Condé Nast spent $100M turning Style.com into a shop — it lasted nine months

Style.com had been fashion journalism's runway home — the place every show was archived. In April 2015 Condé Nast repurposed the name for something bigger: its first solo e-commerce venture, selling fashion, beauty and more to the readers of Vogue, Vanity Fair and GQ. The relaunch ran late, trailed by rumours of weak sales and staff departures, and the store finally opened in September 2016.

It lasted nine months. On June 13, 2017 trading stopped with immediate effect; visitors were redirected to Farfetch, the luxury marketplace Condé Nast had backed early. Chairman Jonathan Newhouse called it 'a painful decision,' with results that had 'fallen very far short of where we hoped they would be.' The investment behind the attempt was reportedly $100M.

The post-mortem was candid: 'the skill sets required to create content and those required to run a seamless shopping site were different,' said digital strategy general manager Matt Starker. Instead of learning retail, Condé Nast folded commerce into a partnership — editorial plugged into Farfetch's technology and logistics, with Newhouse joining Farfetch's board. The publisher kept its stake and gave up the shop.

Condé Nast spent $100M building its own e-commerce store, then shut it in nine months and redirected traffic to Farfetch, keeping its stake and giving up the shop.

The audience came for runway coverage and inspiration, not checkout — content readers and luxury shoppers turned out to be different conversions.

E-commerce needs logistics, merchandising and pricing muscle; a publisher building them from scratch was competing against Farfetch and Net-a-Porter with one hand tied.

The delays and staff departures before launch signalled the trouble; by the time the store opened, the strategy was already behind its own rumours.

Content drives commerce only when someone else runs the commerce — build the shop yourself and you pay retail tuition with your audience's patience.

Style.com's address became a Farfetch redirect, and Condé Nast's commerce ambitions ran through the partnership — and its Farfetch stake — instead; Anna Wintour called the deal a 'new dimension.' The runway coverage lived on as Vogue Runway.