Nathan Bush: Hi guys. Before we get into today's show, I want to share an exciting new venture that I've started up with my friend Emily Hayden. Hi. Em and I are out to solve a very specific problem. E Commerce talent. As we know, 2020 has been a bumper year for E comm, but it's not slowing down anytime soon. Competition will increase, tech will continue to innovate and customers will continue to change. But at the heart of it all, it's still good people and great teams.
[Voiceover]: Our goal is to connect E commerce talent to help job seekers, businesses and communities continue to grow. So if you're a job seeker looking for your next opportunity, or a business owner looking for the best E commerce talent, get in touch. We're the people for E commerce talent.
Nathan Bush: Visit esweettalent.com au that's e s u I t e talent.com au to find out more. We look forward to speaking with you soon. Now let's get into today's episode.
[Voiceover]: We feel like the world is going to be a better place if we put the power, power in the hands of the many rather than in the hands of the few. You've seen so many retailers invest so much money in certain technologies that are meant to be the silver bullet and solve everything and they can do a hell of a lot of things, these technologies, but very rarely do retailers have the capability or the resources to execute on all of that. I grew up with a single mom who was an entrepreneur. I grew up in her business day in, day out and saw how much hard work goes into that. It's not about someone's skills, it's not about what they've done. It's really about who they are. That's where we always start.
Nathan Bush: Welcome to Add to Cart, the podcast that Express delivers all you need to know in the fast moving world of E commerce. Every month, Nathan Bush from 12 High 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 Foreign. Welcome to Add to Cart, the very last episode of the year. My name is Nathan Bush, host of Add to Cart and director at E Commerce Talent Agency E Suite. Joining me today is Reece Ferner, who is the head of partnerships for Shopify plus in the APAC region. Obviously, 2020 has been a huge year for E commerce in general and it seems like you can't go a week without hearing about Shopify hitting a new milestone or releasing a new FE future. So I thought it would be really fun to recap that from someone who is deep in the trenches leading the business here locally. Also, I've known Reece for a long time in his pre Shopify days, so I was really keen to hear more about his experience in such a high profile growth organization and with such a unique culture and he has some great insights especially around the recruitment process. So I had a wonderful week this week. Not only did I get to launch my new venture E Suite, which you'll hear a little bit more about over the coming weeks, but I got some brilliant feedback from listeners and there's two that I really want to give a shout out to. The first is Melissa, who's a shoe retailer from a store called Big On Shoes for anyone who wants to check them out. They're based in regional Queensland and she sent me a note that the POD gives her the the secret tools I never knew about in a practical way which sees my ADD to CART action list grow longer and longer. So I love hearing that. And I also had a really great note from Vivian who teaches Year 12 students at Gladstone Park Secondary College and she said they've been listening to ADD to CART to learn more about social enterprises. I'm not sure that we're a verified educational resource, but hello to Melissa, Vivian and Gladstone Park Year 12. Thank you for listening in and thank you for the feedback. I love it. As mentioned, this is the last week of our regular episodes before we have a few weeks off. We'll be running our Friday checkout series over Christmas and then we'll be back to you on the 11th of January with a new episode. But if you're looking for episodes to catch up on, I'll be subjective and I'll give you the three that rated the highest this year. We have episode eight with Kate Collinson and Craig Somerville from when Covid first hit, which is a pretty fascinating thing to listen back to back in March when we didn't really know what was going on. We also had episode 13 with Kelly Hush on the future of Australian fashion retail and episode 10 with Mike Doyle on how Brisbane Airport got their six figure E commerce business up and running within 16 days of COVID hitting. So there's definitely a Covid thing theme going on there and I know we all needed all the help we can get when that hit. So I'm really glad that ADD to CART could play a little role in that. I also just wanted to throw out a few recommendations, a few personal recommendations that really resonated with me and the chats that I Especially loved. And they were episode 30 with Pip from Jumbled, episode 20 with Nat and Tom from Mr. Poolman. They kept it very real. And episode 24 with Hannah and Verity from Lovely. They're all very much personal favorites of mine, but I love all our guests and it was just a fantastic year for such a range of content. Okay, okay, let's get into it. I just hate goodbyes. Here's our last Add to Cart episode of the year, brought to you by our partners, Shopify plus and Signet. Here's Shopify plus head of partnerships for the APAC region, Reece Verna. Reece Furner, welcome to Add to Cart.
[Voiceover]: Thank you. Pleasure to be here, man. Been excited for this for a little while.
Nathan Bush: To get the great Reese onto Add to Cart is quite the coup, I'll tell you that much.
[Voiceover]: You're too kind, mate. Way too kind.
Nathan Bush: Now a lot of our listeners will know Shopify, obviously, and Shopify Plus. We're going to get into both in more detail, but for those who haven't met you, if we were, say we were having a few beers after a game of cricket on a Saturday afternoon in lovely Maroochydore up on the Sunshine coast and I turned to you and I said, reece, what do you do for a living? What would you say?
[Voiceover]: Wow, excellent question. I had my sister in law this week who turned to me and said, I still don't get what you do. It's a regular occurrence for me. By no means have I nailed it yet either, but there's a few things that probably work against me a little bit. Firstly, not too many people outside of the E commerce or retail world know of Shopify. Secondly, if I say Shopify, people think Spotify. And thirdly, if I say I work in partnerships, everyone stares at me with a blank face. So there's a few kind of curveballs that I have in describing what I do. But the way that I've tried to summarize it best is by just saying I help entrepreneurs and retailers start an online store, control and manage their products, their inventory, their customers connect to a range of third party marketplaces and essentially grow. That's kind of how I've tried to do it. I often, if I still get the blank face a little bit, I ask someone, have you ever bought anything online? And if they say yes, I generally say you've probably bought through a store that was powered by our technology. And I kind of leave it at that. You get some people that go, oh, that's really interesting. And you know, know a little bit about the technology space and want to dive into it. And then you get other people that just have the blank face and go, cool and ready to move on. So you've got to play to your audience a little bit.
