Nathan Bush: Happy Holidays. I hope you're enjoying this episode of Add to Cart on a beach or somewhere really relaxing after a big 2022. We're taking a break at Add to Cart so we're bringing you some extra checkout episodes that haven't gone to air yet. We'll be back with our feature episodes from Monday 16th January and the very first episode we have lined up is an absolute star of the industry. We can't wait to bring it to you. Until then, enjoy the downtime and we'll see you in the new.
[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 Simon Molnar, founder at Flagship, a retail focused tech company that uses Bluetooth product stickers to give brick and mortar stores access to the kind of data and insights and that E
Nathan Bush: commerce businesses have long enjoyed. Simon, thank you so much for joining us on the Checkout. We've learned a lot about what you're building at Flagship and a little bit about your journey so far. We're here to learn a little bit more about you. So five quick questions. Number one, what's the weirdest thing that you've ever bought online?
Simon Molnar: I probably say the weirdest thing I'd ever bought. I guess it's not necessarily too weird. It's chocolate coated strawberries. Edible Blooms was one of the first retailers that aftermate brought on and, and Nick sent us all a message saying everyone buy from this retailer. So I jumped on and yeah, that's, sorry, amazing.
Nathan Bush: Kelly and the team, they're getting on early.
Simon Molnar: Exactly.
Nathan Bush: And number two, who is your favorite retailer?
Simon Molnar: I would have to say Venroy. It's just, I mean as much I think what they're doing is unreal. I think they've created a really unique experience, a really unique product. I feel like they're at the forefront of the style they created. And also Sean and the team are awesome. Got a great relationship with them and I, yeah, I think that, I think they're the bees knees over there. So we definitely have to be them. Awesome.
Nathan Bush: All right, number three, which e commerce practice do you wish was history?
Simon Molnar: Okay, this is probably going to be a kind of longer winded answer. So I built Ice on a very strong SEO strategy. The focus for me was making sure that all the pages I wanted to rank would rank. And one of the products that we offered was Michael Kors and I was so heavily focused on making sure my Michael Kors watch page ranked for every single Michael Kors term. And what that meant was it started ranking for Michael Kors silver watches, Michael Kors gold watches, Michael Kors Rose gold watches. And what ended up happening was I was getting all this traffic from all these different keywords and I couldn't merchandise my site relative to what someone was searching for because I was ranking for every single keyword. And. And what I ended up building at ICE and what I wish retailers would move away from is this notion that you have to just promote the best selling product because it's the bestselling product and being able to offer a product to someone. If someone comes to my site, they might want the watch that's only been purchased two times ever in history. But I will never show them that watch because it's not a top seller. I would love and it's. This is a much bigger journey, but I would love that ability for a category page to be able to be tailored towards the individual and not towards just what sells best, to create a bit more of a personalized experience and again increase that conversion rate.
Nathan Bush: Do you feel in your journey personalization is getting better or do you feel like it's still being thrown around as a buzzword without enough kind of action?
Simon Molnar: Yeah, I do think it is a bit of a buzzword. I think it's getting better. So I built out this tool for myself at ice, but basically what would happen was if someone hit a certain product or a certain category and didn't purchase, if they came back to my homepage, my entire homepage would be entirely tailored towards that product and they or that category that they were looking for. So if they came looking for watches and they hit multiple brands, then when they came back, I'd show watches and I'd show the brands that they looked at if they looked in Michael Kors watches when they came back. My homepage was entirely Michael Kors focused. And I always had. At the one point in time I had 25 concurrent homepages running which were all tailored towards people based on their previous behaviors on my site that took me a long time to build out economy. Also wanted to kind of productize that. I was about to say, were you
Nathan Bush: tempted to box it up and productize it?
Simon Molnar: Yeah, just. It almost went into the too hard basket. It was too bespoke. I would have to be bespoke to every retailer. But that's where I would love like I, my wife and I will both jump on the same side and we both did the exact same homepage, even for some massive retailers. And that to me is crazy. I mean, at a bare minimum, they should be able to identify that she's more likely to look at women products and I'm more likely to look at men's products. And there are a few retailers that kind of do that distinction well. But I would love for a lot of products I've wanted to build, I just want someone to build because I want to experience it myself. So anyone who's listening to this and anyone who wants to build that, go for gold. I don't want any royalties, any commission, anything like that. I just want to be able to go to the website and have a personalized experience. So anyone that wants to take that, go for gold.
Nathan Bush: That's it. Simon can't build everything, go out and do something for him.
Simon Molnar: But yeah, I think that that true personalized experience, I think is. Is where I would love for retail to get to love it.
Nathan Bush: Number four, can you recommend a book or a podcast that our listeners should immediately get into?
Simon Molnar: There's a book called Soar with your strengths. It's directly related to the Clifton strengths finder test. So anyone who's listening who hasn't done that test, I highly recommend you do it. It gives you 34 strengths, it will give you the option to do five, but get all 34. It will give you 34 strengths and it gives you that self awareness, that understanding to really know what makes you as a person. And that book creates some really good fundamental practices for running a business. And my biggest takeaway is you work to your strengths, you manage your weaknesses. So if you do something that comes naturally to you and you understand it inherently, your output is going to be greater than 100%. Whereas if you do something that is more laborious, it doesn't come naturally to you. It's a bit more of an uphill task. Your output is going to be 60 to 70%. So even at flagship, my whole focus and my whole mentality is finding the roles and finding the jobs that people naturally gravitate towards. And if there's something that needs to be done and there's no one internally that fits that skill set, then we find someone externally to help us with it. And that book, saw with your strengths really helps outline that kind of framework. And yeah, it really helps you work to your strengths.
Nathan Bush: It's a great tip. And do you know. And you may not. I can actually Google this afterwards, but
Nathan Bush: do you know, if you have to
Nathan Bush: read the book, do the test or can you do the test online somewhere?
Simon Molnar: You can do the test exclusively. And yeah, I'd say the book is more just to kind of give you a deeper understanding of. Of the test. Gotcha.
Nathan Bush: All right, we're going to find it and we'll put a link in the show. Notes Number 5. Can you finish this sentence? The future of retail is constantly evolving.
Simon Molnar: The landscape of retail right now is shifting it like Covid online, offline, everything is currently evolving and it's going to land somewhere new. Where that lands, I'm not 100% sure. I just want to be a part of that journey and part of that, that drive. And yeah, I think again, with all businesses, the retailers who can adapt the quickest is going to be the ones that thrive and the ones that win.
Nathan Bush: Simon, I think you're going to be a big part of it, whether you like it or not. You've had such a huge impact so far. So thank you so much for joining us on the checkout.
Simon Molnar: All good. Thanks for having me.
Nathan Bush: To hear more from Simon, jump back over to episode 220, where Simon shares the story of how he went from selling Pandora jewellery to his schoolteacher to building one of Australia's biggest online jewelry sites. He also talks about why his biggest strength is also his greatest weakness and how his ultimate goal is to make manual stock takes a thing of the past.
Nathan Bush: Hallelujah.
Nathan Bush: Thanks for listening. And until next time, keep adding to car.
