[Voiceover]: Welcome to the checkout. We catch up with previous add to cart guests and ask them five quick questions to get to know them better and leave you with a little extra inspiration to get you through your Friday.
[Voiceover]: Today's checkout features Alice Williams, founder of Overa, a period pain relief device. A sufferer of debilitating endometriosis, Alice was looking for a safe, instant and drug free way to cope with her pain. And since founding, OVER has brought relief to tens of thousands of other women over. They also happen to be the most followed Australian brand on TikTok with 6 million followers.
Nathan Bush: Alice, thank you so much for joining
[Voiceover]: us on the checkout.
Nathan Bush: We've heard your story, the Overa story and we went into some weird and wacky places which was fantastic. But we're here to learn a little bit more about you. Five quick questions. Number one, what's the weirdest thing that you've ever bought online?
Alice Williams: Oh, I mean, I don't know if You've seen our TikTok content, but we buy some pretty weird shit we've got. This is like highly inappropriate and we've had to hide it away but it was a baby sized sex doll but with like women like features and it was creepy as all hell and it's like, who is buying this? And so that's probably the weirdest thing. When that rocked up, I was like, oh, this isn't good.
Nathan Bush: I have so many questions. What video content did that fit into?
Alice Williams: Yeah, you didn't end up using it, but it's still, she's got a name, she's in the office somewhere and yeah, we always look at that like, oh gosh.
Nathan Bush: All right, moving on. Number two, who is your favorite retailer?
Alice Williams: There's a brand that I always tell people about and I absolutely love it and it's probably not something you would expect or maybe because I'm a woman and so there'll be a few lulls about that but Koala Eco, the cleaning product brand, one, it works extremely well. Two, it's natural, it's good for the environment. And three, they don't use any perfumes. It's all essential oil based and so it smells amazing and I just love it. Aussie grown, Aussie made. It's just a beautiful brand. Love, love, love. Go and buy their products.
Nathan Bush: Beautiful. Do you know the founders?
Alice Williams: I don't know, I always just buy from them. But hey, if they're listening and they want to deck the Avira office out of mask cleaning products, please go for it.
Nathan Bush: Surely there's a TikTok video or two in promotion for them, you know, surely. All right, number three, which e commerce practice do you wish was history?
Alice Williams: I mean, I probably spoke about it on the podcast, but the branded Instagram tiles and making your feed look nice, like no one cares. No one clicks on someone's Instagram feed and says, oh, because this feed isn't all look nice together and like on brand. Well, I'm not going to buy their product. Like it just doesn't exist. But brands care so much about it and keep making the same content even though it gets no engagement or views. Like, I wish that was dead.
Nathan Bush: Bring on the chaos, eh?
Alice Williams: Yeah, bring on the chaos.
Nathan Bush: Number four, can you recommend a book or a podcast that our listeners should immediately get into?
Alice Williams: Not really. Only because I've really gone off books and podcasts and I wouldn't feel like there is something that I would genuinely recommend to people. And this is because I just got way too caught up in the whole like podcast and startup book space like very early in the days and I actually thought it scrambled my brain and made things worse. So now I don't really pay attention to much.
Nathan Bush: That's not good news for this podcast.
Alice Williams: No, it's not good news. Sorry. This is like an anti promo for your name.
Nathan Bush: I'm actually gonna make a TikTok video about that.
Alice Williams: Oh, this is so funny.
Nathan Bush: Where do you go for inspiration then? How do you get inspired and like injections of new ideas. What's going on around the world?
Alice Williams: Not brands. 100% not brands. Look at what Kanye is doing. How does he grab attention? Look at what Pfizer did. How the hell did they create like the best marketing campaign in history? You know, like, I mean they're a brand, but it's like things you'd never think of. Go and scroll on the for you page and look at what creators are doing to gain attention. Brands are so boring and mundane and I think it's different for like techie SaaS businesses in the way they build companies. But for us in E Com and retail, like nothing's that hard apart from tech technology. If you're a dev, I give it to you. I would be able to pick that up in the week, but I can guarantee anything else, anyone with half a brain you could pick up and do.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, just get in there.
Alice Williams: Just get in there.
Nathan Bush: Beautiful. All right, last one I have for you. Finish this sentence. The future of retail is.
Alice Williams: Oh, this is so cliche but AI, I mean it's like just gonna change everything. Especially like, you know, ultimately creative is what's most important? I think it's at a very low level at the moment, so I actually don't think it's that useful or disruptive currently. But I can place my bets that in a year or two it definitely will be cool.
Nathan Bush: Are you using it much at the moment?
Alice Williams: Nah, humans are still smarter. I mean, a lot of people are. But I'm like, wow, if Chatbot GPT's copy is better than yours, you're struggling.
Nathan Bush: That says more about you than it does about Chatbots.
Alice Williams: Yeah, yeah, but it does about. But like, yeah, I've heard about brands do like for website copy and EDMs and ideas for TikToks, but it's just so vanilla. Like I just don't think it's innovative at all yet.
[Voiceover]: Aggregating all the averages, isn't it?
Alice Williams: This is it.
Nathan Bush: Alice, thank you so much for joining us on the checkout.
Alice Williams: Thanks, Nate. Catch up
[Voiceover]: to hear more from Alice, jump back into episode 276, where Alice shares how she stumbled across the device that ended up becoming Overa's main product product. We also cover how they got to 6 million TikTok followers, the most followers of any Australian brand, and we dive into their creative content strategy when it comes to Facebook ads. Hint they're not dead and Alice's tips for getting favorable pr. Thanks for listening and until next time, keep adding to cart.