Nathan Bush: Oh, that's fantastic. It's. Yeah, my parents still don't know what I do, and that's okay.
[Voiceover]: I still get. I still get the calls to fix an iPhone, set up a modem. You know, a lot of people think I'm in it, you know, so, yeah, it's an ongoing challenge.
Nathan Bush: I think it's actually your mustache that's giving people the wrong impression of what you do.
[Voiceover]: Pool cleaner might be more appropriate.
Nathan Bush: All right, let's get into it. So you are head of partnerships for Shopify Plus. Now, before we get into it, can you give anyone who may not be aware of it the difference between Shopify and Shopify plus to start with?
[Voiceover]: Yeah, sure thing. So Shopify and Shopify plus are based on the exact same architecture. Very similar look and feel about the two key differences that Shopify plus just has a bigger and better support structure around it and more of a feature set that's suitable for high growth, high volume merchants that typically have a little bit more complexity as well. So examples of the support is if you're on Shopify plus, you get priority support that pushes through to a particular support team that are generally skilled up on dealing with more complex kind of situations. And we also have our merchant growth model and merchant success managers. So it's a specific program that merchants are enrolled in where you've got an account structure around you that are used to dealing with merchants at similar scale. On the feature set side, there's a range of features that are unlocked with Shopify Plus. Again, they're more suited to a more complex merchant. So some examples, without being exhaustive and boring, everyone with a feature list is checkout Liquid, for example. You get access to that so you can customize the checkout more. You've got Shopify scripts which give you much more advanced discounting. A really cool one is Shopify Flow, which is quite unique, but it's an automation and workflow tool. Really saves a lot of retailers a lot of time where you can automate tagging of customers based on lifetime spend that then flows over into your email. Stuff is literally a world of possibilities with Shopify Flow and probably really relevant one. Right now. Moving into the holiday season is Shopify Launchpad, which is a sales schedule tool. So it not only allows you to schedule when sales will go live and finish and across what collections or products. It actually allows you to automate the changing of your front end website. So the look and feel. So it's great for e commerce managers that are not getting a whole lot of sleep in the holiday period leading up to sales periods where they're staying up till midnight, turning things on, worrying things aren't going to work. So Launchpad is a really great scheduling tool and there's a few other things, like certain APIs are only available to plus, like multipass and Gift Card. And you also get higher API call rates as well, which again comes back to that complexity. And often we're part of the technology stack for these more complex brands. So that's kind of a bit of a summary, I guess, boiling it down to additional support and a feature set that's more relevant for a more complex brand. But we don't force people to upgrade to Plus. It's not based on volume or anything like that. It literally just comes down to whether it makes business sense for that particular brand. And we've got some brands that are doing tens of millions on a standard Shopify plan, and we've got some brands on plus that are doing anywhere from a couple of mil up to over a billion a year online, so. So it's quite flexible.
Nathan Bush: And from an operational point of view, for those retailers who go from Shopify to Shopify plus, does it essentially feel like the same platform but with additional capabilities and a support team available to you?
[Voiceover]: Exactly, yep. So, you know, it's not like a migration from another platform or anything like that. So very simple. Literally behind the scenes, we flick a couple of switches and away it goes. The look and feel slightly changes to have the Shopify plus branding and if a merchant is using the new plus admin as well, which is kind of like an organizational view across multiple stores, there's a little bit of a different look and feel with that, but you're right, it's a very simple upgrade. If someone's already on Shopify, there's no additional skills that they necessarily need to build. They just need to leverage that additional support across that extra feature set that makes sense for them.
Nathan Bush: Cool. And just last question, on Shopify plus specifically, before we talk wider around the year that was for Shopify in the e commerce industry, what about the commercial model or the pricing for Shopify Plus? How does that differ to Shopify?
[Voiceover]: Yeah, so Shopify's got a range of different plans starting at 29 US a month up to 299. We want to make Shopify extremely affordable. The whole purpose and mission for us is to really lower that barrier to entrepreneurship. So we don't want the technology side to be overly expensive for an entrepreneur. So the pricing model for Shopify is very simple. Shopify plus is also quite simple. It's US $2,000 per month, or 0.25% of GMV through the platform. So it's generally around US$800,000. Is that tipping point over into that sliding pricing scale? So don't quote me on this about 1.1. I think Australian is where it sits at the moment. So that sliding scale allows us to obviously increase the infrastructure, the support, et cetera, around some of those larger merchants. So, very simple pricing model. We don't do discounts or anything. It's the same price for every single merchant, irrespective of whether we know you or not or anything like that. And we just try to keep it nice and simple.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, it's a nice. It's a nice, tangible way of looking at it is that if you're a business that's starting to do about $1.1 million on Shopify, then it's worth kind of opening up and looking at Shopify plus and the features that are available. But like you said, there's no, no need to absolutely go over unless there's something specific there for you. Now, we are recording this on the 27th of November, the 26th of November. Sorry, the day before Black Friday.
[Voiceover]: I've got Black Friday. You scared me there. I thought, well, what am I doing on Black Friday? On a podcast, thankfully, the day before, at the moment.
Nathan Bush: What are you seeing at the moment? With your retailers here in Australia around Black Friday, do you think it's going to be bigger? And obviously it's a very dangerous question because we're recording it before Black Friday and it's coming out after Black Friday. So you could look like a real idiot here. What are you thinking is going to happen?
