Sylvan Bard: Since we went live with Shopify, I have not had to touch our website once. So if our business increased by 10 times what it is now, will we still run with the same amount of lean resources that we've got at the moment? So it's always about, it's always looking that way. And so we're kind of willing to walk that extra mile at the start to ensure that we get that efficiency down the track.
Andrew Waite: Like your experience with the brand might start with checkout. I'm going through finding a product, purchasing it, straight through the agenti experience and I'm hit with, okay, now I'm with the brand. Now I'm talking to you.
Nathan Bush: Hey, it's Nathan Bush or Bushy joining you from the land of the terrible people here in Brisbane, Australia. Hello and welcome back for a very special midweek episode of Add to Cart. Today we have something very special lined up because it's from a retailer who has had the most amazing growth since COVID and they don't actually speak a lot around how they did it. So I'm stoked to be able to bring it to you today, thanks to our good friends at Convert Digital. Today we are shining the spotlight on the long term partnership between Convert Digital and Gander Clothing, who you no doubt know, you've probably been in one of their 110 stores around Australia. And, and since COVID have just kind of bucked the trend when it comes to surfwear in Australia, they're really going from strength to strength and we are lucky enough to be joined by their CIO today to talk us through it. Gander Clothing was born out of Torquay, which is in Victoria, and they've exploded from a handful of coastal stores to over 110 locations nationwide. And as you'll hear today, their online store has scaled alongside them and, and even driven that growth. They've done it all while keeping production local, running their own print and manufacturing operations and staying true to that surf meet street Gander vibe. Now leading the charge from a technology and IT perspective is Sylvan Bard, Gander's Chief Information officer, or as he jokes, the guy who was manually letting customers through a Magento checkout during COVID 19. But he's now running one of the most automated and scalable e commerce setups in Australia. Sitting across the table today from Sylvan is Andrew Waite, who is the CEO and founder of Convert Digital, the agency behind some of Australia's most successful Shopify plus builds, including Shopify Brand, Collective Age and Cocoa Black. They're all about turning complexity into competitive advantage. In this chat, we cover a lot, but we talk about the decisions and the lessons behind Gander's transformation from the moment they ditch Magento in a Covid meltdown to going headless on Shopify. We also ask if they'd actually go headless again. We talk about building automation into everything that they do and how they combine online and in store experiences so that it's just one Gander wherever a customer chooses to shop. So without further ado, let's get into this special episode with Andrew Waite, CEO and founder of Convert Digital, and Sylvan Bard, Chief Information officer at Gander Clothing. Sylvan and Andrew, welcome to add to
Andrew Waite: Cart Bushi, how are you?
Sylvan Bard: Thanks for having us.
Nathan Bush: Pleasure. Sylvan, first time. Welcome back. Waiti, you've been here before, you know the drill. Thank you again for joining us and obviously thank you to Convert Digital for all the support. Over a couple of years now, this conversation has come about because we were at a Byron Bay event. Who was it early this year? Late last year, early this year. And Sylvan, you're on a panel talking about Gander's transformation and all the work that you've done there leading the team as cio. And I just thought it was fascinating at retail, at scale and the absolute tear that you've been on with Gander. So I'm really keen to get nerdy and to dive into this from a tech side. But tell us first, if people don't know you, let's do a little bit of an introduction. Sylvan, I'll throw to you first. Tell us who you are and what your role is at Gander.
Sylvan Bard: Yeah, sure. Thanks again for having me. And yeah, I guess, you know, had a very interesting background, judging by my accent. You can probably tell that I'm South African originally. Don't hold it against me. But, you know, worked in software implementations, ERP, WMS, POS implementations as a consultant for about 15 or so years, then started going into, you know, working for end user organizations because I was doing
Nathan Bush: a little LinkedIn stalker view. And this is your first retail gig, isn't it?
Sylvan Bard: Yeah, first where I'm actually working for the retailer themselves. Yeah.
Nathan Bush: Incredible. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Sylvan Bard: So I actually used to be. I used to be a consultant and implemented Gander systems for them about 15 years ago originally. So that's how we kind of our paths crossed. And back then, you know, the brand was just really starting. They've just put up eight stores and it was all kind of based around the Geelong Torquay lawn area because it originated out of Torquay and so kind of implemented their systems for them, went away on a different path, worked for a few other companies, and then touched base with the guys from Gander. A few years later. They had 35 stores. That's about eight and a half, nine years ago. And they just said, hey, you know, do you want to come in full time with us as our IT person? And that's. That's kind of how I ended up here. And, you know, it was very, very small team at that point in time, and businesses boomed, mostly actually thanks to Covid and, you know, here we are, 110 locations and growing strong.
Nathan Bush: Incredible. All right, I want to dive into that journey because I know there's a lot to talk about from COVID onwards, even though the brand is older than that. But from a technology perspective, that's fascinating. Andrew. I know Convert Digital and Gan have been working together for some time now. How did this beautiful relationship form at the start?
Andrew Waite: Yeah, good question. I met Sylvan through a. I think it was a crisis call, wasn't it? Sylvan, you. We're running on a Magento environment. And at that point in time, Convert Digital wasn't just the Shopify Platinum partner. We're also servicing some Adobe and Magento customers at the same time. So Sylvan reached out to say, come fix my Magento site at that point in time.
