[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 Gavin Ballard, CEO and founder of Submarine. Submarine is a shopify add on that helps brands and agencies push the limits of what e commerce platforms can do for subscriptions, memberships, crowdfunding and more. Gav is also the founder of e commerce agency Disco Labs and has helped develop e commerce experiences for leading brands such as jb, hi Fi, Ufoods and Lovisa. Gav, welcome to the Checkout. Thank you for joining us. We heard a lot about composable Commerce
Nathan Bush: and the great work you're doing at Submarine in our main episode, but we're here to learn a few things about you. Five quick questions. Number one, what is the weirdest thing that you've ever bought online?
Gavin Ballard: So part of this is a confession that I don't buy a lot of stuff online, which seems weird for someone working in E commerce, but so I'm going to answer this with the weirdest thing that I've seen someone else buy online, which is that there was a Canadian Shopify store that turned over about a million dollars a year selling graveyard dirt, which is kind of interesting, authentic bonafide graveyard. You've got to use it for particular Wiccan rituals. So yeah, I didn't know there was such a thing. Yeah, the margins on dirt must be pretty awesome. I reckon.
Nathan Bush: That is insane. I didn't know graveyard dirt was even a thing, let alone you could sell it online. All right, there we go. Number two, who is your favorite retailer
Gavin Ballard: wearing them right now? I'm a sucker for a Patagonia. Yeah, I think it's slowly getting to the stage where 90% of my wardrobe is Patagonia. Just absolutely incredible brand and their products are really good quality.
Nathan Bush: Number three, which e commerce practice do you wish was history?
Gavin Ballard: Taking a leaf from the main episode, I would say agencies selling headless websites to brands that don't need them, which is almost all headless builds.
Nathan Bush: What are the follow up question what are the red flags for clients if an agency starts talking about headless, what are the BS detectors?
Gavin Ballard: I mean, ask them why do I need headless over something? And if the answers that are coming back are performance flexibility, then push a bit harder. And then also be asking questions about okay, what's this going to take to maintain after we ship it?
Nathan Bush: Great tips, great tips. All right. Number four, can you recommend a book or a podcast that our listeners should immediately get into.
Gavin Ballard: I can completely outside the world of E commerce, but I'm a relatively recent dad and I've just started listening to Hamish Blake's How Are the Dad's dad podcast and I found that very enjoyable and interesting. So if you are a dad dad to be, then highly recommend it.
Nathan Bush: I reckon it's good even for non dads to a certain extent because they're entertaining as a lot of just choosing how to be around the people that you choose to be around.
Gavin Ballard: Yeah, it's good food for thought.
Nathan Bush: Have you got a favorite app I'm putting on the spot now?
Gavin Ballard: Oh, you are? I recently listened to Pat Cummins episode which was pretty interesting, but they're all really good.
Nathan Bush: Who was it? Tom Gleason, I think was one of the first ones and it's something that stuck with me and I shared it with Sarah, my wife, and it's something we live by now. He said you get 10 good summers.
Gavin Ballard: Yes.
Nathan Bush: And it's like between that when kids are kind of zero to three, four, they're cute, they're lovely, but they're hard work. And then when they get to about 14, they probably don't want to be around you that much.
[Voiceover]: So you've kind of got 10 really
Nathan Bush: good summers there between the ages of 4 and 14. Make the most of them, take those trips, do the things to be together. I love that.
Gavin Ballard: That was a takeaway for me. Rob Sytch's episode was really, really good too, so I highly recommend that one.
Nathan Bush: Actually, it was Rob Sytch that said that, so thank you. Number five, finish this sentence. The future of retail is flexible.
Gavin Ballard: I'm going to have to say, I don't know if you knew this, but I own flexible commerce.org and it's got a little bit of a rant on what I think about flexible commerce and why it's kind of the future of commerce. But yeah, given that I can't say anything other than flexible.
Nathan Bush: Is it kind of a cult website? Do you have people who are like as ranty about flexible commerce coming to you through that?
Gavin Ballard: It's funny you say that. If you check the website, I kind of enumerate these five principles that I think are important. Flexible commerce. And they're C A R, G O. So it's kind of like cargo culting. Love it.
Nathan Bush: Gav, thank you so much for joining us on the checkout.
Gavin Ballard: All right, thanks, Nate.
[Voiceover]: To hear more from Gavin, jump back into episode 282, where Gav drills into what composable commerce, flexible commerce, headless commerce, what it actually is and how retailers should consider it. We also cover Gav's favorite Shopify themes from his best selling but now out of date paper, the definitive guide to Shopify themes. And we hear the story of how he ended up in the office of Shopify CEO Toby Luetka.
Nathan Bush: Juicy.
[Voiceover]: Thanks for listening, and until next time, keep adding to cart.
