Case Study · Fashion · Market Expansion
An Australian D2C fashion brand with a working Australian system wanted to enter the US. We rebuilt pricing, targeting and creative for the US market from day one instead of reusing the Australian playbook.
The brand had a working system in Australia and wanted to open the US market without assuming the same playbook would transfer. Three problems had to be solved before spend could scale.
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 longer than what American customers are used to in a fast-delivery market. 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 gap.
The product, flowy dresses, only sells where the climate and lifestyle support it, so targeting had to be solved alongside pricing.
We set three levers for the US market before spend scaled.
US pricing was reset roughly 50% above Australian levels to cover the CPM gap and the anticipated conversion risk from longer delivery times and low brand awareness. Import tariffs are charged to the customer separately at checkout, so tariffs and the price markup show up as two distinct line items.
Targeting was narrowed to higher-net-worth, warm-climate US regions where a flowy silhouette fits how people dress. We avoided a generic broad target across the whole country.
US-specific creative and messaging was built from the outset, alongside the pricing and targeting work, so the brand read as native to the market from day one.
The US launch ran on its own pricing, targeting and creative logic and returned 3.5x ROAS on US spend over 6 months. Across Australia and the US, the account returned 4.1x blended ROAS. Both figures exclude US shipping costs.
Both figures exclude US shipping costs.
ROAS is revenue divided by ad spend. The 3.5x figure covers US spend only. Blended ROAS covers both markets, Australia and the US, across all channels rather than the ROAS reported inside a single ad platform. Both exclude US shipping costs, so they reflect media efficiency only, and shipping and other costs sit outside them. We judge a market entry on whether pricing, targeting and creative can absorb the CPM gap and the shipping and awareness disadvantages, which is why those three levers were set before spend scaled.
We review the account, connect the numbers, and identify what a new market needs before you spend into it, including pricing, CPM exposure and shipping margin.
Request a Paid Media Profitability ReviewWant to check the margin first? Try the contribution margin calculator.