Alice Williams: It's chaotic, it's a frenzy. You get all your sight load at the same time.
Eugene Chang: It's like a leaky bucket that has too many holes in it and you're going, oh shit, the bucket's not filling. So you go, what do we do? We turn the tap on harder and you turn the tap on harder and it costs more money.
[Voiceover]: If you're getting that same question, you dm. It's probably a really great sign that if you address that, sales will probably
Alice Williams: go up when you're making content for TikTok, like you have to put the rule book in the bin and do whatever the hell is going to work.
[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. Here's your host, Bushy.
Nathan Bush: Hello and welcome to 2024. I am joining you from the land of the terrible people. And as we continue our look back on the best episodes of 2023, that was one of the highlights of for me from last year was the series that we did with indigenous business owners and leaders in the e commerce space over four weeks leading up to the voice vote. It really opened up my eyes into some of the issues and the backgrounds and the talent of some of our indigenous leaders, especially that episode with Sarah and Laura from Clothing the Gaps, who taught me how to give an authentic and real acknowledgement of country. And that's what I've been trying to do in all of our interactions, both here on the podcast, but also at events and other areas of my life where I can just acknowledge how lucky we are to be on the land that we are that has been cared for by the indigenous people for over 60,000 years. So on that note, let's start looking back. Last week you heard from our most downloaded episodes. This week we are going to look at what we think were some of the best chats from 2023. Some of these you may have missed and we thought it was time that we went through the archives from the year and brought out what we think were the ones that needed a little bit of resurfacing. So I hope you enjoy what we've been able to pull together before. We do though, look, we're really excited about 2024. We've got some big plans. I think we're going to have a lot more events in terms of social events, also dinner events. We've got the newsletter which I've fired up every Tuesday. If you're not subscribed to that head along to add to cart.com to sign up to the newsletter I try and give you my opinion plus the five articles that you need to know from E commerce from that week and also I think our community over on Slack Channel will take on a bit more of a life on its own where I'm really enjoying some of the conversations that's coming through that at the moment. A really exciting year coming up. All right, let's get into our best of chats. Starting us off is Alice Williams, the founder of Overa, a period pain relief device. Alice is a sufferer of debilitating endometriosis and she was looking for a safe, instant and drug free way to cope with her pain. And since founding, Overa has brought relief to tens of thousands of other sufferers, so solving a serious problem for her customers. But Alice's approach to social media is anything but. Throwing the rulebook out is at the heart of her non strategy and it works. Avera has amassed the most TikTok followers of any brand in Australia at the time of recording all right, I know your story and I love your story, but for those who may not have come across Overa, can you explain who Overa is and what your mission is?
Alice Williams: Sure. We are a Aussie born women's health brand focusing on period care and our mission is to end the unnecessary suffering of women everywhere. The first problem that we're solving is period pain and we do this through a small wearable device based on a TENS machine.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, and how'd you come across that machine?
Alice Williams: So I don't have a background in business or marketing or anything like that, but what I do have is horrendous period pain and I would love researching other ways to treat my pain. I did study health sciences so I would love looking at literature and seeing like what research was out there, whether it could be like Cairo or infrared sauna or different supplements and so on. And one of the things I came across was electrotherapy or TENS machines. They're not revolutionary technology. This has been around since the 80s and there is a lot of research out there about how it can help women, specifically with dysmenorrhea or period pain. And I was like, why haven't I heard of this before? You know, it's instant relief that doesn't harm the body. Surely this is too good to be true. Tried it, found it, did work, was like what the fuck, it actually works and is this gonna cause cancer in 10 years time? Is that like there's no hidden secrets? Like it really is as Good as it sounds. And so that kind of took me on this. Yeah, crazy journey to where we are today.
Nathan Bush: And in terms of doctors and the medical world, how do you get credibility and trust when you first introduce customers to over. Because it sounds like too easy, right?
Alice Williams: Yeah, it's interesting because we thought health professionals like doctors and so on were going to be really important in getting our customers to convert, but it actually does the opposite. Like, there is a strong distrust towards the medical industry and doctors more generally. And, like, we saw this in the survey results too, as in, I think it was something like 60% had had a bad experience with their doctor when they'd spoken to them about their pain and walked away feeling at a loss. So that's massive. That's more than half of women. And when we test, including a doctor, as someone who promotes this or vouchers for it, we don't really see results. So ultimately, I mean, trust the data. They don't give a shit.
Alice Williams: Yeah, right.
Nathan Bush: So it feels like you've got a community of women who are almost like, well, fuck it, I'll solve this myself.
Alice Williams: Definitely. You know, what we do see is that they trust each other. And so friend to friend is super strong. I mean, like most brands, right, word of mouth. But, you know, we have an incredible online community. We've got a Facebook group of, I think over 14,000 users or members or people who just love Avera more broadly. They're kind of like a VIP group. We love them. And then we've got, obviously millions of followers across socials. So our community exists everywhere. It exists in real life, it exists on Facebook, it exists on other social channels like TikTok. We don't care.
Nathan Bush: I love that you casually dropped in like, yeah, we've obviously got millions of followers on social channels and we've probably got business owners going, what. What was that little bit that you just said? You've become TikTok famous, is that right?
Alice Williams: We have, yeah. I mean, you could say we're the most followed brand on TikTok in Australia.
Alice Williams: Is that true?
Alice Williams: It is, yes, we are. We have the largest following in Australia on TikTok.
Eugene Chang: Why?
