Yoox forms agreement with LuxExperience to reduce redundancies by 74

The number of employees leaving Yoox, the Italian off-price pioneer that has recently run into difficulties, has been reduced to 145 from the initially planned 211. The announcement was made by the Minister for Enterprises and Made in Italy, Adolfo Urso, following a meeting held on December 3 at Rome’s Palazzo Piacentini.

The Yoox dispute has thus concluded with “satisfaction,” as stated in a note by the multi-brand digital luxury group LuxExperience, owner of Yoox.

“LuxExperience announces with satisfaction that it has reached an agreement with the trade unions and the institutions, bringing to a positive conclusion the consultation process launched last September. The agreement reflects the group’s strong commitment to finding shared and responsible solutions, minimising the social impact. Individual meetings with the affected employees will now begin,” the German company said in a statement.

The group, known until January 2025 as MYT Netherlands Parents B.V., “thanks all the parties involved for the cooperation that made it possible to reach a balanced agreement, capable of protecting people and supporting a return to solid growth in its activities.”

LuxExperience also reaffirms its strong commitment to strengthening its presence in Italy, “which continues to represent a strategic and long-term operational hub for the entire group, as well as being home to Yoox, a pioneer of off-price luxury,” it stressed. “The group’s goal is to continue to play a key role as an employer in the country, with positive employment effects in the medium to long term.” 

“A victory for Yoox workers, the result of months of constant commitment alongside the social partners. A success born of teamwork that confirms how the Mimit method, based on genuine dialogue and on a shared path, is the right way to revitalise the industry and guarantee the protection of employment,” Minister Urso said on the Mimit website, describing the agreement as “the result of intense negotiations” between “the company, trade unions, and institutions,” and emphasising “the adoption of a non-disruptive path through the use of social safety measures and incentives for voluntary departures for the workers concerned.”

The agreement will now be submitted to the workers for consideration. The commitment of all parties is now focused on the company’s full industrial and commercial relaunch, the ministry said.

Yoox was founded in 2000 by Emilia-Romagna entrepreneur Federico Marchetti. The start-up quickly became an Emilia-Romagna unicorn, achieving a market valuation of at least one billion dollars despite not being publicly listed. In 2015, it merged with the British Net-a-Porter and in 2018 changed hands: the new entity, YNAP, was acquired by Swiss giant Richemont, owner of Cartier watches and Montblanc pens, among others. In October 2024, Richemont signed an agreement to sell YNAP to the German group Mytheresa, which was completed in the spring.

LuxExperience, the new name adopted by the Munich-based German fashion retailer Mytheresa after acquiring the Anglo-Italian Yoox Net-a-Porter, unveiled ambitious plans and major changes last May. Its roadmap envisaged, by 2030, achieving €4 billion in revenue, with a positive adjusted EBITDA margin of around 7-9% and adjusted EBITDA of more than €300 million.

To achieve these goals, LuxExperience planned to invest between €200 million and €250 million in its restructuring by 2028. In the long run, this investment is expected to generate annual savings of nearly €150 million. In the following months, it sold its other off-price platform, The Outnet, to The O Group and, according to the Ansa news agency, reported a €191 million decline in Yoox’s revenue in the last financial year and cumulative losses of more than €2 billion over the past two years, launching a reorganisation that centralised at group level the functions currently performed by Yoox, together with the aforementioned redundancies.