How agentic commerce helps brands like Willy Chavarria optimize for BFCM

“Black Friday Cyber Monday is the most crowded week of the year, and the shopper has the least patience,” said Juan Pellerano-Rendon, Chief Marketing Officer at agentic storefront provider Swap. “The brands that win during BFCM aren’t the ones with the deepest discounts. They’re the ones where the shopper gets an answer fast enough to still be in the mood to buy.”

Agentic commerce turns holiday shopping intent into conversions

BFCM shoppers typically arrive on a brand’s site to find a gift or take advantage of a promotion. However, unresolved product questions can halt a purchase. Nearly 70% of online shoppers abandon their carts before checkout.

Agentic storefronts’ conversational shopping experiences help shoppers find products based on their needs, rather than navigating menus, filters and product pages. These storefronts are designed to guide shoppers through discovery and decision-making.

“A traditional site makes the customer do the work — filter, compare, open eight tabs and guess on sizing,” Pellerano-Rendon said. “An agentic storefront inverts that. It resolves questions that quietly kill purchases like: will this fit me, how does it move on the body, is it the right weight for the weather? 

“When buying for someone else, you’re guessing. That uncertainty is exactly what sends people to a competitor or to no purchase at all,” he explained. “A conversational experience lets a shopper describe the person rather than the product and get a curated answer back.”

Since launching in early 2026, Swap’s agentic storefront has demonstrated 2x higher conversion rates, 3x time spent on site and 20% fewer returns compared to traditional e-commerce journeys, according to Swap.

How an agentic storefront delivered Willy Chavarria’s biggest single-day e-commerce sales

When designer Willy Chavarria partnered with Adidas on a 2026 World Cup collection focusing on the legacy of the Mexican national team, the launch needed to convey a sense of cultural identity, heritage and belonging.

To accomplish that, Swap created an AI-powered storefront for the collection. Willy Chavarria’s owned channels and an AI discovery widget on the brand’s main site directed shoppers to the storefront. Once there, customers could ask product questions, receive recommendations and virtually try on clothing before checking out.

Over the first six days, the launch generated more than 1,000 orders at a $249 average order value, according to Swap. Overall conversion was 3%, and direct, owned and email traffic drove 81% of revenue.

“Comparing the Swap launch to the last [collection launch] we did, we saw a 2x increase in revenue with comparable conversion and average order value,” a brand representative told Modern Retail’s sister publication Glossy in August 2026.

While conversational discovery helps shoppers with product recommendations and deepens consideration, virtual try-ons close the gap between interest and purchase. Across brands running Swap’s agentic storefront, 58% of virtual try-on sessions end in add-to-cart and 20% convert to purchase, according to Swap. 

These results indicate that agentic experiences offer an effective way for brands to introduce products, guide shoppers and create an immersive path to purchase during seasonal moments like the World Cup or BFCM, according to Pellerano-Rendon.  

“The traffic on that launch was overwhelmingly owned — direct, email, the brand’s own channels. Agentic didn’t find Willy Chavarria a new audience; it did more with the one they’d already paid for,” Pellerano-Rendon said. “That’s the part that matters for BFCM, because in November nobody is short of traffic. BFCM is the same structure as a drop: concentrated demand, a narrow window and no second chance if the experience doesn’t hold.”

BFCM revenue is won in November and settled in January 

Peak week success is measured by revenue booked, but profit and loss is decided long after that, when returns arrive. 

“A cash refund is a 100% revenue loss. An exchange mitigates that loss,” Pellerano-Rendon explained. “If you’re planning a 30% promotion, you should already know what a return on that discounted order costs you. The margin is thin before the item comes back, and once it does, you’ve lost the revenue and paid shipping twice.” 

This puts more focus on what happens after the initial transaction, and it’s why some retailers are experimenting with checkout-based programs, like Swap Checkout+, that bundle returns and order protection into a single opt-in. These programs offer shoppers the option of free returns while helping brands offset some of the costs of post-purchase experiences. 

More than 60% of shoppers opt in across Swap’s live Checkout+ deployments, which include free returns on U.S. and U.K. orders, according to Swap. And brands that use Swap’s returns infrastructure during peak season have seen retained revenue increase roughly 35% year over year, with exchange revenue growing around 133%. 

“The difference across post-peak and return season is enormous, and it’s mostly a matter of what you offer the customer at the moment they decide to return,” Pellerano-Rendon said. “The brands that do this well decide in September what the return experience looks like: exchange-first, store credit offered at the right moment, the whole thing handled in one flow rather than an email chain in January. It’s a decision you make during planning, not a problem you solve during peak.”

Brands should look to BFCM as a test of their entire commerce system from product discovery to purchase and returns or exchange. The brands best positioned to capitalize on the season will be those that make product discovery easier, help consumers feel confident in their purchases and provide smooth transactions, according to Pellerano-Rendon.

To get ahead, brands must prepare both sides now — before traffic spikes, orders arrive and returns begin.

Sponsored by Swap