José Neves was always astute as a dealmaker — making one fashion connection after another as he built Farfetch up from a Great Recession start-up to a luxury platform.
Along the way, Neves, who leads the company as founder, chairman and chief executive officer, cut deals with Compagnie Financière Richemont, Alibaba, Neiman Marcus Group, the Pinault family’s investment arm Artémis and more.
While none of those connections was willing to come to Farfetch’s rescue when it was running out of money this month, Neves had one more deal in him — with Coupang, which is sometimes referred to as the Amazon of South Korea.
Here, a primer on Coupang, drawn from the company’s annual report, press releases and statements to investors.
Leader: Bom Kim, founder and chief executive officer, who controls 76 percent of the company’s voting power.
Bom Kim’s Message to Investors: “We believe we still have significant opportunity ahead in both number of active customers and spend per customer. Our active customer count is just 20 million and our single-digit share of the total retail market indicates a low share of wallet today….
“Fundamentally, Coupang is not a consumer goods company, or a delivery company or a retail company. Coupang is, at its essence, a company that breaks trade-offs to deliver wow in customers’ daily lives.”
“We are building the next generation experience for e-commerce. By investing for the long term with a fanatical culture of customer centricity, we believe we are delivering a superior customer experience at a lower cost and continue to redefine standards for e-commerce worldwide.”
Footprint: Headquartered in Seattle, Coupang has additional office space in the U.S., South Korea and throughout Asia. It owns or leases about 47 million square feet of fulfillment and logistics space in South Korea.
Employees: Approximately 63,000
Earnings Power: For the nine months ended Sept. 30, the company posted net earnings of $327 million on revenues of $17.8 billion.
Stock: Publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker “CPNG.” The stock fell 5.1 percent to $16.15 after the Farfetch deal was made public, leaving the company with a market capitalization of $28.9 billion.
