James Chin Moody: Our entire approach as a business is taking things in some ways that exist and putting them together in new ways in order to create value. You can either be 80% good for everybody or you can be 100% good for someone. Being there in service of something bigger than yourself is actually really powerful and a great way to in some ways both run a business, but also I think just to live.
[Voiceover]: Welcome to ADD to cart, Australia's leading e commerce podcast that express delivers all you need to know in the fast moving world of online retail. Every week Nathan Bush from E Suite and an e commerce industry expert will share the news, research and insights that you need to know to keep you at the top of your game and of course keep your customers Adding to Cart.
Nathan Bush: Welcome to Add to Cart. My name is Nathan Bush, host of Add to Cart and Director at e commerce talent agency eSweet. Have you ever been browsing around LinkedIn and looked at someone's profile and just felt totally inadequate because they are just a superstar? Well, when I was researching today's guest, I got that exact feeling. An engineer, a board member, a TV judge, sustainability expert, an author, and a PhD in innovation theory, James Chin Moody was well placed to solve a world problem or two and the shipping industry is the area he ended up in. James is the co founder and CEO of Sendal, a shipping company focused on helping small businesses thrive by making package delivery simple, reliable and affordable. Sendal recently raised $45 million in investment and are the only 100% carbon neutral delivery service in Australia and the United States. In this chat, James gives us an insight into the systems engineering approach that guides Sendal's operation. He also shares what it's like to take on a national institution in Australia post and why being humble and honest is at the top of his list when it comes to success in business. So thanks to our partners Shopify plus and Signet, here's our conversation with James Chin Moody from Sendal.
Nathan Bush: James Chin Moody, welcome to ADD to cart.
James Chin Moody: Thanks for having me.
Nathan Bush: My pleasure. Amy and I both had a lot of fun doing research for this cause. We always make sure we kind of have a listen to where you've been and read about what you've been up to and your background is just fascinating. So you've been a founder, a board member, an engineer, a book author, a judge on the new inventors. Can you without I wish we had time to go into all of it. But from your perspective, what's been the funnest role out of all of those?
James Chin Moody: I mean, I've had A lot of fun in all those roles because actually, you know, fun actually comes much more from who you're with, I think, than what you do, to be honest. And I've been very fortunate to work with amazing people throughout my career. But I must say, I mean, the New Inventors was a really special gift. I think it's not often that you get to be part of something where you can see every week three incredible entrepreneurs, three incredible inventions, and do it in a way in which you can actually make a real difference. I mean, that show had over a million viewers and it was really just highlighting Australian innovation. I think that was just incredible. And we had a lot of fun on that show.
Nathan Bush: I could imagine. Is there any invention that has stuck in your mind since that show or that you've seen come to life?
James Chin Moody: A lot of them. I mean, everything from really funny ones. I know there was somebody who made a tool that would help screw corrugated iron into a roof of the house, and you would think that's the most Australian of tools in some ways. But then I died on really well, to, like, sipper straws, some people might know of them. I mean. So, yeah, there's lots and lots of inventions that really made it amazing.
Nathan Bush: And there's no other show like it on TV now, is there?
James Chin Moody: Not really, no. And particularly not one that was all about celebrating the inventor.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. Yeah.
Nathan Bush: All right.
Nathan Bush: We're not here to talk about the new inventors, even though we could probably
James Chin Moody: make a show about.
Nathan Bush: We're here to talk about Sendal and your journey, obviously. And one of the things in the research that really stood out to me is your approach to how you've built Sendal. So we're not going to get back over the whole journey because it's a fascinating story. But I love the quote where you said you've built Sendal out of a systems engineering approach. What did you mean by that?
James Chin Moody: Yeah, I mean, at my heart, I'm a systems engineer and I think. Which really means you look at the bigger systems. I mean, everything in my head, my team jokes at me that everything in my head's a model. But what it really means is what we realized when we built Sendal and we originally built it as our own first customer. We were a giving marketplace that needed logistics. But what we realize is that there's not that there's not enough trucks in the world. There are so many trucks in the world, and there's so many that are going around not 100% full at all. There's a lot of idle capacity. But if you plug those networks together in new ways, you can actually create a much better service. In particular, the thing that was missing was that those trucks were only servicing enterprise level, mid tier, large retailers. And that if we can open that infrastructure up to the small businesses in Australia and the US like if we could open them up, then we would get something that was better and also more affordable. So I think really our entire approach as a business is taking things in some ways that exist and putting them together in new ways in order to create value. And that's what a system engineer can do.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. Great. And is there part of that where, when E commerce became a thing, sounding old now, is that
James Chin Moody: a lot of
Nathan Bush: courier companies and delivery companies kind of became fulfillment people overnight just by default because there was no other options. Was that part of your thinking at the time?
