Let's Get Dressed For School

Tuesday’s merger between Net-a-Porter and Yoox, which will create the largest and most powerful luxury e-commerce group.

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Here’s how Citibank described the combined entity in a note: “No other players match Yoox/NAP’s breadth of sourcing, client base, geographic reach, technological know-how, logistics efficiency and luxury expertise and relationships.”

Yes, presumably that means you, Amazon.

On the plus side, the combination of the two, which will be most apparent in their back-office operations, may lead to much better, faster delivery globally, more fun content on both sites (the Yoox chief executive, Federico Marchetti, calls the brand an “enter-tailer” — i.e., an entertaining e-tailer — while Net is more editorial in nature) and more personally tailored interaction.

The latter being, for me, the one eyebrow-raising bit of this marriage of equals.

After all, just think about the customer information now available to the group, which between the main sites (yoox.com and netaporter.com) and their fully owned brethren (theoutnet.com, mrporter.com, shoescribe.com and thecorner.com) will have a giant foothold in beauty, men’s wear, women’s wear, sale shopping and shoe shopping.