Nathan Bush: This episode of the Checkout is brought
[Ad]: to you by E Suite. Whether you're a retailer looking to grow your team or you're an E commerce gun looking for your next role, E Suite are here to help. At E Suite we connect fast growing retailers with the best Australian E commerce talent. We're working with some of the best in the business including Accent Group, Incoo, Aus, Hair and Beauty and Black Mill. So if you are in the market or interested in where the E commerce market is at, reach out. Visit esweettalent.com for all the latest job list or contact me directly on Nathan sweettalent.com au now let's get into today's checkout.
[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.
Nathan Bush: Today's checkout features Dean Jones, CEO and co founder of fashion rental business Glam Corner. They're on a mission to accelerate the transition to a more circular and sustainable fashion system. Today they operate out of a 5,000 square metre fulfillment centre in the middle of Sydney, have 130 people on the team, have 30,000 articles of clothing in rotation and rent out up to 70 tonnes of clothes every month. Dean Jones, welcome to the Checkout. We're going to find out a little bit more about you.
Dean Jones: Thank you mate. I'm happy to be here.
Nathan Bush: Good stuff. Let's hope you are at the end of this as well. Five questions. Number one, what's the weirdest thing that you've ever bought online?
Dean Jones: Yeah, I bought many weird things online but most recently it was a home retro gaming system. I'm a gamer at heart, have been since I was a kid. It takes me back and helps me kind of de stress in a lot of ways. I actually bought it for our company cafeteria so we can plug it in and play Street Fighter. Alex the Kid, Sonic, Mario, all of our favorite retro games anytime 24 7.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. Don't you think it's funny now that like Alex the Kid and Sonic is retro, not like Pac man is retro anymore?
Dean Jones: Yeah, that's funny, isn't it? You're right. Original Tetris and Pac man is proper retro, right. But I think they all. I put them into a. I put retro into the bucket of two bit graphics and sounds before games got so advanced and stressful. Those games are so simple and silly. You couldn't get stressed out if you tried. I love those fun.
Nathan Bush: You could if your mum like if you were playing a game and you got really into it and your mum went over the call with a vacuum because you couldn't save it, you had to go right back to the start.
Dean Jones: I tell you what 90s problems.
Nathan Bush: What are you playing at the moment in terms of modern gaming to de stress?
Dean Jones: Oh, I'm a big. I'm a big Xbox fan. I play PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds. I actually love that game. I like any game that's so immersive that. Especially when you had a busy week or a busy day. I like to just put on the headset and just kinda. I've got a lot of friends online. Social gaming is actually. Is a really. Is a big space. I'm not some streamer, don't get me wrong. But I've got, you know, I like just if it's immersive enough, it can. Whatever was on your mind or was stressing you out at the time, you forget about for a moment and it kind of is a bit of a forced reset button for your brain. I find that incredibly helpful. For me, anyway.
Nathan Bush: No, I think, I think especially when you're founding a business like yours, you'd probably need those fully immersive things to take you out of one world and into another. Just so you don't think about it for a while.
Dean Jones: 100%. I get very excited about gaming getting more immersive, which it absolutely will be in the immediate future.
Nathan Bush: Beauty. We might start a gaming podcast. Cool.
Dean Jones: I'll be honest.
Nathan Bush: Number two. Okay, good. Got our first guest. Who is your favorite retailer.
Dean Jones: Absolutely apart from Glam Corner itself is my. You know, Audrey and I, we put our heart and soul in this business and we love it like our child. If I was to pick a diplomatic answer, a retailer who I'm very fond of is who gives a crap. They sell toilet paper, which is, you know, just another everyday commodity. But they donate a specific percentage of their profits to building sanitation in the third world. People who don't have access to basic things like bathrooms and toilets and sanitation, plumbing facilities, which is. I love that because that's very much in line with our ethos as a company that through our regular transaction habits of just everyday items, you can be making the world a better place. And there's something really inspiring about that. So I love those guys and they're a huge success and they are such quiet achievers, but they built a phenomenal business they have.
Nathan Bush: And similar to Glam Corner, they've turned the idea of what it looks like to buy toilet paper on its head.
Dean Jones: Yeah, correct. Right. It's something so every day and they've made it fun. Like it's got little toilet jokes on the wrapping and stuff and they're all actually quite funny. I'm a big fan of what they do.
Nathan Bush: Cool. So if anyone's interested, we also. We interviewed Simon Griffiths actually on Add to cart around the mid-60s or the mid-70s. Don't quote me. If you want to hear the who gives a crap story head back there. It's a fantastic one.
Dean Jones: Simon's a legend. Yeah, absolutely.
Nathan Bush: Number three, which retail fad do you wish was history? Yeah.
Dean Jones: This is one I'm not. I'm not afraid to make a not very diplomatic answer to. So our business, we're on a mission to accelerate the transition to a more circular and sustainable fashion system that butts heads directly with the fad of disposable fast fashion, which has grown over the last 10 years, that maybe it did solve a problem for a customer of giving access to items that she wasn't going to get a lot of value out of, selling them cheaply and easily and she can dispose of them later. However, that trend has fast made the global fashion industry the second most polluting industry on the planet. And it has to change. And the only way to change it is to offer the customer something better. A higher quality brand and product at a price point that's below fast fashion. So our goal is to make fast fashion seem expensive. So that's a fad. I do wish was history and I'm not going to change careers until we've achieved it.
Nathan Bush: Beautiful. I've got nothing to add to that. Number four, can you recommend a book or a podcast that our listeners should immediately get into?
Dean Jones: Yeah, absolutely. You probably. Apart from this one, I love this podcast. They're obviously already listening to it. Maybe this is a really generic one you probably have had others recommend. This is Masters of Scale. If you're building your own business, you know, read from LinkedIn. Like, it's actually such a great podcast with some real industry leaders of businesses from so many different industries. And yeah, I tell you, it's. I really enjoy listening to it. It's a. It's a great podcast. Masters of Scale, highly recommend.
Nathan Bush: It's a great one. And from a podcast producing perspective, the. The quality of the shows is just phenomenal. It's like listening to a TV show.
Dean Jones: It really is. It's. Next level.
Nathan Bush: Great. Yeah. All right, last one I've got for you. Finish this sentence. The future of retail is instant delivery as in same day, as in as
Dean Jones: close to light speed as it's physically possible to be.
Nathan Bush: I like it. Light speed delivery. Yeah. Beautiful. Dean, thank you so much for joining us on the checkout.
Dean Jones: My pleasure.
Nathan Bush: Thank you. To hear more from Dean, jump back into episode 115115 where Dean shares how Glamcorner have mastered their quality control process to know exactly when a garment has reached the end of its life cycle. It's a skill my wife wishes I would pick up. We also hear from Dean how they've gone from building their own site in five weeks to a fully custom platform that now powers their entire business. And we also hear why Dean thinks that instant Delivery will deliverability led by drones is the future differentiator in E commerce. Thanks for listening. And until next time, keep adding to cartoon.
