Richemont asks LVMH and Kering to team up to tackle Amazon

Johann Rupert, chairman at Swiss fashion conglomerate Richemont, has approached rival firms Kering and LVMH to band together in order to develop a luxury e-commerce platform which can compete with online marketplaces such as Amazon.

The South African billionaire revealed he has had discussions with Bernard Arnault, chairman at LVMH and executives at Kering about joining together with the part-Richemont owned Yoox-Net-a-Porter platform. During a conference in Monaco yesterday he said luxury-goods producers need more weight in e-commerce to survive against increasing competition.

Speaking at the Financial Times Business of Luxury event in Monte Carlo, Rupert said: "We’re not big enough. What I said to them was they can come in and get equity in the company" if they commit to selling their brands on the platform, according to Bloomberg. Richemont aims to create a platform which is open to luxury brands, including privately owned Chanel.

The news comes not long after Yoox and Net-a-Porter revealed plans to merge earlier this year, which have combined annual sales of 1.3 billion euros (924 million pounds) in comparison with Amazon, which made 89 billion dollars (57 billion pounds) in revenue last year. The luxury firm aims to make Yoox-Net-a-Porter the "dominant neutral platform for the luxury-goods industry."