Gabby Leibovich: Everyone knows about those crazy Israeli brothers that work together and built a few businesses. When you look at that, you think to yourself, shit, I'm onto something. There's something really good in this thing called Internet. There's a massive opportunity. How do we scale this? How do we make it bigger? I feel like a retired soccer player watching the best game ever from the sidelines. It's a very exciting time, Nathan, both to launch a business and to invest in a business. And 2021 is going to create some amazing new disruptors. You can just feel it.
[Voiceover]: 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.
Nathan Bush: Hello and welcome to Add to Cart. My name is Nathan Bush, host of Add to Cart and e commerce consultant at 12 high. Now, I don't normally get nervous before recording an episode, but I kind of did today with today's interview. And it's not because of who he is, because he's incredibly warm and very generous with his time, but because he has so much knowledge and so many lessons that I felt this huge pressure to get the most out of them for you guys within 45 minutes. And I think we got there. Joining me today is Gabby Leibovich, founder of Catch of the Day, now simply known as Catch, which was acquired by WES farmers in 2019 for a cool $230 million. Gabby and his brother Hezzy also founded Eat now, which was acquired by Menulog earlier. They've also created Scoopon, Mum Go and Grocery Run. Now, Gabby was in online retail before you could spin up a website overnight, before you could drop ship without even touching product, and before you could talk to customers daily through social channels. He had to truly figure out how to take the traditional retail model online in Australia. And I think he's paved the way for what many of us do every day today. But what I love most about Gabby, and this was even at the height of Katja's success, he always made sure he shared his lessons openly and as you'll hear today, without any bullshit. You'd often find Gabby at retail conferences and talk shop over a drink like he has all the time in the world. I always appreciated that. So I was excited when he said he'd come onto Add to Cart and share it with you guys as well. Of course, forever the Retailer Gabby and his brother Hezzy have written a book called Catch of the Decade and it'll go on sale November 1st. It's filled with over 200 real life lessons and it's a must read, I think, for anyone in retail or business for that matter. And in great news for Add to Cart listeners, we have 20 signed, signed copies of Catch of the Decade to give away. So stay tuned until the end of the episode and we'll tell you how to enter. So let's get into it. Thanks to our partners Shopify plus and Signet. Here is our very special episode with Catch founder Gabby Leibovich.
Nathan Bush: Gabby Leibovich, welcome to ADD to cart.
Gabby Leibovich: Thank you, Nathan. Great being here with you.
Nathan Bush: I'm a great host that catches you mid, mid sip of water, by the
Gabby Leibovich: way, you were drinking coffee at the same time. So we caught each other.
Nathan Bush: I'm going to read you the question that I originally had written out for myself to ask you as the first question. Right. So my question was, we're recording this in November 2020, about six months into Covid after the sale of Catch. You're effectively sitting on the sidelines while the online gold rush is happening. You're ahead of the game. How do you feel about that? But then last week I got onto the news and all of a sudden your name's popping up again as a huge investor in the Mysale group. So you didn't sit on your hands and you've caught me by surprise.
Gabby Leibovich: Look, the two of them are very much connected. You know, if you see behind me, you can see some soccer merchandise. I love soccer and I've been telling people that I feel like a retired soccer player watching the best game ever from the sidelines. And you know, I read anything to do with retail just as, just as much as you do. And it is quite hard to watch and read things like 10 years of growth over a 10 week period. Silly valuations of companies that are so much smaller than Catch, that are valued at a billion dollars today. And yeah, if I had any hair, I would have lost it all by now. But yeah, so much has happened in the last 12 months. You know, we sold catch in August 2019. We sold it at what we thought was an amazing price. 500 people reached out to me to congratulate us. We sold it to the best company possible. It was a dream come true. And the next thing to do was to write a book and inspire the next generation about it. But yes, it is true, Nathan. And I cannot hide the fact that Catch today is worth 10 times more than what we sold it for. And I'm afraid to say that even more than that, not due to the smarts or the moves that Wesfarmers or anyone have added simply because of Corona. Can you believe it? That over the last nine or 10 weeks in Victoria, Kmart, Bunnings and everyone else is shut and everyone has to go online. It's a gift from God. And I'm really sorry that I'm not, you know, part of that game anymore. In regards to our investment in Osale that you just mentioned, it's simply an investment and nothing more than that we see an opportunity in an undervalued company. No different to my investments in Uber, in Redbubble or Catapult.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, absolutely. But I think, you know, even though it may not be great consolation for you what you've done with Catch and the other companies as well, Scoopon, Eat Now, Mumgo Group, Grocery Run, you actually paved the way for a lot of retailers in Australia to make the most of this opportunity because you pushed them really hard in the lead up when they weren't being pushed.
