This case explores the rise and fall of Farfetch, a pioneering luxury e-commerce platform that reached a $24 billion valuation before collapsing under strategic overreach and mounting financial pressure. Through founder José Neves’s 2023 dilemma, students examine how platform businesses create value—and how they lose it when suppliers regain power. Beyond platform strategy, the case addresses leadership judgment, governance oversight, acquisition discipline, brand control, and growth-versus-profitability trade-offs. Exhibits on revenue, marketing spend, and stock price (see Exhibits 4, 8 and 9) highlight how rapid expansion, costly acquisitions, and weak financial discipline eroded investor confidence. As luxury brands strengthened their direct-to-consumer capabilities, Farfetch’s intermediary model came under threat. Suitable for courses in strategy, digital transformation, entrepreneurship, governance, and platform economics, the case challenges students to evaluate whether Farfetch’s decline was inevitable—or the result of strategic misalignment and execution failure.
1. Analyze the strengths and vulnerabilities of platform business models.
2. Evaluate growth-versus-profitability trade-offs in scaling ventures.
3. Assess how supplier power reshapes platform strategy and value capture.
4. Diagnose governance and capital allocation failures in high-growth firms.
5. Design strategic responses to digital disruption and market shifts.
- Client management
- Ethics
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Platform Strategy
Luxury Retail - Marketplace Models
- Growth vs Profitability
- Strategic Failure