[Voiceover]: Yeah, you put me on the spot here. You've really opened me up to a bit of criticism. But isn't it funny how us in this retail world, we love to make predictions, don't we? Every Black Friday Cyber Monday holiday period, we're all coming up with all of these interesting predictions around what it's going to be. I think probably from my side, we're a little bit fortunate that we have such a great base of data. We did a survey across a lot of our merchants to really look at, you know, what are they planning for Black Friday, Cyber Monday and the holiday period in General and you know, we've got to remember as well here in Australia we had Click Frenzy back I think November 10 or 11. We had yeah, November 10 I think and singles day obviously November 11. So we've had a lot of stuff going on already. But from the survey data and what merchants were telling us, the key predictions were that some sales period was going to start sooner. And I don't think that that's going to surprise anyone that's really listening. The challenges that Covid's created are very interesting though around supply chain shipping, fulfillment. A lot of people probably still buying for themselves throughout Black Friday Cyber Monday, but an increase in gifting because people will be doing their Christmas shopping a little bit earlier, we suspect based on the fulfillment networks capacity. And we're seeing some earlier cutoff dates. We saw some earlier cutoff dates back in Father's Day in September around shipping as well. So. So I think they were some of the predictions that we were looking at. But every day since COVID back in March, April, we've been processing Black Friday Cyber Monday level volume every single day. So it's just, you know, you normally look at the chart across the year and you see that huge spike for Black Friday Cyber Monday and this year the chart looks nuts. Right. You know, when you see that line that's in line with that peak of 2019. So understanding how big the peak will be this year is going to be really interesting and I just have no idea what that's going to be. But we have seen a lot of first time buyers through the Shopify platform this year. In April, 62% of buyers had actually never purchased through a Shopify powered store before. Wow. And that was huge because you know, we've got 90,000 merchants in Australia alone. Right. So that really indicated to me that we'd seen a really big shift in behavior. And it's one of those things, sometimes you're pushing a progress and you seldom retreat. Right. And I think that those first time buyers that were typically those in store buyers, that behaviors changed. Right. We've seen them coming back and purchasing more frequently. So it'd be interesting because in previous Black Friday Cyber Mondays we typically wouldn't necessarily have seen those buyers. So how big the spike is, I have no idea. And I won't put myself out there by having a bit of a stab at it, but I suspect it to be pretty big.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's the thing going through retailers minds at the moment, whether it's Black Friday or just 2021 budgeting as well is like if we've had this huge growth this year, whether it's your business being 60%, 100%, some have had 200%, how do you then budget for next year and what kind of growth are we going to get? Because like you said, there's so many new people coming into the market. I think overall in Australia we've had a 1 million people shopping for the first time online. But at the same time, can you beat the growth numbers that you had this year? Like it's a huge unknown and it's really hard to plan for.
[Voiceover]: Totally the danger of that historical data. Right. It's going to be really, really interesting. But I think what an opportunity, you know, for everyone that's listening. You know, obviously you know, the listeners are in the kind of retail space or entrepreneurs and you know, with this change comes some great opportunity and I've been really excited seeing how some people have latched onto the opportunity and done extremely well through it. So yeah, I think there'll be more opportunity for brands and retailers to really harness this changing consumer mindset and I'm very excited to see what happens next year.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, absolutely. And you've mentioned some of those stats already. But even from a Shopify perspective, it feels like every week there's headlines coming out around the growth of Shopify itself. Whether it's share price going up, I think it's tripled in the last year, gross margin doubling in the latest results. They're just phenomenal figures. Has there been anything in 2020 that's really surprised you apart from a massive virus hitting? Apart from that, has there been anything in 2020 that's really surprised you on this trajectory?
[Voiceover]: It's a good question. I think that Shopify has been around since 2004 now and Shopify well before I was there obviously. But Shopify saw a really big spike in 2008 as well around the recession. I think it's interesting because in a lot of ways Shopify is one of those recession proof type of businesses. When things get tough, a lot of people look additional income streams and entrepreneurship really peaks and I think that's great. But outside of seeing that entrepreneurship peak, we've also seen the consumer mindset change so much that it's forced so much innovation across retailers. So when retailers are typically focused on the in store experience and all of a sudden that in store experience is gone, that's really kind of pushed a lot of progress in around the digital innovation side. So I think we're very fortunate in that we're just a recession proof type of business. And like I said earlier, the key things that probably stand out for me is just how many new people are starting to buy online. What's the saying? There's decades where nothing happens and there's weeks where decades happen. And I think a few of those weeks in April were really a decade's worth of progress and we saw that in the percentage of retail spend online. So when this pandemic first hit, I had no idea just how big that influence would be on the online side of things. I don't think any of us knew that, but the progress has been fantastic. And I think if I think of the big surprises is it's probably the innovation across businesses that I didn't suspect. So a great example is butchers. We've just seen a huge number of butchers signing up to Shopify and one in particular down in Melbourne is they're doing millions of dollars of revenue a month.
Nathan Bush: Who's that?
[Voiceover]: You know, selling meat, Vic's meat, kind of like the Apple store of meats. And they're just absolutely crushing it. And I think that innovation has been really interesting. You know, it's been obviously we expected the entrepreneurship, you know, in terms of new, new people starting digital businesses. We expected the retailers that have a digital presence to, you know, invest more for obvious reasons. But it's those fringe businesses that typically haven't done, you know, the digital stuff, jump on it and have success in such a short period of time, you know, that, that just makes me really happy, you know, that that's essentially what I get up for every single morning is to see these entrepreneurs try new things and it be successful and then be able to get through a tough period and pardon the pun, but put, put food on the table, you know, like, like mixed meat. So yeah, that's probably been my biggest surprise.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, that's awesome. We had Oliver and Ruby Hagen on a couple of months ago, another butcher in Melbourne as well, and they're doing some phenomenal stuff as well and, and transition to an online, really content driven offering which you don't really associate with butchers. But fantastic to see. Peter Shepherd Footwear prime pride themselves on delivering their customers the perfect fit. Unfortunately, this didn't apply for their own e commerce technology. Stuck on a niche legacy platform, it took the Peter shepherd team up to 24 hours to make simple changes. It's not quick enough in today's fast paced e commerce world. Enter Shopify plus. Peter shepherd migrated to Shopify plus including a full POS migration Reliable media library and an automated reporting suite. Oh, and did I mention instant updates. As a result, Peter shepherd tripled their conversion rate and increased E commerce revenue by 30%. Talk about some nimble footwork. To read more of Peter Shepherd Footwear's story and to see other case studies, visit the customer section on shopify.com auplus has there been any other industries that you've seen really pop up on Shopify lately that you might not have expected?