Gabby Leibovich: Right, yeah. I'm very happy to hear that. And yes, I think we were digital pioneers. Maybe accidental pioneers. Accidental entrepreneurs. When we launched the business, all we launched was a small business out of a tiny little warehouse in Moorabbin hoping to make enough money to pay the bills and send the kids to school. Now, none of us had any aspirations of building the tremendous household names that we did. Why did it happen? I'm guessing there's a million different reasons. Why did it happen to us? I'm still pinching myself and I don't understand it. You know, I've just turned 50. I started my digital career when I was 36. I wasn't a kid, but someone decided to launch this thing called Internet. And having been a retailer for quite some time, having worked in a store similar to a jb, hi Fi and Good Guys, we started selling online on ebay before anyone else spotted the opportunity.
Nathan Bush: But you must have been ahead of the game a little bit more than that. I know you talk it down a lot, but you, from what I understand, did a Bachelor of Computer Science back in 1994. So it wasn't like you stumbled across technology or saw it later in life. Right.
Gabby Leibovich: I finished school in 98, so I was at uni from 99. For the next four years. I did computer science at Monash Clayton. But just to remind you, in 98, 99, there was no Internet. There was none of that. It's a bit of programming and nonsense like that. I'm also going to go on record and say that I was the worst student in the class, simply because I knew that as soon as I finish uni, I'm going to join my dad's retail operation. Because the retail bug has really hit me from early age and I really enjoyed the buying, selling. I'm one of those people that enjoy getting catalogs in my mailbox and reading them. No matter if the catalogs is from Kohl's, Woolworths or Toys R Us.
Nathan Bush: You're a true retailer, right?
Gabby Leibovich: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Nathan Bush: So what was that moment? What was that moment when you went online and you've seen the writing on the wall for a bit? What was that moment where you've started this business just to pay the bills, get the kids through school? Was there a particular moment where you thought, shit, this is going to be big?
Gabby Leibovich: I think it was a lot slower than what most people actually think. When we launched Catch in October 2006, we did the maths and we wanted to sell 60 products a day. I remember going to the first few suppliers and telling them about this crazy model of ours of launching a new deal and only a single deal every day at midday. And I'm sure that all of them thought to themselves, this guy is crazy. What is he doing? None of us even understand the Internet, let alone one deal a day. Why would that succeed? Just to take your audience back to 2006, when we told people that we are selling online, the first question that you used to get at the time was, is it safe to put your credit card online? And when we reached suppliers and I was the main buyer in the business in the early days, driving in the van in the streets of Melbourne, knocking on doors and telling suppliers that I want to buy some goods from them, the first questions they tackle me with was, what store are you from? We only deal with people that have a bricks and mortar presence. No one even understood that concept of being able to sell without needing to place the goods within four walls. It was a different world. But, you know, this was the best period of my life. That period of 2006 to 2009. It's very much David versus Goliath that we much more enjoy than being Goliaths themselves. It's finding solutions to problems that no one even knew existed. It's been a great period this year. Reminiscing about that and writing about it in the book and going backwards and reading lots of emails, chatting to employees, looking at photos, you know, I'm a very retro kind of guy and it's been, it's been a great, great period.
Nathan Bush: Absolutely. So tell us about, about that buying and selling, because one of the quotes that I've heard you say before that I absolutely love is you make money when you buy product, not when you sell it, which is very retail centric. Right. Can you give us a little bit more insight about that?
