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[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 through your Friday. Here's your host, Bushy.
Nathan Bush: Today's checkout features Erin Williamson, Marketing director of Paramount Retail. Paramount Retail are homes of brands that you will definitely recognize, including Booze, Bud and Barrel and Batch, some of Australia's leading online alcohol retailers. Between Aaron's Marketing Savvy and Damien's Tech, know how they are driving Paramount Retail's growth and really interesting transformation across e commerce and now physical retail.
Nathan Bush: Aaron, welcome to the checkout. Thank you for joining us.
Nathan Bush: We had a great chat on our
Nathan Bush: main episode around everything you're doing at Paramount Group, including some rebranding physical stores and selling dog beer on national tv.
Erin Williamson: Less of that, more of the former. I think more stores left dog beer.
Nathan Bush: We'll stick to that. But we have five quick questions for you to learn more about you. Number one, what is the weirdest thing that you've ever bought online?
Erin Williamson: A boxing glove that screams when you punch. Why? It was for about 2 seconds a super hot item and my 16 year old wanted to buy it for her boyfriend as a present. So yeah, that, that was a great. I mean that's like, tell me what's weirder than that?
Nathan Bush: No, no, no, that's, that's. Well, we've had some weird ones but that's up there. That's up there. All right, number two, which retailer has most inspired you recently?
Erin Williamson: Clearly, for people watching this on video rather than audio, it is a haircare brand called Strand aa. So they've just got a fantastic, tight lineup of products. Their marketing is brilliant. It arrived super quick, exceeded my expectations. They've got great specials and, you know, kind of acquisition offers, I suppose. But yeah, the branding's super fun. When the product got here it's, it's fantastic. It's everything it lived up to be. So for me it was a plus, 100% tick perfect.
Nathan Bush: What more can you want? Number three, name a piece of tech that you or your e commerce business couldn't live without.
Erin Williamson: I'm going to go a little bit basic B here and say Shopify because without it we wouldn't have a business, let alone an e commerce business. So as someone who has never been so close to the front lines, I'll say I've worked at, you know, businesses like Luxury Escapes in which we had big teams of people that managed the product and whatnot. We are very lean and hands on. So, you know, if I need to see something changed, more often than not, I'll get in there and do it myself. It's been a breeze to onboard new team members. We work a lot with our offshore employees as well, you know, and they, they find it very easy to, to get their heads around it and to support us in, in some of the more functional aspects. So yeah, it, it has been such a revelation and it is the engine room of our business. So yay Shopify.
Nathan Bush: Does that extend? Because we talked a lot around the expansion into physical stores and how you said that, you know, it is unusual for e commerce brands to go physical rather than physical to online when it comes to Shopify. Is that something that you're looking to take in store as well from a POS perspective and linking the customer journey together?
Erin Williamson: I would love to say yes. We do have from a wholesale standpoint which if Shopify is kind of, I suppose, our engine room, then there's a much bigger piece behind us. They've got a proprietary stack that really needs integration with. So no, we've got our own pause. But what's fantastic is the plethora of apps that plug in both to Shopify and also third party stack as well. So yeah, I think we're really spoiled for choice there, but that will be kind of our loyalty solution. Among other things. Great stuff.
Nathan Bush: Stuff. Oh, exciting times. I love. It's weird, isn't it? I never thought I'd get to the point where I say I love talking about physical store software, but there you go.
Erin Williamson: Look, you know that what's on the horizon for add to cart could be add to your shopping trolley. Yeah, there we go.
Nathan Bush: I'll come back to you on that one. We're just trading ideas here.
Nathan Bush: Number four, can you recommend a book
Nathan Bush: or a podcast that our listeners should immediately get into?
Erin Williamson: Yeah, and I'm not going to be professional and show off what I know. What I'm going to do is say, I just spent a week in Bali and I was super burnt out and I, I deleted all my apps and I read A Fairy Tale by Stephen King, which is one of his more recent and award winning books, and it was bloody brilliant. I love Stephen King. This was, you know, back to like the classic epic, really thick and just so engaging. So I spent three, four days in that fantastic book and I encourage everyone to pick up some fiction. Yeah, we work hard enough, just chill out. Yeah, I love it.
Nathan Bush: Ideally with a drink in hand, obviously.
Erin Williamson: Of course. And you know where to get it too.
Nathan Bush: All right, number five, what is your biggest challenge today?
Erin Williamson: It's working in the business versus working on the business. So we have, I think, quite a unique setup. Obviously, Damien is in Sydney, I'm based in Melbourne with a few more of the team around me. We've had a recent restructure, so we've got team members that are experienced, but we've got some that are new and we've had some experienced team members to partner for Paramount hq. Meaning that there's a lot of gaps and that you could easily spend the whole day just sitting and responding to colleagues that need help, colleagues that need connecting with others. And if I'm not careful, then that, that could be the full time job. Right. As professional connector person. So, yeah, for me it is actually shutting down distractions, carving out the time to work deeply. And Damien is really good at that. You can always see he's got his little sandwich up on slack when he's gone off to have lunch. He's a very structured fellow, whereas, yeah, I'm. I tend to have very few boundaries in how I conduct myself, but I'm trying to get better. Great. I love that.
Nathan Bush: That's a very open, very honest answer, but I think it's something most people will relate to. Erin, thank you so much for joining us on the checkout.
Erin Williamson: Thank you. Bushy. That's really fun. Thank you, mate.
Nathan Bush: To hear more from Erin and Damien, jump back into episode 446, where they share how Paramount Retail has simplified their tech stack to allow them to transform. We talked about building brand distinctiveness and how sometimes the simplicity and the basics is actually the core of the brand. We talked about how they launched next day delivery to stay ahead in a really competitive alcohol market and why brick and mortar stores will now play a
Nathan Bush: huge part in their future growth strategy.
Nathan Bush: Thanks for listening and until next time, keep adding to cartoon.
