Luxury retailer Mytheresa has sights on Middle East growth despite conflict
New CEO wants to increase investment given concentration of wealthy potential clients in the Gulf
Now is the time to plan investment to expand in the Middle East despite the current conflict, according to the new chief executive of luxury online retailer Mytheresa.
While Iranian missile strikes across Gulf countries, including the UAE and Saudi Arabia, have hit shopping and tourism and prompted some wealthy people to leave, Francis Belin said the attacks on previously safe havens such as Dubai had not dented his optimism about the region’s potential for the luxury retailer.
“What is happening now is very sad, but we are very long-term in the way we approach opportunities, so I think it is probably an area we should continue to [invest in],” Belin told the FT. “We are already quite successful in the Middle East. How we move it to the next chapter is on my mind.”
The Middle East already accounts for just under 10 per cent of Munich-based Mytheresa’s revenues. However, given the high concentration of wealthy clients in the Gulf, Belin wants to increase investment in marketing, personal shopping and events in the region in the coming years.
Belin started the role at Mytheresa in January after a long stint at auction house Christie’s in Asia and in senior roles at jewellery brands including Swarovski and Jaeger-LeCoultre.
“My best deal [at Christie’s] was to sign a lease for a new regional headquarters in The Henderson building in Hong Kong in 2021 when . . . business was stopping. I think it’s probably a good time to also start conversations in the Middle East,” Belin said.
Mytheresa, which sells products from about 250 luxury brands, from Prada to Brunello Cucinelli, experienced a few days of shipping disruption in the region at the start of the war between the US, Israel and Iran. Since then, however, it has been able to deliver orders to Gulf clients without issue, Belin said.
He takes up his role at a time of change and disruption in the industry. Over the past two years, a number of Mytheresa’s peers, both digital and bricks-and-mortar, have struggled. Luxury department store group Saks Global filed for bankruptcy this year, while online retail marketplaces Farfetch and Matchesfashion collapsed at the end of 2024.
Mytheresa is one of the few luxury retail platforms left standing, thanks to its selective wholesale buying model, wealthy client base and reliably increasing profitability. This contrasts with other digital peers, whose high overheads and lack of profits weighed on them as interest rates rose.
Mytheresa also invests heavily in elaborate events — such as a party aboard the late shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis’ yacht in Monaco, lavish dinners in Saint-Tropez, pop-ups in Saint Moritz and Aspen — to build relationships with its high-spending clientele.
It has leveraged the situation to create an overarching online luxury retail group LuxExperience, formed after Mytheresa bought Richemont’s lossmaking Yoox Net-a-Porter online retail division last year. Michael Kliger, Mytheresa’s longtime chief executive, moved to lead the new group at the start of 2025, anointing Belin as his successor at the group’s flagship business.
Mytheresa reported net sales of €242.7mn in the quarter to the end of December, up 8.8 per cent year on year, and adjusted ebitda of €22.6mn, an increase of nearly a third year on year.
“You always feel like it’s been year after year . . . a company on a successful trajectory,” said Belin, who wants to expand sales in jewellery and menswear to balance Mytheresa’s traditional focus on women’s fashion and accessories.
Further investment in Asia, particularly China, will also be a focus for Belin, despite the depressed market for luxury goods there since the pandemic. Mytheresa said mainland China accounted for “a single-digit percentage” of its overall sales, but it was growing by double digits in some regions.
“I think it’s a question for us whether we want to start to invest more. My assumption is yes we will,” Belin said.
The ability to keep investing is tied to a business model that has helped Mytheresa outlast rivals. The company has gross margins of about 50 per cent, allowing it to absorb the high costs of marketing, wholesale inventory, logistics and frequent client events. It also focuses on wealthy repeat clients who spend tens of thousands of dollars a year on fashion and buy at full price. This has helped it secure partnerships with top luxury brands that can be reluctant to work with third-party retailers.
“We’re a wholesale business, so we operate with not the full margin on the product. Which means that . . . we can’t give discounts,” said Belin. “Some people look for discount, they spend a lot of money with discounts but we cannot. This is not us, this is not why brands work with us.”
Within the LuxExperience group, however, discount luxury site Yoox caters to shoppers looking for a deal.
As for the group’s other full-price luxury ecommerce sites, Net-a-Porter and Mr Porter, Belin said there was little risk of cannibalisation. “If you look at the top clients, which are so important to our business, we have around 10 per cent overlap,” he said, adding that product overlap is about 25 per cent with each retailer operating separate buying, personal shopping, communications and events teams.
“We’re very separate and we believe in our [buying] and they believe in their [buying] . . . And that’s very, very important in our strategy, to continue to be separate.”