Gabby Leibovich: Yeah, absolutely. It's very retail centric. It's not my quote. I'm sure I've, you know, adopted it from, from someone else out there. But yeah. A lot of people ask me the question of Gabby, why did Catch succeed in the early days? And so while other retailers did not do as well. And I can answer this question in so many ways, you know, but if I have to pick just one way, then my answer to them is we are better buyers. What does better buying mean? Buying, it's one of those skills that you cannot learn at university and I can, it's very even hard to teach someone how to buy. And in the book we actually spend about six or seven pages talking about what a buyer is. It's, it's a great book for retailers which, which, which, which is your, you know, direct audience and being a buyer myself and having experienced that, yeah, it was, it was a tremendous spirit. But buying is very much about building relationships because people like to do business with people that they like. How do you get people to like you? I mean, what do you need to tell them? What is your message? Catch of the day in the early days, discovered, you know, a window of opportunity or an idea. And our window is quite simple. It's going to existing local suppliers. And as you know, all suppliers and all buyers make mistakes. They either buy too little or they buy too much. And our message was, hey, you know, John, what do you have in your warehouse that you need to clear? And every supplier and brand owner has something that they've been sitting on for way too long. They paid way too much for it. Seasonalities have changed. They are running out of space and they need to move that stock. And we were able to purchase those goods at, you know, very good prices. And in returns we were able to offer great deals to our consumers.
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Nathan Bush: In those days, where were you putting the product? Did you have dedicated warehouses?
Gabby Leibovich: Look, of course we had warehouses from day one. But our warehouse in 2004 was my garage in Caulfield. And in 2006 it was a 200 square meter, tiny little warehouse at Roberna Street, Moorabbin. In 2008, it was 2,000 square meters in Springvale. And in 2010 it was 4,000 in Moorabbin. In 2011 it was 16,000 in Braeside. We moved five warehouses in the first five years. Every time we moved into a warehouse, we thought that it would be our comfortable home for the next three or four years. And a year later, we just kept on growing. The numbers of sales just went through the roof. And in the early days it was 30 of this and 60 of that, which moved to 300 of that and 3,000 of something else. More and more people talked about the Catch brand. We grew very much by word of mouth, by people simply telling their friends about the great deals that they found. And we very much relied on the whole FOMO element. Fear of missing out. Quite often our deals used to sell out within 3 hours, 2 hours, 1 hour, 20 minutes. Sure, it's a missed opportunity. We probably could have sold more, but we sold everything that we had. And nothing beats seeing a great sold out sign on the page when you arrive at 1pm one hour into the sale.
Nathan Bush: A lot of people forget that that's how Catch started out, wasn't it? It was one big sale per day. It wasn't kind of a marketplace where you can get whatever you want.
Gabby Leibovich: Absolutely. And I didn't even realize how long that went to. And while was writing the book, I went to look at old pages and I found out that as late as 2012, we were selling one deal a day. So that model kept on going for close to close to six years. We would have continued with that model, but there was one problem. We were so large and our database was growing really fast. We were unable to find local Australian supplies that would give us the amount of volumes required to satisfy the hunger of our audience.
Nathan Bush: You were becoming the Goliath.
Gabby Leibovich: Absolutely. So we decided to go sideways. And that meant offering more and more products. And that continued until 2017. And only in 2017 we launched the marketplace. We can talk about that later on.
Nathan Bush: Yeah.
Nathan Bush: Absolutely. Now, I understand that you didn't do all this yourself. This is a family business. You're in it with your brother. Hezzy, tell us about your relationship there and how you guys work together.