James Chin Moody: At the time, we were just trying to solve a really painful problem for ourselves, which was basically how to make delivery simple, reliable and affordable. That was what we were trying to solve. And I think over the time, over the days, we have realized that there is this seismic shift going on in retail, of course, in the move to online retail and that that's causing a shift in logistics as well. If you think maybe 10 or 15 years ago, logistics world was built for, I think it was clean to clean or you know, like simple to simple. Like it was built from warehouse to retailer to shop. Right. That's what a lot of logistics. But then suddenly it's been moved from B to C, but it's still warehouse to consumer. No one was really, really thinking about what about what about from small business to consumer. So it's no longer the warehouse. What happens if someone's trying to create a side hustle, trying to build something for their home, or if they're just in the early days and nobody, you know, effectively they were paying far too much and they were getting far too little compared to what the retailers were able to offer. And I think that's the thing that we've realized, that evolution of the market, first from B2B, then to large B2C. And now what we're really doing is we're focusing on the small business end and trying to create logistics as a competitive advantage for them as well.
Nathan Bush: Right now online retail is changing rapidly and it doesn't look like it's slowing down and maybe it never will. So when retail changes, you change retail, sell at the speed of change with Shopify plus and grow with demand on demand, using a commerce platform that can handle up to 10,000 that's 10,000 transactions per minute for bigger business at startup speed. Visit shopify.comauplus to learn more. That's shopify.comauplus because the future belongs to the fast. When you talk about small business, can you give us an understanding on the profile of your customers? Are they kind of shipping from homes, shipping from small offices, warehouses?
James Chin Moody: Yeah. The amazing thing is it's like it's everything. I mean, the biggest thing you can say about small business, it's very, very diverse. We actually started with this vision of, you know, from anyone to anyone with a minimum of one. Right. And the idea being that you didn't have to suddenly have a business already if you wanted to start a small business. We'll pick up a single parcel from your home and deliver it anywhere in the world. Right. And that is the thing that can enable somebody who's just starting out, but also then we want to be able to grow with you, you know, so if you're suddenly sending 10 parcels a day, well, that's going to create efficiency, which we can then pass on to you and then if you grow further. So it was really about thinking these small businesses. Yes, a lot of them. I think more than 50% of the folk who joined us during COVID are doing it as a side hustle. They're doing it to supplement income. They're doing it as a way of creating options for themselves and putting food on the table, potentially, or helping send the kids to school. That's what we love about small business and that's the business that we wanted to create, something that would really enable them.
Nathan Bush: And is that the biggest problem you're solving? If we're talking specifically for small to medium E commerce businesses that they have trouble when they go, oh, we've probably got two, three, four orders, we're in that weird spot where Australia Post won't come to us, we've got to get to the Post office. Is that the problem you're mainly solving?
James Chin Moody: I think ultimately, if you go to the top level, one of the things that the biggest problem we're solving is creating choice and creating competition in the market. Like, go back five or six years ago. For many small businesses, there was only one option, which was to line up Post Office. And that was expensive and complicated and all the mess. What we want to do is we want to bring choice to that market and we're building that choice not just by solving, trying to solve one problem, but we think about it as simple. No one wants to become in small business a logistics expert. There's some of us who do, but, you know, we want to make it simple, we want to make it reliable because that's the thing that drives business back and we want to make it affordable. And also one of the things that's very deep to our heart is we wanted to make it sustainable. We wanted to have E Commerce actually take responsibility for the carbon emissions. And we've done that from day one as well.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, absolutely.
James Chin Moody: So those are all the problems we wanted to solve. It wasn't just one problem. It was like, I've got to. Because shipping is now the new battleground for E Commerce. We want to make sure that small business can actually compete in the battle.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, you're very public around small business and helping small business and we've seen a lot of side hustles and a lot of small businesses turn into big businesses. In E Commerce, especially over Covid. Is there a point where you have to tap out with your customers or you can continue scaling with them as they grow?
James Chin Moody: Yeah, there is absolutely a point. And I think again, because it's all about who you build for, we celebrate that.
Nathan Bush: Right.
