Frette

Caitlin Cheung

Cheung leads Frette’s global e-commerce P&L across North America and EMEA, steering digital growth for a luxury brand defined by heritage and quality. Her mandate encompasses acquisition, retention, site experience and CRM, while repositioning Frette.com from a catalog into a brand experience and driving cross-border expansion across APAC and the Middle East.

Building the Foundation Before Scaling E-Commerce

For Cheung, one of the easiest e-commerce mistakes is confusing activity with progress. New technology creates pressure to move quickly, but Cheung first asks whether the architecture, data and customer journey underneath it are ready.

“Resist the pull to chase every new thing. Build the foundation first,” she says.

A shortcut may help a team launch faster, but the next integration can expose what was skipped and force rework. Cheung would rather say “not yet” and get the underlying system right. The same thinking supports Frette’s international growth through a crossborder model designed to enter new markets without building local infrastructure each time.

A luxury website like Frette.com cannot simply be a digital product shelf. Frette has 165 years of craft behind it, from Italian mills and specific weaves to generations of use in hotels and homes. A standard product grid cannot communicate all of that. Her team has therefore moved the experience toward storytelling, explaining provenance, why a weave or finish matters and how customers can live with the product. Continuous testing helps the site evolve, while Frette’s voice remains the boundary.

Using AI Where It Earns Its Place

AI has a clear role in luxury e-commerce, but Cheung does not believe it belongs everywhere. Bedding is a considered purchase, and customers often need guidance on construction, care and product differences. Frette’s AI Concierge identifies itself as AI and steps in when an advisor is unavailable.

They remain central because they know a client’s preferences, past purchases and likely needs. AI handles routine questions and surfaces information faster, allowing advisors to focus on the relationship. CRM extends that continuity by giving advisors better context and keeping the post-purchase experience just as considered.

Letting Data Challenge the Assumption

Data is most useful, from Cheung’s perspective, when it challenges an assumption rather than confirms one.

As she says, “Data’s first job is to tell you the truth, and its second is to tell you where the value is.”

Data-quality issues and model weaknesses are documented rather than hidden because credibility, in Cheung’s view, depends on openly acknowledging unfavorable details.

One analysis revealed a mismatch between where Frette’s traffic originated and where its revenue came from. The finding changed the roadmap because the issue was not simply generating more traffic but understanding what was happening within the customer experience.

Discovery is changing too. Customers increasingly research through AI assistants, social platforms and answer engines, sometimes without visiting a retailer’s website. Traditional rankings consequently tell only part of the story. Frette now considers whether its content, structured data and credibility signals make the brand visible and citable when someone asks an AI model about luxury bedding. Content, therefore, serves two purposes. Help customers understand the product while giving emerging discovery systems enough context to understand why the brand is relevant.

Designing Beyond E-Commerce

When evaluating a new solution, Cheung asks who else across retail, client services or operations touches the same customer. Building only for e-commerce may solve one team’s problem while creating another elsewhere.

Cross-functional work can move more slowly at the beginning. She believes the trade-off is worthwhile because teams can move considerably faster afterward without having to build and fund multiple versions of the same capability. For Cheung, almost nothing worth building belongs to one channel. The goal is not simply to solve the next e-commerce problem, but to build a system capable of supporting the wider customer relationship as the business grows.