3. Macro Headwinds and Omnichannel Integration
Ultimately, both primary luxury e-tailers and secondary resale giants face a consumer base that demands absolute friction-free convenience, genuine community connection, and transparent provenance. Whether brands are recalibrating digital acquisition due to rising artificial intelligence disruptions or rethinking physical retail footprints, the successful players of tomorrow will be those that treat customer retention and experiential storytelling as non-negotiable core competencies.
