Forty months of salary, a K-beauty land grab, and Net-a-Porter chasing its biggest spenders—who’s actually buying the future here? New to this story? Here’s where it stands. Net-a-Porter and Mr Porter returned to quarterly sales growth under LuxExperience after Mytheresa acquired them in April 2025, but the customer base is still smaller: active customers were down 11.1% year over year. So this has become a high-value-client story, because a small cohort generated nearly half of combined GMV in fiscal 2026. This is Fashion Business Daily. We’ve got department-store cuts, Target rebuilding the beauty aisle, and a very expensive hunt for luxury whales. Charlotte, start us with Lotte. Here's SBS News:
The eligibility criteria for this voluntary retirement program apply to employees with 20 or more years of service (or 15 years or more for GL2 and below). Those who opt for voluntary retirement will receive an amount equivalent to 40 months of standard wages, along with an additional reemployment support fund of 20 million won (2,005 million won for GL2 and below).
Lotte’s voluntary-retirement window runs through October 5, with up to 40 months of base salary. Look at who qualifies: 20 years of service, or 15 for GL2 and below. This targets expensive senior layers, not a sweeping floor-staff reset. And department stores were already down 0.8% in the August retail data, even as apparel held up. So the format squeeze is hitting workers with decades in the building first—while Lotte keeps hiring sales and merchandising people underneath them. The package is unusually rich: 40 months’ wages, reemployment support, child-tuition help, plus three months of paid Re-Start leave. Generous severance is still severance. Lotte ran this only once before, in 2021; a second program in five years says they’re redrawing the organization chart. Here's Mitchell Parton at Modern Retail:
Walking around a Target store today, shoppers are going to find far more K-beauty brands than they would have a year ago as the retailer seeks the latest style trends and as Korean brands seek to expand into U.S. mass retail. Earlier this year, Target quadrupled its K-beauty assortment with more than 150 new products and more than 10 new brands across skin care, makeup and hair care, according to the retailer.
Target booted the Ulta shop-in-shop and filled the space with Beauty Studio: 1,600 products, 90 brands, and a much bigger K-beauty bet. The edit has to feel discovered, not like somebody slapped a Seoul sticker on a clearance aisle. Target’s also betting on the economics of owning that channel. It quadrupled K-beauty earlier this year with 150-plus products, then replaced a branded concession with its own format—so it clearly expects more control of the floor to pay off. Amuse, Rom&nd, Purito Seoul, Sungboon Editor—there are real brands in that mix. But 90 brands is a crowded room. If shoppers can’t tell why Kaja sits next to Dr. Melaxin, the discovery magic dies fast. The number to watch later is productivity per square foot, not how many launch photos Target can make. K-beauty can bring traffic. The question is whether it improves the beauty department’s economics. So what brings a high-value luxury customer back now: product, service, price, or something harder to measure? And when brands increasingly want to sell to those clients directly, can that model really hold up? The evidence says it’s a mix, with differentiated service and a credible value proposition doing more than simple discounting. From August 2025 through July 2026, YipitData found Net-a-Porter captured 32.1% of its returning pure-play buyers’ tracked luxury and premium spending, ahead of Mytheresa at 18.9% and Farfetch at 15.3%. The platform still has real permission with those customers; it needs to win a bigger share of wallet from its most valuable clients. Fashionbi says multi-brand luxury e-tailers are answering brands’ direct-to-consumer push with premium services, private-client programs, and exclusive shopping experiences, because assortment and global reach alone no longer cut it. Pricing still matters, but BoF reports roughly 80% of luxury-market growth between 2023 and 2025 came from price increases rather than volume. Consumers are paying closer attention to whether quality, creativity, and service justify the price. LuxExperience’s turnaround does give it room to invest: Vogue reported group net sales of €653.6 million in the quarter ended June 30, up 7.6% at constant currency, with adjusted EBITDA of 2.1%. But private-client service, events, and exclusives are expensive. If brands can offer the same top customer a direct relationship, why should a marketplace expect to earn an acceptable margin? It needs to offer something brands can’t do alone: curate across houses, make a whole wardrobe easier to shop, and provide service beyond a single label. The test is whether those investments lift repeat spend faster than they add cost. LuxExperience has now reported three profitable quarters since its April 2025 formation, but its 2.1% adjusted EBITDA margin shows how little room there is for undisciplined spending. Watch whether Net-a-Porter can turn its returning-buyer base into a larger share of wallet while keeping profitability intact. From Modern Retail:
Footwear brand Rothy’s, which crossed $211 million in sales last year, is an example of a company that has managed to successfully navigate the volatile direct-to-consumer shoe category, even as competitors like Allbirds have failed. Brands that began as strictly DTC are increasingly looking at what they can do to survive and grow beyond just putting out digital ads.
Rothy’s crossed $211 million last year while Allbirds became the cautionary tale. Turns out people will keep buying flats if the flats are actually good. Modern Retail says Rothy’s remained profitable, and that’s the distinction that matters. CEO Dayna Quanbeck is talking patience while testing stores and wholesale—not spraying money at expansion because the DTC playbook says growth has to look loud. And the store test matters. Shoes need try-ons and fit confidence, and people want to see the color in real life. Digital ads can introduce a flat, but they can’t make it comfortable. But discipline only works if the physical footprint stays sustainable. Still, $211 million in sales and profitability is a far sturdier starting point than chasing a viral acquisition spike. Here's Glossy:
Now, Swan is leveraging many hallmarks of the viral bachelorette trip in other opportunities in hopes of garnering additional upper-funnel brand awareness. The company executed five partnerships during New York Fashion Week, including two fashion shows, a masterclass, a longevity suite, and a salon pop-up.
Five NYFW partnerships for a nine-month-old mirror company is a very polished way to get people filming themselves. It still doesn’t prove people will keep using a $795 beauty device after the Plaza sleepover ends. Swan reports site traffic up 32% week over week and app downloads up 27% from the Fashion Week push. Those are upper-funnel results: they show the activations found an audience, not whether the $9.95 monthly subscription retains one. And the product has to survive outside the creator bubble. Three lighting temperatures, seven brightness levels, skin analysis, in-mirror shopping—fine. But we just talked about Rothy’s doing $211 million because people came back for the shoe, not because the launch party looked great on TikTok. Exactly. Fashion Week can be a useful test bed, but it can’t turn awareness into commercial proof on its own. Swan’s next numbers are paid conversion and repeat use, for mirror owners and phone subscribers alike. If you’re enjoying Fashion Business Daily, take a moment to subscribe or leave a review wherever you’re listening. Reviews help other people find the show, and help us keep bringing you the latest fashion-business news.
We’ll be watching Lotte Department Store’s voluntary retirement application window, which runs through October 5. Links to every story are in the show notes, so take a closer look at anything that caught your attention. That’s Fashion Business Daily for today. This is a Lantern Podcast.