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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 through your Friday.
[Ad]: Here's your host, Bushy Today's checkout features Holly Cardu, founder and CEO of Carted. Carted is an app designed to help consumers supercharge their shopping game with organization, comparison, collaboration and sales access. Holly's entrepreneurial background saw her selling handbags on eBay aged 14 and now several startups and a decade later, Carted is her focus. Holly, welcome to the Checkout.
Nathan Bush: We've had a great conversation in our main episode around the exciting things that you're building at carted, helping people pull together all those tabs into one organized place, which is an amazing thing, but also what is fueling that underneath with the Carted product graph, which will be very, very interesting to keep an eye on over the coming years. But here to ask five quick questions to get to know a little bit more about you. Number one, what's the weirdest thing that you've ever bought online?
Holly Cardew: The weirdest thing that I bought online, to be honest, I don't think it's actually weird. It's more so that I bought a sofa online and I was it's not weird that I bought a sofa. It's weird that I used to go around trying to build e commerce sites and people would say to me, I know people aren't going to buy online, it's like too expensive. And if I think about it, my sofa is probably one of the most expensive things that I've bought online. So I think that's weird in itself is that we now make purchases for thousands of dollars from looking at some images.
Nathan Bush: You know what was weird was that the story that you told around how you got into E commerce of your mum buying groceries online in 1999, which is well before most people were even thinking about shopping online, let alone doing their groceries. So it's obviously in your blood that it's like that is normal just to buy these things online.
Holly Cardew: Why not? You can always send it back most of the time.
Nathan Bush: All right, number two, who is your favorite retailer?
Holly Cardew: Oh, I'm a little bit retailer agnostic. I do love brands, but I absolutely have a dog and I love the delivery service of Pet Circle. They are incredible. You order now, they'll pack it in like an hour and it will definitely be with you the next day. And then the other thing is, I have a soft versus satire Satya. I never know how to pronounce them set here. They're the publicly listed company. They have designer things, designer items directly from the factories in Italy. And they got some good deals. And when I track them on carded and the exchange rate goes down, I get even cheaper. Ah.
[Ad]: And are you saying.
Nathan Bush: Because they are one of the most fascinating stories, I think, in E commerce at the moment, are you seeing from your carted customers that there's a real interest in them?
Holly Cardew: There's definitely an interest in designer items and tracking designer items because they won't necessarily just be in the designer store, but they are a marketplace with a lot of designer items. So yes, it is lovely.
Nathan Bush: Business model carrying no stock.
Holly Cardew: Yes.
Nathan Bush: All right, number three, which e commerce practice do you wish was history?
Holly Cardew: I would say fast fashion. I'm really into buying quality and that doesn't mean expensive, but just fast fashion in general. And I think like, intentional shopping is really becoming a thing and consumers really do care. Like, when we speak to our customers, a lot of them talk about intentional shopping, making sure that that's actually what they want versus an impulse purchase. So I think consumers are really wanting, like, transparency and accountability from brands now. So I would say fast fashion is something we don't need more crap.
Nathan Bush: No. And I think we're in a really interesting crossroads at the moment where there's never been an opportunity to be to access more crap through international marketplaces. And also the pressures of, you know, the economy, the cost of living and stuff makes it easy for people to kind of put ethics and beliefs aside and go, it's just for now. So I think we're in a really interesting space to test consumers and how. How much they're willing to pay and sacrifice for quality and ethical practices.
[Ad]: Number four, can you recommend a book
Nathan Bush: or a podcast that our listeners should immediately get into.
Holly Cardew: I really love the book inspired by Marty Kagan. So it's how to create tech products customers love. He's from Silicon Valley and I think this get the book can really be applied to building for E Commerce. It really talks about, like diving into the team structure, the customers asking customers questions. So I think it's a fantastic book.
Nathan Bush: Awesome. And is that an older book? Is that something that you've taken through your journey, or is it relatively recent?
Holly Cardew: I got it a couple of years ago. Do you know Gavin from Disco Labs in Melbourne?
[Ad]: Kevin Ballard?
Nathan Bush: He's been on. He's a. He's a friend of the show.
Holly Cardew: There you go. He gave it to me and it's honestly one of the best books. So I've had it a couple years. I'm a highlighter. I get the highlight out and highlight my books. It's probably my most highlighted book that I have on the shelf.
Nathan Bush: Okay, good tip. Thank you.
[Ad]: Last question I've got for you.
Nathan Bush: Finish this sentence. The future of retail is personalized and contextual. Yeah, it sounds like you need some good data to be able to deliver both of those.
Holly Cardew: You know it.
Nathan Bush: Holly, thank you so much for joining us on the checkout.
Holly Cardew: Thanks so much for having me.
[Ad]: To hear more from Holly, jump back into episode 413 where Holly shares how Cartit works Think, a massive product API that's available to customers. Holly shares how she approaches the pitch process and gives her thoughts on the future of contextual commerce. Thanks for listening. And until next time, keep adding to Cart.