[Voiceover]: Well, cafes and restaurants have been one. We actually specifically built a theme for our theme store for cafes and restaurants when Covid hit. So that was really cool. And I think probably some call outs is there's been a lot of people jumping on the platform and raising money for businesses. So a great example was Joyce, who's actually one of our merchant success managers at Shopify. She worked on a project called SOS Cafe over in New Zealand and they generated millions of dollars for local cafes that went directly into the pockets of cafes. So it's pretty cool seeing people use the platform for not just for themselves but for others. So I think that was a great example of I guess, leveraging your skill set to do greater good for businesses that were struggling during the pandemic. So that would be one that probably stands out and surprises me a little bit. And cafes, restaurants have jumped on and are doing some interesting stuff as well, which has been great.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, fantastic. I've also noticed that in alcohol as well. Like a lot of industries that have been forced to go on. And the funny thing is, and I know you mentioned it at the start, is that Shopify isn't that well known outside the industry, but it seems to be when these people are starting businesses straight up, even if they haven't been online, Shopify is the go to. Yeah, it's like the starting point. Can Shopify do this for me? And speaking on the clients that I've, I've worked with is like 70% of the time you go, Yep, it's fine. And you know what I mean, it's the leaping off point now. And that's changed a lot I think in the last two years as cementing that leaping off point for people starting an online business.
[Voiceover]: Totally. Yeah.
Nathan Bush: You talked about empowering the entrepreneurs and one of the more famous sayings coming out of Shopify is arming the rebels going up against one of the biggest behemoths in Amazon. Tell us how the Shopify approach in arming those entrepreneurs differentiates to those other organizations in how you approach online retail.
[Voiceover]: Yeah, I guess for us, arming the rebels means obviously the entrepreneurs, but also the entrepreneurs as well. And particularly when we think of Shopify plus and a lot of the brands that are really innovating quite heavily, you know, we're often working with the intrapreneurs within that sort of organization. I guess for us, we very much want to remove the shackles. Our product is excellent at creating focus. How many times have we seen, and I know you specifically, Bushy, you've seen so many retailers invest so much money in certain technologies that are meant to be the silver bullet and solve everything. And they can do a hell of a lot of things, these technologies, but very rarely do retailers have the. The capability or the resources to execute on all of that. And you end up in this opportunity paralysis. You can literally do a million and one things, but you can't do many things really well. And I think that's what our technology really enables, is that it allows focus. And if you really want to expand beyond that, you can if you want. So I think it's getting back to the basics for a lot of. A lot of entrepreneurs within these businesses. And it's often what we hear that they're craving is that they're sick of being spread too thin and trying to do things well, and they're just not quite moving the needle enough. You know, it's a little bit output over outcomes. And so I think that's a really good thing that we enable in terms of arming the rebels. But to get back to your point around really what we're trying to do, like, we feel like the world is going to be a better place if we put the power in the hands of the many rather than in the hands of the few. So we believe in independent businesses. We want to empower entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs across the board to create great experiences and great products so that people have choice. The moment that choice is eroded, the consumer ends up losing. So there's just so much, and I think this is relevant to a lot of people, yourself included, and people that are listening, is that entrepreneurship is special. I've been an entrepreneur before, and there's nothing better than when you're creating a product and you're satisfying a market need, you're creating something unique, you're crafting your brand story, you're connecting with customers, you give a shit. You give a shit about doing something special. And that, I think the more of that that we can do makes the world a better place. And creating that economic independence for people is extremely important. So I think that's really a lot of the mission that Shopify is on. You know, it's about making commerce better for everyone. And I think we, we hold a really important seat at the table. You know, our technology does enable so many entrepreneurs to bring their dreams to life. And again that, that is just what makes our job so special. And I know you, a lot of these entrepreneurs, a lot of our ecosystem does. And it's not just those end entrepreneurs. There's so many businesses that's created around it and I think, I can't remember the exact stats, but we know that our ecosystem of partners makes more money than we do. So it's empowering. Not just those entrepreneurs that are creating products, but it's those entrepreneurs that create the service businesses and the technologies around it as well, which is really special.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, it's a great point and I love that you embrace it that way. I think personally, if I'm looking at it from the last 12 months, there was a bit of a scare that went up in the Shopify community when the whole Shopify and mailchimp breakup happened and people went, oh, you know, we kind of start seeing Shopify at loggerheads with other service providers and locking people out and trying to take the world over. Since then we've obviously seen so many partnerships, whether it's with Pinterest integrations, Alipay, Affirm, Facebook, Walmart had the big marketplace. There's been a lot of big partnerships go on this year and that's kind of what stood out for me on the last 12 months. Do you often see that people start with the simple Shopify site and then go all right, what's next? And then they. And that's why you need to offer all these partnerships.
[Voiceover]: Yeah. And another great one was TikTok and only a couple of weeks ago, Alipay as well. So yeah, 100%. We're part of an ecosystem that we cannot do everything. And as merchants get bigger and bigger, they're dependent on a range of technologies to run their business. So we play our part in that technology ecosystem. And what's really interesting, I guess is that when you've got so many merchants, you hear pretty quickly what they need and they're the type of opportunities that we go after. We can't partner with anyone and everyone obviously, because there's a lot of demand for people to try to get access into the Shopify ecosystem. And in some ways it's very self serve in terms of if you're a freelancer or an agency, you can sign up to be A Shopify partner easily and you get access to a dashboard, access to resources, off you go. If you're an app developer, you sign up for a partner account, you start building your app, you submit it for approval and off you go. So there's a lot of self drive ways that people can get started in the ecosystem, but obviously a lot of those bigger, broader, more commercial type agreements are of very strategic importance to us. Google was another one where we launched Shopify Payments on the Google Shopping, which was a huge one as well. So we keep exploring those type of opportunities. We're fortunate in that being a market leader and having the volume of merchants that we do, we're generally the first type of E Comm platform to launch a lot of these things which gives our merchants a scale advantage of and that's really what we try to do is by lowering the playing field for these entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs, we give them access to the latest and greatest innovations in commerce and that creates an unfair advantage by being on Shopify versus not being on Shopify. And we'll continue to accelerate through products like Point of sale and like B2B and our fulfillment network and things like that. But we try to bring those scaled advantages that typically a behemoth would get access to to the masses. And that opens up margin for these entrepreneurs to keep investing in their businesses and growing it.
