Net-a-Porter founder steps down amid merger with Yoox

London

NATALIE Massenet, the founder of Net-a-Porter and the woman who persuaded high fashion that it had a home online, is leaving the British luxury e-commerce group she built, just five months after announcing a merger with its Italian archrival Yoox.

She resigned shortly after selling her shares in Net-a-Porter, which were valued at £100 million (S$216 million). Ms Massenet, a former fashion journalist who started Net-a-Porter in 2000 from her apartment after spying a gap in the market for selling luxury goods online to the world's wealthiest women, handed in her resignation on Wednesday, Yoox said.