[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.
Nathan Bush: Today's checkout features Andrew Lipp, CEO and co founder of Equal. That's EQL pronounced Equal. Andrew 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 Footlocker and Culture Kings and were named as one of fast Company's most innovative companies of 2023. Andrew, welcome to the Checkout. We've had a great chat in our main episode around all things scarcity and fairness with what you're building at Equal, especially for those sneaker drops and all those other collectible and limited drops. But we're here to learn a little bit more about you. So I've got five quick questions.
Andrew Lipp: Let's do it.
Nathan Bush: Number one, what's the weirdest thing that you've ever bought online?
Andrew Lipp: Oh, is it sensitive? No, no.
Nathan Bush: Like the weirdest. The weirdest.
Andrew Lipp: Like, top of my head, I just bought some like focus earplugs yesterday, right. That apparently you just like pop in. It just blocks out everything and you can just like lock in on doing some work. And like, truthfully, if you know me, that's a very weak thing for me to buy. But earplugs.
Nathan Bush: Okay, seems like you've got a couple of other answers, but you just weren't sure whether they were ready for a podcast.
Andrew Lipp: So we'll leave it there. Yep.
Nathan Bush: Number two, who is your favorite retailer
Andrew Lipp: in our, you know, as a customer?
Nathan Bush: No, no, just overall. Who do you love shopping with?
Andrew Lipp: I love Kit out of the US And I love just their ability to never get it wrong. Like collaborations, designs, launches, ideas, retail experience, online offline people who they work with, like, they are just, they are refined, premium smart and fascinating. Love them. Proper experience. Yeah.
Nathan Bush: All right, number three, which e commerce practice do you wish was history?
Andrew Lipp: So, you know, there's two things I think about there. One is like, we don't work in the world of conversion rates because our products are so in demand that conversion rates mean nothing. In fact, our conversion rates are like 30 to 40% on our page. Right. Compared to standard average conversion rates. The thing that I wish folks would do a little differently is see commerce in different ways. And I think hard metrics of conversion rates and bounce rates, et cetera, are kind of ingrained into the world of commerce. And granted, I'm being like a bit self fulfilling here and that our commerce is a little different, but I find that sometimes you've got to lose your inhibitions and kind of rethink a little bit about those. Those things to understand the true value you're trying to get out of. Out of these experiences. So that's one thing I would like, and then the other thing I think is like. And again, like, I'm kind of shooting myself in the foot a little bit here. Commerce is commerce, right. And we kind of talk about scarcity commerce or in demand commerce or hype commerce. And I'm not sure if that's. If that's. I'm doing it because I feel like you need to put a label on the world and the tools that we provide. But truth be told, is commerce, whether it's mobile commerce or scarce commerce or quick commerce, it's commerce. And it's just the way you engage your audience, you know, through a different channel for transacting. And I think if you start to think about it in wedges, in some instances, you lose its value. Right. But if you think about it holistically, you actually can work out how to
Nathan Bush: maximize, you know, each channel and new opportunities open up.
Andrew Lipp: That's right.
Nathan Bush: Love it. All right, number four. Can you recommend a book or a podcast that our listeners should immediately get into?
Andrew Lipp: This morning I was listening to Harry Stebbings interview the CEO of Uber and whose name has escaped me for two seconds. Darian. It'll come to me.
Nathan Bush: That's right. I'll put it in the show notes.
Andrew Lipp: Let's do that. The other one I listened to actually the other day was Harry Stevens interviewing Daniel Ek, founder of Shopify. Okay. And again, just understanding how creative minds work in wonderful ways, understanding what they prioritize as being important. And the other thing I took out of it was like putting urgency into things.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, I love it, Love it. All right, we'll put a link in the show notes. Last one I have for you, Andrew, finish this sentence. The future of retail is on the cusp of greatness. Nice. I like that. That's. That needs to go on a T shirt.
Andrew Lipp: Go for it.
Nathan Bush: Andrew, thank you so much for joining us on the checkout.
Andrew Lipp: Awesome. Thanks for having me.
Nathan Bush: To hear more from Andrew, jump back into episode 292, where Andrew shares his insights on how to manage the chaotic conditions of an E Commerce hypedrop. He also gives us the telltale signs of retailers who are in need of launch support when it comes to hypedrops. He then takes us behind the scenes into his sneaker wardrobe and shares the special sneakers that have formed his business milestones. Thanks for listening, and until next time, keep adding to cart.