Nathan Bush: Don't you love those calls? It's like, have you got something exciting for me? No, no, no. You can come and fix my Magento site.
Andrew Waite: It was. And like we said, yes, right? Like 100%. I think that the traffic at that point in time was hitting 500 concurrents and checkout would struggle to process that kind of volume, which of a scaling brand like Yanna, that's clearly pretty problematic. So Sylvan said, yeah, can we have a chat? And we decided to go and catch up in the Talkey office. And at that point in time in Gander's Journey, the Talkey office wasn't what it was today, Sylvan. It was a small mezzanine overlooking the full production line. We didn't have a screen to present on. It was just a chat with. With Sylvan and Dom. We bonded pretty quickly and sort of said, well, hey, we can go fix this Magento site or there's this other thing over here called Shopify. And that started that process. And Sylvan and Dom and the team were pretty open to exploring that option at that point.
Nathan Bush: Awesome. Sylvan was there a break point during COVID that made you pick up the phone?
Sylvan Bard: Yes, very much, as Andrew kind of alluded to is the checkout. And we just couldn't ever get our Magento site to scale and run, you know, across multiple servers and just handle the traffic. And I remember we implemented like a waiting room type of app on the Magento site and I would sit in the evenings because our peak traffic is probably, you know, 7:00pm to 9:00pm and I would sit in the evenings and I would just literally click on that waiting room thing and let people in and kind of manage how many people are on the website and how many is offered. It was just so, you know, intensive from a resource perspective trying to manage it. And I mean I knew this is not how things should be. So yeah, got to my wits end and then just called up convert and you know, we, we were fairly sold on Magento at that point in time, to be honest, and we weren't necessarily looking to move. But when Andrew and the team said, look, there's, there's probably a couple of different options for you and I really like the fact that they were, I guess, technology agnostic at that point in time and could kind of give us the pros and cons from different systems, from different perspectives. And yeah, we were open to change because we were going to change anyway. So whether it's going to be the website itself or whether it's going to be to a different platform, you know, we were open to listening to the pros and cons. And I think, you know, we were very convinced that Shopify is probably going to be the better solution for us as a, as more of a B2C kind of business rather than a B2B business. And so I just like the idea of never wanting to, you know, control a waiting room or a waiting list in the future. And you know, I can honestly say that since we went live with Shopify, I have not had to touch our website once.
Nathan Bush: You mean you don't have to sit there at night while you're watching mafs, letting people go through the checkout?
Sylvan Bard: Not at all. Not at all. And I mean, I guess from a volume perspective, back then our Boxing Day orders would be about a thousand orders for the day. Obviously a lot more visitors than orders. But now, you know, our last Boxing Day was about six and a half thousand orders for the day. And you know, I've not had to touch the Shopify platform from a performance perspective at all. And that's been extremely freeing.
Nathan Bush: I could Imagine coming from Magento, there would have been a fair bit of custom build there. And you know, there's a pattern around CIOs and CTOs of building out the beautiful architecture because it is kind of design your own and you get to keep and you get to build a team. And we see this pattern playing out all the time. So I'm really intrigued to understand more around you G up not only just moving a platform from Magento to Shopify, but I could imagine that it changes your whole org model and the roles and the responsibilities that you'll need in the team to grow and maintain this platform because it's a totally different structure right to where you've been before. What was the biggest pros and the biggest cons that you had in mind? And I'd love you to answer this as well, Andrew, as you're making that decision to go from Magento. But if we, even if we put it as a custom owned platform, even though Magento is not custom, so to speak, but over that many years of building it up, there would be a lot of customization in it going from that model to a Shopify model where you're following a roadmap essentially. Where are the biggest pros and cons for retail?
Andrew Waite: Like you, I mean, Sylvan, I might jump in and take them on a little bit. We made a decision at that point in time that was probably going against the grain slightly. When we decided to move to Shopify, we went down a headless implementation. So as far as any of those sacrifices were concerned, I'd say Sylvan, none. Like it was all elevation and there was certainly no regression as far as the feature richness of the decisions that we were making. Yeah, at that point in time and you know, we're talking five plus years ago, some of the considerations, you know, why did we go down that path? You know, Storefront 2.0 hadn't even been released from Shopify's perspective. So, you know, sections didn't exist. So being able to manage the content at scale that Gander had, you know, the back catalog of video imagery is ridiculous. Like, you know, we're serving 10 to 20 videos on PLPs and homepages and whatnot. And managing that through Shopify at that point in time would have been, you know, just complicated, challenging. So that was one of the decisions. We decided to go down the path of headless. Shopify had a hundred product variant limitation at that point in time. So to be able to go, I've got 20 different hoodies across 10 different sizes.
Nathan Bush: Some of the color swatches I was looking at through the product list, some of the, you've got up to like 50 color swatches on some of those products. So that'll get pretty complicated pretty quickly.
Andrew Waite: And navigating through that without Headless five years ago it would have been really slow, like so just click, clicking around. And the Gander team really wanted that mobile app like experience. So yeah, I would say we. Sylvan, correct me if I'm wrong, but certainly no, no regression in features. All, all Uplift.
