Jose Neves

Jose Neves founded Farfetch in 2007 to bring the world's luxury fashion boutiques online. His vision was to create a global platform connecting independent luxury retailers with customers worldwide — giving small boutiques in Paris, Milan, and Tokyo access to the same global audience that major fashion houses enjoyed. Farfetch grew into the largest online marketplace for luxury fashion, with 1,400+ sellers across 50+ countries.

Neves was a fashion tech entrepreneur before it was a category. He built his first e-commerce fashion company in Portugal in the late 1990s and spent a decade understanding the unique challenges of selling luxury goods online — authentication, brand control, the tactile experience, and the reluctance of traditional luxury houses to embrace digital.

Farfetch went public in 2018 at a $6B+ valuation and at its peak reached a $23B market cap. However, the company struggled with profitability and was eventually acquired by South Korea's Coupang in a rescue deal in 2023. Neves's story is both an inspiration (a Portuguese founder who built a global luxury platform) and a cautionary tale about the difficulty of making marketplace economics work in luxury fashion.