James Chin Moody: If there comes to a point where a business suddenly starts becoming, you know, needs warehouses in multiple cities and you know, gets a full time chief logistics officer who's going to be managing like it's. In some ways we will actually say, you know what, you actually go to the enterprise networks do that, right. Because now they'll talk to you. In the early days they might not talk to you at all. And again, we see that as a success. And the reason why we see that as a success is because we have this belief that the only way to be really, really good for somebody is to really know who you want to be good for. So you've got this choice. You can either be 80% good for everybody, right. Or you can be 100% good for someone. You can be 80% good for 100% of the market, which unfortunately is what our competitor in Australia has to do. Right. They're trying to serve everybody. So they can never be 100% good for anyone versus sendal. We want to be 100% good for the needs of small and micro businesses in Australia and the US and we're going to build for them and we're going to do it passionately and with 100% laser focus. And they know that and that's why they know that we're going to be better.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, absolutely. And I think what I love from a marketing perspective about Sendal is that you've been unapologetic with your communication and who you're for. I think you find a lot of in the fulfillment space, in the fraud space, in the payment space, there's a lot of fluffy language and it's almost like you can land on a website of a service provider and go, I don't really know what you do, but you've made yourself look big and important. But for Sendal it's really clear who it's for and how the process works. The other part of that is that you've been very crystal clear around going up as an alternative to Australia Post. Has being so public in that cause you any grief at all.
James Chin Moody: It's interesting. To your first point, I think it's really important to know what you stand for as a business. In fact, we're a B corp, a benefit corporation and that means we've actually written this into our very constitution, into, you know, we are here to have a purpose. We call it shipping that's good for the world. And our purpose is to help small business thrive and also to herald the advent of carbon neutral and eventually regenerative shipping. Like, you know, we want the logistics industry to take full responsibility. So we built that from day one. It's actually written into the very fabric of our business. But to your second point, which is around, you know what it mean when we said, well, you know, in order to help small business thrive, Australia deserves more choice than just Australia Post. For example. Yeah, it has caused grief. We had a trademark that we'd created, you know, in the very early days. One of the ways we thought we could describe our service to differentiate ourselves was the trade Night Post without the office, which she also thought was a bit funny. And bless them, you know, Australia Post took us to court and they tried to say that we were passing off and it was like, no, that's the complete opposite. So we went through that entire process for a couple of years. It took a lot of time, a lot of money. Happily we succeeded. It was absolutely an example of where, you know, Australia needed more choice. Like those anti competitive behaviors are not good for the country.
Nathan Bush: And Australia Post is a big beast. Right? And especially because they go across a bunch of services, they're not just factoring towards E commerce and fulfillment. And obviously with that comes a lot of scale. And Sendal has grown phenomenally but isn't at the scale of Australia Post. Yet you're still able to go to market publicly saying that you're cheaper than Australia Post. How do you achieve those efficiencies? When they have such great scale.
James Chin Moody: Yeah. I think the key is to realize that there is a lot of capacity still. I think there always will be, particularly for small businesses. The thing that really unlocked Sendal for us was realizing that, for example, a lot of trucks drive into neighbourhoods, deliver their parcels and then leave the neighborhood empty. That capacity is the thing. If you can unlock that capacity, that's an efficiency that you can then pass on to your customers and then you bring all those customers together and individually it's very hard to compete, but again, collectively you can make a huge dent. And really. So if you think about what we're doing is we're really doing those two things, unlocking capacity in the network and then bringing together the buying power of all those tens or hundreds of thousands of small businesses in order to basically help them compete. Because if they. Then they will be left behind. It a good example of this is from Sydney to Perth, if you want to send 10kg, you can line up at the post office and It'll cost you $45. We'll pick it up from your door for 20. Right. And that's just an example of there's no way really, really large retailers are spending $45 to send that parcel.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. And do you think this could be a loaded question, so feel free to avoid it. Do you think Australia Post are taking advantage of small to medium businesses when they're charging those kind of rates?
James Chin Moody: Look, it's. I mean, it's very hard to tell, you know, what their input costs are or all that sort of thing, so I can't really comment on that. What I do know is that ultimately there's absolutely no way that they'd be charging that for the really large retailers.
Nathan Bush: Yes, yes.
James Chin Moody: You know, I couldn't imagine that would be happening. So, you know, everyone can probably draw their own conclusion from that. Yeah.
Nathan Bush: And when you talk about unlocking efficiencies or unlocking capacity in the way that you've built Sendal, where do you think the secret. Well, I'm sure you know, but where is the secret sauce behind doing the unlocking? Is it in data? Is it in processes? Is it in relationships? Is there anything specific that you put that down to?
James Chin Moody: I think it's all of the above. It's one of those things. I think if we'd known how complex it was going to be when we began, maybe we wouldn't have begun. But it's a very complex thing to do in order to absolutely focus on the whole merchant experience and then the receiver experience and making sure, that's seamless. It's one of those things. To make something simple often requires a lot of complexity. Think of the light switch on the wall right now. That's an incredibly simple thing. You flick a switch and on goes the light. And if you think about that, that's a level of sophistication. That's a sophisticated technology right there. Because behind the scenes you have an entire infrastructure, a power grid and then transformers and generators and all that just to make it so that reliably you flick the switch and on goes the light. It looks simple, but behind the scenes, it's complex. But that's the beautiful thing about technology. Technology, that's what it's there to do.
