[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 Frank Nesse, co founder of commistry. Commistry is a digital platform that integrates, enriches and synchronizes data from from multiple business systems for retailers. They currently manage over 150 brands, close to 10 million SKUs and process more than 20 million order transactions every year for clients like Kogan, the Iconic and Amazon.
Nathan Bush: Frank, welcome to the checkout. We have five quick questions. We've learned a lot about what you and the team at commistry are doing around product and inventory data. But we're going to learn a little bit more about you. Five questions. Number one, what's the weirdest thing that you've ever bought online?
Frank Nesci: Oh, I'm going to be a boring, bland man here. I haven't bought any weird other than running the old products. But I'll give you a weird experience. I got a notification from my Australia Post locker that I had a parcel arrive, something I never ordered. So I was curious to go and pick it up and open it up and it was a pink cat cashmere scarf from China and I still to this very day don't know where it come from, who sent it to me. So could you return it?
Nathan Bush: What'd you do with it?
Frank Nesci: I think we donated to the Smith family.
Nathan Bush: Couldn't even pass it off as a nice loving gift from a husband.
Frank Nesci: No, my wife says no, it's not my stock, so.
Nathan Bush: Oh, you're lucked out there. All right. Number two, who is your favorite retailer? Bit of a tricky question given how many you're working with.
Frank Nesci: That's unfair. If I'd say who's my favorite retailer? I think the retailer that is really using the power of our platform, well, I wouldn't say one. Two of them from a product out of perspective will be Birds Nest and Adore Beauty. And I think Adore Beauty is actually really punching above the weight when it comes to headless commerce. Very smart team there putting it all together.
Nathan Bush: Is there anything you can tell us about Adore Beauty? Because obviously we ask this question to a lot of our guests and Adore Beauty comes up often at the pinnacle of E commerce in Australia and especially from a front end and a customer experience and customer loyalty, it all makes sense. You can see that. But is there anything that they're doing in the back end in terms of Making sure the data works, the inventory is there that people would be surprised by.
Frank Nesci: I just think it's simply centralization and smart management of data, whether it be product information, whether it be video content, whether it be inventory. It's just they know the importance of data and they've got some good team members that bring it all together and manage it on a day to day basis. Yeah.
Nathan Bush: So giving a shit about inventory and where it is and how you manage it, it's probably correct. I'll put words in your mouth. Number three, which E commerce practice do you wish was history?
Frank Nesci: The one that I think is where retailers think that their back end system is the be all and end all. It's got to do everything and thinking that tools like Comistry are just simply an integr and there's still a lot of functions and features missing in that backend system and it's holding the retailer back from being a better retailer than they can be.
Nathan Bush: And does this often happen with retailers who are hanging on for dear life with legacy backend platforms rather than taking the time to upgrade them along the way?
Frank Nesci: I think it happens with both legacy and modern. Even with modern applications, they get themselves in this trap of they pay for a lot of customization to make that backend system do more than what it should be doing.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, and we talked a lot about that in the main episode around sticking to the guardrails because the guardrails are there for a reason. Number four, can you recommend a book or a podcast that our listeners should immediately get into?
Frank Nesci: So I get inspired by listen to people's stories, their history and the two podcasts that it's how I built this. And with Melanie Perkins and the duo from Atlassian listen to their stories. You know, in the case of Melanie Perkins, she learned windsurfing to be able to get in front of the head guy at Blackbird to get him to listen to the story. I think that was amazing. And the guys from Atlassian use their credit cards to fund the business for many, many months or many years actually. And to become what it is today. It's just a phenomenal story. Both of them are phenomenal, strange stories.
Nathan Bush: Great examples and brilliant podcast. And we'll put links to both of those in the show notes as well. Last question I have for you. Finish this sentence. The future of retail is being able
Frank Nesci: to serve consumers in a timely manner with up to date information about your products, where they're located and how to get them in a timely manner.
Nathan Bush: Beautiful. It's a theme that keeps coming through. We had it in our chat, but we've had a few chats before this around being customer focused and customer obsessed. But you can't do that without having visibility and accuracy of your product data.
Frank Nesci: Yeah yeah, yeah.
[Voiceover]: Frank, thank you so much for joining
Nathan Bush: us on the checkout.
Frank Nesci: Thanks Nathan. Appreciate it. Again,
[Voiceover]: to hear more from Frank, jump back into episode 200 where Frank shares the importance of understanding business processes when designing tech solutions. He also talks about about how to navigate real time or near real time inventory and shares his learnings from scaling chemistry and going international. Thanks for listening. And until next time, keep adding to Carpenter.
