[Voiceover]: Welcome to the checkout. We catch up with previous add to cart guests and ask them five quick questions to get to know them better and leave you with a little extra inspiration to get you through your Friday.
Nathan Bush: Today's checkout features Brad Moran from Citrus Ad. They monetize the digital shelf of e commerce retailing sites. Or to put it simply, they take the old school grocery shelf buying and make it accessible for online retailers so they can make additional revenue from the eyeballs that they attract. They power media sales and ad serving for more than half of the top 20 retailers in the world including Tesco, Sainsbury's, Argos, Bed Bath and beyond. And here in Australia, the iconic Woolworths and Coles. Brad, welcome to the checkout.
Nathan Bush: We've learned a lot about Citrus ad and your journey so far. We're here to learn a little bit more about you. Five quick questions, mate. Number one, what's the weirdest thing that you've ever bought online?
Brad Moran: Believe it or not, I don't shop online very often. Even though I'm supposed to be an expert in online shopping.
Nathan Bush: You just click on all the ads, don't you?
Brad Moran: I do, I do, I do. I'm one of these people that are so impatient that I can't wait for the online order to turn up so I have to drive an hour to the store and pick it up immediately. So I'm one of those guys, not
Nathan Bush: a click and collect user.
Brad Moran: No, no, no, no. I just don't have time to be honest. I'm too busy building a business. I do. However, one channel that does always get me is Pinterest. So I'll go on Pinterest and I'll look at new things for my house or new things for the car or whatever it may be. And the Pinterest ads are so engaging that I ended up buying a full on Ironman mask. I was like, that is so cool. The video of it just shows the mask kind of opening and then kind of closing and I'm like, I'm gonna buy that. Like, do I need it? No, but it looks cool and it's been sitting in my drawer ever since. But my son uses it. It is pretty cool.
Nathan Bush: Does it work exactly like advertised?
Brad Moran: Yeah, yeah. It's like full on Iron Man. I'm thinking during COVID it's like, well, the restrictions are a mask. But I don't say you can't wear an Iron man mask. Maybe it's like this six foot seven bloke walking around like the shopping center with the iron man mask on because some of them, they look freaky as. And. And this one was built as a, as an actual bicycle helmet. So it's got the full padding inside and everything. So it, you know, it was practical as well as, you know, cool. I just needed the full iron man get up then to go with it. But, yeah, that's probably, that's probably the weirdest thing I bought. There's a bunch of other stuff that
Nathan Bush: buys you some decent cool dad points too.
Brad Moran: Yep, it does. But Pinterest gets me at least. Every second time I'm on there, I'll click on something that I do not need, but it's a contraption that just looks cool. I'm like, yeah, I could see where I need that.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, I'll find a way to use that.
Brad Moran: Yeah, exactly.
Nathan Bush: All right, number two, who is your favorite retailer? Tough question given the retailers that you work with.
Brad Moran: Yeah, I was going to say to work with. To buy from.
Nathan Bush: To buy from.
Brad Moran: Well, we've established that you don't buy online. It's true. Who do you think's doing a good job? I think, like, kudos to all the startups out there who are having a crack, like, you know, all the, all the small boutique online stores that are, that are having a go, like I do. I admire the way that they're taking on such big duopolies in Australia and sort of carving through the market. But I have a soft spot for the homegrown guys, you know, so I don't like the conglomerates coming in and sort of dominating, which I'd like to see less of. And I'd like to see Australian retail and the government somehow combined to work out how to win, obviously with the most ethical standards, but to win. But I do do a bit of shopping off the iconic, obviously, and buy my clothes there and I buy my groceries off Drake's dot com. Not all. Yep.
Nathan Bush: Didn't see that one coming.
Brad Moran: Well, JP was a, was a, was an investor in Citrus and a good friend of mine now. So I make an effort to try and shop as local as I can. Oh, nice one. Yep. So that's my two. That's my two retailers, but nothing fancy, really.
Nathan Bush: All right, number three, which E commerce
Nathan Bush: practice do you wish was history?