Nathan Bush: Would you do Headless again today?
Andrew Waite: That's a good question. Look in, in 99% of cases, no. Like from Gander's perspective though, you know, we're going through that process in 17th. I think your team want to catch up Sylvan, to, to go through that, that redesign and rescaping process. I think if you look at, you know, the customer today and the needs of the customer and even the direction, you know, that Shopify is going with the ChatGPT integration, like the priority is focusing on that checkout experience and meeting the customer where they are, if you know. And also there's some other decisions that you know, that the Gamba business have made around leaning into Shopify for things like point of sale that you know, might mean that we dec to go down a liquid implementation but at the same time if we want to go down the path of some more bespoke app like experiences from a customer perspective, it might lean into Headless. We just don't know yet.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. What's on your mind, Sylvan, for that meeting on the 17th? What's changed since you've launched on Shopify to where Shopify is today and where the business is today that you really top of mind that you're like, this is a problem we've got to solve.
Sylvan Bard: Yeah, look, I think firstly from a business perspective is just volume. You know, we've grown significantly, our range has grown significantly. We've got, you know, a couple of other brands that we're bringing on and so kind of we're looking to expand not just from a Gander perspective, but potentially in other brands and things like that. So we, we're needing to fulfill a situation where we can scale quickly across multiple brands, not just within one entity or one brand as such. So that's probably the biggest one for us right now. You know, I guess adding on to what Andrew said before is, is the biggest thing that I was looking at and the biggest thing that I constantly look at for our business when we put new technology in is having efficiency and not having to have significant resources that can run something. So for us, you know, everything comes down to automation and ensuring that. It takes us from a staff resource perspective, it takes just as long to, you know, for instance, upload a Product list of 1000 items as it does to take a product list of 10,000 items. There should be no difference. And so we constantly, you know, we try and run as lean as possible and everything that we do is always with the outlook of how can we scale. So if our business increased by 10 times what it is now, will we still run with the same amount of lean resources that we've got at the moment? So it's always about, it's always looking that way. And so we're kind of willing to walk that extra mile at the start to ensure that we get that efficiency down the track, that long term payoff. Yeah, and that was probably one of the major key decision makers or key decision points. When we did go the headless way back then, we felt like it was going to give us those kinds of things, those options and then the ability to, you know, potentially pull some technology out and replace it with other pieces of technology down the track. And yeah, as Andrew said, we're going through the business is in a very different place now. And you know, in the past we used to, we called it reskinning the website. Right. So basically building a brand new website pretty much every two years prior to going onto Shopify and we're now going to our, you know, second iteration of Shopify. But that re effectively by the time it goes live, it'll be six years later. So, you know, the amount of longevity that we've gotten from it is good. And people may ask, well, why do you have to do it again? But you know, there's a lot of new technology that Shopify has released that, you know, our bills just don't have in and so just hasn't incorporated that. And so we just feel like this is a really good time from a business perspective in terms of our growth and where we want to go to and so scale to, you know, this is a good opportunity for us to kind of revisit that and see which pieces of the puzzle will keep the same and then which other pieces we're going to replace with, you know, hopefully something better.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, Andrew, we've spoken about this before in that the lines are blurring between a redesign and a replatform and a new platform. You know what I mean? Like before it was like we're switching from one platform to the next or we're going from Magento 1 to Magento 2. But to Sylvan's points, there is like, sometimes you just need to reshape core parts of the build, not the whole thing or, you know what I mean? It's as straightforward as a replatform versus a rebuild anymore. Are you still finding that?
Andrew Waite: Totally. I think with a solid foundation and design system, you know, certainly that uplift becomes a lot more seamless than it used to be. And we're not going through this like constant refactoring or re engineering process or rebuilding process. I think the expectation of the customer or the retailer is to get that longevity and like, you know, you might call it sweat the asset or like, whatever terminology you put around it, but
Nathan Bush: you just hit the bingo card there. Well done.
Andrew Waite: Yeah, exactly. But, you know, it is a testament to the effort that, you know, Silver and the team, and, you know, our, our team went into building this thing five years ago, that it still looks and performs unbelievably. Yeah, that's, that's definitely, you know, the expectation I think, moving forward is that, you know, you can have that longevity.
Nathan Bush: It's a beautiful site and it doesn't strike you as a Shopify build straight away. And I don't say it in a negative way, it's a lot of people take the templates or what's out and go, well, that's good enough. From a design perspective, you can tell that there's been a lot of design and UX put in over the top that's relevant for the Gander offering and the gander customer. Sylvan, how do you approach this as CIO to make sure that there's a good balance of tech and design in what you're putting out there?
