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[Voiceover]: Welcome to the checkout. We catch up with previous add to cart guests and ask them five quick questions to get to know them better and leave you with a little extra inspiration to get through your Friday.
[Voiceover]: Here's your host, Bushy Today's checkout features Carla Penkan and David Kahn, co founders of ProfitPak. ProfitPak is a SaaS platform built to give merchants true visibility on everything that contributes to profitability, all in one place and in real time. This husband and wife team started ProfitPeek in 2022 to help them run their own e commerce business and it soon became very clear that this was a solution that other founders were crying out for. Today they work with clients such as Arms of Eve and Flora and Fauna.
Nathan Bush: Carla and David, thank you so much for joining us on the checkout. We had a brilliant conversation around what you're building with Profit Peak, allowing e commerce businesses to get better visibility on their profitability on a daily level across all things marketing, inventory and customer. So really exciting solution, but we're here to learn a little bit more about both of you. I've got five quick questions. Number one, what's the weirdest thing that you've ever bought online? Start with you, David.
David Kahn: You probably have to be this urine odor remover for our Astroturf for our big fur baby. Our child. Number three.
Nathan Bush: Glad you clarified that.
[Voiceover]: Definitely.
David Kahn: Yeah. No longer having those drunken nights anymore. Especially when you got kids and you got a startup that's also a child.
Nathan Bush: Just wheel it under the desk when you're a startup founder.
David Kahn: I've got my flask under the desk as we speak.
Nathan Bush: That's amazing. Okay, that is a weird thing. I like that. Clarifying that it is for your dog. Carla, any weird purchases come to mind for you?
Carla Penn-Kahn: Honestly, I was the first one to purchase that and he laughed at me and now we use it all the time and we're frequent shoppers because we have a Saint Bernard, so she likes to use the Astroturf and soak it
David Kahn: up, especially when guests are arriving as well. You know, having a barbecue and trying to entertain people outside. It's not very appetizing to. You're smelling the St. Bernard.
Nathan Bush: Oh, good stuff. All right, number two, who is your favorite retailer? Carla.
Carla Penn-Kahn: That's a really hard one, I would say. We have a lot of Aussie brands that we really love to support. Names that first come to mind for me are brands like Mecca Shoes and Socks, Rebel Sport. We love to avoid marketplaces. We try to avoid catching Amazon as well because we know how expensive those fees are for the brands and we want to make sure that as much money as possible goes into the pockets of the brands themselves and stays in Australia.
Nathan Bush: Are there any brands on the ASX that you look at and you can see their financials? Obviously that you go. That is just a well run business.
Carla Penn-Kahn: Look, I have long admired Temple and Webster. I think they have done an incredible job growing that business. Yes, they did have venture capital funding and received a lot of capital injection along the way, but. But they have managed to run a very profitable business for E commerce. I should clarify that. And they have remained profitable for a long time while growing their customer base. So clearly whatever they're doing in that space, it's working for them.
Nathan Bush: Great example. David, what's your favorite retailer?
David Kahn: I definitely love obviously supporting the dog with more than just odor remover. I like shopping at Pet Circle and Petstock. I'm a huge coffee drinker so I order a lot of coffee beans from smaller boutique coffee roasters. Gabriel. And then of course, you know, seven miles as well. But also the bigger ones like Campos and of course everyone that works in the cbd, Pablo and Rusty as well.
Nathan Bush: Keeping the coffee industry alive, keeping startup
David Kahn: founders alive, keeping us awake. Yeah, I love it.
Nathan Bush: All right, number three, which E commerce practice do you wish was history?
David Kahn: David, I know that could be a bit controversial, but I love controversial. I definitely think tying the metric of roas is something that needs to go. Unless you're tracking it properly, it's not a real measure or an roi. And I know so many people out there love to bang on about the ROAS returns that they're making for themselves or their clients. And I just don't think it's a true measure.
Nathan Bush: What's the alternative to roas?
David Kahn: Proas. So profit. Profit on ad spend, I think is. Is obviously where it's at.
Nathan Bush: Proas on itself doesn't Sound great
Carla Penn-Kahn: profit on ad spend. For me, it's businesses thinking that just because you're running an E commerce business, you don't have to provide customer service. So I would say from our experience in E commerce, what actually helped us grow and in a really strong way was providing exceptional customer service. So I say listen to your customer and serve your customer. And just because you're a digital business doesn't mean that you shouldn't touch your customer.
Nathan Bush: Brilliant. Number four, can you recommend a book or a podcast that our listeners should immediately get into?
Carla Penn-Kahn: Carla, it's going to sound true to my unit economics form, but I love the Lean Startup by Eric Ries. I've probably read it three times, I'm not going to lie.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, great. That's a good recommendation, David. Do you guys share books or do you. Do you have separate reading parts?
David Kahn: Yeah, well, I've got the Kindle, but I have been known to stealing her books in the middle of her reading it, thinking that she had finished reading it. Yeah, I'm a good book thief, but I have received a number of really good books over the years. But one thing that definitely is in the front of my mind is especially as we admitted that we are new to the SAS space, is the SAS Podcast by Omo Khan. I see a lot of overlap with yours as well, obviously being a longtime listener of your podcast. But I find that every short podcast that he puts out, there's always a small nugget. Even if it's a different, entirely different software than what we're building. There's just always a very similar story. And much like the similar stories that we hear between the different e commerce customers we have. So it's been really helpful.
Nathan Bush: Great tip and a great way to learn quickly, isn't it? Whenever I throw myself into something new, even when I was podcasting for the first time, I listened to podcasts about podcasts just for a little while to get myself up to speed. And I was like, cool, I know all the terminology, I know the lingo, I'm ready to go. So it's a great tip as you're entering into somewhere new.
David Kahn: Absolutely. You know, learn from people that have walked the path or are doing what you're doing.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, great. All right, last one I have for you guys. Finish this sentence. The future of retail is giving customers
David Kahn: what they want with the shortest journey, the least amount of friction, and obviously the most cost effective way for a business.
Nathan Bush: Carla.
Carla Penn-Kahn: I agree. It's about giving customers what they want. And if that is an in store experience, then you need to be in store. If that's online, then you need a digital presence. And I don't think anymore it's a matter of which one. It's giving the customer and meeting the customer where you need to be as a brand.
Nathan Bush: What I loved about our main conversation though was understanding what the customer wants, but making sure that what you're delivering, especially in terms of unit economics, stacks up. Don't just go after it at all costs is making sure you've got the foundations in place that it can be done profitably, not just on a whim
Carla Penn-Kahn: and on a hope 100% you want to build a sustainable business and you don't want to be one of the stories that aren't so happy.
Nathan Bush: Lovely Carla, David, thank you so much for joining us on the checkout.
David Kahn: Thanks Nathan.
Carla Penn-Kahn: Thank you.
[Voiceover]: To hear more from Carla and David, jump back into episode 400, Big 400, where Carla and David share their insights, including the key metrics within marketing, inventory and customer that everyone in E Commerce needs to know because they contribute to profitability. We also hear about their commitment to ProfitPak's social media presence and what the duo gained from being part of Blackbird Giants. Thanks for listening and until next time,
Nathan Bush: keep adding to cart.