Gabby Leibovich: Absolutely. Everyone knows about those crazy Israeli brothers that work together and built a few businesses. My brother is Hezi. I just turned 50. My brother is 44. He's six years younger. I mean, in the book, we go as far as talking about our childhood in detail and in order to explain to the reader why we've become who we've become and how our childhood and our upbringing and the conversations that we had at the dinner table with an entrepreneurial retailer father that turned us into who we are. Our first employee, his name was Vijay Bala. He was a tech guy. And after 10 years of working with us, Vijay said the following very smart line that I really agree with. And Vijay said, this business would not have succeeded with two Gabis or with two Ghezis. It really needed one of each. Myself and my brother are extremely different in the way that we view the world. We have different sets of skills and various things that we love to do or hate doing. For example, my brother has never done a podcast, will never do a podcast. My brother hasn't Even mentioned on LinkedIn that we have a book. And I scream as loud as I can to the whole world to let them know about the book and so on. But my brother is a lot more technical than me. My brother is a better negotiator than me. So we all let each other lead where was required if we're going into a negotiation game. I let my brother talk and I sit on the sidelines and because I just know that he will get a better deal for both of us. So I think that it worked really well for us. But another thing that we've discovered over the years is that we have done so much. For example, in April 2010, we spotted this amazing company in the USA called Groupon. And we said, wow, this is really interesting. It's very similar to Catch. Catch Sales product Groupon Sales services. I love retail a little bit more than my brother loves retail, but he loves the early days of building a tech business. So the next day, my brother left the office of Catch and started building Scoopon. Building the team, building the tech, and everything else that's. That's required. We could never have built Catch and Scoopon in parallel had we had only one founder. We trust each other fully 100%. We never argue about money. But on the flip side, we are both super entrepreneurial, very driven, very optimistic, and we don't cry about spilt milk characteristics that entrepreneurs do need. And if we both believe in something, we go in it full force. And I suppose the proof is in the pudding. We managed to create some amazing stuff together, and I think that that's not the end of it. We'll be building some stuff together in the future.
Nathan Bush: Again, there must be something you don't see eye to eye on.
Gabby Leibovich: Absolutely. Absolutely. As soon as you said that, the first thing that comes to my mind is marketing. You're a marketing guy. We have been arguing forever, and we will be arguing forever about where to spend our marketing dollars. My brother only wants to spend it below the line and give it all to Google, Facebook and anything that can be fully measured. I sit on the other side of the spectrum whatsoever and I understand the power of Google and Facebook, but I also understand that brands needs to be built above the line on newspapers, podcasts, radios, interviews, billboards in the street, et cetera. My brother refused to agree with me on that and will fight like dogs and cats about it. But you know what? It is what it is and it all those arguments, Nathan, they come from passion. I a true believer in my way of thinking, and he's a true believer in his way of thinking. And in the book we mention, when we get to a point where we couldn't agree, we just kept on arguing.
Nathan Bush: And I suppose because your siblings, you've grown up together, you know when you're pushing it too far and when to stop and how to get to a resolution quicker than if you were coming together as separate partners, right?
Gabby Leibovich: We absolutely do. And because we've been together for such a long time, you know, I mean, the other day we met with an entrepreneur. We, we sat on the park bench and we listened to a two hour pitch. And I just know that whatever I'm thinking, my brother that sits next to me is thinking exactly the same thing. He sees the same opportunities that I do and he sees the same weaknesses in the proposal that I do. And we don't even have to talk to each other anymore. It just goes by wavelengths. It's a good position to be in. I don't think it would be as much fun building a business on your own because the whole entrepreneurial journey is already very isolating and it's great to be able to share it with someone in such an intimate way. And by the way, Nathan, this is the most that I ever talked about the relationship between myself and my brother. So that's A bit of a scoop.
Nathan Bush: I'll take that as a scoop, absolutely, yeah. So tell us about the growing up of Catch. And I know there's so much in it and you go into detail in the book about it, but are there one or two standout moments where you went, gee whiz, we are moving from being David to being the Goliath of retail.
Gabby Leibovich: Look, as you asked the question, I've had this. I've got about 20 of them running through my head right now. I'll tell you about a couple of them. The first time that we were featured on tv, I think the business was about one and a half years old. Within one and a half, we managed one and a half years. We managed to build a database of about 50,000 people and we were featured on Current Affair, Channel 7 for the first time, 6:30pm Within 24 hours, 50,000 new registrations have hit our site. And we grew overnight from 50,000 followers, which is tiny today, to 100,000, but what it means the next day, 100,000 Australians were talking about catching, telling their friends about Catch, and the snowball just became a lot bigger.
