Last week, executives from Coupang, the Seoul-based e-commerce company that bailed out Farfetch in December, paid a visit to the luxury marketplace’s headquarters in the glossy Bower building on Old Street, the onetime epicenter of London’s tech scene. Silicon Alley, it is not, and Silicon Valley, it never was. At one point, though, when Google’s British headquarters were also on the traffic circle, across the way from Farfetch, they called it the Silicon Roundabout.
But back in 2016, Google moved down the road to King’s Cross, closer to the City. Then Brexit happened. Then the pandemic. In 2021, Alphabet, as it’s now known, closed down its remaining operations on the traffic circle. Meanwhile, Farfetch moved into The Bower just as Google was heading out.