Sylvan Bard: I guess, to be honest, I just stay out of the way of the designers and let them do what they do. Right. I'm not necessarily a very design orientated person. I'm kind of more about, you know, the workings behind the scene type of thing. So I think a lot of that is to do with allowing the right people to do the right things and not, not necessarily wanting to micromanage everything. But at the same time, I guess, you know, we've got a strong design team who really wants to convey our brand. And when people, as you say, you know, kind of click on our website, they can go, wow, I'm with Gander. And it should be almost to the point that even if you don't see the gander Logo, you should just feel that it's gander. And so having Convert in this process is hugely important for us because they are the guys that kind of can say, okay, well, this is what your design team wants, but this is also what you want from a process flow behind the scenes. And here's the piece of technology that's going to allow us to make that happen. So, you know, we've been very, very happy with our relationship with Convert. They truly have been, you know, not just kind of business partners, but business advisors for us in terms of where we want to go. And I think, you know, when you have that trust in those advisory roles, that goes a long way because, you know, we do fashion on a daily basis. We don't necessarily do websites on a daily basis. And so we're dependent on Convert to say, hey, you know, well, maybe have you thought about this or have you thought about that? So, you know, and especially right at the start, I mean, if you wanted everybody's input into it and want to build the perfect site or, you know, the perfect system from the start, it's never going to happen. You have to at some stage sacrifice a little bit of, I guess, kind of some user experience maybe or, or some performance just to get like a minimum viable product out there and then
Nathan Bush: you can know that it's not the end.
Sylvan Bard: Correct. And it's. But you've got to start somewhere. Yeah. And so I would say, you know, as great as our website does look at the moment, that was not what it was on day one. You know, that's a culmination of the last six years worth of work. And I guess that was again, one of the main reasons why we did go down that Shopify headless solution back then, so that we can constantly evolve rather than having to build something brand new every couple of years.
Nathan Bush: And you mentioned before that you do run very lean. Most people looking at the site wouldn't go, oh, this is a lean team. Like, it doesn't, it doesn't scream lean. But is that more from a process perspective in terms of making sure what teams are looking after what. So allowing your design team and your front end team the liberty to have all the data available to them in a safe way that, you know, can't be messed up, separating the front end and the back end so the front end team can do exactly what they need to deliver that customer experience?
Sylvan Bard: Absolutely. I mean, it's as simple as basically, you know, your design team creating imagery that they were going to use for the product and, you know, Banners and all those kind of things. And instead of them having to log into the website and have to go to every area where they want to upload it and click upload, we've just got a system where they just drop it in a folder and it automatically gets uploaded.
Nathan Bush: Right. What system is that? Is that custom built?
Sylvan Bard: It's all custom built, yeah. So things like that just allows the designer to not necessarily have knowledge of the technology. They do what they are good at. They design the imagery and they drop it in a section and the rest gets taken care of. And to me, you know, that's automation.
Nathan Bush: Yeah.
Sylvan Bard: From that perspective.
Andrew Waite: But to get there is like, from a, you know, engineering and design perspective, I think it's about like getting the right people in the room for those discussions. So, like when we're showing up with the Gambit team on the 17th, you've got Blake, head of engineering, Kylie, solutions, Matt, head of design. Like everyone's having these discussions to not only think about, okay, what's the customer experience but like, what is that staff experience? So, you know, the fact that Gander is dropping those files into a folder, we're picking that up through Cloudinary. It doesn't matter the size of the imagery either. Like, we're just doing all that automation in the backend to, you know, make sure that staff experience is we want to get this product in market as quickly as possible. Both the actual product, but, you know, also the engineering component of the product.
Nathan Bush: Is that a common setup that you've seen Andrew, with other clients around, having the design team stay out of the Shopify backend or. Because, I mean, if we look at the Shopify backend, it's pretty simple, especially for us who've been in E commerce compared to the old Magento ones or the WordPress ones, like where it's a bit more complicated or even custom. Most of us look at Shopify backend and go, it's pretty simple. But again, from a design perspective, if it's just wasting their time logging in and not actually doing the designing, it's a really great idea. Is it common?
Andrew Waite: I'd probably say no. But like, depending on the product and retailer or customer that we're dealing with, like you're talking about, you know, Gander's product lifecycle management. It's fast. Like it's, it's super fast. I think Sylvan, you know, you guys have told stories about, you know, testing and trialing product and to the point where you're printing limited runs in torquey and then Going, okay, that really worked. Let's push this into mass production and those decisions happening within days. So like to be able to do that at scale and have people doing a lot of manual work doesn't make any sense.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, that makes sense. Sylvan, you've now got me curious. The automations that you speak about, that's a great example, that one for the design team being able to drop into a folder and have them publish on the website. What are some of the other key automations that you've got in place that you think separate gander and allow you to run so lean?
Sylvan Bard: Well, I think, you know, probably the one that we're really pushing towards right now is Shopify Pause. You know, an example of that is instead of having an ERP that integrates with a point of sale system and Shopify to get master data up and down is just, you know, the moment the products are available online, they're available through our Shopify Pause platform, you know. And so we're starting to roll out Shopify pos. We've got it in four outlets at the moment. We just, I was just speaking to Andrew before and we're rolling out what we call Cubasters, which is the, you know, just basically handhelds that people use that we'll use in our stores. So we're actually currently running a stage point of sale which we're converting slowly to Shopify point of sale. But that process takes time because there's hardware, you know, brand new tools and printers and all those kind of things that needs to go into the stores. But we actually can now run a hybrid of the Sage point of sale and then bring these Shopify POS Q busters in at the same time.
Nathan Bush: So you're running it alongside your existing point of sale?
