[Voiceover]: Welcome to the Checkout. We catch up with previous guests of Add to Cart where we ask them five quick questions to understand more about them and leave you with a little extra inspiration to get through your Friday. Today's checkout features Basil Karam, who's the co founder and the CEO of Life Interiors, one of Australia's leading homeware designers and retailers. Fresh off the back of a record 2020 a replatforming and an expansion of physical stores, Basil shares how technology is playing a key role in their expansion and growth plans. Basil, Karen, welcome to the Checkout. I have five quick questions for you to learn a little bit more about yourself. We'll kick it off with number one, what is the weirdest thing that you've ever bought online?
Basil Karam: That question is I don't do weed.
[Voiceover]: You are coming off the back of some very weird answers. So it might be nice just to have someone who just says straight out that they don't do weird. So I can appreciate that. Number two, who is your favorite retailer?
Basil Karam: Favorite retailer and in our industry is made.com in the UK and I've been to their showrooms, met the CEO and I love how they have really empowered designers to really bring affordable designer furniture and we get a lot of inspiration from them as a brand and I really love how they have a physical space and a physical space plays an important role in their value proposition to the customer. So for them, they're my favorite retailer.
[Voiceover]: Great. And they're UK only.
Basil Karam: UK and European. European as well. They launched probably about I think two years after us, so maybe 2012 or thereabouts.
[Voiceover]: Okay, cool. We might have to wait a little while before we can go to their showrooms. Number three, which retail fad do you wish was history?
Basil Karam: I don't know if the word is necessarily fad, but just giving it a moment's thought. I mean, I guess being in industry and sometimes getting caught up in some of the hype as well, the whole idea between omnichannel versus multichannel versus online only versus retail and whichever way you want to sort of slice it and dice it, I think it's just really simply understanding what your customers needs are and solve the problem, I guess the best you can with the resources that you have. So obviously be customer centric and also, and I touch on this during the conversation, just apply a paretos principle of 8020 because we can't do everything, we can't be everywhere. And sometimes it's okay to say no and focus your attention as well. I know we all want the Latest and greatest. But sometimes there are trade offs.
[Voiceover]: That's a great. It's a really good one. There's so many shiny things that we can be doing and you get pressured to do, but sometimes sticking to your knitting is a great thing to do. Number four, can you recommend a book or a podcast that our listeners should immediately get into?
Basil Karam: I read lots of books or a lot. Or listen to a lot of audibles. I should say I should be reading more. I really enjoyed Principles by Ray Dalio. I'm sure quite a few people would have already most probably read that book or listened to that book. And he's obviously got a couple of short YouTube videos as well. And it's really around the journey of what it is to build a business and knowing that you're comfortable to fail. Make sure that you're learning along the way, applying those lessons and we don't know all the answers. And feeling comfortable that we're all. It's all new. No one's launched. Yeah, E Commerce wasn't around 20 years ago.
[Voiceover]: Did you find that after reading that book, after you make decisions in your business and your life, you. You start thinking about them in terms of the book of principles that you would write?
Basil Karam: Yeah, definitely. And I've got. And I even have highlighted different areas in that book. And so this is actually how I should respond in this scenario because some of the insight that he's written in that book, I could almost cut and paste and reply back or communicate to the team sometimes. And we actually record now, similar to what he's done, I record all our meetings, all our internal meetings and management meetings. In terms of transparency, they're all on a central drive. We upgraded to during COVID to, I think it was Google Meets enterprise or something. So the team knows that anything's available to anyone. To jump in and to discuss our manager meetings. Everything's been recorded. So once again, just focus on what matters and get rid of the bullshit.
[Voiceover]: That's incredible. All right, last one I've got for you. Finish this sentence. The future of retail is
Basil Karam: exciting for those willing to innovate.
[Voiceover]: Nice, Nice. I don't think we need to explain that one. And I think our earlier conversation, which was released in one of the earlier episodes, is a great example of how you can innovate and take business to the next level. So thank you for all you've shared, Basil, really appreciate it.
Basil Karam: No, thanks for having me on. It's been really exciting to share our experience.
[Voiceover]: To hear more from Basil, jump back into episode 74, where Basil shares how expanding the number of physical stores showed an immediate improvement in online sales. He also shares why they moved from Magento to Shopify plus and why he wouldn't start his business on Marketplaces if he had the choice. Again, thanks for listening, and until next time, keep adding to cart.
