Sabre Paris already made over 90% of its sales abroad, but almost entirely through wholesale and B2B. In this conversation, Emilie Afonso explains how a small team took the brand's direct-to-consumer business international: five localized European storefronts live in two weeks, Germany doubling within weeks of launch, and a store now selling in more than 20 countries. The discussion covers translation quality, localized Google Shopping campaigns, duties calculated at checkout, and what changes operationally when opening a market stops being a project.

Part 1: Meet Sabre Paris ▶ Watch (1:03)

A maison built to shake up the tableware world
Emilie Afonso joined Sabre Paris about five years ago to build the brand's direct-to-consumer business. Sabre is a French maison with 30 years of savoir-faire, hand-assembling its cutlery in a workshop in the Paris region and pairing French craftsmanship with color, patterns and a deliberately playful take on a traditional category.

The trade-conference moment ▶ Watch (2:34)
Julien recalls a session at the French tableware industry confederation (the CAT) where the moderator asked who in the room ships products abroad, then asked who is fully satisfied with how it works today. Far fewer hands stayed up the second time. That gap is the subject of this webinar.

Why a French + English site is not enough ▶ Watch (3:05)
Most brands still sell worldwide with a domestic site plus a generic English one. Yet more than 76% of online shoppers prefer to buy in their own language, and when the language, currency and delivery options are right, conversion rates can go up to double. AI removes the constraints that used to make localization slow and resource-heavy.

Part 2: Before Glopal, known abroad but not equipped ▶ Watch (4:37)

Three sites and a generic storefront for the rest of the world
Emilie draws a line between brand awareness abroad and a real international commercial infrastructure. Sabre had a French site, a US site and a UK site. Everything else was served by a generic English site: prices in euros, shipping costs that did not fit the destination, and no targeted marketing campaigns. The US and UK launches had proven the model, and the team could feel untapped potential in Germany, the Netherlands, Spain and Italy.

90% export, but organic and B2B-led ▶ Watch (5:40)
Sabre was already realizing over 90% of its sales at export, mostly through wholesale and B2B, with a strong presence in the US and Korea through distributors. In Europe outside France, orders arrived organically through the visibility of resellers and hospitality clients. The challenge: accelerate direct sales on those markets with a small team, no army of country sites, and no big budget.

Part 3: The launch, five markets in two weeks ▶ Watch (6:40)

Configure the brand voice first, then launch in parallel
What struck Emilie was a speed the team had not anticipated. They started by configuring the translation engine with Sabre's tone of voice: warm but never over-familiar, an exacting artistic direction, and collection names that must not be translated. Two weeks later, five European sites were live, including German, Spanish and Dutch versions, with the right redirects and the right SEO. Human review happened afterwards, by Sabre's own language speakers and Glopal's teams.

Why AI compresses the timeline ▶ Watch (7:39)
Julien explains what makes multi-market launches fast now. Translation is only the visible part: tone of voice and glossaries are applied so the output is never word-for-word. Once configured, the rules repeat across markets. The traditional model was slowed by an accumulation of tasks (translation, site layout, SEO) spread across multiple actors (translators, technical teams). Collapsing that is what made Sabre's timeline possible.

Quality and human review ▶ Watch (9:10)
Quality was the team's main initial fear. The objective was a site that reads as local and does not feel machine-translated. Sabre's own team members who speak the target languages validated the translations, and that review layer, on top of the AI base, is what Emilie identifies as the difference between raw automatic translation and the result they shipped.

Part 4: The results ▶ Watch (10:13)

Germany doubles within weeks
The first big surprise was Germany, one of the five launch markets. Within a few weeks it was growing at over 100% versus the previous period, and roughly doubled year on year over the same period, on a market where Sabre was already present. Emilie's reading: customers had simply never been given the right conditions to buy. Double-digit growth continued in the following months and showed up across the other European launch markets too.

Localized Google Shopping as the accelerator ▶ Watch (11:13)
Localized sites converted the existing organic traffic better, but paid marketing is where things accelerated. Glopal runs localized Google Shopping campaigns as part of the service, on a simple model: if a market performs, investment increases, otherwise budgets adjust. Emilie describes it as fully aligned with Sabre's interests and the driver of local brand visibility.

Are these results replicable? ▶ Watch (12:14)
Julien anticipates the question Glopal hears constantly. Sabre's performance is not luck but an accumulation of factors: a distinctive product, latent demand on the target markets, a team that played the game fully and reinvested when campaigns worked, and AI amplifying all of it by replicating the domestic playbook across languages.

