Online luxury retailer Yoox Net-a-Porter said it’s developing technology to allow well-to-do customers to buy products directly through WhatsApp as the e-commerce market for Prada and Versace goods becomes more competitive. By becoming one of the first companies to use WhatsApp to sell directly to customers, Yoox Net-a-Porter is seeking a leg up on competitors like Farfetch and luxury brands’ own sites. About 40% of its higher-margin in-season revenue comes from just 2% of its clients, which it has dubbed EIPs, or “Extremely Important People.”“We’ve made some of our biggest sales to EIPs by chatting to them through WhatsApp,” Marchetti said. Yoox Net-a-Porter is jumping on the WhatsApp opportunity because Net-a-Porter’s mobile customers place more than double the orders of desktop users, and those purchases on average are about twice as valuable. The company was valued at almost US$1.5bil (RM6.67bil) in a funding round last year and is said to be planning an IPO.

Source: thestar March 07, 2017 08:03 UTC