Alice Williams: Because we make great content and people ask, how did you do it? Like, what's the secret to the algorithm? And, you know, I'm very bad at most things, but TikTok, because I started it with who Shanky on our team, who's incredible, we did it together for the first few weeks and months, and we were maniacs. Like, we got hyper obsessed with it and if there's One thing I do understand extremely well, it's organic TikTok content. And yeah, going back to when people ask, like, what's the trick with the algorithm and posting time and all of these things, like, they're 1 percenters. Like, the thing that's going to move the needle, the 90 percenter is making content. People are going to watch. And it's, you know, I speak about this all the time. When people reach out or other podcasts, I swear of what is great content. TikTok will tell you. Go and scroll on the for you page and look what's coming up there. 99% of the time, it's not brands, and that's because brands are making content that worked on Instagram five years ago. It's pretty, it's brand, it's a vibe, but it's fucking boring to watch. And it's never going to come up on the for you page. And they also try and stick to their brand guidelines. And when you're making content for TikTok, like, you have to put the rule book in the bin and do whatever the hell is going to work. And if it's working, it means people are having an affinity with your brand. They like watching it. As long as you're not causing huge controversy, which, hey, a little bit of that is fine, then, yeah, there's not really a secret.
Nathan Bush: So when you first started playing around with TikTok, where was your head at at that point before you got to your 6 million followers?
Alice Williams: I should know this, Nathan, because I listen to your podcast all the time, but I'm sure other people on your podcast have spoken about the privacy laws that came in recently. And I guess it changed the way a lot of E Com brands approach marketing in general. Because when we launched, it was the golden days of Facebook. You could put up anything and Facebook would know who your customer was and it would convert. So we could put up a terrible ad and Facebook would know exactly who our customer was, and so they would convert. And it wasn't because we were good at creative. It was because Facebook was incredible. And you'd literally just press a button, chuck up some ads, and suddenly that changed and it didn't work anymore. And so we were like, what are we going to do? And we were like, let's test all different things. And we did. And one of the things that we tested was TikTok. And when I say tested TikTok, I'd never even been on TikTok before, and no one in the team have, so I feel very old Hanging out on a platform like that. But we just jumped in headfirst and I think, I don't know, we're posting like one video a day and doing trends like what most people do when they first get on the platform. But one of our videos did happen to go viral. I think it got like 40 million views and it was a device video. And we saw our traffic just go like. And we were like, whoa, there's something in this. And like those people were converting, like it was a high quality audience, which, don't get me wrong, just because a video goes viral, you will get a lot of shit traffic too. But because we saw that, we were like, we want to see that again. And so we kept trying to repeat that. But obviously TikTok is a hungry beast and it likes new content. So we have to diversify very quickly and just posting product stuff. You might go viral once because it's the first time TikTok has seen your product, but then after that you've got to innovate and it's not going to be about the product.
Nathan Bush: So how much time do you spend with your team thinking about all the different types of content that you create versus actually just getting in and doing it?
Alice Williams: So we do zero planning. Zero. Zero calendar planning. Don't use any of those apps. Nothing.
Nathan Bush: That's so cool. And how do you. Or do you set boundaries around the types of content? Because obviously you've got over as a product, but then you've got your broader mission around, you know, helping women through pain in general. Sorry, I worded that pretty badly. But then you've also got your personal story, your team story, your business story, everything else around it. Do you put boundaries around what kind of content you'll go live with or do you just go ide?
Alice Williams: Well, there you go, Nath, like you just mentioned, like eight different areas we can make content. Why wouldn't we create eight channels and make eight different styles of content that's going to appeal to, you know, all different types of people. So, like, there is so much we can do and that's why we don't put boundaries on it. And like, there is so much variation. And so when we go to make TikToks, we set ourselves a time limit. And so at the moment, like let's say, for example, Shanky's making content, she'll set herself a time limit for one hour and make 15 videos in that hour. And so when she rocks up, she's got no plans about what to do. She'll just pick up her phone and scroll through like it could be. The comments section gives great info and then pump them out, upload it straight away. It's no approval process.
Nathan Bush: I love that idea of TikTok sprints and I love Alice's rogue spirit. It's one of the benefits of startups being spontaneous and doing things entirely different. So 2023 was a big year for Add to Cart. Just to give you some stats, we know you all love Numbers. We published 49 main episodes, the Monday ones, 54 checkouts, two exclusives, two live episodes, and an upskill series. And we were joined by an additional and amazing voice, Joanne Huey Miller. It was about time we mixed it up and heard someone new asking the questions, especially someone who's actually a journalist. And it's been amazing to have Jo as part of the team. We're going to hear one of her chats next. In fact, it was her first and it was an absolute cracker. Eugene Chang is the founder of the kick ass business Sneaker Laundry, which offers sneaker cleaning products as well as services both online and in store. Sneaker laundry launched in 2017 and now ships locally and internationally with stores all over the world including Melbourne, Sydney, Lebanon, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and even Peru. Eugene's an ex lawyer who's now known as Australia's wealthiest shoe shiner, even if he gave himself that title. He's sold over 110,000 sneaker care products worldwide and cleaned over 37,000 sneakers in Australia alone. We're going to jump in where Eugene is talking about the relationship between his stores and the e commerce side of the business.
Eugene Chang: I don't even know if I'm doing it the right way, but I personally use retail as a bit of a halo effect. The reality is like sure, our products are better, our products are the best. We use this stuff in our stores and if it's shit, we hate our lives for it because we just take forever to clean the shoes. Customers get mad at us, it's not good. So we use the best shit. But the reality is we use retail as a bit of a halo effect. It's very competitive online in the product space with new products coming out, new brands coming to market to try and compete. But not many can do the service aspect as well. So the service aspect serves as a testimonial to what our products do because we clean these shoes every day and get these results and the product serves as an option for people that either want to try and do it themselves or are just too far to access their service. So the Way we use the service as is really as like a halo effect, like a retail, like really just to reduce our marketing costs when it comes to selling these products online. Because the reality is like, you know, Facebook and Instagram Roas and Google Roas, you know, return on ad spend used to be so, so, so, so good. But every year, on year, it keeps going down and down and down and down and down. And you need to be this much more competitive every single year just to maintain your return on ad spend at this baseline level. Whereas there are alternative ways to market and be more creative with marketing. For us, I think that's where the store comes in and the store as a presence, markets to quite a large area. And then when we sort of get into consumer mindset and they go, oh, it's a bit far for me. I'm just going to buy their products.
