Toby Bateman on Mr Porter's Mandate and Expanding into Fine Watches

LONDON, United Kingdom — Like Net-a-Porter, its sister site for women, pure play e-tailer Mr Porter has reimagined the luxury e-commerce experience for men, pioneering the integration of commerce and content, delivering a robust service offering (including personalised same-day deliver in key markets) and challenging assumptions about the types of products that can be sold online. Now, the company is expanding its product offering with a move into fine watches.

BoF spoke with fashion director Toby Bateman to learn more.

BoF: What is Mr Porter’s mandate in today’s menswear market?

TB: It hasn’t really changed. In the original mission statement, there were phrases like ‘style not fashion,’ which I think is still very relevant to what we do. I guess Mr Porter was founded to dress the man in the Net-a-Porter girl’s life, which I hope it does, but it is probably a bit broader than that now. The approach hasn’t changed, but the business has changed because of its scale and how quickly it developed. It’s still about the provision of desirable items and I think that one thing that sets Mr Porter apart, from either online or physical retailers, is the attention that we place on product. Product really is the star.

BoF: What are the key differences between Mr Porter and Net-a-Porter?

TB: Net-a-Porter is very glossy and sexy and product focused; you know, you might go on to the home page and see the latest bag or the latest shoe. We never wanted to take that way of working and try and apply it to men, because we knew that is not what men want to see. The home page was always going to be the magazine and it was always going to have interesting articles. We don’t use models in our magazine shoots. We always use people that are interesting for another reason: actors, writers, architects, inventors and sport stars. They are real people, and I think that immediately draws people who are just visiting the site into the world of Mr Porter. It is about style, not necessarily fashion, and it is looking good and it is contemporary. Helping men become more stylish — and hopefully them enjoying the results of that and feeling better about themselves as a result — is what we are trying to achieve.

BoF: How do you approach merchandising?

TB: Every item on the site has got to have a really good reason for being there in terms of quality, provenance and styling. It's incredibly important because we don’t surround our product in a glossy, walnut-trimmed shop fit or any kind of a physical environment. We are taking that white shirt, navy sweater or a pair of jeans and simply photographing it — and then merchandising it with four or five items from other brands. What we find online is that because of the emphasis on product, what you get is much more cross-pollination between end-consumers buying different kinds of products.

BoF: Is there a limit to what types of products might end up on the site?

TB: Customers like the fact that we have got a good range — whether it's Gucci, or J.Crew — but they really love discovering new brands, like Drakes for a tie. We really do try to layer on these [brands] that actually do the best job, out of anyone else in the world, with one thing.

I don’t think there is any limit to what guys are willing to buy online. I am not saying that we are going to start selling cars and yachts tomorrow, but I think it will certainly continue to evolve. We are trying to break into the fine watch category. People are very dubious about whether you can sell a £3,000 to £4,000 watch on a website, but we have been working with Bremont, an English fine watch brand for six months and it has been really, really good. It is a category that will continue to sell, and to give you an example of that, Bremont issue special-edition watches once a year and give their retail network one or two pieces each. We got given three pieces. One retailed for £12,000 and another for £18,000 and we sold them within a week.

BoF: Tell me about the Mr Porter consumer.

TB: I would be worried about defining our consumer too closely. Obviously [the site] is global, so our key markets are America, the UK, Australia, Hong Kong. Germany is key from a mainland European point of view. We have shipped in the last three or five years to 120 different countries so it is really, really, really varied. We know that if you were to take an average of who the customer is, then he is in his late 30s and he is a professional guy, relatively successful in that he has a high income, but his lifestyle means that he is working long hours. He is traveling a lot for work and, as a result, not really wanting to spend his off-duty time traipsing round the shops trying to buy clothes. What Mr Porter does is fit into his lifestyle. We are fitting into [his life] in terms of the physical shopability, but also in terms of service. Customers don’t want hassle; they want it to be easy.

BoF: How have you seen the online menswear market place evolve?

TB: It certainly has grown. I think what has happened is that people have realised that they need to invest a little bit more in their websites. I think prior to Mr Porter, there was a misconception in the fashion business and the menswear business that online retail was cheap, easy, margins were high and service wasn’t important — that you could just sling items on a website and anything you sold was all sort of just extra on top of your store business. Now, if you are going to have a good online business and you are going to have good loyal customers, you can’t do it like that. I think Mr Porter was a bit of a game-changer, investing in the quality of the content, the quality of the photography, the detail of the product description that you give on size, the speed of service, the packaging, the customer care — all of that is not cheap to do, by any means. Online retail is a specialist thing as much as physical retail is; it is not just a cheap option.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

Mr Porter is one of 30 leading menswear retailers recently recognised by The Business of Fashion and Pitti Immagine. To explore the full list, visit BoF's new Menswear Hub, where you will also find menswear news and analysis from BoF correspondents and around the web, as well as a live index of the most influential people shaping the global menswear market.