Nathan Bush: And how did you get onto A Current Affair? Was that a deliberate strategy or did it happen organically?
Gabby Leibovich: I don't remember that specific case, but I'm guessing it was a deliberate strategy. What's a deliberate strategy is me sitting at home at midnight and contacting reporters, telling them about a whole new site that we are running. It's called Catch of the Day, giving them some numbers. Yesterday we sold X amount of this and Y amount of that. And look, reporters are quite lazy these days. They're always looking for stories. And we have used the same method throughout the years. When we became a larger company around 2012, 2013, we've already hired a professional PR company that was doing that job for us. But message to small startups out there, get as much free media as you can. And we actually talk about that in the book and we actually talk about how to approach reporters. And you know the problem as well as the opportunity. I got to tell you one more story and Nathan, that's, that's in my head. And it's the story again. Back in 2008, 2009 sometime, the deal of the day was Samsung Television. The price of the TV was about $3,000 and within one hour we ended up selling everything that we had in stock, which totaled about 1 1/2 million dollars of Samsung TVs. Just take us back about a decade or so. We're talking a tiny business 200 square meters, 10 employees, a bunch of kids sitting there playing with computers and we're looking at the sales report in the first hour. And one and a half million dollars worth of goods were sold by us. And when you look at that, you think to yourself, shit, I'm onto something. There's something really good in this thing called Internet. There's a opportunity. How do we scale this? How do we make it bigger?
Nathan Bush: Yep.
Nathan Bush: And you call them the golden years where you really enjoyed growing the company. Take us forward to that moment where you first get the hint of I think I'm done here, I think I'm ready to sell.
Gabby Leibovich: It's going back to the thing between me and my brother. My brother was ready to sell way more than me, way earlier than me and you know, I kept him going. I kept him going. I'm a bit more optimistic and you know, probably, you know, more of a risk taker. And anyway, we pushed it as far as we thought we could until 2019. Nathan, I'll be very honest and truthful with you Today is we fucked up. We sold the business one year too early and everyone knows that. Not because we're stupid or no one had the vision to see Corona coming. When we sold the business at the end of 2019, 500 people reached out to me to congratulate us about the sale, the price, whoever bought it and so on. And we've done tremendously well. It's a lot of money in anyone's book and the truth is we never have to work again, etc. And we're quite young. But knowing that this business is worth 10 times more today, not because waste farmers have done anything specific simply because Corona came in and, and completely change the game going forward. Yeah, I really miss the team, I really miss working in a group, I really miss the challenging. And I think we're going to have to start a new business, Nathan, because we're a little bit bored right now and I've been walking around Coffield park for way too long.
Nathan Bush: Is there any parts of retail that you're looking at at the moment and you're like there's something really interesting or there's something missing here that I think I can really make an impact in without giving away any future ideas, obviously.
Gabby Leibovich: Look, I mean, I don't think that I'm smarter than anyone else right now. We're all seeing what's going on. My 11 year old daughter received the LCD version of the Alexa the other day and you can just see how it's Going to change the world. And it's changing the world already. Social media and social commerce is obviously an area that everyone is looking at right now. But I think the answer is, Nathan is probably in an area that hasn't even been invented yet. But the world is changing so quickly. And just like my kids don't use Facebook and to me, Facebook is so important, but they're on TikTok and Snapchat and something completely elsewhere. I think there's more stuff coming and we don't even know what it is.
Nathan Bush: It feels like there's something huge brewing around live streaming and integrating entertainment and shopping together. It's almost like a flashback.
