Luxury online shop Mytheresa up for sale

FRANKFURT, Germany - The owners of German online retailer Mytheresa, specializing in luxury fashion and accessories, have mandated Goldman Sachs to find a buyer, three people familiar with the matter told Reuters.

Online retailers have been growing fast and attracting interest from investors. For example, MySale, an Australian fashion sales site backed by retail businessman Philip Green, earlier this week said it was buying luxury flash sale site Cocosa.

Mytheresa sells ladies' fashion from 180 designers including Valentino, Balenciaga, Dolce&Gabbana and Yves Saint Laurent, targeting customers in countries like Germany, UK, France and Italy.

It competes with luxury online shops like Net-a-Porter, which belongs to Swiss-based Richemont and also German online fashion retailer Zalando, which is considering a stock market listing later this year but is focused less on luxury and more on mainstream brands.

Fashion retailers Susanne and Christoph Botschen in 1987 opened a store called Theresa in Munich, which still exists. In 2006, they launched the online shop Mytheresa.

In 2010, buyout group Acton Capital Partners acquired a minority stake in Mytheresa, which posted 66 million euros in sales in 2013 and expects to exceed 100 million euros in revenues this year, Christoph Botschen told a trade journal earlier this month.

Mytheresa has been profitable from the start, he told Drapers.

In 2012, Mytheresa posted a net profit of 2.5 million euros, according to a company filing.

Goldman Sachs, Mytheresa and Acton declined to comment while Susanne and Christoph Botschen were not immediately available for comment.