Podcast Ep 179 - Ep 179: 3x Conversion, 20% Fewer Returns: Inside Swap's Agentic Storefront

On this episode I’m talking to Sam Atkinson, Co-Founder and CEO of Swap, about what happens when the company that built the infrastructure layer for e-commerce decides to rebuild the shopping experience entirely.

Swap started with a simple conviction: the hardest problems in e-commerce - cross-border tax, returns, compliance, demand planning - were being duct-taped together with five different vendors and none of them talking to each other. Sam and his co-founder Zach set out to fix that. Three years later, they’ve built a back office suite used by brands scaling internationally, and they’ve just launched something entirely different: an agentic storefront that replaces the traditional website with a guided, conversational shopping experience.

The reason that sequence matters is because everyone is trying to build the AI shopping layer right now. Most of them don’t have what Swap has underneath it: the product data, the integrations, the customer relationships, and the trust that comes from already being inside the operational engine of these brands. That changes what’s possible.

We get into the agentic storefront they’re running live with brands like Studio Nicholson. How it caters to the customer who knows exactly what they want, and the customer who doesn’t. The discovery mode they built for low-intent browsers. The outfit builder coming next. And the numbers: 3x conversion rate improvement, 20% reduction in returns, customers spending twice as long in the experience.

We also talk about where Sam thinks AI doesn’t disrupt Swap and why. Moving physical goods across borders with accurate HS codes and correct local tax filings isn’t something a general-purpose model can do reliably. That moat matters.

Then the fundraising conversation. What it looks like to raise from the very first cheque to a proper growth round, when you’re still figuring out how to tell the story. Why the market in 2025/26 has become haves and have-nots. And how you build the discipline to cut a product that isn’t working, even when you’ve already invested in it.

If you’re building in commerce - as a brand, an operator, or someone trying to understand what the infrastructure of this next era actually looks like - this conversation is worth your time.