Gabby Leibovich: That's right. That's right. Live streaming is another huge area of growth, you know, in Asia. Yeah, we're watching it all. We read a lot of articles. But if you look at, if you look at our career, Nathan, you'll see that you don't need to have an original idea in order to succeed. We always found that it's better to copy an idea and excel in it rather than be original and build some silly mediocre business. So. And I don't believe that there's any fresh or original ideas anymore. We all get inspired by companies, xyz and we try and build something that has the components of all of those companies put together. Exciting times ahead, Nathan. You know, the world has created so many new problems in 2020. And I know that more than anything, we enjoy solving problems, you know, and there's so many more problems to be solved in all areas. I mean, obviously we're here to talk about retail today, but the same thing goes with, you know, anything from logistics, education, health, hr, real estate. There's problems galore. I mean, look at afterpay. Need I say more?
Nathan Bush: Where do you get your ideas or your confidence that an idea is ready to go all in on?
Gabby Leibovich: Look, I mean, to answer that, I have to use the word gut feeling. But what is gut feeling? Gut feeling is I'm 50 years old. It's 50 years of reading articles about retail. It's about meeting and shaking lots of hands. It's about walking to lots of conferences. It's about seeing what's working out there, knowing your audience, and then it's about just honing in on one. Will the next business that I launch be the next big thing? I don't know. We have failed many times in the past. People don't know about the failures. They remember the successes, but we failed just as many times. But being optimistic kind of people. We don't get discouraged by failure. You know, we look at it as a way of learning. You know, pivot is a word that's being used quite often when it comes to entrepreneurship. You know, it's okay to start something, run it for a couple of months, and then change the direction, you know, and we've been doing it forever and I think it will continue. But it's a very exciting time, Nathan, both to launch a business and to invest in a business. And 2021 is going to create some amazing new disruptors. You can just feel it.
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Nathan Bush: You are a really open person and, and what I've always loved about you is that you share your, your lessons along the way and obviously they're all packaged up now in this book. What's been your favorite failure so far?
Gabby Leibovich: My favorite failure? I'll tell you a couple of quick stories. You know, in 2014 we reached, I had hundreds of meetings with Australian retailers trying to tell them about the business idea that we had. And the business idea was a company called Atlas.com that no one's ever heard of. And long story short, Atlas would have been a marketplace, an Amazon, ebay. But in 2014, none of the retailers were ready for it, Nathan. Their technology teams were either non existent or too busy and no one really saw the opportunity in e commerce. And we spent the whole year hiring smart people trying to build it and after a year we just gave up and we put it in the bin. I wish we succeeded because you know, we would have had a marketplace in 2014. We ended up launching one in 2017. But one thing I regret is not doing it any earlier. But even in 2017, we seem to have been ahead of the time because in 2020 the number one most used word was corona. But number two was probably marketplace. Right? Everyone wants to build a Marketplace, everyone realizes that you need to be where your customers are. And companies like Catch, Kogan, My deal, temple and webstar, eBay and Amazon is where the consumers are today. And marketplaces are on everyone's lips. Yeah, I wish we could have done it in 2014. So it is what it is.
Nathan Bush: Given your recent investment, you must be still bullish around that there's a lot of growth left in marketplaces.
Gabby Leibovich: Look, we invest in lots of other companies that no one knows about and don't get press release. But of course, we are lovers of retail. We are certainly lovers of commerce. And I think we're also being entrepreneurs. We enjoy opportunities. And the investment in my sale, or sale is simply because we thought that the market is. The price of this company is undervalued. When you look at other Australian equivalents like My Deal Adore, Beauty, Temple and Webster and others. So it's an opportunistic investment.
Nathan Bush: Absolutely. So I know you talked earlier around the timing of the Catch sale, but at the time, and absolutely you're right, everyone was looking at it going, that is an incredible deal. Well done, guys. That's fantastic. There was no one coming out and saying, oh, I think Wes Pharma's got a great, got the better deal there. It was actually a really, it feel like a win win situation. Where do you think for, especially for people who are building their own e commerce and retail businesses at the moment that are looking to sell in the coming years, where was the, that $230 million of investment? Where do you think the value or the assets in Catch was that Wesfarmers really looked at and said, that's really valuable to us?