[Voiceover]: So I know Snicker Laundry is about to undergo a major rebrand. Tell me about that. What's it involved? What will it translate into? Tell me.
Eugene Chang: So the funniest thing was when we first started the brand, like, you know, just picture a couple of young 20 guys that were just like, like bootstrapping a brand and just be like, oh, this look good? Yeah, it looks good for a brand, right? Slap it on. That's your logo. Your logo is your brand and that's all there is to a brand. And then take that logo and slap it as many places as you can. That's brand awareness. And, you know, when I look back, it's a pretty good reflection, you know, now it sort of evolves where, where we're trying to scale the business and every little thing you do affects your sales, affects your bottom line, affects how your business is going to perform. And we have to, you know, look at the brand under a microscope and go, how legible is the brand? How long has the brand been? We haven't changed much about the products and, you know, we've added more product range. But the reality is the look's been the same. Are we still competitive in the landscape
Alice Williams: and stuff like that?
Eugene Chang: You know, does that brand that we started six years ago communicate to what our audience is like today? Who is our audience? Right? And we embarked on this journey about man, I would say close to nine months ago now. It's been a long journey. There's a lot of branding agencies that are just fluff and you sort of got to work through them and you eventually sort of find the people that really resonate with you and they then have the highest likelihood of creating A brand that resonates with your audience and, and then taking that brand further. So yeah, I guess for us right now, like we were gutting everything. Everything that we know. The only thing we're keeping is part of the name. So we used to be called the Sneaker Laundry. It's just going to be called Sneaker Laundry now. And that would just sort of help us to scale overseas as well. Because then it can be, you know, Sneaker Laundry, Riyadh, Sneaker Laundry, Lebanon. The dirt, just waste of three letters, I guess. And yeah, we just go super legible, super clear, super clean. That's what the brand about. It's about clean sneakers, it's about clean everything. We want to go more minimal sensor, roof type of stuff and our products as well. The product range is going to be insane. I look at it, I go, I, I have my stuff in the house now, but I can't wait to get like all the new to come in. And I want one of everything because it looks that good and we put so much time and effort into it. It's small little things, man. Like when you first start a brand, you, you cut a lot of corners, right? Like everything when it comes to your products and stuff, like whatever you can get, you need to get out to market as soon as possible. But I think now when, when I've been in the business six, six and a half years, you pay attention to a lot of the little details, right? Like, I mean, how squeezy is your bottle, how big is the opening, like all that sort of stuff, right? And, and even like brushes, like people always played. I know it goes into a lot of like, product design, but it's always this like constant ability to evolve your product to be better and better and better and better. So every competitor that's looking at what you're doing, by the time they copy you, they're kind of like three steps behind. And by the time they catch up to you, you're already four steps ahead because you've already thought about the next big thing. Give me example. Like, we've been using wooden handles on our brushes for the longest time. And we realized that in our store, the more we use these wooden brushes, we had to throw them out, you know, after a few months because the handles on them, as woods wet starts to swell, it looks bad. So we moved into acrylic handles, just heavy duty acrylic handles that would just last your life. So you throw stuff against the wall and still won't break. And we realized like on a sustainably aspect like sustainability is about having something that lasts as well so you don't keep, you know, it's not fast fashion, it's not like throw bin buy again. So we started like to look into all these little different parts of our business and start to, to improve and, and, and we said since we're gutting the whole thing, it's like starting a new brand from the beginning. So nothing from the old brand will stay, none of the products will stay, none of the branding will stay. It's all going. The only thing that's staying really is our formulation, which we're very, very happy with. And we've like, sort of like optimized to a T. So our solution stays just as effective and just as awesome. But everything else we're just cool.
Nathan Bush: Wow.
[Voiceover]: Can you tell me a bit about what the website will look like? Like, are there any new features on it that you're really excited about? Is there anything you can tell us about that?