Nathan Bush: I can see why your team are saying that you've always got a model going through your head now.
James Chin Moody: Indeed.
Nathan Bush: Now, obviously, Covid was massive for e commerce in general, and I can imagine that it had huge impacts to send all and your network. I saw a stat in there that you Parcel volumes grew 103% in 2020, which is just insane in terms of. If we leave volume aside, are you seeing any changes in customer expectations or behaviors around fulfillment post Covid? Well, I mean, we're still living it, right? You're unfortunately in lockdown and it's still going on. But are you seeing changes in customer behavior out of that period?
James Chin Moody: Yeah, I think it was interesting. We get a very unique view of the world because we focus on small business. And I think we saw two trends. It looks, you know, it might be one that when you see it, but we actually saw two things occurring, and we could see it in the data. The first was the beginning of COVID What we saw is a lot more folk buying online. Right. And you could see that through a lot of our merchants would suddenly double in sales or grow by 30% in sales, whatever it might be, en masse. So what was happening is a whole lot of folk shifted to online to buy stuff. And then what happened? Quickly after that couple of months, we started to see more and more folks selling online. So you sort of had these two waves, right? The first wave of shifting to online retail for buying, and then actually all these small businesses suddenly turning to online for the first time. And a good example of that would be either because I want to create an online business, or maybe I've actually had a boutique before and my business ran off foot traffic. But now I realize I have to sell online, right, for my business. And so I think we just saw those two waves and that was the big story of COVID for us.
Nathan Bush: And out of that second wave around more businesses transitioning to selling online, were there any businesses or types of businesses that came to you that come to mind at Sendal and went, we want to start shipping this online. And you went, oh, that's interesting. We haven't kind of had that scenario before.
James Chin Moody: It's hard to, you know, in some ways because we don't force anyone to declare. You know, we try to keep it as simple as possible of what they can put it in the scripture they want. I think all I'd say is that the beautiful thing about small businesses, you can pretty much see everything. There's every single thing in the world there. And that's what we love, that's what we celebrate. You know, the fact that you could have, you know, dog pajamas, right. Or it is. There's incredible diversity of things that are being sold online and to. Diversity of locations that being sold to and sold from?
Nathan Bush: Yeah, absolutely. And during that Covid period, well, during the peak of it, because you were a network based business with so many partners involved in there, where did you see the main stresses and strains on your network?
James Chin Moody: I think they were just like every other business during COVID You know, there's definitely stresses and strains and peak. You know, there was this sort of internal, I don't know, maybe this is a logistics or an E commerce joke. You know, you had peak and then you had peak, peak. You know, and then Covid was the sneak peek and then, you know, so things really went crazy. I think that from our perspective though, the amazing thing around a business like us is, you know, we are very adaptable as well. And, and during that period, I'm very proud of the fact that we managed to maintain our delivery performance. A lot of that was by moving to bits of the network that we needed to, when we needed to.
Nathan Bush: Did it open up any opportunities that you didn't see coming?
James Chin Moody: I think the thing about, if I think about that whole Covid period and again, we're still in it was in some ways the hallmark was it was all about volatility, which also then means you need to think all about resilience. In some ways, the world had been pushing towards efficiency, efficiency, efficiency. And that's when everything's stable. As soon as you move to volatility, then you start to think about resilience. I think we've done that as a business as well. We think more and more around how to build that, make sure that network is extremely resilient. And so, you know, the opportunities was really more around. Let's build stuff that creates more resilience in the network as well as just trying to make a more efficient network.
Nathan Bush: Absolutely. And in terms of resilience, if you were giving any tips to e commerce retailers who are listening to this, who are designing their fulfillment and logistics operations using Sendal or otherwise, what would be your biggest tip to creating that resilience in their network?
James Chin Moody: I think diversity is a good thing even if you're not using it have as a backup back to we're a minimum multi quantity one network. We don't require any promises that we will give you more discounts as you get bigger. That's absolutely that. But we're not that sort of business that requires you to sign up and promise thousand parcels in blood, whatever it might be. Diversity is absolutely the hallmark of planning. I think for big. I once heard a really great way of thinking about is like on one sheet of paper, one slide, you want to talk about everything when things go right and what you want to do and then you turn the paper over and think about, well, if things go wrong, what are we going to do? And thinking about both sides of that I think is really important. And for all retailers, that unfortunately is part of the new world, particularly when we're in this period of massive volatility still.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, showing that we need plan B, plan C, plan D just up our sleeve, ready to roll out at any point. Now I had an old boss once say to me that payroll is the worst job in the business because, you know, no one ever thanks you every time you get paid. But if you miss a pay or your pay is wrong, you're not going to hear the end of it. Right. I can imagine that running a network like Sendal might be pretty similar because if everyone receives your parcel, everything's okay. Like you're never going to have people contact you and go thanks Sandal, you did an amazing job. I love that my parcel got here just in the delivery time and everyone was great. It wasn't broken, it was fantastic. But looking on your social, you can see that when things go wrong, people don't hold back. Right. How do you balance that and keep your customers happy with so many moving parts?
