Luxury, Loyalty, and Lifestyle: Michael Kliger on Mytheresa's Unique Model

• The son of two entrepreneurs, Michael Kliger decided to study business and initially pursued consulting while being unsure of which sector or function he was ready to fully commit to.
• After spending 12 years in retail, but never in digital, he made the move from McKinsey to eBay to gain a deeper understanding of the marketplace that was rapidly becoming the present and future of commerce.
• Michael recognized early on that the customer experience is the cornerstone of a company’s success, whether in digital or brick-and-mortar environments. Rather than tell them what they wanted, he first asked.
• While more complex designs and customer experiences emerge with the expansion of technology and its capabilities, Michael committed early on to having their content strategy guided by a deliberate simplicity.
• Understanding that their customer had significant buying power but a limited budget when it came to time, he quickly learned that their role was to inspire while curating a thoughtful, edited selection that met their customers' unique needs. Ultimately putting forward a smaller, yet more targeted, offering than their competitors.
• Like many others in the luxury sector, they have recognized and began catering to the growing demand for new categories, particularly in home and decor.
• Partnering with brands like Dries Van Noten and Valentino, part of their distinctive offering includes frequent capsule collections or exclusive product drops.
• Despite the platform’s ongoing and impressive success, Kliger describes their strategies as being in a constant state of evolution, likening it to a snake shedding its skin.
• A firm believer in the importance of consuming data points—whether through personal anecdotes, customer feedback, or other sources—Michael highlights how new ideas often emerge when different pieces of information suddenly connect.
• Michael also discusses the acquisition of Net-a-Porter and its implications for the future of both companies' respective businesses.

‍Notable Quotes: ‍

• "I started in retail and worked for 12 years in retail. At some stage, I felt consulting was enough, and later I always regretted that. When I was at McKinsey, consulting, I actually worked in retail but never in digital."
• "The difference between the good and not-so-good out there, be it digital or physical, is exactly that: Can you provide the right and the good experience to your customers?"
• "We are luxury. We provide inspiration. We have amazing products. We work with prestigious companies, but there is a customer out there who wants all that but still needs to bring it all together with a very busy lifestyle, sometimes realizing that there is something they need at the last minute."
• "We focus on the big spenders. So, in general, I would say there is a pretty high level of knowledge and information.They come to our website with a concrete need."
• "You need to define your audience and then be as good as you can at serving them and staying close. And again, this dichotomy: they are looking for inspiration, but they're not willing to scroll through 500 depictions of products."
• "It sounds happy and shiny, but it is a constant transformation. It is painful, um, it's like a snake constantly getting a new skin."
• "Ideally, you grow in a way that your infrastructure is just a little bit larger than what you need, but not too large, because then you cannot fulfill the promises to the customers."
• "You need to collect as many data points as possible. Get anecdotes, get facts, look at all these things. And then, sometimes magically, sometimes as you take a stroll, sometimes as you wake up or go to bed, suddenly those thousands of data points—two or three—connect, and that's the idea."
• "What a Net-a-Porter means for customers is something quite different than what a Mytheresa means for them. And so, the fascinating, the exciting idea is to bring these brands under one roof to serve different customers, or at least the same customers with different needs and different occasions, and thus increase the relevance of what we do."
• "I think the better strategy is to be prepared to go left, right, forward, or backward, and then be fast in reacting, rather than spending hours predicting whether it's left or right."