Eugene Chang: Yeah, so I can, I mean from aesthetic standpoint, it's just going to look better, right. But I think the reality is when you deep dive into it, there's endless amount of numbers that a website will give to you, that a retail store struggles to feed you. It's so creepy to the point where like, I mean they had this years ago and I'm still amazed by it today, where you can monitor every user's like session on your website. Like you can have mucky orange or some app where it just monitors, it tracks your cursor and it tracks where every session ends and you can do heat maps and see where people are leaving and then you've got all the data that you need to tell where you need to improve. I guess what sparked the website rebuild was that I felt the website was too inefficient for us. Our conversion rates weren't doing very well. Sitting around like 2%. No matter what we threw at it, it wouldn't increase. We threw everything at it, right? Like we. Different themes, different layouts, like apps, speed. We started playing around everything we could and it just sat there and I went, holy shit, like something is not working. And we went, well, it's one of two things, right? One, it's the brand and the product and to your website you've done everything that you can and you need someone better to come in and do it. So that's why we went on the sort of two prong attack and gutting the whole product range and then also revamping the website, which are both two very Expensive exercises at the same time to do so. Reality, the website. The main things, the main metrics we're trying to attack are conversion rates to sort of fight return on ad spend. Dipping, we figured, and there's sort of increasing cost of traffic down day. We figured we needed to make our website more optimized for commitment. Conversion rate, average order value, your usual sort of like e commerce metrics. Even if you put money into a website, that makes it, you know, 20% more efficient than what's running. We're hoping for 200% more efficient at the moment with our new website, but I'll take it. If you take 20% more efficient, it means that your cost of traffic goes down by 20% because anyone that you send across your website is 20% more likely to buy, is 20% more likely to spend more money. And all these metrics stack up. So your conversion rate goes up by 1% and your average order value goes up by $20. Then you've now got one out of a hundred customers more likely to come in and also more likely to spend $20. So your revenue goes up not just by that little bit. It kind of just stacks, you know what I mean? And if you then fix on your back end how quickly they repurchase and how much they repurchase, then all those numbers just stack up and you can then afford to buy traffic for a lot more. So a lot of people, I think, especially including me, got, got stuck on this. Oh, no. We're like, our roas is dipping. Maybe we've got to change the media buyer. Maybe it's our placements, maybe it's our content, maybe it's our copy, maybe it's who we're targeting and they focus on that. But not forgetting that all this impacts the first, the advertising bit. This is everything. Because if you. It's like a leaky bucket that has too many holes in it. So this bucket has too many holes. And you're going, oh, shit. Like, the bucket's not filling. So you go, what do we do? We turn the tap on harder. And you turn the tap on harder. It costs more than money. So just like us, like, we had the biggest December ever, but when we got the numbers back from our accountant, we're like, holy, we lost more money than ever. And I was like, dude, like, this is supposed to feel like such a win, and now it's not a win. And we're like, why is that the case? You know? And we realized, well, it's because, you know, our systems were inefficient Our website was inefficient, you know, so it's, it's, it's costly mistakes that we make every day. I guess that's, that's quite painful. And, you know, I'm still experimenting for. I know I could launch my new website. It could be a flop. I could put my product line on and people could say, hey, man, I like the. Oh, better bring it back. You know what I mean? Like, like, so, I mean, I wouldn't, for anyone listening, I wouldn't go out there and do it just yet. You know, like, maybe wait for me to be the, the guinea pig and I'll report back the result some other time. But, you know, I'm trying, right? You know, I mean, that's what we do. We try, we fail. If we fail, we cry about it for a day and we do it again.
Nathan Bush: I'm not sure that you get chats that are more raw and fun as that one between Eugene and Joe. Some great chemistry there, some great questions and a really, really enjoyable insight into just an amazing business model. 2023 has been a busy year and a lot has happened. I hope you've had some rest from it by now. We've seen the decline of COVID 19, the growth of generative AI, the shifting sands around meta advertising and a battle against rising costs and inflation. 2023 also saw that rare thing, an Australian referendum and a question about the future of our first nations indigenous people. Now, it wasn't the result that I was hoping for, but if there was a silver lining, as I referred to, it's that so many more conversations were had around the subject of reconciliation and inclusion. You may have heard some of the ones that we had in our Voice series, four episodes with a focus on Indigenous founders and leaders. The next clip that we've got for you is from one of those special episodes. It is from my chat with Clothing the Gaps founders Laura Thompson and Sarah Sheridan. Started as a Covid hustle when Laura and Sarah were in health promotion. Clothing the Gaps is now Australia's leading indigenous fashion brand and arguably Australia's foremost brand when it comes to leading real social changes. From their Free the Flag campaign, which ended up freeing the flag, to this year's voice referendum, Clothing the Gaps are an inspirational team who won't stop or apologise for standing up for issues that matter to Indigenous Australians. They've also had a fair bit to overcome, as you'll hear.
[Voiceover]: I think along the way, it'd be amiss of me not to mention that we had two lawsuits in between that time. One with the Gap Clothing America for the. Because we're closing the gap and they've trademarked the word gap and clothing.
Nathan Bush: What was your initial reaction when you heard that was coming at you? Did you go, this is ridiculous that I'll never stand up, or were you like.
Eugene Chang: It was pretty funny. So Gap Gap Inc. Liked one of our photos or started following us or something on socials and one of the team screenshotted it and sent it through. I wish I saw the text feature.
[Voiceover]: They were like, woohoo.
Alice Williams: How cool is this?
Eugene Chang: And my brain was like, that's not good. That is not good. And then, yeah, we got the, we
[Voiceover]: got the cease and desist because we're also little.
Eugene Chang: We got the notice of intent to defend their trademark. Yeah, yeah.
[Voiceover]: So we just trapped it in the drawer for a bit and we thought we didn't have enough money because we'll still spark merch.
Nathan Bush: Covid.
[Voiceover]: We're in the middle of COVID How are we going to fight this back? Let's just change our name.
Eugene Chang: They gave us six months. We're like, we'll just, we'll try and come up with another name.
[Voiceover]: And we did that for a bit and you know, all the other names felt like they were trademarked as well. But in between then we also received a cease and desist for using the aboriginal flag on clothing. So we got the copyright and we started the Free the Flag campaign. And really sad. We got a lot of media attention from the campaigning and advocacy work that we're doing. 150,000 people signed our petition. Pride not profit. And we found ourselves dead set in the middle of a. A whirly thing cyclone for two years as we fought for equality with copyright, with our flag. And we realized that the name become much more important to us because people were recognizing us because they were not just because of the clothes, but because of the work we're doing in the advocacy space. And then our outcome that we were able to negotiate was to add the S. So we're closing the gaps.
Nathan Bush: Yep.
[Voiceover]: And obviously there was conditions around what that looks like going forward. But for us, we knew it was similar enough to, you know, we're happy with that negotiation.