Gabby Leibovich: So, yeah, so absolutely. I mean, they're sitting in their offices today and know that they got the bargain of a lifetime. You know, it's the one that got away for us in a way. We do talk about that in the book. And we were wondering during 2019, as we had continuous discussions with farmers as to why did they approach us? Before I say that, would you believe, Nathan, that in the decade that preceded that not a single retailer, market leader, media player, has ever approached us for conversations that may have led to any form of one plus one equal three. So congratulations to Wesfarmers for spotting the opportunity. They reached out to us at the right time as our marketplace was gaining momentum. And yeah, so the reasons that they were attracted to us. Okay, we'll start with that. Number one is the marketplace. The marketplace was, you know, building momentum. It already was generating 20, 30, 40% of, of daily Transact and they needed something that could compete with ebay and Amazon. We were most likely the most digital savvy team in the market, having been doing that for 13 years in a row. We've built a tremendous team of entrepreneurs with an eye, smart people that know what they're doing in E commerce and E commerce touches logistics and customer service, digital marketing and everything else. And of course, they were also interested in our digital, in our logistical capabilities. So even in logistics, we were pioneers. And in 2012 and 13, you know, we spent a lot of time looking at logistical solutions around the world. And by mid-2014, we launched a robotic warehouse in our warehouse in Traganina. And as early as then, we've spent $20 million, you know, to improve our, you know, speed of delivery and put it all together. They got, you know, a tremendous company, a tremendous brand that's being associated with great prices, great culture and, and so much more. And as you can see behind me, I proudly have the Catch sign in my, in my room. And I proudly sleep in my Catch pajama and drink from my Catch cup. And nothing makes me prouder. Driving on Dentonong Road and seeing the Catch billboard or the Catch commercial. You know, I'm gonna love this business forever. It's gonna be my baby that, that grew, that grew up. And once it reached bar mitzvah, we had to let it go.
Nathan Bush: Absolutely. I remember we did a Nora tour and it must have been back in 2015, seen to your offices. And I, I do remember going in there and you were addressing your whole team. You had a lunch going on, you had the tables full of food, there was music, and you really, you could sense the excitement and the passion in there.
Nathan Bush: But it did feel like a family. It felt like you're all in it together.
Gabby Leibovich: It did, it did, it did. You know, and you know, I become teary when I start talking about stuff like that. Because they were family and they still are family. You know, we communicate. We communicate regularly. You know, we got to a stage that we thought was, you know, we've taken it as far as we can. But Catch is certainly no. Or at least our period that we were there is certainly no, as we managed to build a great place that people enjoyed coming to work. And, you know, we talk about that a lot. And you know, people that come to work and they have friends at work and they enjoy working together and they're being allowed to explore and try new things and being allowed to fail, then they also enjoy celebrating together. We've built something very, very special there. It's. You know, you could probably write a whole book about the culture. But when I do talk about the culture, it's actually the part that I find the most. The hardest to try to explain to someone else on how it happened, because there's so many elements that need to be put together for that to actually click. And it did click with us. And I'm very proud. I'm very proud of that.
Nathan Bush: And I think a lot of it, obviously has come from you and Hesi and how invested and giving you are around that now. We are running out of time. I actually, before this interview, contacted one of your friends, Paul Greenberg, and I said, paul, what's something that I can ask Gabby about?
Nathan Bush: No one.
Nathan Bush: He said to ask you about your passion for football and about your wedding, because he said it was off the charts.
Gabby Leibovich: I'm not sure that's a good one. Okay. For the. For those that will read, read the book, which is obviously every one of your audience. My. The wedding stories in the book, including a photo. And the story goes like that. Eighteen years ago, I got married during the same week there was a soccer match in Melbourne between Leeds United from England and Colo Colo from Chile. It was a friendly match. I sent an organizer, the organizers, an email, and I said, hi, guys, I'm a Leeds supporter, which is not true. I'm actually a Liverpool supporter. And my dream was to get married on a soccer field. Why don't you guys organize me a wedding at halftime? And yes, I got married at halftime on the grass at Etihad Stadium, which is now known as Marvel Stadium, in front of 25,000 people. It was my bucks night. It didn't cost me a single cent. And we became. And we became the halftime entertainment during the match. And by the way, that was 18 years ago, way before Gabby's story with ebay. Catch. No one knew Gabby. I'm just a guy off the street sending an email. The moral of the story here, it's got a, you know, a business moral as well. Nathan. Sometimes in life, all you have to do is ask. And when you ask, things do happen, and people are quite afraid to ask. You know, in Israel, we have a term for it. It's called chutzpah. You know, it's a Hebrew word that's in the English dictionary that means blatant arrogance and a bunch of other things. And, you know, I think that I have it in abundance, but it does open doors and things do happen when you go for it.
