LuxExperience CEO on Luxury Retail Customer Resiliency

LuxExperience CEO on Luxury Retail Customer Resiliency

Bloomberg

Fri, September 18, 2026 at 12:27 AM GMT+3

Michael Kliger, CEO of LuxExperience, said the luxury market is becoming increasingly polarized, with affluent customers continuing to spend heavily while middle-class shoppers pull back under inflationary pressure. He said the company is less concerned about total active customers, which are around 900,000, than about growing the small group of top customers that generate a disproportionate share of sales. He speaks with Romaine Bostick on "The Close."

00:00 Michael Seery

coming off of a phenomenal earnings report, third straight consecutive quarter of positive positive EBITDA and more importantly, comp sales growth in the quarter, Michael, of about uh 7.6 uh percent. And guidance going forward that suggests an acceleration, at least on a year-to-year basis, uh in that growth both in terms of the top line and the bottom line. How do you get there?

00:30 Geoffroy van Raemdonck

Um, thanks for having me and indeed we we published some great numbers and we had very positive reactions. as you know, we uh we finished a big deal 12 months ago acquiring the YNAP group and uh I think we really have to go segment by segment, the My Theresa business, double digit growth of the last quarters continue to do so. We expect it continues to grow in the next fiscal year and clogs high profitability. The real difference is Netta Porter and Mr. Porter, which uh in Q4 reported positive growth, 5.6%, positive EBDA the first quarter since we acquired that it had top and bottom line positive. and we we absolutely see that continuing. Our financial year ended in June. So we already have pretty good transparency and visibility on Q1, which goes from July to September, the momentum continues. So we will have on My Theresa double digit growth on Netta Porter, high single digit growth, and then we have Yoox, which is our off-price business, uh, which will have mid digital mid digit uh mid single digit growth. So that combined effect gives us high confidence and uh with these numbers, we are at the moment an outlier in luxury industry and I think that showed the reaction of the of the investor community.

01:31 Michael Seery

Well, give me a sense though. I mean, all three businesses are growing and they certainly look healthy, but I was looking at active customers. Uh they were down about 6% at Mytheresa, 11% at Net-a-Porter, and I think around the same amount at Mr Porter. So give me a sense here as to what the customer mix is right now. If there are fewer active customers, I assume the ones you have must be spending more.

01:54 Geoffroy van Raemdonck

Absolutely right. and I think that's a very important point to notice at the moment. We are in a very, very polarized market. The top, top customers continue to spend massively, the middle class customers for better words are thinking twice to spend the money. Uh there are inflationary pressures and so it's not the total active customer number, which is around 900,000 that we are concerned about. It's the top customer numbers. We have about 4.8% of our customers that account for 48% of the My Theresa business. In Net-a-Porter it's 4.3% that account for 49%. This is roughly 35, 38,000 customer. That number needs to go up and this is going up. In the last quarter for My Theresa, these customers grew by 18% and they spent more per capita. Same for Net-a-Porter, 9% higher spent per capita. This is how growth happens today in luxury. We are in a polarized market. It's at the top and then of course, at the discount end, the middle ground is the very risky ground.

03:13 Michael Seery

Well, let's get to an idea though of how durable the luxury market is. If we're starting to see fewer customers in this space and I understand there is this threshold of customers that will always have the capacity to spend on these goods. But if we do reach a stage, I mean, we're talking on a day where interest rates are going up, uh cost pressures on everyone, both low income and high income are changing dramatically. Do you worry at all, particularly with some of your long-term targets that some of those cost pressures might actually catch up to the wealthiest out there?

03:52 Geoffroy van Raemdonck

At the moment, there's no indication whatsoever. Um, reality is, we are dealing with customers whose resilience, whose uh elasticity is is is not tested with inflation going up four or five points. Not at all. I mean, their wealth is of course dependent on the stock market, dependent on commodity, dependent on the uh real estate. So as long as that is in in good shape, we are in good shape and we have seen that over the last years which frankly, were not the best in macroeconomics and still we continue to grow. Uh that customer is the most resilient one. I'm not saying they never feel it, but a lot must happen before these customers feel it.

04:54 Michael Seery

Talk to me broadly about kind of the state of the luxury e-commerce business. I understand you're doing well, but it's only a few quarters here, but this is coming in the wake of Farfetch collapsing, uh YNAP, which obviously you bought those assets, uh uh uh and a couple of matches uh and a couple others that I'm forgetting. Why can this sort of newly reimagined Lux experience sort of buck that trend longer term? What are you doing differently than maybe those companies weren't able to do?

