I started as a freelance French content writer in Farfetch’s early days – this was 2012 and no one was talking about the possibility of an IPO then. The French website had just been launched, the first international iteration of the e-commerce site, in a high-visibility market since so many key brands and luxury boutiques are based in Paris. I quickly started leading the French-speaking team so we could do better transcreation. We worked on localised editorials, product pages, newsletters and social media but also UI.

Since that localisation experiment went so well, Farfetch went on to launch several international websites – Japan, China, Korea, Germany, Russia, Spain/Latin America – and armed with my experience with the French team, I helped hire and train all content supervisors (who themselves went on to create their teams). As the Lead Content Supervisor, I worked closely with the Content Manager to lead all localisation projects in this high-growth environment.

At the same time, we were trying to find a smart way to translate the many many product pages that were to be uploaded daily and no off-the-shelf CMS tool was quite right. Along with the Content Manager and the Product Team, our in-house team created a highly time-efficient (using the Kaizen principles) and flexible tool that, with the help of an expanding translation database, could automatise content to increase productivity and accuracy. That tool became the backbone of the translation process once Farfetch launched its other international versions.