The opportunity

The resellers ranked, the house did not

Yves Salomon is a French luxury house built on coats and outerwear, with an average basket around 1,000 euros. A few years ago the online business had moved from Magento to Shopify Plus, but it still spoke two languages, French and English, and traded meaningfully in three countries: the UK, the US and France. International activity beyond that was small.

The brand was visible internationally, just not on its own terms. A large wholesale and reseller network plus retail presence across several countries meant the demand was real. But when a customer searched in their own language, it was the resellers who appeared, not the house. COVID sharpened the question. The business wanted online growth that did not depend on its resellers or on a single domestic market.

Underneath that sat a commercial argument. Direct customers mean direct data, and in this category assortment does not travel. Japan wants shearling, Germany wants down jackets and the iconic parka, South Korea wants mink. Without the direct relationship, none of that is visible in time to act on it.

Before and after, on the same query, in the same market.

Challenges

Six things in the way

What we put in place

One catalogue, thirty-nine markets

Glopal runs as an application on top of the existing Shopify Plus store, localizing every page and every product, with translation memory, per market glossaries and human proofreading behind the automation. The team chooses which markets to activate, sets shipping and return policy per market, and excludes anything that should stay untouched, such as the house name and campaign codes. Opening a market became a few clicks rather than a development project, which is what made testing 39 of them affordable.

Marketing moved with it. Product titles, descriptions and meta fields are translated, which is what lifted local search rankings and brought in new local traffic rather than only converting the traffic already arriving. Paid campaigns stayed with the brand’s agency: Glopal translates the feeds and campaign files into the chosen markets, the agency runs them locally. Behind the storefront, the UK and US subsidiaries serve their own markets directly, so American customers are not shipped to and returned from across the Atlantic.

Opening a market became a control, not a project.

The timeline

Two languages to thirty-nine markets

Results

Doubled in three months, then tripled

Turnover doubled within three months of going live and has since tripled year on year, with sales volume up 55% and return on ad spend above nine. Average order value rose alongside it, because direct customers reach the full catalogue rather than the edited selection a wholesale partner chooses to carry, and they buy the expensive pieces: full coats, technical down jackets. Localized product data improved returns too, since customers reading sizing and materials in their own language make fewer mistakes.

Seasonality changed shape entirely. A house that made almost 80% of its turnover between October and February now sells winter coats through the northern summer in Australia and Canada, enough that the site carries a permanent iconic section to keep that offer live all year. And the markets meant to be marginal keep proving otherwise. Two months into the South Korean store, a single order arrived for a full mink jacket worth around 12,000 euros, from a customer who came back and ordered again.

A winter house that now trades through the northern summer.