Clickbate:
But its true
Our international revenue is up 200% YOY while barely increasing spend.
How do we do it?
A unique international opstack:
We have 5 different web experiences.
One for each major market.
Thats pretty standard right?
But we go above and beyond to have LOCAL INVENTORY.
If you order from the UK store, your products are shipping from the UK.
Its a true localized experience.
check out in pounds
VAT (Taxes) are included in price
Ships in the country, shows up in 2 days
And thats true for every market.
When we tested this vs sending to one main store, the results were night and day.
Double the conversion rates for cold traffic, better customer experience.
We go so far as to make sure the wallets feature that countries currency.
And this attention to detail roles into marketing.
We highlight country specific holidays and do promos based on that.
Work with in market influencers, etc.
Australia doesnt care about july 4th after all lol
We arent alone on finding growth abroad.
Manscaped, while they were about to SPAC, shared that their US ecom biz would be flat or down and most of their growth was going to come from global expansion.
Why you shouldnt try to expand internationally:
Instead of managing 1 store, we manage 5
So updates have to happen across 5 stores
5 sets of inventory and restocks we have to manage
sometimes product launches cant happen the same day across all markets
Either because of production deadlines or because of inventory constraints
Like we dont have rings abroad right now, so their roll out is a quarter behind the US market
TAXES
US sales tax costs $200,000 a year to do right
International is harder
You have to pay and remit VAT or sales tax to dozens of governments
We use a Importer of record and a Merchant of record to streamline all this
Pay them a fee, they sell and remit on our behalf, just give us the net dollars
david@brandaccess.com if you want to learn more about international in general
Warehouses
Like I said, local inventory means local warehouses
We ship from 3 US nodes and use the same provider in UK/CA, but Australia and EU we found other people
So its 3x as many bills and order volume to manage
Brand access could also do warehouses though if you really want a one stop shop
I was just a Ruby Has loyalist, Rafi was an amazing CEO who cared about my brand dearly
This is really only 8 figure behavior
If you are doing single millions or even low to mid 8 figures, do something else first
It is expensive and hard to make international work
CX 24 hours a day because it is always peak somewhere
Multi language CX
Shipping carriers all over the world
Multiple new ad campaigns needed
You really need to do this when you have the bankroll and are ready to commit
Tips and Takeaways:
Pick one market to test first
Everyone typically goes canada
Find a good partner to guide you
Little things internationally can fuck you
Couldnt recommend brand access enough
We used a different partner before and I legally cant talk about what happened, but it was bad
This newsletter has millions of dolalrs on mistakes in it
DONT DO IT UNTIL YOU ARE READY
US biz needs to be huge and mature
But if you do it right, revenue can be huge.
By 2026 I think international will be bigger than our US biz.
Growth and trajectory are insane.
Thanks so much!! Curious about the reasoning behind 8 figures. E.g. what about only running perf. in the US woth 1 product but not yet being 8 figures. Would you recommend to first go other channels/product (product expansion, more paid, influencer, Amazon, B2B, etc.) or also expand with 1 product in other geos?
You’re a legend Sean. How do I repay you for this invaluable info!?