Nathan Bush: Meter maids, bikies and one of the best dam retail events in the country. That's what the Gold coast is known for. Retail Global is coming up on the 29th to the 31st of March and features amazing speakers from e commerce leaders like Amazon, Kogan and Booktopia. But the best part is catching up with some of the greatest people in E commerce. I'm going to be putting on my Budgie Smugglers and heading down there and I hope to see you there too. Tickets for the three day festival start at $450 and are still available over at retailglobal.com that's retailglobal.com au get your ticket, drop me a note. I'd love to see you there. 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 episode features Reece Verner from Shop. Reece is the head of partnerships for Shopify plus and was one of the first handful of Shopify employees when they first landed on Australian shores. Reece gives us a great view inside the fast growing world of Shopify. Reecy Ferner welcome to the Checkout. Here we're going to ask you five quick questions to understand more about you. Number one, what is the weirdest thing you've ever bought online?
Rhys Furner: I recently bought an LED light with a sensor that's attached to the toilet for the kids at night and it lights up the whole toilet in different colours and it's pretty cool but super weird. So I'd say that's the weirdest one at the moment.
Nathan Bush: When does it light up?
Rhys Furner: So it's got a sensor on it so it detects movement. So in the night, if my kids get up and need to go to the toilet, it detects the movement, turns the light on and they can easily find where they need to go, which having boys it's important that they know where where they need to go.
Nathan Bush: Well, that was the direction I thought you were going down that it lights up when you hit a target of some sort and it encourages clean paying.
Rhys Furner: There's a product idea. All right.
Nathan Bush: Number two, who is your favorite retailer?
Rhys Furner: Hard for me to go past Culture Kings. I think Simon and the team there have just done such a great job. It's incredibly unique. You know, even walking around Brooklyn you still don't see streetwear retailers like Culture Kings so have to give them a plug. I think they're a phenomenal brand and they do really cool stuff.
Nathan Bush: Anything specific that they do that you just puts them a mile above in store experience.
Rhys Furner: It's just like no other. You know, you walk in there and the vibe is just unreal. Between the DJs, the barbers, just the store layout, the basketball ring. Like they're so well connected to the culture of their fans and the community around it. I, I just think that experience is unlike anything I've. I've experienced before. I've been in a supreme popup in Brooklyn, which was pretty co. But yeah, I feel like culture kings just do such a great job with that in store experience.
Nathan Bush: Great. Example number three, which retail fad do
Rhys Furner: you wish was history? RFPs.
Nathan Bush: And if you want to know more about Reece's thoughts on that, we can go back to the episode with Reese where we talk about that. But also the alternative to RFPs, which are much more future focused, 100%. Will you answer an RFP if you get requested to do one?
Rhys Furner: We do do them just because, you know, the reality is it's part of the space that we play in, but we try to kind of get, I guess, the brands and retailers into that future mindset around. Okay, we've got a bit of a checklist here, but here's the things that we think this is missing. So. And provided that the retailers, you know, kind of very open to going, oh yeah, okay, that sounds really interesting. We hadn't considered that that will, you know, really push forward. But when it's just the checklist, it does make it difficult because you just don't feel like you're getting to the right outcome for the brand, which is a bit soul destroying. As a vendor, I love that chat
Nathan Bush: that we had around that. So that was a standout from our conversation. So I encourage people who are in the RFP mindset or about to look for the next platform to have a listen to Reese's view on that. Number four, can you recommend a book or a podcast that our listeners should immediately get into?
Rhys Furner: One of my favorite books on leadership is High Output Management by Andy Grove, ex Intel. Just phenomenal read. It's a little bit old now, but I've certainly learned a lot about leadership through that book, so I would highly recommend that to anyone that's kind of building and scaling teams. A great podcast though, that I have to slip in, which I absolutely loved, was the End of the World by Josh Clark. Really interesting podcast series which sits outside of the world in which we work, but just super interesting for anyone that wants to know about all of the challenges humanity faces. Wow.
Nathan Bush: Okay, that sounds big.
Rhys Furner: It is big. Super interesting.
Nathan Bush: Awesome. Good tips. Last one I've got for you, Reecy. Finish this sentence. The future of retail is already here,
Rhys Furner: so stop wasting time.
Nathan Bush: Oh, get on with it. Give him an, give this guy an RFP and get on with it.
Rhys Furner: We're so future, you know, it's really interesting and we do need to think of the future, no doubt about it. Like we have to be future minded in how we make a lot of decisions. But you know, there's so much great technology out there, you know, and don't get caught planning for war in the tent. Sometimes you've got to get out there and, and start swinging. And I think that we need to move fast. The consumers are moving very, very quickly. We've got to keep up.
Nathan Bush: I think it's a great point. It's there's so much opportunity out there. You're never going to be able to do everything that's already out there, let alone what's coming. So just get in, get in and get done.
Rhys Furner: 100%.
Nathan Bush: Reece Ferner, thanks for joining me on the checkout. If you want to check out our longer form conversation with Rhys, go back a couple of episodes and check that out.
Rhys Furner: Thank you. My pleasure. Thanks, Bushy.
Nathan Bush: To hear more from Reece, jump back into episode 39 where we speak with him about his Australian retail observations over the Black Friday sale period. He gives us a bit of a behind the scenes on the Shopify recruitment process and he shares how his mum is the inspiration behind him helping other entrepreneurs. Thanks for listening and until next time, keep adding to cartoon.