Nathan Bush: So go for it. You know, that's brilliant. Thank you for sharing. I love that story. Now, Gabby, you've got the book coming out, Catch of the Decade. Tell us a little bit about this and also some of the organizations that the proceeds are going towards because it's a fantastic initiative.
Gabby Leibovich: Yes. So we are donating 100% of the profits to a couple of charities. Being retailers, we looked for a retail charity and pretty much the only one that we found is a company called Goods360. And Goods360 takes goods from companies like Big W and Kohl's and donates them to charity organizations, needy schools, needy families, and so on. The other charity is called Second Bite and they donate lots of food that they take from companies like Nando's and supermarkets and donate about a million different meals a week. Please support them. They're doing a great job and it gives us a great pleasure to support them as well. The book is called Catch of the Decade. You can pick it right now on Booktopia from 1st November. It will be in every bookstore around the country. I'm working really hard to make sure that it's Australia's number one selling business book this season. And you know, when we work really hard, we reach our targets and it will be. Nathan, the book is super, super educational. Just like this podcast. It is very open. It tells our stories of success and failure and hopefully it will inspire the next generation of Australian entrepreneurs to learn from our lessons. Take some of them, take all of them and get in the game because it's a very exciting space. I think it should be read by every entrepreneur, every business owner, everyone in the investment space, tourism, space travel, up to food. And we didn't have time to talk about our amazing sale of Menulog for $855 million. We'll talk about it on the second podcast.
Nathan Bush: Nathan, done. When the second book comes out as the follow up to the bestseller. Okay, Gabby, thank you so much for joining us. And I was just going to say on Good360, we know they're a fantastic organization as well. If anyone wants to listen to our episode with Alison Covington, it's probably about 10 episodes back. Go see what they're doing because it's fantastic. If you want the book, go over to Booktopia, grab it. Comes out first of November. And Gabby, thank you so much for sharing what you have today. We love your story. Congratulations on all your success and being a pioneer of retail and E commerce
Gabby Leibovich: in Australia was a pleasure. Nathan, you're doing a great job. Great being here with you.
Nathan Bush: So how's that for a bit of a taste of behind the scenes of one of Australia's best e commerce stories. One thing that stood out for me, and despite him playing it down, Gabby knows the tech. He got a bachelor in Computer science in the 90s. He's built this huge customer database, delivered custom built e commerce platforms and had state of the art automated warehouses. But he's still an old school retailer at heart. Buy cheap, sell higher, look after your team, serve your customers. Those values mixed with an eye on the future has led him to build something that's truly special and pioneering in Australia. And just quite quietly, I don't think the story stops there. Now the book. We have 20 signed copies of Gabby's Catch of the Decade to give away and we're going to make this super simple. Super simple.
Nathan Bush: Ready?
Nathan Bush: The first 20 listeners who leave add to cart a review in the itunes store screen, grab it and send it to hellodocart.com will win the book. That's it. Go to itunes, leave add to cart a review screen, grab it and send it to hellodocat.com and the first 20
Nathan Bush: will win the book.
Nathan Bush: If you missed out on that, head over to Booktopia and order your copy today. You won't regret it.
Nathan Bush: It's a must read for anyone in retail.
Nathan Bush: 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've found which will help grow your business. Visit 12high.com auhigh5h I g h5 to sign up for free. Thanks for listening and until next time, keep adding to cartoon.