James Chin Moody: I mean, you're absolutely right. In some ways shipping is the invisible industry because it's invisible when it works and then it's highly visible when it doesn't. And that's. And it's also unlike many, many other digital parts of the world, it is also the one with huge numbers of edge cases. There are Things that can go wrong. There are dogs in, in yards, there is rain, there is traffic, there are, you know, there's all these things that can happen in logistics because we're dealing with atoms, we're dealing with physical objects. And so, yeah, it is absolutely in some ways, you know, if you're a digital company, you're optimizing the golden path. If you're a logistics company, what we're trying to do is make sure that we recover. And we are always thinking about, you know, there's plan B, C, D and everything. When things inevitably happen as they do, we will recover. And I think the biggest thing we say within Sendal is it's all about taking responsibility. Right. If something goes wrong, you take responsibility and you do whatever you can to fix it. And a good example here is if for some reason a courier misses a pickup, for example, we have a pickup guarantee the day after we will actually send a direct service to pick up that parcel. Right. To make sure it gets on its way. So that's the sort of thing that we do that to take responsibility, it makes means that we're. Again, for us, it's about building the best network we possibly can. Yeah, Right.
Nathan Bush: So it gives your customer service team something tangible to come back to customers with when something goes wrong, that they have options up their sleeve to offer a customer.
James Chin Moody: Yeah. And for us, it's all about getting to that end goal of making the delivery occur and ideally in full on time, you know, and it just comes down to the very heart of taking responsibility. Take responsibility as a business. Do your very best to do what you said you do. And the flip side is try not to say you'll do something if you can't do it.
Nathan Bush: Is it hard to find people in your business at all levels who can take the responsibility that you want them to take?
James Chin Moody: I don't think it's. I mean, we're very fortunate. We have what we call the five Hs in Sendal, which are the things that we recruit everybody by and we try to live by. And that is in order, humble, honest, happy, hungry and high performing. And we think that that's. And the reason why there is an order is because we also think that we want high performers and folk who are ambitious and hungry. But we have to be more humble and honest than we are ambitious and hungry. And getting that balance right is really important. And what that translates to, though, of course, is everyone in send all here, we succeed. If our customers succeed, we thrive. If small business in Australia thrives. Right. And you sort of from day one. If you can build that from the beginning, then it isn't very hard to take responsibility.
Nathan Bush: We've talked a lot about B Corp. Retailers on past episodes of Add to Cart and our packaging partner Signet are playing their part. They recently helped nail polish brand Sienna Byron Bay achieve B Corp status and 99% plastic free orders from start to finish by switching from bubble lined mailer bags three years ago to Signet's Giami protective packaging. Not only is Sienna's practices better for the environment, it keeps the nail polish better protected. Visit signet.netaublog to find out more. Why is humble so important to you?
James Chin Moody: I think that humble, you know, humble is ultimately putting others first. Right. And you know, it doesn't mean that you don't have an ego or that, you know, the team doesn't have an ego, but it's in service of something bigger than yourself. And back to, you know, why are we a B Corp? We're B Corp. Because I actually think that businesses should know why they exist. Right. We exist to create economic opportunity for small business. We exist to show that you can be 100% carbon neutral and have a fantastic business at the same time. And in fact you can do it by unlocking capacity and shifting the network ultimately to looking at carbon intensity. So being there in service of something bigger than yourself is actually, you know, a really powerful and a great way to, you know, in some ways both run a business, but also I think just to live. And so for us, humble comes first. The other thing is that's the foundation for some of the others. Like I do think that, that if you're truly humble, if you understand your own strengths and weaknesses, then you can be honest.
Nathan Bush: Yeah.
James Chin Moody: Or they could put it the other way. Why does, where does dishonesty come from? It often comes from the ability to not tell the truth because you're worried about what happens if you tell the truth. Right. And that's ego.
Nathan Bush: Spot on. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Ego. Ego is the enemy. I really love the 5H's and I love that they are in order with high performance being at the end and as an end result of doing all the foundations first. And I think it's a really nice way and from a recruitment perspective, if I was to tell the story of the five Hs, people would immediately go, oh, I get what they're, I get the type of person that they're after. So it's a really nice tool. I love it. Following on what you were saying there around your purpose around sustainability. Sendal was 100% carbon neutral in the early days. Was it right from the start?