Sylvan Bard: Correct. And then we're just pulling it into our ERP combined so that, you know, our staff can see all the data in one platform and basically do their end of day cash UPS and make sure that they, you know, balance across both systems. But the fact that we've already got the integration of the website and the ERP sorted just meant that the POS integration is already there, you know. And so it's, I guess one, it's about building, I guess what, what I would classify as smarter integrations and solutions, but sometimes just going for the lower low hanging fruit as well. Like the option is already there. So why would I want to do something else, you know. So we're, yeah, we're moving to that space where you know, in the new year probably By April, May next year will be 100% on a Shopify platform from a sales perspective. So that'll be both from E commerce and from a point of sale perspective. And you know it's going to enhance our customer experience significantly because customers will be able to see their transactions both from in store as well as online in one platform and allow us to serve them better and you know, give them better I guess access through things like loyalty and things like that. So yeah, we're very excited about it and but yeah, that's just a great example I think of simplifying, you know, automations and integrations.
Nathan Bush: I can imagine you'll have an eagle eye on those four stores over peak trade to see what impact it has on customer experience, even sales. If you've got store associates wandering around stores being able to get people out pretty quickly.
Sylvan Bard: Well we actually, so we, we implemented that in December last year and we actually specifically did it to see how it went over peak period. And you know, I guess to give you an indication we've got a, a talkie outlet that you know, Torquigos just gangbusters over summer, you know and they would do about 100 transactions a day and then on New Year's Day they did about 980 transactions, you know. So the question is how do you scale to serve that amount of customers in a quick amount of time? Right. And so we actually ran Shopify Pause with two cubusters and we, although there was lines and waiting as you can imagine for that, a number of transactions, we didn't expect that many people. So we'll, we'll top them up with an extra couple of Cubasters this season. But you know, they were able to get through it and we've had through no fault of our own but there's been power outages and things like that and Shopify has performed in an offline capability. And so you know that's, we've, we really have used our outlets like a proof of concept to prove itself before we can roll it out to our full price stores.
Andrew Waite: What I found really interesting with that and my business partner Aaron from Make Retail was involved with, with Sylvan and that project over December last year. The change management side of things. Sylvan you said like staff just didn't even need to be shown how to use the system and just jumped into it straight away. Then you know, you and Aaron were sort of standing there and said hey look, someone just paid with their watch in the middle of a queue. That was interesting. And like the staff Just adopted it so quickly.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, I know. Aaron and the team at Make Retail just rolled out. They were the first to hit over 100 stores with nutrition Warehouse rolling out Shopify Pause, which is pretty incredible. Are you finding that most retailers who are going on a transformation at this scale are taking Sylvan's approach of putting Shopify POS alongside existing to test, learn, not overly disrupt or are they doing the rip and shift model?
Andrew Waite: I'd say a combination of both. I think, you know, once that decision has been made and the lean in is happening, it's a, you know, that rapid progression as Sylvan said, like the team are rapidly trying to adopt it. I think there's some other projects going on in the background that have been a priority Sylvan this year. But I think the proof of concept approach works for some. But people that are, you know, have been highly involved in in Shopify are pretty comfortable with making that mobile physically, quickly.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, that makes sense. Sylvan, I'm really interested. You mentioned multi brand before and I've just worked on a project with another client around setting up multibrand on plus. It's a lot more complicated than people think about. You know, it looks like really simple. All the good ones look simple because there's just different brand tabs at the top of a page. But we know there's a lot of complexity under that. For anyone who is maybe considering a multi brand presence on the one site. What advice or lessons do you have from that experience?
Sylvan Bard: Well, we're definitely not there yet. You know, I think what has counted in our favor so we've got another brand for instance at the moment called Karma. And with Karma what we've done is we've just set up its own complete Shopify environment and they use Shopify Pause. You know, they only had a couple of stores at the start so we were kind of like we can make some mistakes here. And I think that's the other thing is, you know, you've got to be willing to make mistakes, be willing to test the waters and say, you know, if the mistake happens, that's fine, we'll take it on the chin. But we've got a fallback option, you know, if and when that happens. And so I guess from an internal perspective we've got different designers working on the Karma brand than the Gander brand. And so it's got, it really has its own identity. And when we meet up with Convert, you know, in a couple of weeks, that will be something that we I guess try to push on on in terms of, with our new platform that we want to go to, how can we have multi brands but keep them fairly, you know, potentially quite distinct in terms of, you know, what the page layouts looks like and all those kind of things. Right, because we want them to have their own identity. We don't want them to just be another gander with a different logo.
Nathan Bush: Yes.
Sylvan Bard: And I think that's important because that's how you build a brand rather than just, you know, trying to copy another one.
Nathan Bush: That's right. Andrew, what are the benefits that you see in brands that take a multi brand approach within the one experience for separating them out as separate sites?
Andrew Waite: It's like the most simplistic answer to that question is checkout.
Nathan Bush: Yeah.
