An Italian luxury fashion house with strong European retail, ambitious about Australia, and no operational footprint outside Europe. The play was a hybrid: DTC ecommerce from day one, seeded with PR and a parallel wholesale push into high-end boutiques. Fast, but not careless.
Cross-border fashion DTC into Australia is harder than it looks. GST registration, duty thresholds, returns infrastructure, local payment methods, fulfilment partners, and the fact that Australian luxury consumers shop very differently from Italian ones — none of which the team had handled before.
On the brand side, the bigger risk: looking like a discount export, not a considered local launch. Wholesale relationships and DTC narrative had to land in the same window or the brand would be miscategorised before it found its footing.
AU legal entity, GST, customs and duty workflow, AUD payment processing, returns flow, fulfilment-partner contract — the unglamorous foundation.
Shopify Plus storefront in AUD, AU sizing conventions, Klaviyo flows tuned to AU shopping behaviour, AfterPay integration. Editorial-first product pages.
Coordinated launch wave across Sydney and Melbourne — editorial seeding to fashion press, gifting to a curated influencer set, launch event for press and buyers.
Direct outreach to high-end multi-brand boutiques. By month four, twelve wholesale accounts were placing initial orders alongside the DTC launch.
Six months after Australian launch, measured against pre-engagement plan.