Nathan Bush: Absolutely. And I think what you said before around being able to take the pressure and commitment to technology resources away from entrepreneurs, especially early in their journey, is really strong. And I think that's where we see a big difference with Shopify is that there's so much effort put into the branding side and the marketing side of businesses early on that probably wouldn't be able to probably five years ago when they were just trying to get their tech up and running. Question for you around a bit of a trend around DTC branding at the moment. There seems to be a little bit of a backlash around the minimal kind of styling of D2C brands at the moment. Especially in kind of a feeling that there's a bit of a sameness happening around DTC branding at the moment. What's your feel around that at the moment from what you're seeing?
[Voiceover]: It's a good question. I have been doing a little bit of reading around that and I guess it's because certain D2C brands have found a formula that's working right and people are replicating that and that is a byproduct of the barriers to entry being lower and the focus being in Certain areas, look, at the end of the day, you've still got to have a great product that's differentiated and has a great value proposition. You've got to be able to deliver a great experience. You've got to have great customer service, fast shipping, easy returns. All of the basics still exist. What often happens is when some of these DTC brands get so much funding early, they're pumping all the money into the acquisition side of things and probably losing some of that focus around what makes their product great and who their audience actually is. And they end up all kinds of of looking the same and funneling all of their money into the marketing side. So look, it's probably true to a degree. I would just say that's the effects of a low barrier to entry and a market being a certain size. Supply and demand principles will always come into play and some will fade away and some will grow. And I suspect the ones that will grow will be the ones that tick all of the boxes that I mentioned earlier. It doesn't matter whether you're a DTC brand or whether you're a 50 year old retailer. The same principles apply around what makes a great business.
Nathan Bush: The fundamentals of retail don't change whether you're pastel pink or whether you're bright orange, 100%.
[Voiceover]: And consumer taste will always change. Like the DTC kind of design principles probably did appeal to a market. But of course we change with our tastes and preferences over time as well. And some brands will adapt to that really well and others will stay a little bit stagnant.
Nathan Bush: Yep. Risi, I'd love to dive into the Shopify culture because from the outside it seems like this big, beautiful, happy family. But I know that there's been a lot of growth and, you know, a lot of internationalization as well, with separate teams trying to deal with different markets. If you were to summarize the Shopify and Shopify plus specifically culture, how would you summarize it?
[Voiceover]: Yeah, good question. The whole Shopify organization is extremely mission driven. We're here to make commerce better for everyone. You can probably tell just by how I speak or anyone else that you speak to. At Shopify, we're pretty aligned from what we're trying to achieve perspective. We know that the impact of our work is really important and there's no problem in getting up every day and having a red hot crack at what we need to do because we see the free fruits of that labor, you know, and seeing entrepreneurs grow these businesses and live, you know, the lives that they want to Live is really rewarding, but you're right with a lot of growth that that creates some challenge for sure as a team here in apac. You know, I started four and a bit years ago and it was just myself and Jason, as you know. And that's a small team, really small team, you know, so we inherit a lot of the cultural nuances from HQ and we kind of start making our own culture to a degree.
Nathan Bush: So Reece, how big are we up to now in terms of APAC team?
[Voiceover]: Yeah, so we've got. Geez. Good question. Because I don't know the exact number it's getting that big. I think we probably have about 30 sprinkled around Asia at the moment. About 50 to 60 sprinkled around ANZ. And we have a support office in Wellington in New Zealand too that I believe has about 80 people. So we're probably starting to push between 150, 200 I would say at the moment, which is fantastic because I started a little bit over four years ago and at the time there was myself and Jason here in Australia and Hayley and Darren over in New Zealand. So we're a tiny team. So it's been great seeing that growth and that's reflective of how entrepreneurial we are in this market. And a lot of people are surprised when I say that running 11 Aussies and Kiwis run a business. When you look at the US for example, 1 in 30 and you look at Canada, it's 1 in 32. And Singaporeans are similar as well. So when you look at the number of entrepreneurs per capita, Australia, New Zealand and Singapore are actually the biggest markets globally.
Nathan Bush: Market being.
[Voiceover]: Yeah, they might be smaller markets in terms of overall size, but they have really high ceilings. They well and truly punch above their weight as markets and we've used that a lot as the storyline to continue to get more buy in and to continue to grow the team out here because there's just so much action happening down here that we can facilitate some really good growth around.
Nathan Bush: And is all the team remote? There's no central office.
[Voiceover]: Yeah, yeah. So we're a fully remote team. We always have been a remote team actually in this part of the world. So with COVID hitting, you probably saw that Shopify came out pretty early out of the gates and we moved to a digital by default working principle. And that was a bit of a shock for the folks in Canada who have been much more of an office first culture. And we have some pretty amazing offices to be perfectly.