Alice Williams: Yeah.
Eugene Chang: But I guess what we really learned within both of those pieces was the power of fashion to create change as well. So I guess before, perhaps before the Free the Fly campaign was when we sort of thought that, you know, that the T shirts were just the vehicle to get to the bucket of support, AKA profit, to then be able to run the foundation. Whereas within those campaigns and those moments, we really learned the power of the T shirt itself to do the impactful work. And then the foundation gets to add to that in the work that it does as well. So every single person who bought a T shirt. So this is the power of E Com, right? Like when we're talking about add to cart, like you know, ecom, I have to remind myself, I'm like, what are we talking about again?
Nathan Bush: Don't worry about that.
Eugene Chang: Every single person who bought a free to flag T shirt, that whole product page, that product description was fueled with information and facts and links to, here's how to write a letter to your MP and have you signed the petition yet? And then every single person who wore that T shirt out in the world was a roving billboard having those exact same conversations to, you know, bring together people for social change to see the outcome that we eventually saw on the 25th of January, 2022.
Nathan Bush: So tell us about that outcome because, Laura, I can see you've got the new T shirt, the yes T shirt with the flag on it. Tell us about the outcome. So I'm assuming it ended favorably.
[Voiceover]: Yeah, look, it was an emotional day. I'd say. I remember it because it was the day before Australia Day or Invasion day, Survival Day, 26th of January. And yeah, it was an emotional day because it felt like I was finally there was we could stop fighting for free the flag. We could stop fighting and we could now use our platform to elevate other Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander causes and campaigns and people that we could finally lay this to rest. And what we saw is that the Aboriginal flag returned to the world pretty quickly. People started using it again. We saw it back in Indigenous round in our national sports. And what I will say is, you know, we realise the power of the T, but we also realise the power of allyship. And that was something new for Sarah and I. I mean, even though I'm Aboriginal and Sarah's non Indigenous, we had this, you know, partnership. But in our work at Vaaz, we hadn't really invited non Indigenous people to step into that. Our programs were just focused on the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community. But closing the gaps was very much about uniting people through fashion and cause. And that was new. So it was like so cool to see non Indigenous people step into this space and say, hey, we're gonna support you and these causes. And that was different for me. I think that's when we talk about the power of the T is actually about how do we activate the non indigenous community? They share some of these loads and carry these conversations to for the betterment
Eugene Chang: of whole of Australia into places perhaps where Wallace doesn't normally or you know other aboriginal people normally perhaps don't hang out too as well. Like that's the really cool part about wearing your values really is that you get to and for me as a non aboriginal person I'm in different spaces that laws is perhaps not in as well and being able to wear my values is a way of being able to ensure that that conversation comes up wherever I go.
Nathan Bush: Yeah and you do such a great job of that on the website around labeling which products are ally friendly, which ones are for mob just to help people feel comfortable and to navigate it in a respectful way.
[Voiceover]: I mean that decision to do that in the business really come from you know, our community saying am I allowed to wear it?
Eugene Chang: Hundreds of DMs culturally inappropriate.
[Voiceover]: I don't want to yeah, I don't want to offend anyone.
Eugene Chang: I care so much about this but I just want to make sure that I'm doing it in the right way. So it really came from that piece of and I can speak to that very clearly as a non Aboriginal person. It comes from that place of wanting to do the right thing but wanting to ensure that you don't offend people in the process which is coming from a real genuine place of care. But it was also just getting a little bit annoying in the process.
[Voiceover]: It was really shame and I guess for people listening if you're getting that same question you DM probably is a really great sign that if you address that sales would probably go up. And I certainly for us once we started labeling things as allo friendly and mob only we saw an increase in sales because it made people more confident to fill their car.
Eugene Chang: It felt like there were a whole bunch of other like minded non aboriginal people like me just waiting in the wings for the permission to be like they were like oh finally I am allowed.
Nathan Bush: The other thing you did tell and I like being challenged. I think it's really important. The thing you challenged me on in our initial chat was why I don't have an acknowledgement of country at the start of add to cart. So I am totally open to it and I think if I'm honest there's that sense of not wanting to be a tokenistic ritual or something that you record once and then go yep. Gil, my producer just put this at the start of every episode to make it look like we're doing something and then there's also the thing of, you know, where does it go? Does it always. Is it just for physical events? Does it belong on a podcast? Will listeners go, you know what I mean? Is it. Where does it fit? So I'd love to understand more from you around acknowledgments to country, why they are so important, firstly, and how to do acknowledgements that are meaningful and relevant, whether you're an ally or whether you're mob.
[Voiceover]: I might let Sez take chat to this, but I might just start by saying, Nathan, thank you. Thanks for being open to having this conversation and to exploring it and to sort of doing that internal reflection yourself about what it looks like for your podcast.
Eugene Chang: I think they're all really common questions. I'm actually really glad that we're having this chat because that same, exact same piece we were talking to before about non Aboriginal brands and trying to work through how they talk about the voice. They don't want to get it. They care so much about it, but they don't want to get it wrong. So often when I ask people, when I ask other non Aboriginal people, like, oh, you know, I just noticed that you didn't do an acknowledgement. Do you want to chat to me about, like, do you have any questions about, like, you know, I'm a safe person to chat this through, like, let's chat. Like, I just. I didn't want to pronounce it wrong, I didn't want to offend anybody, all
[Voiceover]: of those sorts of things.
