How a ‘Typical Nerd’ Became a Leading Luxury-Fashion Seller

“I was a geek, a typical nerd,” said Mr. Neves, to whom fashion had seemed trivial. “I used to wear shoes for so long that my toe would literally come out the end.”

Visits to those suppliers’ factories sparked an appreciation of luxury, however, revealing the passion and attention to detail high-end brands pour into their products, said Mr. Neves, who is Farfetch’s chief executive. Fascinated, he attended a fashion trade show in Milan. “It blew my mind,” he recalled.

Rubbing shoulders with buyers and designers from dozens of countries, he realized that luxury was much more global and cosmopolitan than technology was at the time.

Mr. Neves moved to London and committed himself to developing fashion technology, culminating in his founding Farfetch in 2007. It began operating the following year, immediately before the financial crisis washed over the global economy.

That wrecked Mr. Neves’s plans to raise capital. “All the doors were shut,” he said. “There was absolutely no chance of getting funding.”

As a relatively unknown entrepreneur, Mr. Neves lacked personal connections that might have helped him to unlock seed funding, forcing him to use his own money to keep the company going, he said.

Farfetch survived on a shoestring until the crisis eased and Mr. Neves was finally able to secure venture capital in 2010.

Today, Farfetch hosts around 1,300 brands, including Gucci,

Prada

and Versace, which sell their products on the site in return for a commission.

But in the platform’s infancy, it was a challenge to persuade luxury firms to engage back when some assumed they didn’t need to participate in online retail. Luxury’s relatively slow pace could also be frustrating to tech people used to innovating and making quick decisions, he recalled.

“These brands are generational businesses,” Mr. Neves said. “Decisions are made in a very long-term way.”

The key to success in luxury, perhaps more than in any other sector, is building trusted relationships over many years, he said. Several of those relationships have helped mold his company and management style.

Here are four of the people he turns to for guidance:

António Horta-Osório

Former chief executive of

PLC.

Mr. Neves said Mr. Horta-Osório’s experience handling the daily stress of running a large organization has been invaluable.

A fellow Portuguese expatriate in London, Mr. Horta-Osório ran the U.K.’s Lloyds Bank for a decade before also serving as chairman of

Credit Suisse Group AG

.

Eight months into his tenure at Lloyds in 2011, Mr. Horta-Osório took an extended leave of absence due to exhaustion—then a highly controversial move for the leader of a major company—before returning to work after receiving treatment and having learned new ways of coping. Alongside his business career, he has since become known for his work championing mental health, especially dealing with work-related stress.

In the past, Mr. Neves and his team would exhaust themselves working several days and nights straight to meet clients’ deadlines, Mr. Neves said. But he now thinks that it’s counterproductive to work such long hours, thanks largely to his conversations with Mr. Horta-Osório about the importance of work-life balance.

“Work is super-important,” he said. “But in the end if it’s going to kill you there’s no point, really.”

Gary Leboff

Sports psychologist & executive coach

Mr. Neves engaged Mr. Leboff to work with Farfetch leadership after hearing him address a group of chief executives on management techniques several years ago—a speech Mr. Neves said was a revelation, thanks to Mr. Leboff’s insights into performance psychology.

Having only ever worked for himself, Mr. Neves said he’s benefited from executive coaching, especially Mr. Leboff’s. His approach is to analyze an individual’s performance in detail, and understand and then break down the psychological barriers to performing better.

“He’s helped me to be more assertive and less afraid of conflict,” said Mr. Neves, who sees Mr. Leboff regularly. Mr. Neves said that as an entrepreneur he used to be too focused on building and expanding Farfetch, but Mr. Leboff’s advice has lately helped him to broaden his skill set as a CEO and devote more time to mentoring his team, he said.

José Manuel Durão Barroso

Former European Commission president

Another member of what Mr. Neves terms “the Portuguese diaspora,” Mr. Barroso was Portugal’s prime minister before occupying the European Commission presidency until 2014. He now serves as nonexecutive chairman at

Goldman Sachs International.

Farfetch banks with Goldman Sachs, and that connection enabled Mr. Neves to get to know Mr. Barroso.

A wealth of political experience makes him Mr. Neves’s go-to source of intelligence on world affairs. “He has a very deep understanding of geopolitics and macroeconomics, of how everything works,” Mr. Neves said.

He’s consulted Mr. Barroso on everything from the pandemic and the development of China to the monetary policies of the U.S. Federal Reserve and European Central Bank, Mr. Neves said. “He doesn’t have a crystal ball,” he said. “But he has a very educated idea of the different scenarios that are going to play out.”

Sophie Devonshire

Chief executive, the Marketing Society

The second executive coach whom Mr. Neves credits with shaping his approach to management, entrepreneur Sophie Devonshire now runs the Marketing Society, a global network of marketing executives.

As a coach, Ms. Devonshire focuses on helping business leaders to make good decisions quickly and not to be overwhelmed by the pace at which new challenges fly at them. That’s been especially helpful at a fast-growing company like Farfetch, where revenues roughly quadrupled over four years to $2.3 billion last year.

“How can you manage in a fast-changing environment with lots of uncertainty and volatility?” Mr. Neves said. “She’s helped me a lot to be a better manager in that kind of scenario, to manage that speed of growth and keep levelheaded, to keep the team motivated with high levels of energy.”

Write to Trefor Moss at Trefor.Moss@wsj.com