How Ekster Built 80%+ of Its Business in America Without Moving There
The Dutch accessories brand made the U.S. its biggest market without relocating its team — and learned that marketing, not logistics, was the harder problem.
Dutch accessories brand Ekster has built the United States into its dominant market without moving its company there.
Roughly 80–85% of Ekster’s revenue now comes from the U.S., according to Tom van der Kolk, the company’s co-owner and managing director. Yet Ekster has no employees permanently based in America, relying instead on U.S. logistics infrastructure, freelancers and locally adapted marketing.
Van der Kolk recently shared the lessons behind that expansion during a Venice Founders session on entering the American market. The discussion was not conducted by Scaling in America, but his experience provides an unusually practical look at what happens when a European direct-to-consumer brand makes the U.S. its primary growth market.
America was part of Ekster almost from the beginning
Ekster’s connection with the U.S. predates the company itself. Founders Olivier Momma and Rick Scharniggau met while studying in the United States on a Fulbright scholarship, where their frustration with bulky traditional wallets eventually developed into the idea behind Ekster.
The company launched through Kickstarter in 2016 with a technology-focused wallet proposition. According to Van der Kolk, around 70% of the campaign’s initial backers came from the United States.
That early demand changed the company’s expansion strategy. Rather than building market by market across Europe, Ekster shipped inventory to America and concentrated on learning how to sell to U.S. consumers. Today, Van der Kolk says the country still accounts for roughly 80–85% of revenue.
Ekster has since expanded beyond wallets into bags, luggage and other everyday-carry products. The company says more than two million customers have used its products globally.
The operational side was not the hardest part
One of Van der Kolk’s more counterintuitive observations is that European founders often overestimate how difficult the operational side of entering America will be.
Ekster was able to build a large U.S. business without relocating its team. Inventory is handled through American third-party logistics providers, while international freight has been managed with partners including Flexport.
The company did establish a separate U.S. corporate entity, something Van der Kolk considers particularly important for managing legal and product-liability exposure.
His experience also came with warnings. Ekster faced several lawsuits as it grew in the U.S., including claims related to website accessibility. For Van der Kolk, those experiences reinforced the importance of appropriate U.S. legal advice, terms and conditions and corporate separation before a European business becomes large enough to attract greater legal attention.
The harder problem was learning how Americans buy
Where the operational setup proved manageable, marketing was significantly harder.
Van der Kolk argues that European companies cannot assume creative campaigns that perform well at home will translate directly to American consumers. U.S. advertising is often more competitive, more direct and built around different customer expectations.
His biggest recommendation is therefore not hiring an American executive or opening an office. It is finding a copywriter or creative strategist who understands U.S. consumers natively.
That distinction gets to the core of Ekster’s model. Much of the company can remain European operationally while the customer-facing communication becomes distinctly American.
Van der Kolk’s approach is to test multiple customer profiles and advertising concepts instead of assuming that a European audience segment will behave identically in the U.S. The winning audience, message and offer are discovered through testing rather than imported from the home market.
Building the economics around America
American customer-acquisition costs can also be higher, but Van der Kolk cautions against looking at advertising cost in isolation.
What ultimately matters is whether the economics of the complete transaction work: conversion rate, average order value, acquisition cost and repeat purchasing.
That has led him to focus heavily on increasing average order value through bundles and larger initial purchases. In another business he founded, The Longevity Store, Van der Kolk says average order value rose from approximately €45 to €150 within a year by changing how products were packaged and sold.
The same company is now preparing its own U.S. launch for November 3, giving Van der Kolk an opportunity to apply lessons learned through Ekster to a second European consumer business.
You do not necessarily need to move to America
Perhaps the most interesting part of Ekster’s story is what the company did not do.
It did not begin its American expansion with a large U.S. office, an American management team or an expensive physical footprint. Van der Kolk says Ekster reached its current position without having a single employee living in the United States.
That does not mean local knowledge is unnecessary. Ekster effectively localized selected parts of the business — fulfilment, legal structure, creative talent and customer communication — while keeping its core organization elsewhere.
What this means for European companies
Ekster challenges one of the assumptions European founders can make about entering the United States: that a serious American business requires immediately becoming an American organization.
For digital and direct-to-consumer companies, the first priority may instead be identifying which parts of the business genuinely need to be local.
Warehousing can be outsourced. Freight can be handled by specialists. A U.S. entity can be established without relocating headquarters. Even American talent can initially be hired through freelance or remote arrangements.
What cannot simply be copied, however, is product-market communication.
Ekster’s experience suggests that finding an American customer, understanding what motivates that person and learning how to sell to them can be substantially more important than having an American address.
For a company now generating the large majority of its revenue from the U.S., that may be the most useful lesson: scaling in America does not always mean moving to America.