Welcome to the Scoop: a weekly email series in which I quiz fashion insiders on the stories of the week. This will be a way for the Vogue Business community to synthesize and reflect on the latest headlines and get a little inside scoop every Friday.

This week’s guest is Juan Pellerano. Juan is the chief marketing officer of Swap Commerce, a company that helps companies with their e-commerce logistics. Swap was also our partner on our new executive report, ‘How to Sell’, as well as the Vogue Business Global Summit that just took place in Chantilly.

It was on that stage at the Château de Chantilly where Swap co-founder and CEO Sam Atkinson broke the news that Swap is launching the world’s first-ever agentic storefront. But what on earth is an agentic storefront? I asked Juan to explain while we took in the sun on the steps of the château in between sessions.

Hi Juan, what’s the scoop?

We’re bringing out the first agentic storefront. We’ve been working on it for a year and are excited to launch it alongside over 20 brand partners, but notably Simkhai, Retrofit, Studio Nicholson, and Manors Golf. Originally, we worked on this from a B2C standpoint. We had a product called Window Shop that we ultimately didn’t bring to market, but it was essentially about how to get someone the exact product they’re looking for. And during the development of Window Shop, we realized we could put this power in the brands’ hands and give them a tool that lets them control the customer experience end-to-end.

But what is an agentic storefront? Can you explain it to me in layman’s terms?

Basically, it’s as if you were a brand that took to ChatGPT for a day; what would that look like? Once you land on an AI version of the brand’s site, we have two journeys that you can choose from. One is the discovery mode: shopping as if you’re scrolling on TikTok or Instagram, where you can scroll through the feed and see products in that way. And then there’s the conversation side of it, where you can talk directly to the agent with your voice or through text and find very specific things. If you’re looking for an outfit for an occasion, a trip, etc., or you’re just looking for simple basics, you’re able to interact with the agent in the same way that you would interact with someone in a store.

We find that through that very guided discovery, you’re able to convert better. So we’re seeing brands convert at roughly twice the rate of a standard .com. And then virtual try-on helps them reduce returns because they can try on items. So we’re seeing about a 20% reduction in returns and, obviously, more time on site, as the experience is interactive.

It’s interesting that you were working on a different product before. When I speak to people in the tech industry, the concept of learning from products that were never launched keeps coming up.

We realized, as we were working on Window Shop, that the way AI was shaping things was really similar to where we are today in shopping experiences with LLMs like ChatGPT and Gemini. What they’ve essentially created is walled-garden experiences where any experience has to happen within the LLM, whether ChatGPT, Gemini, or others. These LLMs are focused on keeping a brand’s customers on their platforms. They own the experience and the data, so they own the customer. We wanted to give the acquisition power back to the brands.

Tell me a little bit about Swap Commerce. When was it founded and why?

We were founded a little over three years ago now. We really started on the back office side of things, helping brands manage their returns, inventory, and tax and compliance. In a post-Brexit era, it’s been challenging to sell anything anywhere and also get that item back. We helped scale 800 brands globally, and that’s really been our bread and butter up until this point. Now we are moving on the front-end side of things, and the long-term vision is to unite the two.

We are in Chantilly for the Vogue Business Global Summit, and Swap is sponsoring the event. We see a lot of tech brands right now engaging with fashion in very direct ways. Why is that?

I think fashion really has the opportunity to be on the cutting edge of what’s coming in AI. The summit has been great so far; there are certainly two camps of people regarding the brands we have connected with here. There are the early adopters who are eager to innovate, and then there are those who are more resistant to it. I’m very interested to see how things evolve over the next couple of months.

Where do you see AI taking fashion over the next decade?

Obviously, we are super bullish on the storefront. Certainly, there will be a subset of consumers who still prefer the traditional way of selling, but we believe the agentic experience will be the preferred way to interact with brands. Also, AI evolves very quickly, so what we’re seeing now will be even better in three months, six months, or a year from now.

The topic of AI keeps coming up in every conversation we are having today at the conference. It tracks: AI also keeps coming up in everyday conversations. Do you think we’ll be talking about it as much in 10 years, though, or will it be more in the background?

I mean, if we were here three years ago, there would probably have been some conversation about blockchain. Before that, it would have been AR and VR. But AI is the technological shift that’s not just involved in one segment of the industry; it’s actually in our daily lives. We’re actually using it not just to shop but also for work. We’re using it for personal, professional, and all facets of our lives. Using agents, I think, will become very fundamental. But it will still be very human-led. It’s why we’ve built what we’ve built in a way that allows you to interact directly with the agent.

Lastly, did you go to prom? What did you wear?

I did, and it was fun. At that time, we were just renting things from like Men’s Wearhouse. Prom wasn’t as evolved a business as it is now. I wore a pretty horrendous ivory tuxedo, which was funny at the time, but I wouldn’t want the photos on Vogue…

You can catch up with last week’s Scoop with Kristoffer Juhl here.