Nathan Bush: They're pretty nice offices to leave behind,
[Voiceover]: yeah, there's some unreal offices, but for us here in this part of the world, we've never had that. Right. So we've always been remote first. And I think that was a great opportunity for us as a team to take the rest of the business on a little bit of a journey around how we've been doing it for so long. And we're sprinkled all over Anz. You know, we've got some pretty big catchment areas in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Auckland, obviously, but you're fully remote. And I'd never worked remotely before joining Shopify, and I must admit I was a little nervous about it at the start, but absolutely love working remotely. I get to live here on the Sunshine coast, you know, I get to take my kids to the beach every weekend, I'm in the pool every day. It's a great lifestyle and I really think it's. It's the future. And I'd say to a lot of people that do run businesses or hiring that are listening, you know, it's definitely important to consider how you're going to incorporate remote working in the future, because I think it's going to be a really big driver of where the talent goes.
Nathan Bush: Are you just trying to drive up property prices in your area?
[Voiceover]: Mate, I did just sell my house, actually, about to build another one. But, yeah, I mean, I'm seeing a lot of Sunny Coast, Gold Coast, Central Coast, New South Wales, Wollongong area, you know, all of those connected to the city. But lifestyle areas certainly seem to be on the rise and it makes a lot of sense, you know, living in Sydney, Melbourne's expensive, so, yeah, I think remote working is a great change that's been accelerated by Covid, and it's not for everyone, I'll preface it with that. But I also think it's important to say that working from home is very different to working from home in a pandemic. So if you've got kids and you're in lockdown, I really feel for the folks down in Melbourne who thankfully now, out of that lockdown, that's really hard. And if that was your first experience of working from home, you know, it probably wasn't overly enjoyable, which is fair enough. But having worked from home outside of a pandemic, there's certainly a lot of benefits to it.
Nathan Bush: Absolutely. Do you have any tactics or routines that you've taken on in your four years, not just through Covid, of working and managing a team remotely, that have really helped you kind of crack that barrier between the physical distance yeah.
[Voiceover]: So there are a range of things that I really try to do. Like the key of it all comes back to communication. And obviously that's a bit of a general statement, but it is amazing how few teams truly know what communication is. And I think when you're working remotely, you really have to practice over communication. You don't have the water cooler chat. You need to be jumping into your team channel in Slack and sharing the conversation you just had. You need to be oversharing the learnings that you're having. You know, it's really, really critical. We're fortunate at shopifying that we. We obviously have a range of really good technology that we use and a really great app that we use is called Fellow. So for those that haven't heard of Fellow, it's a really great one on one tool and it incorporates intended outcomes into it. So how do you spell.
Nathan Bush: How do you spell that one?
[Voiceover]: S, E, L, L, O, W. Exactly like it sounds. Yeah, exactly like it sounds. So if you Google Fellow app, that's how you'll find it. But a fantastic app, I think. One on ones are obviously a key skill for all leadership, but particularly with remote teams, having that one on one structure in the cloud, it's always there. You can set templates. It's got some really good questions that you can automatically probe around each one on one and having that linkage through your intended outcome. So we use objectives and key results. We're pretty planned on an annual and a quarterly basis. So it's just creating clarity and focus. Our big challenge is opportunity paralysis. I mentioned it before around a lot of retailers having that as well. And there's so many things that make a lot of sense for Shopify, but we have to keep coming back to, okay, where are our priorities? What do we focus on? Because despite us being somewhat of a big business now and we've grown, we still don't have unlimited resources. So we're constantly weighing up what is the right thing for our merchants and what moves the needle for us. So focus, clarity, ongoing communication, some good technology that makes that easy. And a strong culture to begin with always helps, obviously. And just trust. You have to trust people. I've spoken to a lot of people about remote working and I hear so many people say, but how do I know what my team are doing? I say to them, if you need to know what your team are doing, you got the wrong people to begin with. So it's a craft leadership in itself and it's a craft remote leadership in itself as well.
Nathan Bush: So this is a question in case this podcast just hits the dust. What do you actually look for in a team? What kind of the capabilities and skills do you look for, especially in Australia? I kind of want to keep it in the Australian context. Do you look for to know that they're going to fit in and hit that mission with you?
[Voiceover]: Yeah, I feel like the vast majority of my life is hiring these days. So one of the things that we're really big on is the life story. And that's always the first interview that we do. And it's not about someone's skills, it's not about what they've done. It's really about who they are. That's where we always start. And it's interesting because a lot of people aren't used to that. A lot of people are used to jumping straight into those sort of things, so they're a bit taken aback and like, oh, you want to know me and you want to get to know what I'm all about. So that surprises me that more people don't do that.
Nathan Bush: How does that actually work? Talk us through that process if you can.
[Voiceover]: Yeah. So it's an awkward first question, but generally we'll preface the first interview with, look, today's just about getting to know you. And it's starting with tell me about you. I realize that's a really open ended question, but most people start with where they're from, where they grow up, you know, what are their interests. And it's just getting to know someone. And I think that that's such an important aspect that is probably not done enough. So when we get to know someone, we start obviously getting that sense around culture fit, team fit. And you don't want a bunch of clones. You need to look at people that are obviously different and amplify the culture, you know, culture of always changing. But it's interesting just getting to know people. They're fantastic conversations. You really learn a lot about someone. And then once we go, okay, yep, this is definitely someone that we want to progress further into the process. The subsequent interviews will be a lot more around. Okay, tell me a little bit about the roles that you've done today. What are some of the things you're most proud of? What were some of the big challenges of? What would you say are your key strengths? Where are some of your gaps? Selfishly, as a lead, I often ask, you know, tell me about your best lead. What made them so great? You know, you're trying to, trying to get, how do I create the conditions of success? For this person and do I see them as someone that's passionate about what we're trying to achieve and do they have the attitude to either learn it or the skills to be able to have high impacts? And that process has not overly changed since I started four and a bit years ago. But what I would say is the type of talent that's coming into our business has changed dramatically. And I always joke with my team that if I was applying today, there'd be no way I'd get the job. But we've been really fortunate in that we are a bit more on the radar now. We've invested a lot of time in trying to build our profile as well as a product. We have a lot more of this, the support kind of structure and region now, which also shows a lot more commitment to the market. You know, early on, when it was Jason and I, it's hard to convince someone to leave a good gig to come and take a punt.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. You know, is that what you mean about the changing of the talent? Is that your. Is it more specific skills rather than generalist now, or how's that changed?
