My computer’s had a hard time adjusting to life in the States after being in the Middle East for three weeks.
Abc.com alerts me to their US-only policy and my Google Docs Fashion Week calendar still wants to display in Arabic, but it’s Net-A-Porter‘s UK orientation that I’m struggling to make right.
Their sale section is booming. It’s full of product that sold out on the US site within minutes of its Wednesday morning debut: a version of Carrie’s Vivienne Westwood dress, Balmain boots, dresses and jeans, handfuls of classic (wearable) Herve Leger, a creamy Rick Owens leather jacket, piles of lacy Stella McCartney and her ombre jeans, Christopher Kane dresses and Bottega booties — there’s even Luella.
The problem, of course, is that even though I can window shop the UK site, I can’t click ‘buy’ without a UK address and the US site’s without a single sale item.
I asked Net-a-Porter why and they said this, “Net-a-Porter’s US website is an entity on to its own, with its own separate distribution centers and stock levels,” which wasn’t very helpful.

So I asked a friend who writes The Business of Fashion and he said this, “Net-a-Porter has two warehouses (one USA, one Europe) which are managed, in a way, as separate business units,” which is slightly more helpful.
Though the two are, in the end, owned by the same company which makes me wonder (pardon the Carrie-ism) why, if it’s obvious the product would sell out in minutes on the US site, its not made available on both.