Andrew Waite: But having said that, like, Shopify's got some functionality that's like, kind of like, watch this space as far as checkout is concerned. And, you know, amalgamating multiple brands into a SQL checkout experience through a cross like domain strategy is something that's like not impossible moving forward. But I think, yeah, certainly the benefit is in the checkout. The benefit is in leveraging an existing brand's presence and leveraging that asset to be able to push across. I think the challenge comes in trying to define and create that experience that doesn't make you feel like you're getting pushed and shoved left, right and center between brand X and brand Y. And also where you've navigated from too. Right. If you come from a social experience that looks like a kid's product into a ganner environment, I don't want to be pushed into an adult world where I'm seeing that kind of different kind of content that's not necessarily relevant to the advertisement or experience that I've seen. So I think we've done that as good as we can in the existing sort of technology stack that we've got with the gander experience. But yeah, I'm really keen to see what our team come up with when we move to the next site.
Nathan Bush: Speaking of checkout, I know that checkout is a sensitive area, especially this time of year. We don't want to mess around with it too much. But we also know that Shopify have lifted the lid on what we can do to it. For a long time. Shopify was like, don't touch the checkout. We know what we're doing. We've got best in class practice. But I know Gander has a few little customizations in the checkout. Based on what you're seeing so far, where do you think you get the most value in customizing the checkout. Sylvan, I might start with you there.
Sylvan Bard: I think Andrew is better place to answer that question, to be honest. For me. You know, I guess where we're sitting right now is that our checkout works really well and conversion rates are good. I mean, we're, we're constantly trying to see how we can get that better. But, you know, the functionality is good. And so for me, it's not as much as what we can do right now as it is, you know, what's our next step with the next platform that we want to go to? So once we, you know, re platform this or decide on what our next version is of the Shopify platform, you know, then we'll kind of reassess that in a little bit more detail. But yeah, I'll let Andrey give you more detail on that.
Andrew Waite: I mean, Ganner in a really fortunate position with us. When we went through this process, we were open to some beta access to checkout extensibility. So we were, you know, one of the first in, well, global actually to be working on Shopify checkout customizations that started with some like, really simplistic use cases around product cross sell, product upsell in checkout that then led into, okay, well how do we automate this? Yeah, going back to Silver's point around the importance of automation, you know, they use Search Spring for search and merch or Athos. So we said, okay, well we'll kill
Nathan Bush: you for calling it Search Spring.
Andrew Waite: Yeah, yeah, maybe we'll just cut that bit and like we've got all these automatables sitting over here.
Nathan Bush: Right.
Andrew Waite: It's like, well, let's just leverage those and pull those into checkout. So Search Spring is. Athos is now driving all that automation with product upsell and like the. I think I'll have to ask Blake and Silver in particular around the success of that. But it's a, you know, ridiculous uptake as far as conversion is concerned. That then, yeah, that just that one project that we did with with Silver and the team actually led into us productizing, you know, that in what's now called checkout components. So Blackout head of engineering runs that that business and that that project which is used on over 500 merchants globally and allows customers to, you know, not only do things like upsell and cross sell and check out, but, you know, messaging, localization, a bunch of different stuff.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, I loved it. I've obviously gone deep in checkout components recently and just seeing the ability to add one click additional items into checkout but even do things like add a donation or promote loyalty or promote new ranges within the checkout is really clever because I think we're seeing that shift now, aren't we that the shopping journey doesn't stop once we get to checkout which is kind of like well we've done what we can here, we're done. We're also seeing checkout as a sales opportunity and also post checkout with you know, upsells, cross sells, add to your order, all that sort of stuff. So the journey is getting longer.
Andrew Waite: Well not only that, like think about the agentix stuff. It's like your experience with the brand might start with checkout. Like I'm going through finding a product, purchasing it straight through the agent experience and I'm hit with okay now I'm with the brand, now I'm talking to you. So yeah I think that you know we are trying to surface a lot more in that experience than traditionally. Just trying to capture a bunch of information.
Nathan Bush: Speaking of information, Sylvan, you've got an incredibly complex setup there. 110 stores, multi brand, online, offline. What's your approach to customer data? I know that's a shit question, it's a very broad question but how are you making sure that with first party customer data is such a strong asset? I've got a feeling that you've got some really great automations in place to make sure that the right data is collected, organised, put in a central source of truth to make sure the right teams can get it. What's your philosophy on making sure that that's available?
Sylvan Bard: Well I think about 18 months ago or so we, we kicked off a project with convert of implementing a CDP and basically starting to store some data in that we've been doing in storing that data for about the last 12 months. So we're probably just at a point where we can start to get to a point where we can actually use that data in a significant way. And you know, that's all about what people browse, what they're looking for. Obviously user, you know, or personal identification is all, you know, hidden and anonymous and all those kind of things. So that was fairly important for us, you know, I guess things like having to be PCI compliant with payments and all that other stuff. We've taken that complexity out of the way by handling all payments through Shopify. So we've just gone, you know what, we're not even going to touch that because I think that could be a big black hole that you can get down into and especially when it comes to cybersecurity and things like that. So I guess we've gone and taken the easy approach, but, you know, we've been gathering that data to really kind of want to start and that'll be part of the new platform as well, really focus on personalization so that when, you know, you as a customer are coming onto our site and we can recognize you and, you know, you look at men's clothing that we don't serve you with, you know, the next woman's jeans that's coming out and things like that, which is just useless, and then other things like, you know, localization so that you're actually seeing the type of product that is. Is running well for your area based on geographical locations. Because, you know, gander runs both. You know, we've got quite a bit of a following in the US and so and obviously their seasons are, you know, opposite to ours. And then, you know, just even in Australia we've got stores down to Hobart and then we've got one in Broome and their climate is very, very different.
