Ep 179: 3x Conversion, 20% Fewer Returns: Inside Swap's Agentic Storefront with Sam Atkinson, Co-Founder & CEO of Swap

On this episode, I sit down with Sam Atkinson, co-founder of Swap, to get into one of the more interesting infrastructure stories in commerce right now. How do you build the back office that nobody wants to think about, and use it as the foundation for something that changes how people shop entirely?Sam played semi-professional football for West Brom until 18, studied law, worked at McKinsey, ran his own DTC business, and joined a fintech before co-founding Swap in 2023. The through line is someone who kept getting close enough to the hard problems in e-commerce to eventually decide to go and solve them.We get into what Swap actually is, the back office suite covering cross-border, returns, tax, compliance and demand planning, and why building that first gave them something most agentic commerce players don't have: the data, the integrations, and the customer trust to move fast. We talk about the agentic storefront they are already running live, the stats on conversion and returns, how they think about high intent versus low intent shoppers, and why they want to be the agent powering experiences like Brunello Cucinelli rather than replace what great brand teams do. And then the fundraising journey, what it actually looks like to raise capital across multiple rounds, and the state of the fund raising market in 2025 and 2026.Enjoy the show.Book a free demo at: swap-commerce.com/offcuts