James Chin Moody: Absolutely. Every parcel we've ever seen.
Nathan Bush: Do you get frustrated that you've been able to achieve this and build a business around being 100% carbon neutral in an industry that is so carbon intensive and not an easy one to solve? Do you get frustrated when you hear other businesses and even other politicians dilly dally around targets for neutrality to move towards?
James Chin Moody: Look, I think the whole world should be frustrated. You know, we have the COVID crisis right now, but that will touchwood eventually be resolved. But the climate crisis is not going away and it's getting worse. Right. And so yes, I think everyone should be frustrated at the huge amounts of inactivity and really we should be accelerating. I think from our perspective, the first thing you can do is you can actually vote with your feet. I think sentiment shifted. What's really interesting right now for small business in particular is sentiment is shifting like mad. Over 80% of millennials are more likely to buy from you if your brand shares their values. Right. That's huge. And so we've gone from back in seven years ago where no one was talking about this at all and in some ways we were just doing it because it was the right thing to do and no one cared too much, to the fact that now you can ship with send all and you can say I'm now sending 100% carbon neutral and that becomes a competitive advantage for your business over a giant retailer that's not doing that.
Nathan Bush: Absolutely.
James Chin Moody: And it's a way for you to engage with your, for a merchant to engage with their customers. And I think that's a really positive sign. We don't want this to be a competitive advantage for us. We want the entire industry to take responsibility and to basically start saying E Commerce has a cost both in terms of shipping and packaging and take responsibility for that cost.
Nathan Bush: What you were saying there around the appeal of sustainability and that it is a true decisive factor is so true. And I realized this last week, actually this more from a team perspective than a customer perspective is we posted a job around a sustainable surf brand and they're not a big brand at all and they're relatively new, but we put it up there. And the amount of interest we got from candidates coming from big businesses, big corporates wanting to work somewhere with purpose and making a difference was just phenomenal. And the questions being asked about the business in terms of manufacturing processes, whether it's greenwashing, all those questions which were really well qualified, just showed that it was real, that it's not just nice to have.
James Chin Moody: Yeah. And I think to your first point, you get to a point where you say, I want to know why I'm doing what I'm doing. Right. The why becomes really important. Why should this business exist? Why should. Why should, you know, I'm going to go and do something that I want to know that that's making a difference and making having a positive impact in the world. And that's by being a B corp. That's our thesis as well, that it's not either purpose or it's actually good business. By having a purpose or by building it, in aligning your business model with the positive impact you want to make and then being really focused on that. The flip side is, yeah, you're absolutely right as well, that a lot of, you know, you can't do this some ways. Greenwashing or purpose washing or whatever, folk can sniff that a mile away, Right. And so don't do it unless you're actually committed and you actually believe it because really you will be found out. Right. And you've got to think very, very hard. It's not enough to basically say, you know, stuck some green paint on something and say it's now green. No, you've actually got to think very deeply about, are you committed to this? And back to what our vision is, we can start to remove the barriers to that commitment. You know, you can shift to Sendal and you will save money and go 100% carbon neutral. That's removing a barrier. And a lot of folk, if you give them the choice, would absolutely say, yes, I want my shipping to not cost the carbon dioxide, so let's remove that barrier and help them do it.
Nathan Bush: Absolutely. Now, you have been very successful in raising investment for sendal, recently closing 45 million in Series C funding led by Afterpay Ventures. Congratulations. Does the sustainable side of Cendal come up as a key kind of motivator for investors?
James Chin Moody: Yeah, I think of it more as when we talk to investors, we have detailed conversations about alignment, alignment of values and purpose, and thinking about that very deeply as well. Because a startup journey is a long journey, Right? It's a journey and you want to make sure that you're very aligned. And so if you think about back to our purpose shipping, that's good for the world. It is about helping these small businesses thrive. It is about doing it in a way that takes full responsibility for the environmental impacts. And I was very pleased that all of our investors actually share that passion to not just have a great business because that's ultimately the thing that helps you to, to scale, but actually do it in a way that has a positive impact.
Nathan Bush: Yep. And when you are choosing whether or not to partner with investors, when you talk about alignment of value and purpose, do you use the five H's to assess that alignment?
James Chin Moody: We do. It is again we like to be particularly, you know, the folk that you work with closely. That is a, it's a great test as well because at the end of the day it's how you know the five H's. The humble, honest, happy, hungry. High performing also is the thing that makes teams work. Right. And if you're working with folk, can you want high performance but actually you want to know do we have each other's back? Right. Are we going to be honest with each other? Are we going to do it in a way that's positive? You know, sometimes things will happen, you know and it can, you can have constructive negativity but unconstructed negativity just doesn't help anyone. So really thinking about all of those is also part of again not just for investment but actually a lot of the way that we do business.
