Meet the Woman Behind Our Favorite Online Luxury Retailers: Alison Loehnis

Welcome to Second Life, a podcast spotlighting successful women who've made major career changes—and fearlessly mastered the pivot. Hosted by Hillary Kerr, co-founder and chief content officer at Who What Wear, each episode gives you a direct line to women who are game changers in their fields. Subscribe to Second Life on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or anywhere you get your podcasts to stay tuned.

If you are serial shoppers like us at Who What Wear, chances are you are extremely familiar with the top online luxury fashion retailers—Net-a-Porter, The Outnet, and Mr. Porter. At the helm of those premier shopping destinations is the president of luxury and fashion, Alison Loehnis. Disrupting and dominating the industry, Loehnis has catapulted the three platforms into a new era of luxury shopping. 

Since joining Net-a-Porter in 2007, Loehnis has evolved the business through major moments of strategic growth, including the launches of The Outnet in 2009 and Mr Porter in 2011 and a merger with Italian online fashion retailer Yoox in 2015. She's also led the company through massive global expansion, including regional hubs in the United States, Asia, and the Middle East. In fact, if you happen to live in New York, London, or Hong Kong, you've likely experienced the luxury of the same-day delivery service, allowing customers to receive their orders within just hours of purchase. Today, the group has fostered an audience of 1.2 billion across its online destinations and continues to pave the way for online shopping through innovative initiatives led by Loehnis.

However, before Loehnis was spearheading the growth of the world's leading luxury retailers for men and women, her career was quite dynamic. She began in advertising, working at the multinational communications and advertising agency network Saatchi & Saatchi, and then went on to explore media at Hachette Filipacchi, which published magazines such as Elle. Loehnis also experimented in the film industry, where she wrote script coverage for production companies and even became a creative executive at Disney. She then landed a position running sales and marketing at perhaps the biggest luxury corporation in the world, LVMH, overseeing Thomas Pink and focusing on marketing, PR, brand, and content. 

Listen to the latest episode of Second Life to hear how Loehnis's past career experiences have led her to become one of the most influential women in fashion retail.

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