Kay Barron believes luxury brands are overlooking a revenue channel hiding in plain sight.

After more than a decade at NET-A-PORTER, where she most recently served as Fashion Director, Kay saw firsthand how tightly controlled brand storytelling often comes at the expense of human connection. In her view, luxury has “over-optimized” for perfection while underinvesting in real-time customer engagement.

Her solution is VVEND, a London-based creative video commerce and strategy agency she launched in November 2025. The company helps fashion and lifestyle brands integrate live shopping and shoppable video into their core retail strategies, turning stores into studios and in-house teams into on-camera hosts.

“For me, creating captivating shoppertainment is the biggest part of it,” Kay says. “It opens the worlds of these brands up to the customer.”

At a time when brands face fragmented attention, declining in-store footfall, and rising ecommerce return rates, VVEND positions live commerce as both a storytelling engine and a measurable revenue channel. Kay’s conviction is not theoretical; her turning point came during her tenure at NET-A-PORTER.

Editorial Roots, Commercial Realization

Kay describes herself as “a kind of fashion storyteller.” Her career spans editorial roles at major publications before she joined NET-A-PORTER in 2013. Over the years, she rose to oversee fashion direction across the business, including MR PORTER, and to author “How to Wear Everything.”

But it was during the pandemic that her trajectory shifted.

As physical retail shut down and audiences migrated online, NET-A-PORTER experimented with Instagram Lives and eventually live shopping integrations. Kay was initially hesitant.

“I was dragged kicking and screaming in front of that camera,” she says. “I was like, I am not doing this. This is not my comfort zone. I hate having my picture taken. I hate being on camera.”

What began as a necessity became a commercial turning point. In one 15-minute live episode, Kay says the session generated £1 million in attributed revenue.

“From that moment, I was like, there’s something bigger,” she recalls. “I did that, and then I came back to my desk, and then I had meetings about HR and budgets, and I was like, ‘Hang on a second.’”

Live commerce was already established in Asian markets, but Western luxury brands were slower to adopt. Kay attributes that hesitation to legacy brand culture.

“Luxury is very traditional. It’s a very traditional model,” she says. “People were still thinking Instagram and TikTok were not for them.”

The Problem: Control, Fragmentation, and Fear

VVEND exists to solve what Kay sees as three interlocking problems.

First, luxury brands often prioritize rigid brand guidelines over real-world styling and customer context. On a runway or in a lookbook, items are presented in fixed combinations. In live shopping, that rigidity dissolves.

“When we were pulling together a rail, it was very much about putting pieces together,” Kay says. “You’ve got to think about where the customer is going? What is she going to wear this to? What does she need this for? Rather than think, what is the brand message?”

Second, e-commerce lacks human reassurance, particularly around fit and sizing. Kay notes that return rates for dresses can reach 80% in some cases.

“If you’re watching somebody talking through fit, size, fabric transparency, then you’re like, ‘Oh, I get it,’” she says. “Returns are what kill businesses.”

Third, brands are organizationally confused about ownership. Is live commerce a social initiative? A marketing function? An innovation project?

“No one knows who owns it,” Kay says. “Is it social, is it marketing, is it site, is it innovation? But you have to have everybody on board.”

VVEND’s role is to align those teams – brand, marketing, ecommerce, and social – around a unified, consistent strategy.

What VVEND Actually Does

Kay describes VVEND as a creative video commerce and strategy agency.

The agency works with brands, retailers, and select creators to build long-term live commerce strategies, oversee production, and train internal teams. Rather than act as an indefinite partner like a PR agency, VVEND often enters, builds infrastructure, and steps back.

“We offer a long-term strategy, go in and set it up for them, show them how to film it, produce it, and then step out,” Kay explains.

The company collaborates with technology partner Bambuser to integrate live shopping functionality directly into brand websites, with additional distribution on Instagram and Facebook.

Kay emphasizes that technology alone is insufficient.

“Bambuser, TikTok Shop, Whatnot can create the best tech in the world. But if people don’t know what to do with that tech or don’t know how to create the best content for it, then it’s not going to be as successful as it should be.”

VVEND also supports full production, from scripting and host training to content shoot planning.