Nathan Bush: Correct. And that latest series of funding, I read that that is going to help your expansion plans in the U.S. is that right?
James Chin Moody: Indeed. I mean we'll be building more product in Australia. We're always looking at how we can make the network better and better in service of our merchants. But also the exciting thing is that we found that the same some problem really exists in the US even as sophisticated it is that we really don't see anyone who's just building 100% focused on the needs of micro business. And that's what we're trying to do, unlock network for micro business in the US as well.
Nathan Bush: And do you find that they have a similar problem in the US around a lack of choice?
James Chin Moody: Indeed. Particularly FedEx and UPS really together is sort of a duopoly giant. You know, we think that there's a lot of opportunity there to create choice for customers.
Nathan Bush: Great. Making enemies all over the world.
James Chin Moody: How good bless them.
Nathan Bush: And in terms of what we expect to see from Sendal rolling out here in Australia, is there anything like express or overnight delivery on the cards that you would expect us to see?
James Chin Moody: Look, I'll get in trouble if I ever pre announce things so I can't answer that question. Look, I'd say that we are, we look very deeply at shipping trends. Our big focus is what will make the biggest difference for our customers in order to help them sell more. You mentioned about shipping being the chore, the thing we'd love to get to the point where actually shipping does become visible and where it becomes a joy, not a chore. And we can use shipping as a way of helping our customers to really build their business, not just, not just save time and money. Sendal shouldn't just be there to save time and money. It should be something that helps you sell more because of the shipping speed or because you can offer free shipping because you've got guaranteed low, flat, flat rates or it drives loyalty back to your business cycle. All of those things are not about saving time and money. They're actually about creating more revenue for a small business.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. And it should be celebrated. Right. Because that's the moment where you've put all your hard work into your branding and your marketing and your customer acquisition, your conversion. And this is the moment where you go, we've done our job, now let's. It's over to customer. Like this is the fun part.
James Chin Moody: It is, yeah. And it's like a little gift at the end of the thing. So you know, so that's, that's our vision. That's what we're trying to build. Again, we don't always get it right. Yeah. Like I'll also be the first to say there's, you know, chip. Cause shipping is hard but you know, really, how do we turn shipping from a chore to a joy?
Nathan Bush: Yeah. Now the, the germ of Sendal, the idea was, was created when I read that you're on paternity leave and you know, inundated with kids toys and clothes and books. Your boys, they must be getting to their teenage years now.
James Chin Moody: Are they getting there? Yes.
Nathan Bush: So they must be pretty proud of what dad's created.
James Chin Moody: Look, I think they're, yeah, they're proud little sendlers of their own. You know, I think that's pretty fun. Yeah. You know, I think the interesting. Yeah, I actually did. It wasn't even paternity level. I'd actually signed up to be the primary carer for the boys for a good five year period while my wife took on a, you know, her dream role. And, and really it came from this realization. You know, I just finished a big role at the CSIRO that I really wanted to do. I wanted to build and you know, in the mental model of life at that time was primary care plus building equals startup, I think. Yep. And it was. And you know, we built an amazing business which was about giving things away again. Having a solid purpose. But quickly we realized that if you wanted to remove the friction of giving, you had to remove the friction of delivery. Right. And we then also realized that we were just one marketplace of many, and in fact, one small scale shipper of many. And the big moment for us. Well, not. I mean, there were lots of big moments, but, you know, one of the realizations was when it was, I think it was 2014, a whole lot of ebay sellers started to pile into what we'd built and effectively they would sell on ebay. But because this was a giving marketplace that actually then pretend to give the same item away. Right. So they'd list it on ebay, and then when it sold on ebay, they'd list it again and the receiver would actually just say, yeah, I'd like that free thing. And that was really so that we could do the shipping. It was like a hacking and giving network for shipping. And it was like, wow, that's a lot of effort that they're going through in order to take advantage. And it was really because we were door to door, we were more affordable, we were 100% carbon neutral. You know, we're so convenience, price sustainability. We were really making a difference. And that was when we realized, hang on, maybe our purpose is actually something bigger, which is to help all these small businesses and all these micro businesses to thrive.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. And you've given us the really short version there. We haven't kind of gone back on the history of Sendal. And you've done a couple of podcasts before. I think the Startup show was one that you've done. So I really encourage people to go back and have a look at the Startup show episode with James, if you haven't already, because you do a great job of explaining where the idea comes from and how you grew it out. But we kind of wanted to jump straight back, straight into where we were today. We're a bit impatient.
