Fairfax & Favor saves over £1M with US expansion supported by Markets, Multi-Currency Payouts, and Shopify POS

Since launching in 2013, Fairfax & Favor has grown into a multi-award-winning brand at the forefront of British luxury fashion and rural vogue. Unlike many of their digital-first peers, Fairfax & Favor was built on face-to-face customer relationships. The brand established itself by attending dozens of events annually, where they were on a mission to get boots and shoes directly on customers’ feet, and the business grew quickly from there.

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, they shifted their focus to ecommerce while maintaining a physical presence across nine UK stores and events. Online sales remained high post-pandemic, with growing interest in the US. This led them to expand into the states with in-person stores and ecommerce, and they turned to Shopify to help execute their strategy.

With Shopify, Fairfax & Favor has optimized selling both in-person and online across multiple international markets. By leveraging Markets, Multi-Currency Payouts, and Shopify POS specifically, the brand has:

• Saved £50,000 annually in currency conversion costs
• Saved £1M annually in head count and hours spent by having single store management for multiple geographies
• Grown US portion of total sales from 3% to 10% in two years
• Enabled advanced customer segmentation and personalized marketing through POS integration
• Brought the simplicity and convenience of online checkout to the in-person shopping experience

The Challenge: Managing US growth and multi-channel complexity

When Fairfax & Favor watched their US sales climb from 3% to 10% in just two years, they faced a new challenge. How do you manage nine UK stores, dozens of annual events, and ambitious American expansion plans without everything falling apart? They needed a platform that could connect every customer touchpoint. Whether someone discovered them at a country fair in Yorkshire or browsed their site from Brooklyn, the experience had to feel connected.

“We wanted to make sure that we were providing the best service we could to the States, because ideally we wanted an order to arrive in two or three days for a customer,” says Ben Buxton, Head of Web Development at Fairfax & Favor. “At the same time, we also wanted to make sure that we were completely compliant internationally. We wanted our US sales to grow organically as quickly as they could without bottlenecks.”

Fairfax & Favor built their reputation on face-to-face relationships, and they weren't about to lose that personal touch as they grew. Whether a customer bought boots at their Holt flagship, picked up a handbag at a Virginia horse show, or ordered online, the team wanted every interaction to feel connected and personal. Their US expansion meant they needed their point-of-sale systems to talk to their inventory and ERP systems back home, so they could track customer preferences, manage inventory levels, and deliver the same thoughtful service that made them successful in the first place.

Another complexity the team grappled with was handling the various duties and tax regulations required when working with US shoppers across all sales channels. "Everything looked rosy once the US sales came in," says Ben. "But when you're dealing with international duty, DDP requirements, tax requirements, and footwear declaration forms, it starts to become a little bit convoluted. Then when you add the point of nexus requirement—which of course, is different for every state—then you've got to take things a lot more seriously and really break it down before things spiral."

The team also faced the issue of managing multiple currencies across all their operations, which became particularly challenging with unpredictable exchange rates that left their finances at the whim of the markets. "You can have somebody buy something one day and return it 30 days later as a 20-pound difference from what they paid originally, which is fine for one order. But when you're talking thousands of orders across a year on an international basis, then it all starts to add up," says Ben. "Not only are you losing out with the conversion rate at the time of checkout, but you're also losing out by converting back in order to pay international suppliers.”

The Solution: Simplified operations fuel multi-channel, international expansion

Improved tools for new market growth

Around the time that Ben's team was strategizing about how best to support their growing US market and expanding retail footprint, Shopify released Markets, a unified solution for business expansion. With only three people on his ecommerce team including himself, he was looking for quick solutions that “just worked.” Markets, with its subfolders and price books features, fit the bill.

Selling and building relationships everywhere customers shop

Fairfax & Favor leveraged Shopify POS from the start of their business. Using it alongside Markets and other key features helped create a truly unified experience.

For their US expansion, the team set up a dedicated POS store that syncs back to their main platform, so event sales flow smoothly while keeping all customer records in one place. They built custom tools across every channel: a loyalty program and an appointments system that connects with POS, letting staff create draft orders and send purchase links directly to customers.

Shopify POS helps the brand better identify in-store shoppers and build long-term relationships in other ways as well. “As POS ties directly into Shopify admin, we can use automations and the abilities available in admin to link with different systems, target customer groups by area, or use additional platforms like Klaviyo to grow a customer’s profile,” says Ben. And new staff can master Shopify POS in 2-3 hours of training, only needing refresher training every 18 months. This means Fairfax & Favor can open new locations fast without drowning in training costs.

Automating foreign currency conversions and compliance

With Multi-Currency Payouts, a feature of Shopify Payments, the team eliminated manual currency conversion.

The brand can also hold funds in reserves to pay suppliers and have cash on hand for emergencies, all without having to convert currencies. "You've got the certainty that the money there is the money that you're gonna pay," says Ben.

For tax compliance, Shopify Tax handles international requirements across all sales channels. "This is going to be a gamechanger for us because it monitors where a customer is in terms of the point of nexus, even down to a county or town level," says Ben. "The fact that we can be completely hands off with tax calculation on a US basis means that we know customers will be paying the right tax.”

The Results: Off to the races with Shopify

With Markets, Multi-Currency Payouts, and Shopify POS working together, Ben estimates the business has seen approximately £1,050,000 worth of annual savings. Plus, operations run smoother and customers enjoy better experiences everywhere they shop.

Without the Markets subfolders feature, Ben says that setting up the US store would have taken two months to get a new website up and running and hand off their SEO and pay-per-click programs to a new instance. "Instead, we could just create a new store, with exactly the same products but entirely different settings, within a day, and without sacrifice to SEO," he says.

Ben estimates that without Shopify's unified approach, his three-person ecommerce team would need to be "three if not four times the size" to manage separate systems effectively.

Multi-Currency Payouts saves Ben's team about £50,000 a year by eliminating weekly currency conversion calculations across all sales channels. "We know how much will be in our different accounts and we can account for that much more easily," Ben says. "So our attention can turn to other areas because we don't have to have our eyes on currency conversion all the time, but we've also got the certainty in ourselves that we can meet those payments at the right time."

Shopify POS connects online and offline customer experiences. Staff can access purchase history and email data in-store, while their private appointment service lets them hold items at POS level and send draft orders to customers who complete purchases online with proper store attribution. The same automations, customer data, and personalization that power their website now work in every store interaction.

The results speak for themselves: online returns run 18-20%, but retail POS orders see less than 1% returns since customers can try products in person and request specific items that might sell out online. Their 25 annual US events feed a cycle where new event customers become repeat online buyers, creating true cross-channel relationships.

For Ben and his team, the benefits that Shopify’s unified platform bring to the business and their customers is clear: these solutions will be a default part of any international expansion strategy for the brand moving forward. “This is it, we’re set for life now with Shopify,” Ben says.