Fairchild Studio: Talk to me about ESW. What role does it play in the global e-commerce ecosystem?
Tonia Luykx: ESW is the international growth engine for ambitious brands. We absorb the complexity behind global commerce — payments, duties, compliance, localization, delivery and returns — so brands can grow into new markets without the operation getting in the way of the brand experience.
Our role in the ecosystem is to sit between a brand’s ambition and the reality of global commerce, making international growth feel local to the customer and manageable for the teams behind it. That role has become more important as international demand has stopped arriving in a predictable sequence. It now shows up in real time through customer behavior, social engagement and conversion signals. For brands, the challenge is responding to demand that is already taking shape — and doing so without introducing friction at the very moment a customer is ready to buy.
Fairchild Studio: How does ESW help brands scale internationally and cross-border?
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T.L.: International demand is becoming more fragmented and less predictable. ESW Signals, based on more than 23,000 consumer interviews across 18 markets, shows that 71 percent of Gen Z consumers use social media for product discovery, yet only 6 percent prefer to buy directly through social platforms. Demand can begin anywhere, but conversion tends to follow trust and right now trust is on the brand’s DTC checkout.
Many brands have international demand. What they don’t always have is a model that is designed to capture all of it. That includes localized checkout, market-specific payment experiences, merchant of record capabilities and fulfillment models that can support demand consistently across markets.
That is where ESW helps brands scale internationally. We help brands localize the moments that build trust, from pricing and payment mix to duties, delivery expectations and returns, so the experience feels familiar and reliable in each market. In fashion and beauty, demand can build quickly around a product, a routine or a creator moment. Often in markets, a brand was not actively prioritizing. That is the gap brands have to close. Our role is to help make sure the purchase experience keeps pace with that interest, so brands can capture demand without having to rebuild the model market by market.
Fairchild Studio: How do decisions on tech, payment, duties and compliance shape customer trust when expanding into new markets?
T.L.: Customers may never see the infrastructure behind e-commerce, but they feel it immediately when the experience is unclear.
Trust is built through practical details. Can the shopper understand the full cost early enough? Do the payment options feel familiar? Are duties visible? Does delivery feel predictable? These decisions shape some of the clearest signals a brand sends at the point of purchase. In fashion and beauty, the purchase experience is part of how the brand is judged. Customers bring the same expectations for clarity, confidence and polish to checkout that they bring to the product and the brand itself.
Our Signals research shows that shipping costs, duties and taxes and delivery uncertainty remain among the biggest barriers to international purchases. We see that play out quickly in performance. Brands that have strengthened checkout clarity and localization through ESW have improved checkout conversion by 16 percent within the first month. That is why decisions around technology, payments and compliance carry so much weight. They shape whether the experience feels controlled and credible or whether confidence drops when delivery expectations don’t match reality.
Fairchild Studio: What are the challenges brands encounter when expanding internationally?
T.L.: The biggest challenge is that international growth creates operational complexity faster than most businesses are built to absorb it. Payment behavior varies market by market. Expectations around pricing transparency, duties, delivery and returns do too. What works in one market can create friction in another and that friction shows up in conversion, in margin and in how the brand feels to the customer.
The brands that perform best treat localization as an operational discipline, not a marketing one. They invest in getting the details right, such as duties visibility, local payment methods, delivery expectations and returns — because that is where trust is built or lost. The challenge is doing that consistently across many markets without the operational overhead consuming the team that should be focused on growth.
International growth works best when the complexity belongs to the operating model, not to the customer experience. For fashion and beauty brands, localization is part of brand stewardship. It is one of the ways a brand shows customers that it understands their expectations and respects how they shop.
Fairchild Studio: What role does tech play to ensure the brand experience for consumers stays consistent?
T.L.: Technology has to adapt to the brand, not the other way around. For fashion and beauty brands, consistency comes from making the experience feel equally clear, trustworthy and on brand wherever the customer is shopping, while still protecting the elements that define the brand. That takes the right foundation behind the scenes: localized checkout, the right payment mix, duties visibility, realistic delivery promises and a post-purchase experience that holds together.
ESW gives brands a configurable international commerce layer rather than a fixed global template. Brands need more control than legacy, one-size-fits-all platforms can provide, without having to build and maintain every market solution themselves. The technology has to fit around the brand’s architecture, not force the brand into a template.
That matters even more as discovery and conversion become more distributed. Social commerce, artificial intelligence-assisted discovery and agentic shopping journeys are changing where demand starts and how quickly it moves. Brands need platforms that can support today’s international commerce needs while giving them a roadmap to turn on new channels as the market evolves. When that foundation is in place, brands can respond market by market without fragmenting the organization or diluting the brand experience.
Fairchild Studio: How is AI making the biggest impact on global e-commerce today?
T.L.: Consumers are already showing where they see value. Our research found they are far more comfortable with AI supporting product discovery, comparison and deal-finding than they are with AI making payment or purchase decisions on their behalf. That distinction matters because trust still plays a major role in conversion.
In beauty and fashion, AI is proving most valuable when it helps customers navigate choice, discover products and find relevant recommendations more efficiently. For brands, it is also helping identify emerging demand patterns earlier, whether that demand originates through social platforms, creators, search or other AI-enabled experiences
The opportunity is not simply adding AI to the customer journey. Discovery is becoming more fragmented, but conversion still follows trust. AI can help brands find customers and identify demand earlier, but the purchase experience still needs to feel clear, familiar and reliable. That’s where the real commercial value is created.
Fairchild Studio: What will stand out for brands when scaling internationally over the upcoming years?
T.L.: The brands that pull ahead will be the ones that can convert creator-led demand and international attention into a buying experience that still feels polished, local and unmistakably on-brand.
International growth is becoming less about broad expansion plans and more about reading where demand is real, moving quickly when it is and getting the operational detail right in the markets that matter. The brands that do this well move fast without creating overhead for their teams or friction for their customers. And they choose partners that stay accountable for performance beyond launch, not just partners that provide the infrastructure to get there.
What separates them will be disciplined execution, clear pricing, familiar payment methods; duties and taxes are handled transparently; delivery and returns that feel easy to understand. Details like these have a direct influence on whether a customer completes the purchase and returns. In international e-commerce, that is where growth becomes durable.
To explore ESW Signals 2026, visit esw.com.