Brad Moran: Well, one thing that grinds my gears a little bit about the, about any retailer really that I buy from online is when the product isn't good. I guess it's about knowing what type of customer you're dealing with too, because I would say I'm like every customer. I'M a high sort of value purchase customer that is fairly low maintenance, but when something's wrong, it's wrong. Like if I. You kind of want to say to them, hey, look, if I'm making a fuss, it's genuinely a fuss. And what they should do is just go, here's a brand new. Whatever you've just bought, we'll come and collect the old one. Don't worry about it. Because I know, you know what? For the next 10 years, you're probably going to spend a lot more money. And that's not just me. That's, that's a lot of people. So I had my co founder buy a TV off Harvey Norman. No offense, Harvey Norman, because I know it's a franchise thing, it's no one's fault, but. So this is a guy that's just come into squillions of dollars and he's probably going to spend, I don't know, hundreds of thousands of dollars on electronics over the next five, 10 years. And he sat there without a working TV for two weeks. And I'm like, okay, you could have. Well, you can't actually put them in your car these days because it's like big. So it's like, okay, at what point does the store go, we're just gonna go out there and get it. Cause we don't wanna really irritate this guy. So I guess, like, doesn't matter what size you are like customer service. Like, if your customer service is really good and you handle complaints really well, and we get used to it as a B2B customer. Cause whenever there's a complaint, you just jump to make it better. You know, customer service at the forefront is everything, you know, makes. And those customers.
Nathan Bush: There is, you know, understanding what the customer values. Because to your point is that there's customers that don't really value the price point. It's not the dollar value, it's the time value.
Brad Moran: It's.
Nathan Bush: I'm here to solve a problem. I don't care what the, what the process is, but just solve my problem for me and I'm willing to pay for it.
Brad Moran: Yeah, I mean, and look, to be fair, I shouldn't bag Harvey Norma, because they actually do it much better than everybody else. I made the fatal mistake of buying a tv off jb hi fi.com didn't realize again that it's a totally different store that came to the house. It wasn't the right size, already taken out of the box, put it on the wall. And they're like, no, you've already taken out the box, not replacing it. And so I was like, okay, well, I'm never buying from you again. That's the kind of. You obviously do, but it kind of leaves you with that thought of. So I called the store and the store basically looked after everything for me. So just buy from the store from now on. Like, they came and picked it up and I was like, hey, I'm happy to upgrade to a better tv and. But it's just that small minded kind of thinking of not. Not thinking about the bigger picture, almost
Nathan Bush: what you did there with tv.
Brad Moran: Don't take offense, jb. Hi, Fi. Don't take offense to Harry Norman. I've put you in a tricky spot there. I know. All right, thanks.
Nathan Bush: Number four. Number four. Let's move on. Can you recommend a book or a podcast that our listeners should immediately get into?
Brad Moran: Well, this one, of course. Thank you. And I was about to return the famous Name the future book that you're about to write. Look, I'm not a big, I'm not a big book person and I wouldn't want to just be cliche and go read this book, you know, but for anyone that wants to understand the life of a founder, whether you watch this movie series or not, watch it again with this lens. So I always bring an analogy to a founder being like Frodo from the Lord of the Rings. And I bring that analogy because one, it's a ten hour journey that, you know, it's a long journey. You as a founder have this heavy burden of this ring that you know only you can hold. And all you want to do all across the three movies is just give it to someone else. It's like, hey, Gandalf, take it for a bit. You know, Samwise, you take it. But ultimately you're responsible. It's your ring to hold. And it paints a picture of what the startup journey is like as it's got its highs and its lows, but what it tells you is that you need to surround yourself with very, very capable, supportive people in order to get there in the end, because you're not going to get there by yourself. And so, you know, you look at all the different characters in the film, but if you can try and spin, try and look at it from a founder's perspective. Now when you watch it again and go, okay, how does Frodo relate to a founder? And then it kind of paints a whole new perspective on Lord of the Rings and how it was created. It's awesome. And then if you kind of want to Get a realistic sense of it. Watch House of Cards.
Nathan Bush: Oh, yeah.
Brad Moran: That teaches you a little bit about what you're in for from a corporate perspective.
Nathan Bush: So on the Lord of the Rings example, who's been your Golem?
Brad Moran: Gollum. Yeah. Golems change. So golem. I would find that it's interesting that you asked that question. So obviously nobody. Sam Wiser is my co founder, but we obviously carry the burden together. And there's a reason they say that dual founders are 30% more likely to make it than single founders because you just got so much emotional baggage to work through with your co founder. But yeah, Gollum changes. People come and they feel like they're helping for a while. But again, it's a very good analogy that you bring up with Gollum because Gollum often happens to a lot of the senior guys you bring into your business that they want the ring for themselves.
