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[Voiceover]: Welcome to the checkout. We catch up with previous add to cut guests and ask them five quick questions to get to know them better and leave you with a little extra inspiration to get through your Friday. Here's your host, Bushy.
[Ad]: Today's checkout features Damian Smith, CTO of Paramount Retail. Paramount Retail are homes of brands that you will definitely recognize, including Boozebud and Barrel and Batch, some of Australia's leading online alcohol retailers. Between Aaron's Marketing Savvy and Damien's Tech, know how they are driving Paramount Retail's growth and really interesting transformation across e commerce and now physical retail.
Nathan Bush: Damian, thank you so much for joining us on the checkout. It was great to hear everything that you are doing at Paramount Group including some of the brand relaunches and your new infrastructure. We're keeping everything as simple as possible on Shopify plus while expanding new options such as next day delivery with deliver in person. But we're not here to talk tech. We're not going to get nerdy. We're going to learn more about you. So I've got five quick questions. Number one, what's the weirdest thing that you've ever bought online?
Damien Smith: I think it would have to be K Pop cards for my youngest daughter but she's now 11 so she's just worked out how to buy them herself. So.
Nathan Bush: Right, yeah. K Pop. Where does the fascination with K Pop come from?
Damien Smith: I don't know, it's. It's a real thing. So she's like for years now she's just got her favorite K Pop bands and then the cards arrive and I have to sit down and pick out which one's my favorite artist. Out of all the cards that I'm shown.
Nathan Bush: Has she asked you to dress up like a K Pop star yet? No. No. Okay. All right, number two, let's move on. Which retailer has most inspired you Recently
Damien Smith: I had to buy some skateboard bearings. Recently. My oldest daughter's 14, just decided she wants to go skateboarding. So I dusted off my 30 year old skateboard and the bearings were shot. And I found this amazing skateboard retailer called Kick Push located in like tweed heads or something and just get the vibe they're really trying to do the best they can across every single touch point and just doing it well and they're just nailing all the basics. Got great website, good pricing, had what I needed. It's fast, express delivery at a good price. Follow up emails. For such a niche industry like skateboarding, it's like these guys are just doing it really well. Just stood out.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. Can you still ride the skateboard?
Damien Smith: I can cruise around. Don't ask me to ollie. Rubbish.
Nathan Bush: Oh, that's my dream though. I got a skateboard about five years ago for Father's Day because I asked for it and I like, I had that idea of like being at the beach and kids are on bikes, whatever, and I can cruise around. Literally got it, took it out, put on the ground in the bedroom, stood on it and it fell out from under me, hit my head in the bed, useless in the garage. Gave up straight away, too scared. All right, number three, name a piece of tech that you or your e commerce business couldn't live without.
Damien Smith: Right now I'd have to say Asana. So we're using that for all of our project and task management. Also because I'm in Sydney, the rest of the team's in Melbourne, and plus we've got some offshore staff members as well. And just a way for us all to keep in touch with what we're meant to be doing next.
Nathan Bush: Number four, can you recommend a book or a podcast that our listeners should immediately get into?
Damien Smith: Yeah, I've got one of each actually. So book, it's a favorite area of mine actually called Good Strategy, Bad Strategy, written by a guy, Richard Rummelt, and it's just actionable strategy framework. And so Aaron and I have used that a lot this year. So it's not that long, but a really good read. A lot of anecdotes in it, a lot of takeaways, and for a podcast, it's one I've been listening to for a very long time called Manager Tools. But anyone who's managing a team, again, actionable advice about different situations, here's how to do it. This is how what you say, Amazing. So particularly for new managers, it's a great resource.
Nathan Bush: That's brilliant because no one teaches you that stuff really? Exactly.
Damien Smith: That's how I found it. It's like, how do you do this management stuff?
Nathan Bush: And is that. Is that local or is that international?
Damien Smith: It's based in the US but it's. Yeah, they've been going for over a decade and just. Yeah, just. You can start simple, take as much as little as you want. But yeah, for people moving from a technical role into a management role, which is a completely different skill set that nobody teaches you, as you said, it's a lifeline.
Nathan Bush: Fantastic tip. Thank you. Last question I've got for you, Damo. What is your biggest challenge today?
Damien Smith: I need to duplicate myself pretty much. So it's really just having the time to get into the analysis. So within everything we're doing from a campaign perspective or product mix, there's a mix of winners and losers. So it's really trying to pick out what are the things that are not worth spending time on, spending money on, to bring up that average. So it's really a question of what can we stop doing to improve?
Nathan Bush: Makes you a popular person in the office, doesn't it?
Damien Smith: Sometimes.
Nathan Bush: Damo, thank you so much for joining us on the checkout.
Damien Smith: Thanks.
[Ad]: Pushing to hear more from Erin and Damien. Jump back into episode 446 where they share how Paramount Retail has simplified their tech stack to allow them to transform. We talked about building brand distinctiveness and how sometimes the simplicity and the basics is actually the core of the brand. We talked about how they launched next day delivery to stay ahead in a really competitive alcohol market and why brick
Nathan Bush: and mortar stores will now play a huge part in their future growth strategy.
Damien Smith: Thanks for listening.
Nathan Bush: And until next time, keep adding to cartoon.
