Scaling a fashion D2C brand from Australia into the US

The challenge

The brand had a working system in Australia and wanted to open the US market without assuming the same playbook would transfer. US Meta CPMs run 30 to 40% above Australia's for comparable audiences, so the same spend buys less attention from the start.

US shipping times are also longer than what American customers are used to in a fast-delivery market, and we hypothesized that this wait, combined with a new brand having no US awareness yet, would put downward pressure on conversion rate independent of the CPM problem. And the product itself, flowy dresses, only sells where the climate and lifestyle support it, so targeting had to be solved alongside pricing, not after it.

The approach

• Reset US pricing roughly 50% above Australian levels to cover the CPM gap and the anticipated CR risk from longer delivery times and low brand awareness. Import tariffs are charged to the customer separately at checkout rather than folded into that markup, so the two show up as distinct line items rather than one inflated price.
• Narrowed targeting to higher-net-worth, warm-climate US regions where a flowy silhouette fits how people actually dress, rather than running a generic “expand to US” broad target.
• Built US-specific creative and messaging from the outset, running alongside the pricing and targeting work rather than after it, so the brand read as native to the market from day one, not exported into it later.

The result

The US expansion was built on its own pricing and targeting logic rather than inheriting Australia's, and scaled alongside it profitably.