Nathan Bush: You know, software selling in Hobart, it's
Sylvan Bard: surprising actually that there's quite a bit. But obviously they, you know, so we, we kind of classify stores a little bit between the geographical locations and so from physically what we put in stores to, versus what they, you know, what we want to show users when they come onto our website will be kind of quite specific to that. So we've been on a process to go, how do we get there? But it's not a flick of a switch, right? You've got to invest in the infrastructure and get the information because information is. Is key and you've got to kind of, you know, capture that information over a period of time before you can start using that. And so we're just about, at that point we can start using that. And that'll be part of the new platform that we're going to roll out. Alongside with that, we're actually working with make retail on a project that we're looking at, you know, at camera systems within our, in our stores, really giving us an opportunity to view where people are browsing within the stores themselves. Because from a website perspective, it's easy, right, because you can have people click and they, they can browse and you can kind of capture the interaction. But from a store perspective, how do we know which areas of our stores are really hotspot areas? And then is it to do with the location in the store? Is it to do with the product in that location? And Just kind of being able to really analyze that data and then, you know, serve the customers better ultimately in terms of that. Because if we see that customers keep hanging or clogging in a, in the corner at the back of the store, well, maybe it's better for us to bring that a little bit more to the front of the store where there's a bit more space or things like that. So.
Nathan Bush: And is all that camera data is the intent there to have that AI analyzed? Because I can imagine it's not like the, the old camera systems where you're trying to work out patterns manually.
Sylvan Bard: Yeah, very AI analyzed and you know, just even looking at things like conversion rates. So for instance, you know, how many people have gone to the change room who then actually go to checkout, you know. And so is our staff serving our customers really well in store or do we need to give more training to our staff in terms of, you know, how do they work with the customers to, to get those con rates up and things like that? So it's all about, you know, serving the staff and our customers better and you know, what opportunities do we have that we're potentially just missing out on just because we just don't know what we don't know.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. Andrew, we had David from Lexa on a few weeks ago, obviously co founded the Lexa cdp. What's your view then on how retailers are using customer data? Because you're working with a lot of retailers who do have physical and online stores. Huge amounts of data can get really complex. I love the approach that you talked about. Sylvan is like let's take 12 months to collect the right data and to have a really strong database before actually trying to implement it and frustrate customers or frustrate our team with incomplete data. What is your approach to a central source of data? Do you generally have it in Shopify most of the time or do most of your customers move towards a CDP model?
Andrew Waite: I think it depends on like where you're at in your journey. Right. It's a data maturity discussion and like how we're handling data. Certainly depending on where you're at in that scale will depend on, you know, what system we're talking to when it comes to data. As far as like serving the customer though, like we do really need to structure that information where the customer lives. So you know, the front end being Shopify, having a really in depth conversation during the discovery process around data. You know, everything from content through to customer order product and making sure we architect that. Right. So that Depending on where you're at in that journey, when we are ready, we can do something useful with that information. Like if we don't get the product schema stuff right at the start or the content architecture or whatever it might be, it becomes useless and like, really hard to manage down the track to the point where it's like we have to blow this thing up and start again.
Nathan Bush: What's the biggest mistake there that you see with the product schema?
Andrew Waite: Like, just replicating what we have from an old system and trying to shoehorn it into a new system. So, like, you know, when we talk about data migration from a Salesforce or Magento, it's like, let's just duff this thing and put it across. So it's just not going through the process of that proper solution design up front.
Nathan Bush: Okay, gents, you've given us so much both on the incredible growth of Gander and how you've set your team up to be lean, but also set up to scale. Incredible journey so far. And I'm excited just listening to. I want to be like a fly on the wall in that meeting that's coming up to hear where you're going, because it sounds like you've got some big ideas and plans for the next five to ten years as well, that you're thinking ahead for. Now. If I was to ask both of you what you're most excited about around what's innovative or what's going to be the future of retail, where do your minds go? Sylvan, I'm going to ask you. If we go beyond. We've talked a lot around the basics, the getting the customer data right, the product data right, making sure customers have good experience, good design, good brand. What excites you the most? Where do you think we can blow the lid off?
Sylvan Bard: I think the part that's the most exciting for me is being able to bring in store data and merge that with online data. Especially with our customer base. We have a lot of people who will buy in store but also will buy online at the same time. You know, I guess giving them that true kind of omnichannel experience and that they, I guess for our customers feel like gander's gander. Whether I'm on the website, get served by, you know, getting a parcel in the, in the mail, or whether I'm in the store itself. But I think that that browsing experience type of thing. So that whole CDP framework of getting the online data, but also then the analytics from the vision in store, getting that together, to me, I think that just kind of completes the picture and really will go a massive way towards us serving our customers better. And so it's just more about analyzing that data. And the data is really king in the whole process because ultimately, you know, if the customers are not happy, then they're not going to buy. So I think if you're in this journey not to enhance the customer experience, then you know, you're probably just barking up the wrong tree a little bit or you're going to spend time and effort on things that's not necessarily going to equate to a return on investment at the end of the day.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, and that makes a lot of sense that, that direction, given that the scale of your business. I can imagine the pipelines of data that you're getting getting bigger and bigger every day and that's leading with automations in mind that you're going, well, how can I use this data in a more effective way? We're not having to manually make changes or recommendations or what, whatever way it is to keep your team lean and then leaning into that to deliver a great customer experience, it comes together really nicely. Andrew, what about you? What's exciting you? What's getting you pumped up at the moment?