Part 5: What it changed, for the team and for customers ▶ Watch (13:16)

From "how do we open a market" to "which one do we open first"
Emilie describes the operational shift by listing what the team no longer does. A new market used to be a full project: meetings, a site localization, a budget, deadlines. Now the questions are when to launch translations and when to configure the DNS, a matter of days, with a review before going live. That frees time, energy, creativity and budget for other projects.

The customer experience: language, currency, duties ▶ Watch (14:48)
A German customer is now redirected automatically to the German version, with product descriptions, filters, cart and checkout entirely in their language. On non-EU markets, duties are calculated and displayed at checkout, so Sabre ships DDP and the customer never faces a surprise customs bill at delivery, an experience Emilie calls a reason to never buy from a site again.

Part 6: What's next, and is any brand big enough ▶ Watch (16:19)

Long-haul markets, starting with Japan
Beyond the first five, Sabre has since opened more European countries and now wants to push into long-haul markets. Japan launched recently, more countries are on the roadmap, and the team plans to accelerate paid marketing as the lever that speeds up each new market.

Size is no longer the question ▶ Watch (17:19)
Julien challenges the "we'll go international when we're bigger" reflex. What matters is a product with something relevant to offer abroad (a savoir-faire, a design, a price position) and the will to go. International is a growth lever, not a consequence of growth, and the SEO groundwork compounds: time not invested today cannot be recovered tomorrow.

Emilie's closing advice ▶ Watch (18:50)
Growth relays run through international, and for Emilie the moment is now, not in one, two or three years. Sabre is not a CAC 40 company: it is a family-scale maison with small marketing teams, yet it sells in more than 20 countries with localized experiences and active campaigns. The right tools make those markets reachable even with limited resources.

Q&A Highlights ▶ Watch (20:21)

Did you choose the markets yourself, or did Glopal recommend some? ▶ Watch (20:21)
Mostly Sabre's own shortlist, but the language lens changed the map: Sabre thinks in markets, Glopal thinks in languages. Translating into German unlocked Austria, and with German, Italian and French already covered, trilingual Switzerland opened almost for free. (Hortense)

Did German buyers already know the brand, or did you have to build awareness? ▶ Watch (21:54)
A bit of both. There was some organic awareness through wholesale and a former B2B agent, but no direct B2C presence. Sabre paired Glopal's paid media with its own press and influence work, a 360 approach, and keeps working on awareness today. (Hortense)

Did you consider translating in-house before working with Glopal? ▶ Watch (22:57)
That was the old way, and it was abandoned quickly. Agency translation means extracting every text, translating, reimporting, and it is one-shot. The value of the tool is the run: a new campaign goes live in English and is translated into every market language automatically, with regular review passes. (Amélie)

Are translations instant, and what about international SEO? ▶ Watch (23:58)
Near-instant: content goes live in English and the translation appears right away, with review as needed. On SEO, translated keywords and meta descriptions improved organic traffic naturally, with the usual delay. Julien's advice: start international SEO as early as possible because it compounds.

What ads budget do you need to start on a market where the brand is unknown? ▶ Watch (25:32)
Sabre started small, around 1,000 euros per month per market, in a test-and-learn mindset. Budgets adjust against a ROAS target: when a market performs and shows potential, the tool increases investment, so spend follows results rather than guesses.

Have you launched Meta ads? ▶ Watch (26:34)
Not yet on the Glopal-managed markets: the launch phase deliberately prioritized ROAS-driven Google campaigns. Meta is the planned next step as the focus shifts to awareness, and Glopal translates Meta ads as well.

We work with an agency for our ads. Is that a problem? ▶ Watch (27:36)
No. Sabre runs exactly that setup: its biggest markets (France, US, UK) with an agency, and the Glopal-managed markets alongside. It takes coordination and clean naming at the start so campaigns and accounts do not overlap, then it runs smoothly. (Camille)

How long does Glopal take to launch a market? ▶ Watch (28:08)
The first five markets took under a month end to end, around four weeks including internal setup and synchronization. Now that everything is in place, a new market goes live in a few days to a couple of weeks, depending on both roadmaps. (Camille)

How good is the AI translation, really? ▶ Watch (29:09)
The AI provides the base, and every site launch gets a human review pass: collection names that must stay untranslated are protected through glossary work with Glopal. In the run phase, the vast majority translates very well, with regular reviews by native speakers covering the rest. Julien adds that this expert layer on top of the AI is exactly what distinguishes the service from DIY AI translation tools.