James Chin Moody: Yeah, look, I think that we just found problems to solve. We've been very fortunate and turned out that we found a really painful big problem to solve.
Nathan Bush: And it's great to see. I love seeing, you know, you taking on the world and solving this problem and keeping your values as you're doing it. So we've kind of touched on it throughout our conversation. But in your mind, what is the next big steps for yourself and Sendul?
James Chin Moody: I think, again, we're very fortunate. We have the support of some amazing partners and investors. And we could also say we're just only just beginning. You go down these Journeys, I think, yes, we are taking an Australian model and we expanded into the US at the same time, we're also making sure that we're not pretending that we know anything. And we've got an amazing team in the US who's actually looking very hard about how we solve all of the problems for our U.S. merchants. And I think that's the big. The big sort of journey for us is continuing to create value for merchants in Australia entering the US and then stay tuned. We'll be looking at other countries after that. Great.
Nathan Bush: We're not going to see you up on Richard Branson's space flight anytime soon, are we?
James Chin Moody: Not for a while. We do like to. One of my favorite measures, because I am a, you know, satellite engineer, once upon a time is actually how many kilometers of parcel delivery. We've crossed over 20, 20 billion kilometers of parcel delivery now. And what that means. We're almost at a light day, so think about the, you know, something traveling at the speed of light, it would take almost a day to get the number of kilometers of parcels we've delivered. So we're chasing Voyager. We'll pass Voyager. Voyager soon. But it's pretty. Pretty exciting and pretty. Yeah. You know, astronomical.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. Now, if we have retailers listening to this, small businesses, and they're going, this sounds great, got to learn more. Where do I get started? How do they get started?
James Chin Moody: Yeah, I mean, one of the best things about having a network that really starts with minimums of one. In other words, no minimums is, you know, you can just get started. There is no. We don't put any requirements on our merchants. We don't do anything so effectively. Yeah, create an account, reach out to the team if you're slightly bigger. But really, we love the idea that you don't have to be going through lots and lots of hoops in order to create an account and to get started. There is no subscriptions, no minimums, no nothing. It's all about keeping it really, really simple.
Nathan Bush: Awesome. Thank you so much, James.
James Chin Moody: Thank you.
Nathan Bush: So I went into the conversation after researching James feeling like an underachiever, and I left that way as well. A smart guy, a nice guy, but I'm not sure I've ever heard someone be so articulate in their thoughts. Whatever models James has running around in his head, I'd love to have just a little bit of it. Here are my three takeouts from the episode.
Nathan Bush: 1.
Nathan Bush: It is still possible, even in a world of Amazons, to take on the Goliaths. Before Endel, if you said that someone was going to come along and take on Australia Post and come out with a better customer proposition and cheaper, you'd be laughed at. James and the team show that it's possible that with a bit of smarts and a lot of purpose, it's still possible. He is unapologetic about being the champion of small business and I think this is the secret to it. Don't be put off with competing with
Nathan Bush: the big guys if you have a
Nathan Bush: very clear problem that you're out to solve and you're unapologetic about it. Number two, James talked about the need for warehouse systems and processes to be diverse and obviously that's a different use of diversity that we normally use. He's talking about not having all eggs in one basket when it comes to your systems that operate your business and it's a great point. An exercise to do here is to take a supplier or a piece of tech out of your process and work out how you can operating without them. If you can't figure that out, you need to have a plan B in place as a backup. Number three how can I go past the five H's of humble, honest, happy, hungry and high performing? Almost wanted to say Hungry Hippo in that order. I'd heard James talk about these before, but every time it hits home and it cements what Sendal is about in five words. It's a challenge for you. Can you sum up what you expect of your team and your partners just as succinctly?
Nathan Bush: To finish up, I have three resources for you. Firstly, if you're a first time listener about to cart and you want to stay up to date with new episodes, head over to addtocart.com and you can sign up for our weekly newsletter. We'll let you know every time a new episode drops as well as giving you my my three takeaways from each episode and a link to the transcripts so you can know that this is an episode that you want to dive straight into. Secondly, if you want a weekly roundup of the best e commerce case studies, tools and research, sign up to the High Five Friday newsletter which is delivered to inboxes at 8am every Friday morning. I read all the e commerce news and send you the bits that I think you can take action from. Sign up at 12 high 12h I g h.com au high 5 and the last thing if you are looking to explore your next e commerce opportunity, head over to esweettalent.com we are a dedicated e commerce talent agency connecting the best e commerce talent with the fastest growing brands. Check it out. Sign up to the email and get in touch with me if you want to discuss your next move. Until next time, thanks for listening and keep those customers adding to cart.