[Voiceover]: Yeah, so definitely specific skills and people with a lot of experience that are now looking at Shopify going, I want to be part of that. I see that it's still in its early growth phase. So you start attracting those people that have, you know, some really solid experience over a number of years doing really interesting things that bring a really, you know, different mindset and capability to our business. But. But it's. It's very easy to convince them now.
Nathan Bush: Yeah.
[Voiceover]: You know, Shopify is here, we're committed, we're growing rapidly, we're doing cool things. If you get excited about what we're here to do, it's, it's generally people are like, like, I really want this
Nathan Bush: job and I've got a spare bedroom in my Sunshine coast house you can work out of.
[Voiceover]: Exactly, exactly.
Nathan Bush: Do you. Before we move on, I just want to ask you, do you remember a story that you told when you were first interviewed that you think may have got you over the line at Shopify?
[Voiceover]: Oh, you don't have to actually tell
Nathan Bush: a story, but do you remember what angle you went in with to say, this is me?
[Voiceover]: I. I probably spoke about cricket. I don't know. I actually can't remember. I love my cricket. And I was being interviewed by a Canadian, so they probably would have had no idea what I was talking about. But I think the general passion that I have for entrepreneurship, I grew up with a single mom who was an entrepreneur. I grew up in her business day in, day out and saw how much hard work goes into that. And I think that having that general understanding and passion for what the mission is, I think is probably one thing that would have stood out. And also I'd started my own Shopify store at the time. I knew the product pretty well, I started my own business. So I would have ticked a lot of those boxes, I guess. So, yeah, I can look back on that now and hope that that was the case.
Nathan Bush: I imagine your mum must be pretty happy or proud of what you're doing now, helping other entrepreneurs with their journey.
[Voiceover]: Yeah, I still think she's not quite sure what I do as well as we discussed earlier. But yeah, I mean, she's got a pretty good understanding. She actually has a Shopify store as well, which I've helped her with and whatnot. So, yeah, I think she's definitely, definitely pretty proud, which is good. That puts a smile on my face. Nothing like pleasing your mum.
Nathan Bush: That's awesome. Well done, mate. Now, if we turn our attention to retail in Australia, what are you seeing at the moment where Australian retailers are really struggling or having trouble getting their heads around solving with their online businesses? Is there a common theme?
[Voiceover]: Yeah, I think it might be a little bit of the hangover from the on prem kind of days where, you know, retailers have come from this background of often being able to do everything. And we've spoken a little bit about this earlier. I think think focus is the key thing that I often see. A lot of brands and retailers are just trying to do too many things and they haven't got the basics in place. So that really stands out to me. Get back to the basics. I'd say RFPs. RFPs are just horrible. I don't feel like anyone wins from RFPS a lot of the time. From a vendor perspective, you're often answering the wrong questions to begin with. So, you know, I really challenge brands to just think a little bit faster, a little bit more nimble. You know, you need to move at the speed of the customer, you know, because the gap's getting bigger.
Nathan Bush: What's the best platform selection process you've seen?
[Voiceover]: Oh, that is a great question. I think it. So there's probably a trend that I would say when we go, okay, that was a good experience for everyone and that's often where, where the retailer is very future focused. It's like, where do we need to get to? How do we move the needle? They're focused on the outcome, not so much on all of the bits and pieces that go into that. It's like this is where we're going. This is what we need to achieve. We understand that we've got all of these things at the moment, but we're very open and flexible to doing it in whatever way makes the most sense. So I'd say future focused brands that have that vision for where they want to go is important. Where I see it being the worst is where it's. This is all of the things we do right now with what we have and we just want to replicate that with different technology.
Nathan Bush: It's so good because it's so easy to make a checklist of what you've got right now and then see who
[Voiceover]: else can ticket right 100%. And it's just so short sighted. And a lot of great technologies now that exist and there's many outside of just Shopify, they don't understand all of the things that the technology does. So by putting that checklist together, you're actually only tip of the iceberg sort of stuff. So, you know, technology's come a long way. There's some really great technologies that retailers can be looking at and I think try to get out of that checklist mentality and more around what would this technology unlock for us to get to that future state?
Nathan Bush: We get it. You're pumping out a lot of products and a lot of packaging at the moment. Did you know that Mecca saved 30% in their packing time just by changing up how they pack their goods? Our partners at Signet have over five and a half thousand packaging solutions that help other businesses such as T2 Lush Cosmetics and Ikea make the most out of their packaging and logistics. Visit signet.net au to find out more. I know this is going to be like asking you to pick your favorite child. Can you pick your favorite child?
[Voiceover]: Oh, I would get in a lot of time.
Nathan Bush: You don't have to answer that. But can you give me your favorite Shopify app and your favorite Shopify retailer from this year?
[Voiceover]: Yeah, that. That is a tough one. Can I give you multiple?
Nathan Bush: No.
[Voiceover]: Oh geez. Well, if I have the Shopify goggles on the Shop app would be my favorite. But no, I'll go outside of the Shopify side. I love what the Akendo team are doing out of Sydney so I'll call their app out for those that don't know, review platform. They just announced the integration with Klaviyo as well and what I love with that is seeing our ecosystem work together. So love that. I Think they're just a great team doing some great things. I think they've just opened up in the US as well, so started out of Sydney, so that's a great example of the ecosystem around Shopify doing really well. So give them a bit of a plug.
Nathan Bush: Nice. And in terms of retail, that stood out that you've worked with or seen this year.
