YNAP names Emma Mortimer to run The Outnet

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
May 29, 2018

Yoox Net-A-Porter is adding to its management team at The Outnet with Emma Mortimer returning to the company as managing director, a newly created role.

She reports into Alessandra Rossi, who is YNAP’s president of off-season, and will oversee the buying, merchandising, sales, marketing and creative teams.

Mortimer actually worked at Net-A-Porter for six years until 2015, having been global director of studio production and customer care, as well as the interim Outnet head.

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Since leaving she has deepened her experience of the online fashion retail sector. She consulted for YNAP rival Matchesfashion, helped to launch modest fashion e-tailer The Modist and advised on the fashion sector for the UK’s Department for International Trade.

Rossi said: “With her broad business knowledge across luxury e-commerce and her extensive expertise in customer experience, she is the ideal candidate to drive the international growth of The Outnet, enabled by our new technology and logistics platform.”

And she will clearly have a challenge ahead of her as she works to boost growth at the business. Off-season, which comprises the giant Yoox webstore and the smaller Outnet operation, has been the weakest performer in the YNAP portfolio.

YNAP doesn't break out specific figures for the unit, but earlier this month said that the whole of the off-price operation, including Yoox, saw net revenues up only 2% on an organic basis to €183.3 million in Q1, and they dropped 4.6% on a reported basis.

Part of the problem was caused by customer retention rates at The Outnet due to “low product availability” in Q4.