“As soon as somebody hears the word video, they panic,” she says. “They think 800 people will land in the studio, and it can be expensive to do. But it’s about precision planning to get the most out of every single day that you’re shooting.”

The agency is currently developing its own studio infrastructure to reduce barriers for brands without physical retail locations.

Customer First, Creator Second

In the broader Creator Economy, where influencers often dominate brand campaigns, Kay takes a different stance.

“I think creators at the moment have got more power than brands do,” she says. “But my mission with VVEND is less about the creators, less about the brands, and all about the customers.”

Her belief is that in-house brand talent (store associates, stylists, personal shoppers) often possess deeper product knowledge than external creators.

“The people who know that product better than anyone else are those who are working with it all the time,” Kay says. “If they can sell to somebody who’s wandering into a shop, imagine what they can do online.”

That approach shifts live commerce away from influencer-led affiliate content and toward brand-owned storytelling environments.

“It is about, ‘This is something I believe in, and I’m excited about this product,’” she adds. “It’s about authenticity.”

Entertainment First, Sales Second

Kay views live commerce not simply as a sales tool but as a hybrid of entertainment and retail.

“You need to entertain first and sell second,” she says. “Ideally, they happen at the same time.”

She points to brands such as Zara experimenting with short films and community-driven livestreams, and to major cultural figures like Kim Kardashian hosting TikTok Lives.

“The brands are becoming entertainment platforms,” Kay says. “They’re realizing that they need to be telling their own stories and not relying on telling their stories on social media.”

For Kay, the opportunity is not only transactional, but strategic: brands must bring storytelling back onto their own digital properties rather than ceding narrative control to social platforms.

“If you look at social platforms for brands, they look completely different and disconnected,” she says. “You go on the homepage of that brand, and all of that storytelling is gone.”

Common Mistakes and What’s Working

According to Kay, the most common error brands make is treating live commerce as a one-off experiment.

“There’s no point in doing one of anything because you can’t measure it,” she says. “You need to have a cadence. You need consistency with hosts. You need consistency with when you do it and how you promote it.”

She also stresses the importance of patience.

“You have to let the audience come to you and not expect them to be there immediately,” Kay says. “Most of the time, live shopping washes its own face at the beginning, and then it just gets bigger and bigger.”

She acknowledges that fear around investment is real, especially in a challenging retail climate. But her position is that properly executed live commerce can quickly justify itself.

“It makes its money back quickly, and it’s worth the investment every time,” she says.

Why Now?

Kay admits she questioned her timing when launching VVEND.

“It’s very hard to be first on something,” she says. “Am I first because this is a great idea and no one thought of it, or am I first because this is a terrible idea?”

Market signals reassured her. Major retailers increased experimentation. Social commerce accelerated among younger consumers. And brands began reconsidering how to drive acquisition and retention beyond static imagery.

“I can’t quite get over my timing of it,” she says. “Every time we did it, engagement was huge. Conversion was huge. The average order value was huge. ROI was just unprecedented.”

For Kay, live commerce is following the same adoption curve that social media once did in the luxury space.

“It will become mainstream,” she says. “It’ll get to the point where people will think, oh, this is so weird that we were scared of this.”

A Human Alternative in an AI Era

As AI tools increasingly shape retail recommendations and customer journeys, Kay sees live commerce as a counterbalance.

“You can shop in ChatGPT and whatever else,” she says. “But there are lots of human connections that are so important when it comes to purchasing.”

She recounts sitting beside a tech executive who spent 20 minutes asking AI which handbag to buy his girlfriend, when she could have advised him in five.

“You sat next to me at dinner last night. I could have told you in about five minutes,” she recalls thinking.

For Kay, that anecdote underscores the enduring value of human expertise in commerce.

Predictions for the Industry

Kay believes brands hesitant about live commerce are overestimating the risk and underestimating the upside.

“There’s absolutely nothing to be scared of,” she says. “This comes from someone who was terrified.”

She likens live commerce to walking into a store and buying something because of an associate’s enthusiasm. “Doing live shopping is that, but on a much bigger scale,” she says.

As VVEND continues to expand its production capabilities and brand partnerships, Kay remains focused on simplifying adoption and reinforcing authenticity.

“It will just get bigger,” she says. “Brands have to figure out what their story is, who they’re attracting, and be human about it.”

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