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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 you through your Friday.
[Voiceover]: Today's checkout features Hayley and Andy Warley from sheet society. They 4 years ago with a 20k investment shooting web content on an iPhone and they even sold a car to pay for stock. Now they're generating over $15 million worth of sales a year, have a retail store, a team of 50 and operate out of a 3 and a half thousand square metre warehouse in Melbourne. Hayley and Andy Worley, welcome to the Checkout.
Nathan Bush: We have five quick questions. I feel like we learned so much about you in our main episode already, but we're going to learn more. All right, so five questions. First one I've got for you. What is the weirdest thing that you've ever bought online?
Hayley Worley: All right, mine is like a prosthetic tiger nose that I bought to wear to Glastonbury. We had like an animal dress up day and it was the weirdest thing because it was like skin color but it had this like nostril. It was the best.
Nathan Bush: How did you even research that?
Hayley Worley: That's a good question. I don't know.
Nathan Bush: Glastonbury. You do a lot of weird things in Glastonbury.
Hayley Worley: It's what happens in Glastonbury stays in Glastonbury.
Nathan Bush: What about you, Andy? Tiger tail
Andy Worley: for me, I'd say, okay. So we hired our first employee and it was, I don't know, sometime in the middle of 2019, we were still at Kensington Collective and it was a big kind of open warehouse with a lot of other businesses in there. And there was just so many flies around. And I wanted to make sure Phoebe, our new employee, had a nice work environment. So I bought her an electric fly swatter on ebay.
Nathan Bush: Beautiful.
Hayley Worley: It was awful it was like, you know those ones that zap flies but like shaped like a tennis racket and
Andy Worley: the fly literally catches fire.
Nathan Bush: Okay, all right, well, moving on. Number two, who is your favorite retailer?
Hayley Worley: Mine is a brand called All Things golden. So I use this as a cheap plug for my mates business. But yeah, it's a beautiful brand of just really lovely basics for women. So check it out. All Things Golden.
Andy Worley: I get a lot of inspiration from Gymshark. I love watching Ben Francis and his warehouse videos for me. But I also love Rapha Recycling brand from a brand perspective as well.
Nathan Bush: Well, yeah. Cool. Gymshark is just great warehouse porn, isn't it?
Andy Worley: Absolutely. And office inspired.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, absolutely. All right, number three, which retail fad do you guys wish was history?
Hayley Worley: I actually hate a pop up which is so bad. And we obviously have a pop up on our website because they work, but I just find them so frustrating. You know, I'm always on different brands, websites and within the first five or ten seconds it's like, sign up, get $50 off. I'm like, I don't even know what you sell yet. Like, stop, enough with the pop up. So yeah, unfortunately that's mine that I hate.
Nathan Bush: Have you had any learnings with your pop ups that you've had to adjust over time to get one better result and not piss customers off?
Andy Worley: It's been the same pop up from 2017. I don't think anyone's ever had any time to figure out if it's working or not.
Hayley Worley: That's a great. We'll put that on the next marketing meeting. Thank you.
Andy Worley: I think we chose.
Nathan Bush: Sorry, guys. What about you, Andy, Any fads?
Andy Worley: Those wheelie O thingies. The Spin and wins.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, they work right?
Andy Worley: They get results. I reckon we've done it as well Halloween spin and wins in the past.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, I don't mind the approach of having them for a short, sharp period, but if they're on all the time, they get really frustrating and old and paper kind of like wallpaper. All right, number four, can you recommend a book or a podcast that our listeners should immediately get into?
Hayley Worley: Yeah, my favorite book is the Monk who Sold His Ferrari. And I don't know if you've read it, but it keeps coming up.
Nathan Bush: I haven't read it yet.
Hayley Worley: Oh, does it? I'll have to send you a copy. I think I bought a few extras so I could send it away. So I'll send you one. It's a really lovely tale about, you know, the way you approach your days. So I really recommend it.
Nathan Bush: Cool.
Andy Worley: I love anything by Malcolm Gladwell. So outliers and Tipping Point and books like that are really, really cool for me. And I'm reading a book called Scaling up at the moment, which is really helping us at kind of our stage of growth. That's about people, strategy, execution, cash. Just really giving me a lot to think about.
Nathan Bush: Yeah.
Andy Worley: Nice.
Nathan Bush: All right, cool. Great. Great recommendations. Thanks, guys. Number five, finish this sentence. The future of retail is, for me,
Hayley Worley: it's about creating experiences through product and brand. I think you can't just sell things anymore. You've really got to bring consumers on the journey. And it's more than just a product. It's an experience.
Nathan Bush: Yeah.
Andy Worley: You stole my house. Yeah.
Hayley Worley: Well, that's good that we're aligned on that.
Nathan Bush: You've already said something else.
Hayley Worley: The spinny wheel.
[Voiceover]: Yeah.
Nathan Bush: The spinny wheel is the future.
Andy Worley: Yeah. Digital experiences. Yeah, absolutely.
Nathan Bush: The way to go. Beautiful, guys. Hayley and Andy, thank you for joining us on the checkout.
Hayley Worley: Thank you.
Andy Worley: Thanks, Bushy.
[Voiceover]: To hear more from Hayley and Andy, jump back into episode 109, where they share their incredible story today, including the challenges that they've faced while building such a significant business in the a short amount of time. Highlights for me included the multiple warehouses and the difficulties in stock forecasting, especially during COVID Hayley also shares her approach to building a brand that shows you are doing things differently in a very crowded category. And we even get an insight into how Andy wooed over Hayley in the early days. Talk about a smooth operator.
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