[Voiceover]: Yeah. So really good. One that I'll call out small business, but just love their product is Mimi and Jinder. So I don't know if you've heard of them, but Gumbing Gear ladies, and they produce really beautiful indigenous artwork. They're featured on the block, I think, in the season before the one just finished. And they also just announced or they've just been doing a collaboration with Adairs with some really beautiful sheets and stuff. So I've got a beautiful painting that sits in my dining area, actually. And it's. The story that it tells is multiple mobs kind of coming together and sharing culture, eating, dancing, that sort of thing. So it's perfect for a dining kind of area. So I love what they're doing. I think they just produce beautiful artwork. They've got a really strong connection to their culture and. And I love seeing brands like that, you know, do really well. So I'll call out them.
Nathan Bush: That's awesome. So unique and so, so Australian. So we're going to put a link to them in our show notes as well. If anyone wants to check, check that experience out as well. Now, I know you are publicly listed and you have your handcuffs on there, but can you give us any hints around where Shopify might be headed next year?
[Voiceover]: Yeah. So the world needs more Shopify, I think so. We really need to give the world more Shopify, if I'm honest. So Shopify has done really well in the Anglosphere, so obviously the us, Canada, uk, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, we've made some really great inroads in the rest of Europe, throughout Asia, in a bunch of other markets now. And I think that we're really trying to start push hard into some of those other markets. And commerce is complex, as we all know, and it's very different across regions. It's not just about trying to roll a product out that works here in Australia into Malaysia. There's just so much complexity around payment methods, shipping, logistics, language, support expectations, et cetera. So I think next year for us, we're really trying to expand our footprint globally and just take Shopify to more places and help kind of power more entrepreneurship across those markets. So I think that's probably the big thing. And then obviously on the product front there's lots of things that most people will be across that will be pushing a lot more. So obviously getting point of sale into more markets. Hopefully we'll keep accelerating our fulfillment network, which I think has huge potential. I'm really excited to see what the Shop app can turn into as well. That's obviously a bit of a V1 launch at the moment, but it's got a huge kind of Runway. We've got capital that we need to launch into more markets which is just such a great product in itself as well. B2B, you know, as we push some advancements down that way. So I think there's a lot of products coming down which will be great and certainly help a lot of our merchants. And then there's also getting into more regions which will be important and we're hiring in a lot of those regions at the moment, which would be exciting.
Nathan Bush: Awesome. Any specific countries in the APAC region that you are focusing on at the moment?
[Voiceover]: Yeah, I think Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan are probably big ones for us. The Southeast Asia market itself, which we kind of slot Singapore and Hong Kong into, is interesting because it's very cross border. So it's difficult to just enter Singapore and build a model around Singapore. It's a bit of a catch all. So Singaporean merchants will be selling to Vietnamese buyers, to Filipino buyers, et cetera. So we've really got to build out some of that infrastructure in the team to support a lot of that throughout Southeast Asia and Japan itself. I mean, it's the third biggest E commerce market in the world. We're seeing some really good traction with Shopify there. So it'll be interesting to see how we kind of put the foot on the gas a little bit more there, but very unique business environment as well. So it needs to be done really thoughtfully in Japan. So we think we've got some, some good plans in place for next year for there. So we'll, we'll see how all of that rolls out.
Nathan Bush: Can't see it slowing down anytime soon, right?
[Voiceover]: Hopefully not. Hopefully not. Yeah. I still think we're really just scratching the surface on the global, global side. So yeah, opening up more markets and taking Shopify to the world is going to be an exciting ride.
Nathan Bush: Absolutely. Well, Reece Ferner, we really appreciate your time today and your insights around what you're seeing globally but also in the Australian market and the culture behind Shopify. That was fascinating for me. So thank you very much for sharing. If people want to get in touch with you. What's the best way to reach out to you?
[Voiceover]: Yeah, feel free to find me on LinkedIn. That's probably the best way. Just remember to spell Reese. R H Y A S. That'll make it a bit easier to find me.
Nathan Bush: Beautiful. Thank you, mate. We'll speak soon. My pleasure.
[Voiceover]: Thank you. Bushy.
Nathan Bush: It might just be the headspace that I'm in right now, but I loved that Reece lifted the lid on the Shopify recruitment process. The focus on finding out who you are as a person was really smart, even if it seems a little uncomfortable or a little unorthodox. After all, these are the people that you will be working with day in, day out and investing in. We want to make sure that they're on the same mission as us and we can't just treat it like we're ticking off a shopping list of skills. So I loved that insight and I think there's all something there that we can all steal a little bit of around how we can find out people that are on the same wavelength as us. So that's it for the year. And last thing before I go, promise last thing is I just want to thank the amazing team behind Add to Cart. I'm just the mouth of it. There's so much work that goes in behind the scenes and I want to thank Amy, who's our wonderful content producer, Gilberto, AKA the podcast boss, who's our audio producer and our team at Expressway Studio. It couldn't happen without you guys. So thank you for all your hard work. Even when I push you and have the crazy ideas about going from one episode a month to two episodes in a week, you've always stepped up. So thank you very much. Also to my amazing guests who have joined me this year. There's not been one chat that I have not enjoyed or that I struggled through. I was always inspired and felt that I was made better by speaking with with every one of you. And I hope our listeners got that as well. Thank you for being so open and sharing with us all. We're currently putting the guest list together for 2021, so if that's of interest to you, drop me a note on hellodtocart.com and we can speak about whether you you're the guest to come on in 2021. And to everyone that has listened, reviewed or shared, thank you so, so much. I had no idea that the type of relationships a podcast can bring, but it's been so fun to bring this to you. I get a real kick over the 1 percenters that I hear from listeners that has been brought into your business or just into your personal lives from what you've heard from our guests on ADD to cart. So it's really fulfilling. And thank you for coming along on the journey in 2020. So that's it. I'm gonna go crack the eggnog. Thank fuck 2020 is over. Let's do it all again in 2021, maybe a little bit differently. Merry Christmas and we'll see you on the other side. Enjoy. If you're looking for more e commerce news, case studies and research, sign up to 12High's High5 newsletter. Every week I read all the e commerce news and send you five things which I found which will help grow your business. Visit 12high.comauforward/high5h I G H5 to sign up for free.