Andrew Waite: Oh, I mean, if you look at the evolution of Convert as an agency, like we've been around for 12 years now, you know, when we first started, like highly focused on web development, E commerce and you know, those conversations evolved into omnichannel, into what's now called, you know, we consider unified commerce. And you know, we're no longer an E commerce delivery agency, we're commerce delivery agency. It's, you know, commerce anywhere, retail everywhere. You know, we started the retail practice in make retail last year. You know, those conversations are evolving rapidly and the growth of that piece of our business is evolving rapidly. This next gen analytics stuff that Sylvan's been referencing is like super exciting. And I think, you know, being able to meet the customer where they are and service that customer, as Silvan was sort of referring to, is what's really exciting, you know, being able to have deeper conversations and this digital asset that exists over here, it's like, what is that customer experience everywhere and how are we supporting that journey?
Nathan Bush: And I love following your journey, not only because we've known each other for a long time and you're a great supporter of the show, but just seeing how you've evolved when there's so many development agencies and I'm not putting in that category, but traditional development agencies who are shitting themselves with AI and what's coming. Right, because anyone can build a website now. So then what becomes your point of difference? And I think you've done a great job at expanding out your point of difference. We heard how Sylvan was talking about having you there as consultants to help guide the strategy, to help guide the direction, not just build stuff is a fantastic testament to what you and the team are doing. So congratulations.
Andrew Waite: Thank you. Appreciate it.
Nathan Bush: Gents, thank you so much for joining us today. That was a great case study and I've loved, you know, going over those last five years. You've given us lots to think about in terms of how we set up E Commerce for the future, to scale, to stay lean and to automate to deliver a really great customer experience. So thank you so much.
Andrew Waite: Thank you.
Sylvan Bard: Thank you.
Nathan Bush: There we go. How lucky are we to get that undercover view of what's really going on at Gander? There's someone that I've admired for a long time and based on the parcels that come through my front door for my wife and my children constantly from Gander, I've always wondered how they keep up with the demand and what's behind those systems that make those puzzles turn up so regularly and always on time. Here are three ideas that I took out of that conversation with Andrew and Sylvan which caught my attention. Number one, the no touch e commerce model. It's come up a few times in conversations, but the idea of running Lean. Now you wouldn't think an organization like Gander, who does of a lot, lot of production in house, has over 110 stores and a huge footprint would be associated with Lean. But the way that Sylvan described it was that they're making decisions especially around technology that they know will scale with them, that they don't need to keep adding resources, team or money to keep growing them. Once that decision's made, they're made as scalable decisions to handle whatever growth may, may throw at them. Now of course that doesn't mean that they might not have to revisit some of those decisions in further down the track. As we heard, they're coming up to one right now. But when they make the decisions, they're thinking what will scale with us for the next three, four, five years and knowing that they'll get their return over that time, not in the next 12 months. I love that idea of making decisions around a no touch scalable E commerce market. Secondly, POS as a secondary system, we don't often hear this. We have heard a lot lately around Shopify POS and how retailers are adopting this as a simplified way to take pause in store to have one view of the customer and to give store associates the ability to be with the customer on the shop floor with transactions with them everywhere they go. However, it's usually talked about as a replacement for the existing POS system, which is often a legacy and tied to other systems. The way that Gander has approached it, at least in this early model of it, is to have it as a secondary system alongside their existing POS so they can trial it and not disrupt too much. I really like that approach and if all it's doing at the start is allowing your store associates and team to have all the customers information with them wherever they are on the screen shop front to allow you to check out customers anywhere in the store and to kind of give those cube buster capabilities when times get really, really busy. I think that's a nice add on number three and the last one I've got for you and I'm not just saying this because they brought you this episode is the Art of Agency Partnership. You can hear it in this dynamic that this is definitely a partnership, not a retailer vendor relationship. As you've heard heard. They built this solution over five years together and they spoke like colleagues, not necessarily internal external parties. And that's what true relationships look like. Agencies need to bring strategic and commercial thinking to the forefront to be of value and to get that relationship. And retailers need to embrace that. They've gone to external subject matter experts to get that strategic input and advice, not just be order takers. When you can find a relationship that brings both of those parties together, you get something that magnifies the output and magnifies the results. Like you saw today with Gander and Convert Digital. That's everything from this very special episode with Gander Clothing and Convert Digital. If you want to know more about Convert Digital and get in touch with Andrew, you can see the brands that they're helping. There's lots of case studies on their website. Everyone from Age to Coco Black to Showpo to Brand Collective, go on there and see the work that they're doing. They're doing some great work across development, design, strategic consultation. Go check them out. ConvertDigital.com we thank them again for their support. Until next time. We hope this has given you a little bump in the middle of the week. We'll see you again on Friday.
