From afterthought to $12M+ run rate: How Obvi turned international into its fastest-growing revenue engine

At a glance

Obvi is a fast-growing wellness brand best known for its collagen and metabolism products. For most of the company's life, international was a rounding error. Orders trickled in from the UK, Canada, and Australia, but the volume never looked big enough to build a real strategy around, and the operational lift to serve those markets properly (VAT, import duties, supplements labeling, fulfillment) was hard to justify against a growing US business.

Twelve months after partnering with OpenBorder, international is no longer a side channel. It generates roughly 30% of Obvi's total revenue, runs at a $12M+ run rate, and returns nearly 2x the ROAS of Obvi's domestic ad spend. Better still: those markets were profitable from day one.

"What I think about going international is cost of traffic in the US and competition is at its peak. It's only going to go higher and higher. The buyers who are good buyers for you in the US, they exist in other parts of the world. Cater to them. Run the same ads, run the same creative, run the same copy, and find the same people that are buying here."

The problem: International was underinvested, not undersized

Before OpenBorder, three things were quietly capping Obvi's global potential.

International was a low priority. With a strong US business to run, international had minimal investment behind it and no dedicated strategy. It ran on whatever spillover demand came in through the DTC site.

Order volumes looked too small to justify the work. Because the markets weren't being served intentionally, the numbers looked modest, which reinforced the case for underinvesting. It was the classic international loop: no investment, small numbers, no investment.

The operational lift felt uncertain. Serving international properly meant taking on VAT registration, import duties, supplements-specific regional regulations, labeling requirements, and fulfillment logistics. Every one of those was a real project. Together, they looked like a full team's worth of work.

There was also a channel gap. Obvi's international presence was DTC-only, which meant Amazon International and TikTok Shop, two of the largest growth surfaces available to a supplements brand outside the US, weren't part of the picture at all.

"International for us, before we started using OpenBorder, was a mess. More than a mess, it was expensive. It was expensive for us, it was expensive for our customer, it was expensive for our marketing, it was expensive for every party involved. We were charging a lot, the customers were paying a lot, and the biggest complexity was we really had no vision on how to drive the price down. There was really no path to it."

Why OpenBorder

The Obvi team didn't want to hire an international operations function to solve this. They wanted a partner who could carry the end-to-end operational load (compliance, logistics, checkout) and help them think about international as a growth channel, not just a shipping problem.

OpenBorder was the only option that covered both. The logistics and compliance side handled the regulatory and fulfillment work without Obvi standing up new 3PLs or warehouses. The performance marketing side treated international as a portfolio of country-level bets to be actively tested and reallocated, the way Obvi already ran its US paid media.

The solution

1. Rapid market entry, no new infrastructure

OpenBorder plugged Obvi into key international markets within days. There were no new 3PLs to onboard, no warehouse changes, no new fulfillment vendors to negotiate with. The existing US inventory footprint became a global one.

At the checkout, OpenBorder switched the international experience over to VAT-inclusive pricing, local currency, and region-specific CRO. Customers now see a total landed price at checkout, with taxes and duties baked in, and the shipping and delivery promise localized to their market. That single change removed the most common reason international shoppers abandon: surprise fees on delivery.

2. Performance marketing, run like a real channel

This was the piece that separated international from being an ops win versus a revenue engine.

OpenBorder relaunched Meta ads across a test group of 20 countries, then ran three iterations on Meta campaign structure to figure out where efficiency lived and where it didn't. The output was a live map of profitable markets and unprofitable ones, with spend actively reallocated toward the winners.

Alongside the spend work, two levers went into retention:

• Regional pricing optimization and upsells to lift AOV and repeat rate in each market.
• Free shipping thresholds tuned by region, so Obvi wasn't overpaying to acquire in markets where a lower threshold cleared the same conversion bar.

The result was international campaigns that hit ~2x the ROAS of domestic, in the same accounts, on the same platform.

3. Compliance and operations, off Obvi's plate

Supplements have some of the most complicated cross-border rules in ecommerce. VAT rates change by country, import duties change by product category, and labeling requirements vary by region. OpenBorder handled all of it (VAT, import duties, and supplements-specific regional compliance), so Obvi's team didn't need to build the internal muscle for it.

Post-purchase, branded tracking pages kept customers inside Obvi's brand from checkout to doorstep, and gave the marketing team an extra touchpoint for cross-sells rather than a generic carrier tracking page.

"What made us choose OpenBorder was the end-to-end of their solution, which stitched everything together. Everything from the front end to the back end, making sure our consumer got the best rates, making sure we could pass back the best savings to our brand, making sure our consumer got the best experience in terms of shipping timelines. Every part of the journey just doesn't feel like a headache. It just feels like it's taken care of."

Results

Revenue and growth

• International went from <10% of revenue in Q4 2023 to 30% of total revenue in one year, making global markets a core growth driver rather than a side channel.
• $12M+ international run rate achieved within a year, with day-one profitability in new regions.
• ~2x ROAS on international campaigns vs. domestic, a stronger return on ad spend than the US market.

Profitability and marketing efficiency

• Day-one profitability in global markets, no long ramp-up period required.
• Higher repeat customer rate internationally, driven by localized pricing and checkout transparency.

Operations and compliance

• Automated tax and duty compliance across markets, without Obvi standing up an international ops function.
• New regions launched in days, not months, using cross-border shipping from the existing US footprint.

Looking ahead

With a $12M+ international run rate coming from DTC alone, the next phase is channel expansion. Obvi is now moving into Amazon International and TikTok Shop International, unlocking two of the largest ecommerce surfaces outside the US.

"30% of our revenue now coming from international is a pretty big deal. UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, all these countries mimic US buyer behavior at a fraction of the cost of traffic, at double and usually higher AOV, at a much higher conversion rate now that we were able to give them the experience of what OpenBorder offers: a rate that includes duties, taxes, and fees upfront to the consumer."