Eugene Chang: So they're super normal. And I've been there too. Like, I've absolutely been there. When I first did an acknowledgement, I was like, I have got no idea. And I really don't want to stuff this up because it comes from a genuine place of care, but I think one of the things that I have found really, really helpful in this whole navigating the acknowledgement of country pieces is that shifting the word acknowledgement to honouring has been a huge change, I think, in the way that I think about an acknowledgement of country. When you acknowledge something, it's got that. Even the way that you say acknowledge, like, it's kind of a bit like when you say honour, you actually have to smile when you say it. And it's this heart shift I think of. When you really think about what it means to honour something and it is an honour to live on unceded, sovereign Wurundjeri land, where Laura and I are coming to you from right now, I think about living on wurundjeri country every day. And that's a privilege and I want to honour that and Wurundjeri elders. And I can't encourage people enough to shift away from. I would like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the people that would, like. You don't need to say that. And honouring of country could be as simple as, you know, we get to have these conversations with you on unceded sovereign Marjorie land. And, you know, it's a pleasure to get to do the work that we do and we're grateful for the. For Wurundjeri elders that share their knowledge and stories with us so that we can, you know, we can have that connection to this land through them as well. It should just be weaved into a natural opening of thinking about who we are, because it's that it's applying that decolonisation lens of we were not, you know, for me, as a. As a white settler on this land, I was not here first. There's a deep, beautiful, rich history that we can speak life into in so many different moments throughout our days. And an acknowledgement of country is one way to do that. But just shifting away from the stiffness so that it doesn't feel tokenistic, so that it feels like a part of your, you know, your reflective practice in the morning or when you're opening up a chat, like, rather than saying, like, oh, you know, where's your favorite coffee shop? I'm like, oh, it's amazing. It's on Wurundjeri country. It's just down the road. Like, how do you like. Do you know what I mean?
Eugene Chang: Yeah.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, I love that. I love that. I love that shift from the acknowledgement to honor, because I. I feel we've kind of got to that point with acknowledgement where before it was unusual, but now it's. You kind of see it everywhere, which is good. But now, because there is such a templated version of it out there that it can become wallpaper if no thought or heart has gone into it as well. So I love that version of going to an honour. What do you honour about the people that have come before you and what you are doing today?
[Voiceover]: Certainly, for me, even starting this podcast, not having that acknowledgement at the front, I personally, I'd say, felt it. For me, it really, as an Aboriginal person, sets the tone of creating that safe space to sort of step into, to delve deeper into the issues. Because we started on, I'd say, common ground, that we've got this respect for first nations people and acknowledgement that we'll hear first and then being able to lean into that then feels like we've created a safer space. So I would say as an aboriginal person, it's noticeable if it's not there. Not to say that you want it to be tokenistic, but it is. It feels like a missing and it does allow you to lean in to that person a little bit more, knowing that, you know, they've at least taken the time to know whose country that they're on and all those things. So that makes building a relationship. You've got a nice guy.
Nathan Bush: I can honestly say that I felt so lucky to have conversations like that in 2023. Now, how did the pre Christmas sales go for you? Any sight load issues? Our next chat is with someone who is very familiar with busy times. So much so that he developed a platform specifically designed to help brands cope. Andrew Lipp is the CEO and co founder of Equal. That's EQL pronounced Equal. He is a former sneakerhead who felt the pain of missing out more than once and with the help of two former Google colleagues decided to create a solution. Equal is an end to end platform built for retailers to reliably sell the most in demand products to more customers and get more value out of every launch. By facilitating site reliability, accurate payments scam prevention and helping to ensure a level playing field for customers. Equal have clients such as Sullivan's Cove, Whiskey, Footlocker and Culture Kings and were named as one of fast company's most innovative companies of 2023. Here Andrew gets into the detail of the hype drop.
Alice Williams: So from the retailer side, so our value prop is that we solve for infrastructure that scales so site load, you know, when it all hits the site at the one time, we solve for Botan's gamut detection and I can dig into that a little bit further, but it is as it sounds like getting products into the hands of real fans. And we solve for accurate payments, meaning we want high throughput of payments in a very accurate way so you don't oversell or undersell or kind of automated so you remove the operational pain. Right? Historically when retailers run these launches, they kick through the rubble of this chaos for weeks or months afterwards, right? Sites crash, they don't know who got product? Did they oversell or undersell? Are they undersold? Where do you put the stock? Does it go back on the shelf? How do we manage it with warehousing, our customers didn't have a great brand experience. Our customer success team got so many tickets like it is just operational Pain. And I can imagine a lot of
Nathan Bush: these products, there's not a huge amount of margin too. So a lot of the pain that is caused, you're not making much money at the end of these huge drops as a retailer.
Alice Williams: Well, that's right. That's one thing. And the other thing is like a lot of these launches are a small facet or a small wedge of their overall commerce, right? So you have retailers that, you know, they sell these high heat Nike products or Crocs or Adidas or whatever else, and that's call it, you know, 10%, let's say, of their commerce and 90% is of standard retail. They need to make sure their ecom sites working and to make sure their bricks and mortar in order. They need to make sure supply chain operations are working. They didn't make sure that staffing is working. Right. But this wedge of commerce takes up all their mindshare when they've actually got to run retail, right. So it actually becomes more massive load for what is a small wedge, right. And it causes more pain than it actually contributes to revenue and upside. But the thing about these launches is it's a honey pot, right? Because the launch, you get so much demand for not many products. How do you maximize that experience? How do you actually capitalize not on just delivering the operational benefit, but giving a product the ceremony it deserves, giving the brand that the experience it deserves. Making the customers feel amazing, making your loyal customers feel even better, right? It's a real opportunity for customer acquisition and for insight and for being strategic. And at the moment it's not being done that way. So your question to how does it work? So a retailer gets access to a portal like kind of like a content management system to some degree. They pop in the details of the launch and that might be everything from product images, product name, product description, and they click publish. And it spins up a launch page that looks like a product landing page. It lives on their custom domain. So it can be launchers.footlocker.com, launchers.crocs.com or it can live on our domain that we provide them, which would be like Tiffany's.RunFair.com RunFair is a certification around fairness that we've trademarked. That page gets spun up and it looks like their brand experience, but it's enabled by our tech and in doing so it can manage the scale and volume of traffic load. The retailer then captures all the entries and interests in that. In that product there is a timer, so it might be a five minute drop, it might be a 15 minute drop. Sometimes we have a timer counting up. So it's just like get your entries in. Because this is open for a limited time. Once the draw finishes, the retailer can then update its inventory just to make sure the entry has been delivered to store, the inventory has been allocated correctly. Because the biggest challenge we have is, you know, when inventory isn't allocated. So they double check that and then they click run payments and run payments to give you the inverse. So you understand how these intersect you as a consumer. Nathan goes in and goes I want a pair of Crocs Lightning McQueen's or I want a pair of Jordan Fours.
