Arabnet Arabnet

Yoox Net-A-Porter Group (YNAP), the Italian online fashion retailer, and Mohamad Al-Abbar will form a $139 million luxury retail business in the Middle-East.

YNAP will hold 60% of the joint venture while the remaining 40% will be owned by Symphony Investment, a luxury store controlled by Al-Abbar. The partnership will let Mohamed Al Abbar focus his luxury retail activity in the region through the new joint venture. The youthful population of the Arab World and improvement of Internet access - for example, the smartphone penetration rates are above 70% in the UAE and KSA - means the region is ready to capture the growth of e-commerce.

This new venture will manage all the existing multi-brand online stores of the group in the region: Net-A-Porter, Mr Porter, Yoox and The Outnet. It will also operate in the GCC and will expand to other countries in the MENA region in the future. They will start operating in a Dubai office and distribution center by the end of 2017 and the debut of Yoox and The Outnet will debut in 2018. Afterwards, Net-A-Porter and Mr Porter will launch in 2019, followed by select Online Flagship Stores.

Al-Abbar is also set to launch the MENA’s largest technology fund, which aims to collect investments worth $1 billion to drive Arab tech-entrepreneurship and create a ‘sharing economy’ business model and will be the first in the region. 

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