05:27 Geoffroy van Raemdonck

Uh, absolutely right. We have seen a lot of competitor going out of the market. It's a much more consolidated market. The key difference amongst of course, many operational differences is we always focused focused on these top high-end customers. Farfetch, good example. It was a marketplace, very attractive to aspirational customers to find the one logo product. We have never focused on that. Our share of 50% sitting with just 4% is not only a remarkable KPI, but is showing we are dealing with a different customer. We are dealing with customers that for reasons of convenience, for reasons of efficiency choose digital, but they're wealthy spenders, six- digit spenders a year and and that is not only a high spending customer, it's a more profitable customer. We have much higher full price share. So less discount with this customer. The average basket has reached around 900 euros. So even increasing shipping costs because of fuel costs are of course less of a concern if the bus parcel you ship around has 900 euro merchandise value inside.

07:05 Michael Seery

So I I understand the strategy, certainly with My Theresa, certainly with Mr. Porter, uh and Net-a-Porter, but you have to kind of explain to me where Yoox fits all into this because you sold the Outnet which was also in the discount uh discount luxury if you will. Yoox is in that same space. So why sell off the Outnet and then make a bet on Yoox or is there maybe a plan that maybe Yoox does not fit longer term?

07:44 Geoffroy van Raemdonck

So Yoox is a distinct business. You're absolutely right. I mean, we only have 3% customer overlap. It is part of the luxury sort of ecosystem by helping brands to solve overstock of older season, but it's a different business. The reason why we we sold the Outnet was YNAP was a massive turnaround and to win the war, we wanted to reduce the battles. Yoox is more than double the size of the Outnet. It has the leverage of cost leverage that we need to get there. Um it's not a strategic asset, different to YNA to Net-a-Porter and Mr. Porter, but in this polarized world, off-price luxury is highly popular. You can see it with many competitors and so we clogged in the last quarter 23% growth in Europe with the Yoox business and we focus on Europe because for off price with lower margin and with lower baskets, it doesn't make sense to ship overseas. but in Europe, there's a healthy core, we're growing it. We are treating it as an independent business, it will make money, but it's in the portfolio more for that than for strategic reasons.

09:20 Michael Seery

Let's talk about the geography of the overall business. Uh the US is uh doing great. It's actually been a a bright spot, a lot of growth there. Do you worry at all uh given the tariff situation, the geopolitical situations and some of the other things uh could potentially impede uh some of the transactions that actually occur from US-based buyers.

09:54 Geoffroy van Raemdonck

You're absolutely right. At the moment, US is probably the best luxury market in the world. Uh My Theresa grew 39% in the last quarter. Uh also for Net-a-Porter and Mr Porter was the highest growth geography. Um we have seen a lot of headwinds. Um the tariff situation is not new. I mean it started last year and it's fully reflected in our results. But of course, uh we never know how long these cycles continue and that's also always to keep in mind a a big advantage of our business, we are much more diversified. We ship to 170 countries, territories. If a region is not as booming anymore, we shift our marketing resources to another region. We have no fixed assets. We don't have a store network that now in Asia has the issue of less footfall. We moved our marketing dollars to the booming US market. I don't see signs of a decline, but it's also fully possible for us to to mitigate as long as there's growth in the world, Arabic peninsula, maybe that comes back after the crisis. So we are in a much more flexible situation than classic physical luxury players.

11:27 Michael Seery

And my final question to just kind of has to uh deal with some of the technology changes, particularly the use of AI uh in shopping, and more importantly, finding products, uh and then actually purchasing those products. Uh Bain just put out an interesting report, kind of talking about we're reaching starting to reach an inflection point where we can see AI tools uh somehow involved in the process of at least 50% of consumer discretionary purchases. Are you integrating AI tools into your own functionality and if so, what is the interaction that you're having right now with the customer?

12:20 Geoffroy van Raemdonck

You're absolutely right. It's it's definitely a a a new S-curve in in interfaces. We really use and look at AI as more efficient, more frictionless uh interface to the customer. Uh it's on the search site, so it's really, we taught customers for years how to search by saying shoe size 47 red, talking like a catalog. That's not a natural way to shop. So we, we want to be able to understand I'm looking for a dress for a wedding and give relevant suggestions. We are developing these tools, they need to get better. It's very important that of course, we really embed into these tools our knowledge, our know-how. We have people that understand what's hot the next season and so in search, in making suggestions for full looks, that's all where we look to AI in addition to of course efficiency gains in asset production, be it video, or be it imagery. Um it's early on. luxury has high standards of quality. so good is not good enough. It must be very good. But uh we agree with what you said and what Bain says. There is an increasing adoption rate because we are serving customer that look for convenience and efficiency. That's why they are digital, that's why they're online and so they are also interested in any further improvement to make it easier and faster to find what they're looking for.