Nathan Bush: Exactly what I would order.
Alice Williams: Well, there you go. You enter your details on that page, you put your credit card details in, you put your shipping details or you can choose to pick up in store, we did postage or pickup. You submit, you get a confirmation email that looks like it's come from the retailer that says hey Nathan, thanks for your entry from Footlocker. And then as you have selected your size as well. So what we're doing in the midst of all that, we're doing a whole bunch of signaling, right? So we're looking at down the browser, what does it look like? We're looking at payment types you're using, we're looking at does your address look like someone else's. We're looking at cohort analysis, we're looking at longitudinal data points when you previously used our platform. We're looking at live learning models that, that are looking at are trends coming from a suburb, estate, an area, are there sequencings that happening that should be weighted down. And we're starting to uplate you for doing great things and down weight you for looking like you're trying to scam, you're trying to bot, you're using automation techniques, et cetera. And then when Footlocker choose to then run the payment when that drawer closes or Crocs or whoever chance to choose that fast times they run payments. And what we basically do, it's automated, it goes, Nathan is a size, I haven't seen your feed mate, so I'm going to guess a size 11.
Alice Williams: There you go.
Alice Williams: So Nathan is a size 11. Do we have one available? How does he look like? He's got a risk profile. Is it good or bad?
Alice Williams: Right.
Alice Williams: And they're shades of gray. Yep, he looks great. Okay, let's auto debit his card. Because an intent to purchase is from this card, we debit him, the money lands in Footlocker's account Or it lands in Fast Times account, whoever the retailer is. And then we go to the next person. Andrew, size 10. Is there a size 10 of Apple? Yes. Let's debit him until the inventory is gone and sold through debited in random order based on risk profiling. You or I will receive a winner confirmation that says or a success confirmation. Hey, Nathan, congrats. You've just been debited for this product. Here is your invoice. It'll be sent to you here. Or here are your pickup details to go in store and grab it. That's basically the sequence. Keeping in mind that wins are scarce because products are scarce. So there is a bit of luck on side, but there also is a bit of, like, play fairly and your chances ultimately will be greater. And then we have a thing called the equalizer, which is ultimately, the more you engage with our platform, so the more you lose, your chances increase each time until you actually win to kind of, you know, ensure that the love is being spread, you know, really nicely around.
Nathan Bush: And you mentioned, obviously, sneakers is at the heart of this and the most obvious use case.
Eugene Chang: Yeah.
Nathan Bush: Or at least the starting point.
Eugene Chang: Yeah.
Nathan Bush: What kind of products have you seen Hypedrops expand into that? Maybe you weren't expecting.
Alice Williams: Great. So, you know, we started with sneakers. We now do sneakers, apparel collectibles, alcohol, and we've done some tickets to retreats. Right. The world that we.
Nathan Bush: So.
Alice Williams: So some fascinating hype that I think is interesting. You know, like Messina ice cream cakes they sell out there is high heat for them. Really interesting. I met a company that does native animal broaches. Right. And they do something like 85% of their revenue in three minutes a month. And it's like demographics skewed higher. Right. But like, it goes nuts. Tickets are a category that I think is ripe for the taking. It's a very interesting category of players that have cemented themselves in this. In this world. But you would argue, you know, the kind of appetite for fairness is really there from the consumer side. We've seen a lot of moments in the last six months where ticketing is probably the value of ticketing and its delivery mechanic has fallen over. Look at Taylor Swift launches, Drake launchers, Glastonbury sites, crashing. It's a world that I think consumers are really driving some change for, and there's some policies that are being implemented too. But I think our kind of fairness engine and how we upwind and downweight and give access to real fans based on inputs and signals and the like could be a real Value add to those types of, those types of businesses. I also think we can help ticketing increase yields because we can capture interest for certain types of product skus, ticketing skus and understand the demand before they actually release tickets. So there's ways to kind of like increase volumes of sale. So yeah, I think there's, you know, scarcity lives in weird and wonderful corners of the world that like when you dig into it you realize like it goes everywhere from ticketing and collectibles, which is like the OG of like scarcity, to then like funky passion enthusiasts like manual keyboards and gaming mouses and Barbies, you know, Mattel creations, a whole bunch of really fascinating toys, like 100 Years of Barbie books and you know, Wrestlemania characters. Then we, we also track like a lot of the resale sites and groups and communities to see where, you know, botting's coming next. Like the Australian Mint just got botted for a collectible coin. Right. You know, we see Australia Post getting bought up their stamp collections. We see, gosh, like just there was this, like Amazon was selling this thing in the US which was you can turn Cheetos into dust that you could sprinkle. Right. And that was getting botted and resold. Prime drinks are getting botted and resold. Like there is just this world of, you know, our world is chase the fad. Yeah. Chase the fashion and then chase the bau. And as I said, you got tickets and collectibles in the bau, you got fashion where brands are in and out of vogue. Like they have their day in the sun and then they move on and then you've got your sugar hit like something that really goes big, really quick, one drop and then they move on. And so we do get to see this diverse kind of end to end of how these products go in market.
