What better time to watch an interview with fab British retailer TopMan than now, amid the British/Olympic buzz that doesn’t seem to show any signs of dying (at least not for another week)?

I sat down with the men’s brand’s Head of E-Commerce, Gracia Amico, at eTail Europe, where we talked about how TopMan is expanding into other countries and maintaining its beloved British image. Turns out it takes quite a lot of compromise and flexibility to successfully enter markets in other countries, especially those where consumers shop in ways that might send shivers down the spines of your exec board.

That’s kind of what Gracia had to deal with when she and the firm started doing business in Germany. Customers there don’t like to use credit cards, she said. In fact, they want to order loads from the website, try it all on and ONLY pay for what they keep.

GASP!

But before you go into cardiac arrest over the thought of such a transaction, know that this is not necessarily bad. Gracia and TopMan have found that by dealing in the ways your customer wants to deal, you’ll actually come out with higher revenues in the end. When TopMan let its customers shop this way, they were happier and kept more.

Hear her talk about this, as well as how to maintain a decidedly nationalistic brand image across international markets, in the brief video below.