[Voiceover]: Welcome to the checkout. We catch up with previous add to cut guests and ask them five quick questions to get to know them better and leave you with a little extra inspiration to get through your Friday. Here's your host, Bushy.
Speaker B: Today's checkout features Alice Cooper, head of sustainable business and corporate social responsibility at Winning Group. Alice's broad and functional far reaching role includes goals such as championing a circular economy, ensuring good visibility on supply chain ethics and forging meaningful connections with first nations communities.
Nathan Bush: Alice, welcome to the checkout. We had a great conversation where you shared all the amazing things that Winning Group are doing in sustainability and corporate social responsibility. Starting with your indigenous reconciliation action plans all the way through to modern slavery acts and sustainability practices for production. We're here to dive in and learn a little bit more about you. So I've got five quick questions for you. Number one, what's the weirdest thing that you've ever bought online?
Alice Kuepper: Okay, Nathan, I know I work in E commerce but I actually don't really like online shopping.
Nathan Bush: I hope John's not listening to this.
Alice Kuepper: Yeah, yeah. So I don't know, like to me it's actually really still astonishing that we can buy pet food online and things like that. But personally I, I still like to go to shops if I go to shops and, and pick out things in person. But I will say, and this, I mean this sounds like I'm sucking eggs because I'm working for the company. But I will say when my washing machine broke five years ago and I wasn't or not was probably more so 10 years ago and it was the day before Christmas and I had a house full of people coming and I then went on to appliances online and picked up my washing machine and they were there, I think it was the next day before 7am with a new washing machine and they took the old one away on Christmas Day, I thought that was just magic. And I think that's when I fell in love with this company because I like, how is this happening? A washing machine is like magically reappearing. So to me it's still kind of not maybe weird but magical that we can do this. Yeah.
Nathan Bush: And I could imagine that at winning you would have a lot of people maybe buying online for the time that are just amazed by the experience because it is a different experience that you normally get from online. It isn't replicated anywhere else.
Alice Kuepper: No, it's not. Yeah. And then you get a truck, truck coming with like guys that are super friendly. You know, it's 7 o' clock and it's Christmas and they're like there with a smile on their face, bringing this bulky thing in and taking the old one away. I was like, this is just amazing. Yeah.
Speaker B: What are you putting those guys?
Nathan Bush: Food. They are always so happy and like, always cheerful. Nothing's too hard. It is amazing.
Alice Kuepper: Yeah. It's the culture at Winning Services.
Nathan Bush: Beautiful. All right, well, that leads on to the second question. Who's your favorite retailer there?
Alice Kuepper: So I really like to. In terms of what I personally love is going to small little shops when I'm, for example, traveling and just finding something that's really unique and, you know, artisan and just different, I suppose. So I know this is not really the question, but yeah, that's what I like. I like and same probably in an online sense. So I like boutique, unique retail. Retail stores.
Nathan Bush: Did you have a, did you find a nice little boutique in Germany that caught your attention?
Alice Kuepper: I did, yes. It's just, you know, it's just very nice because you've got all these different cultures so close. So I think there's just a really nice mix of interesting products over there.
Nathan Bush: Beautiful. Number three, which E commerce practice do you wish was history?
Alice Kuepper: Well, from a sustainability point of view, I think that, you know, free returns is, is just a real issue because it, it kind of incentivizes a practice that's just really bad because, yeah, having. There's people who just buy, you know, 10 times more of what they need because they know can. They can send it back for free. And it's, it's very unsustainable. And so, yeah, from a sustainability point of view, I wish that free returns would be shelved.
Nathan Bush: I saw H and M have just started charging customers in the UK two pound, taking off their returned items that are. Change of mind.
Alice Kuepper: Yeah.
Nathan Bush: Feels like the tide's turning, especially in Europe, around that being an expectation.
Alice Kuepper: Yeah.
Nathan Bush: All right, number four, can you recommend a podcast or a book that our listeners should immediately get into?
Alice Kuepper: Yeah, look, I love the Circular Economy podcast. I think everybody needs to understand what circularity is because it's, it's going to be the future of business. And so just to get some the basics around it, it's by the Ellen MacArthur foundation, the circular Economy podcast hosted by different people around the world. So it's a real international insight. I really like that. Great.
Nathan Bush: We'll put a link in the show notes there. And last question I have for you, Alice, finish this sentence. The future of retail is sustainable. Wouldn't be anything else, would it?
Alice Kuepper: That's right, Alice.
Nathan Bush: Thank you for joining us on the checkout.
Alice Kuepper: Thank you.
Speaker B: To hear more from Alice, jump back into episode 343, where Alice shares how winning group takes tackles reverse logistics with a focus on sustainability. She tells us why slavery is not, sadly, a thing of the past and how businesses can map out a clear and structured pathway to support reconciliation with a reconciliation action plan, otherwise known as a wrap.
Nathan Bush: Thanks for listening. And until next time, keep adding to cartoon.