Nathan Bush: And obviously the Cheetos dust one. That's a long term trend.
Alice Williams: That's, that's not. Well, I mean when I said it I saw your eyes light up, mate. I feel like there was some interest in it. So you were as curious as I was.
Nathan Bush: Exactly. And you mentioned bots there.
Eugene Chang: Yeah.
Nathan Bush: At a time when things like NFTs, blockchain. What we're seeing around AI at the moment is there's a lot of investment, a lot of advancement in that technology. You've essentially created a technology that said we're going to take on the bots. It's a brave position. How do you stay ahead of the bots?
Alice Williams: Yeah, it's like bot creators are hyper intelligent and they're Very smart folks. And it is a cat and mouse game to which like we're winning most of the time. We discover parts where we've seen some things happen. It's funny because we kind of like still use and are ambitiously using AI and ML and live learning models and alike to solve for these problems. So we're kind of like we're on the same slipstream when it comes to technology. The way that we do a lot of our preventing is really interesting. It's not hey consumer or hey fan, draw a picture of an orange or, or pick the cat which right. It's under the hood. Like you have no idea what we are signaling, but there is a whole bunch of signals that combined with other inputs have meaning to us and therefore help us make educated choices around who to sell to and who not to sell to. And when you combine that with learning models that look at trends in real time and learn, we are playing with, call it like arguably the cutting edge of tech. It's allowing us to do this. So we are very much kind of capitalizing on the trends that are out in market to solve for this. But it's a, as I said, it's a bit of a cat and mouse game. But that's kind of why we're in business, right? Like, like it's, it's why we're in business with some evolving state to which like retailers don't have the time or capacity to solve for.
Eugene Chang: Right?
Nathan Bush: I just love those ideas that are using technology to solve problems that have been around forever and all of a sudden they're put in front of you and you go oh, it makes so much sense. I feel like we had a fair few of them this year. And Equal is a great example of Australian innovation in that space. I hope you enjoyed that remix of the best of 2023. We're like the nerdiest DJs ever. Here are my New Year's resolutions that I took away from those chats from Alice at Overa. Embrace the chaos. Are you going to change your formula for TikTok content creation or performance ads after listening to this episode? Are you going to freak out your content agency? Whether that be 30 TikTok videos in one hour, throwing away your brand guide for socials, or loading up the ad channel with a bunch of lo fi content? Alice has shared a heap of tips on how to introduce some chaos and get the performance algorithm working for you from Eugene at Sneaker Laundry. More water won't fix a leaky bucket. Focus on optimizing your website. Rather than throwing more money at advertising and content from Sarah and Laura at closing the gaps, Fix it. Don't DM it. When Sarah and Laura kept getting asked the same questions as to which piece of clothing Allied supporters could wear, they bit the bullet and labeled them on their site. Not only did it reduce the customer service, it immediately increased sales. Look to your inbox for sales ideas. And from Andrew at Equal Hype is sales on steroids. But we know the negative side effects of steroids, right? Well, some of us. Andrew gave plenty of sneaker examples. But how about that animal brooch retailer that does 85% of their sales in three minutes? Sounds like a dream, right? It puts the four hour workweek to shame. And while we all want high demand and instant purchase, the downsides of not doing it right are massive frustrated customers, weeks of admin cleanup, processing, refunds, tech crashing, inventory, getting out of whack. If you want the benefits of hype, you need to make sure the operations are ready not to turn those three minutes into three years of cleanups. Thanks everyone. That is all from me. Before we wrap up 2023 in its entirety and launch into our 2024 four episodes, of which we have an absolute cracking episode coming up for you to kick off next week, I want to take some time to thank the Add to Cart team. As you heard during the episode, I want to thank Jo for coming on board and bringing her style and her experience into interviewing some great e commerce guests. I want to thank Amy, who is the producer extraordinaire behind Add to Cart, who makes sure this episode reaches your ears every every week. Thank you Amy. You are absolutely amazing. And to Gil, the podcast boss, the person who actually turns all of these conversations into listenable content, thank you so much. I am constantly hearing from those listening that this is a really professional podcast and I can tell you it's not because of me, it's because of the team around me. So thank you so much to Joe, Amy and and Gil, who've done so much over the year and really excited about what's coming up in 2024. So as I said, we'll be dropping our first episode of 2024 on the 8th of January. It is going to be absolutely massive. All I will say is we may have another Shark Tank judge. Stay tuned for loads more conversations with amazing folks doing great stuff in E commerce. And as always, don't be a stranger. If you've got ideas for guests, things you want to hear about, make sure you reach out to me. You can reach me on Add to cart on LinkedIn or give me an email nathandecart.com have a happy have a safe new year and I can't wait to bring you more in 2024. See you then. Thanks for joining us today on Add to Cart to listen to all all our e commerce conversations now in the hundreds. You can head on over to addtocart.com there you can also join up to our free private Slack community to share e commerce ideas, tips and questions with other listeners. You can also subscribe to the Add to Cart weekly newsletter and browse some of the video highlights from our chats. There is a lot there that's Add to Cart. And if I can ask you one thing before you go. If you enjoyed today's episode, make sure you share it with a friend or a colleague who could benefit or leave us a review. It really makes a difference. Thanks again for listening and until next time, keep those customers adding to cartoon.
