[Voiceover]: Welcome to the checkout. We catch up with previous add to cart guests and ask them five quick questions to get to know them better and leave you with a little extra inspiration to get you through your Friday.
[Voiceover]: Today's checkout features Beth glancing GM of Anz at Aero. Beth left LVMH and the corporate world of luxury behind to become the GM of Aerob, a technology startup connecting customers and brands to the recommerce market with just one click. With Aerobe, customers get to create a circular wardrobe in which they can add beautiful pieces, then rent, recycle or resell them in the future with ease. And it's pretty cool. All your fashion assets in one place and the ability to give them another life and make a little bit of coin along the way. Leading retailers like the iconic Oryton and PE Nation are already partnering with Aerobe to drive an average basket uplift of 30% for brands and retailers.
Nathan Bush: Beth, thank you for joining us on the checkout. We've learned all about your journey and what's going on for Aerob, but we're here to learn a little bit more about you. So five quick questions. Number one, what is the weirdest thing that you've ever bought online?
Beth Glancey: Okay, so this was last week. My brother in law has just started a startup in groceries called Good Groceries and we were doing some testing and I bought a hundred pack of squidgy tomato sauce. You know, the ones that you get when you buy a pie. I've got a hundred of them at home. You want to come up for a pie, come over. I've got 100 squidgies tomato sauce. Is that weird? That's pretty weird.
Nathan Bush: That is weird.
[Voiceover]: Do you remember one time there was
Nathan Bush: like a shortage of them? People couldn't find them anywhere.
Beth Glancey: Yeah. And then didn't Hamish and Andy have a whole campaign about trying to make them free when you went, yeah, love them.
Nathan Bush: Is this your new investment campaign?
Beth Glancey: It was actually just my main motivation was to give a little shout out to my brother's startup, my brother in law's startup, which is good groceries. So there you go. That's the truth behind that answer.
Nathan Bush: You got two plugs in there now. Well done.
Beth Glancey: Yeah, exactly.
Nathan Bush: All right, number two, who is your favorite retailer?
Beth Glancey: Oh, this is a hard one. I love a good multi brand retailer and I'm all about the experience being seamless and making smart decisions, particularly around shipping and the ease of returns. So I'm gonna have to go with Farfetch because when you return something, they send a courier to your door and you don't even need to print the label, they just come and collect it. It's so, so good. So for that alone, I'll always have full confidence in being able to shop with farbage. And it has amazing range of fashion. I should have said Aero. We're not a retailer, we're a marketplace. So it's all great.
Nathan Bush: That's true. You're, you're a bit of everything, you're a thousand businesses. But I love when retailers put thought into the return process and it doesn't necessarily have to be that, but just to make it so seamless and you can, because a lot of times it's just an add on, it's just like, oh, we have to do this. But when retailers, you can tell, they really give a shit about the customer experience end to end.
Beth Glancey: Having worked in retail, I can tell you now return logistics is a pain in your ass. And it's expensive. So it's lazy and selfish when a retailer has a shitty returns policy because they're basically saying we'll take all of your money but we're not going to care about giving it back to you if you've changed your mind. And that's just rubbish, especially in today's age. So anyone who has amazing returns policy and kind of all. It's just all that aftercare, actually, if you really want loyalty, customers are so discerning, you have to care for them after they've left the purchase as well. So. And farfetch do a really good job.
Nathan Bush: So well said. Great example. All right, number three, which E commerce practice do you wish was history?
Beth Glancey: Charging for shipping? Outrageous.
Nathan Bush: Any shipping?
Beth Glancey: Yep. It's a cost of customer acquisition. Unless you're buying a fridge maybe. But even then it's a, you know, it's a $3,000 purchase. It's all relative. Your margin is a percentage percent of the product you sell and I think it's about the value of the customer. You've got to remove that barrier. You have to. I hate it when you're buying. It's worse when you're buying like a 60 product and they want to charge you $12 for shipping. Firstly, I know that shipping's only costing you $9. And secondly, you know, I'm happy to give, get, have free shipping over a hundred. Happy for you to make me spend a little bit more. But no, free shipping I think is lazy.
Nathan Bush: It's a really interesting time that we're living through at the moment. We're shipping here in Australia in that I feel like we had that Real big thing, probably five years ago where everything should be free, all delivery should be free. That's an expectation. But now everyone's like, okay, cool, spend over $100, get free. But now we've had people with instant on demand delivery. You could buy a bottle of milk and have it delivered in 10 minutes and it's still free delivery. And they're not making money.
Beth Glancey: Yeah. And it's not free. If you're referring to milk run now it's not free anymore, is it? Because they. Yeah, they can't afford to run it as a kind of economical model. And look, and I, I get it. I've worked in retail my whole life and I've run store being B M, P Ls and E commerce P Ls. And it's so tempting, so tempting to charge for the shipping, but it is such an expectation for if you're in any form of, I think like any consumer space where there's choice and it's not a begrudged product or it's not a necessity. I think you really have to look in the mirror if you're charging shipping.
Nathan Bush: Oh, and I like what you said there about putting it down to a cost of acquisition rather than a cost of product. That helps shift mindset as well. All right, number four, can you recommend a book or a podcast that our listeners should immediately get into?
Beth Glancey: I was listening to this great podcast with you, Nathan. Okay, I'm gonna go with a book. I'm gonna go with a book. Which was. Actually, I listened to the audio book because I don't have much time, but. Kim Scott, Radical Candor is the best professional book I have ever read. I've gone back to it twice. I reference it daily in. Okay, daily is a bit, Bit of a fib. I reference it. I reckon weekly would be honest in terms of my own vernacular around how I show up. Her whole theory is to care deeply and challenge directly. And it is a complete reframe of how to give feedback and how to. How to receive feedback in the workplace. She's kind of X Google X, you know, xxx everything amazing, you know, like that pedigree. And it's just incredible. And then it just, it expands into how to be productive at work, how to create amazing, amazing psychologically safe places to invite people's opinions and how to get the best out of teams. It's absolutely incredible. And it's the best by far.
Nathan Bush: Brilliant. I read a similar theme book a while ago around having honest conversations and how to structure those conversations so it benefits both parties. And it changed the way that I interact with people and help me be more authentic to the conversation that we were having in the main episode.
Beth Glancey: The thing with feedback is 99% of the time, you don't want to give it because it makes you feel uncomfortable. Like, that's ultimately why people don't want to give feedback, because it makes them feel like they now feel bad about, you know, giving, passing this feedback on. But once you reframe that as it's actually not about you and it's about helping the other person grow and develop, it's just. It's a complete mindset shift that I just found really, really empowering.
Nathan Bush: That's a great tip. Thank you so much. Last question I have for you. Finish this sentence. The future of retail is sustainable fashion.
Beth Glancey: I have to go in that. Don't I?
Nathan Bush: Couldn't be anything else, could it?
Beth Glancey: Couldn't be anything else.
Nathan Bush: Beth, thank you so much for joining us on the checkout.
Beth Glancey: My pleasure, Nathan.
[Voiceover]: To hear more from Beth, jump back into episode 210, where Beth shares the cultural whiplash she experienced when she jumped on boarded Aero. She also talks about why it's so important important to bring your whole unserious self to work and how having an identical twin was the key to her career change. Thanks for listening. And until next time, keep adding to cartoon.