Nathan Bush: Yeah.
Brad Moran: You know, or even a shareholder or a director. It can be anyone that gets influenced by the power of wanting to own that fame that supposedly comes with being a founder and how, you know, that kind of notoriety or whatever you want to call it, it's that, it's the power.
Nathan Bush: Especially after you've done the hard work at the base of the mountain.
Brad Moran: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Right. So you do have to be always weary about who you can trust in business. I've been very fortunate to have some really good guys I work with along the way. But, you know, I had some not so good guys that I learned off too. So, you know, you learn what not to hire as well as what to hire.
Nathan Bush: It's a brilliant analogy.
Brad Moran: Thanks for sharing.
Nathan Bush: All right, number five, last question, finish this sentence. The future of retail is
Brad Moran: self plug. I would say the future of retail is going to be Amazon and Uber unless we as a retailer ecosystem do something about it. And it's not about Woolies competing with Kohl's. It's not about JB competing with Harvey Norman. It's about Australian retailers together, collectively competing against Amazon, ebay, Uber. Because at the end of the day, they're all fighting together in the same battle. Not, not for lion's share of market, share of like sales. But the ad industry is what's up for grabs. And if these retailers work together, like we found that the more Coles invested, the more benefit Woolies would receive. So they would all grow together. Because together you have this. Think of it as like Citrus Ad working across the both platforms. Like, well, Citrus Ad right now working with Coles and Woolies is gigantic compared to the Amazon ads business. So if we can keep it that way, and we can keep. That's why I talk about the 12 month period. If you can start investing now into retail media and you can start getting ahead of them in terms of media dollars, you will starve Amazon of their profits, which means it makes it harder for them to scale. So not impossible, obviously. Very big business. They know what they're doing because it's not a bag on Amazon, but it is a bit of like, you know, patriotism and making sure that Australian retailers do the right thing and, you know, all work together, stop seeing themselves as competitors and start seeing themselves as mutual friends. Now, as the UK market does and as the American market does, these big retailers are now are in talks about working together to combat the greater forces. Right?
Nathan Bush: Yeah. And you gave a great overview in the main episode around what the next three years could look like and are projected to look like with Amazon. And what I took from that as well is that for retailers to be successful moving forward, got to stop thinking of us as just retailers, that there's other revenue opportunities, other partnership opportunities. So much more. When you've got an engaged customer, you've got huge numbers of customers relying on you, there's more ways to connect and make profitable business than just buying low and selling higher. Correct.
Brad Moran: And who would have thought? I mean, obviously the name Uber's been around for quite a while, Amazon's been around forever. And everyone's like, you know, Amazon will come and Amazon's going to kill us and blah, blah, blah, it takes a while, right? But everyone sort of is aware of and acutely aware of Amazon. But people wouldn't have thought that Uber Eats is going to start eating into their revenues. But ultimately, when you've got a commodity, when you sell a commodity product that's made by somebody else, if you don't give another X factor to your distribution center, which is effectively your stores. So that's an in store immersive experience or we won't even get onto the metaverse. But I see that unless retailers continue to innovate in lots of different ways, these unassuming companies like Uber can pivot into your industry in a heartbeat because they have the last mile, right? And they have the technology and all they do is they go, you know what, instead of loading restaurants now, we're going to load milk, bread and eggs. And it might only be three products or Panadol or whatever it is, but it's enough to take 10, 20% market share off of coleslaw, woolies, once the cracks exposed. Yep.
Nathan Bush: Brad, thank you so much for joining us on the checkout.
Brad Moran: Great to have you. Thanks very much.
Nathan Bush: To hear more from Brad, jump back into episode 164 where Brad shares how retailers can earn anywhere from an additional 5k a month to $10 million a month in revenue by making their website real estate available for bidding. We also go in depth on the emergence of Amazon in Australia, why category terms are more powerful than brand terms in search, and we talk about the chasm of death when it comes to selling the business that you have founded.
Nathan Bush: Sounds delightful.
Nathan Bush: Thanks for listening and until next time, keep adding to cart.
