Nathan Bush: Before we get into today's checkout, I want to invite you into something brand new. Our free Slack add to CART community. After four years of bringing you experts and leaders in e commerce, I thought it was time to connect you our listeners. I have no doubt that you can share experiences, tips and questions that will help you in your e commerce, businesses and careers. It makes sense to bring you all together. If that sounds like a community that you want to be a part of, head on over to add to cart.comaue ecommerce community to join.
[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. Here's your host, bushy.
Nathan Bush: Today's checkout features Laura Thompson and Sarah Sheridan, co founders of Clothing the Gaps. Clothing the Gaps is now Australia's leading indigenous fashion brand and arguably Australia's foremost brand when it comes to leading real social change for indigenous Australians.
Nathan Bush: Laura, Sarah, welcome to the Checkout. We've heard all about closing the GAPS mission and some of the incredible things that you're up to, but we're here to learn a little bit more about you both. So I've got five quick questions for you. Number one, what's the weirdest thing that you've ever bought online?
Laura Thompson: Oh, God,
Sarah Sheridan: I've bought, I have a dog. George and I once on Marketplace in Loftyard bought some like, some just some secondhand like Kong toys and I get everything delivered to work. And our one of the warehouse team brought them up and he was really excited because he thought he knew what it was. And I played a game on him, played a bit of a trick on him because he was feeling the package, thinking that it was something else and he freaked it out. But it was actually just coleslaw. Everyone knows what common dog. So I scared the living daylights out of him. It was so funny. Poor brother.
Laura Thompson: Mine's not that exciting, but Sez and I were working in prisons and had to bring a clear bag. And the bag I brought to carry all our cords in was about this big. As it says, I got some clear bags.
Sarah Sheridan: She was so proud of herself because we'd been having this, you know, in our health promotion life, we, you know, ran health promotion programs in prison for three years. And there was this real issue about, yeah, everything had to be clear, but laws didn't read the dimensions correctly and we had these little clear bags.
Laura Thompson: So cute for a sandwich.
Nathan Bush: All right, number two, who is your Favorite retailer?
Sarah Sheridan: Oof.
Laura Thompson: I don't know. I'm gonna put it out there. I've been Patagonia collab if you're interested. Hit us up.
Nathan Bush: Yeah.
Sarah Sheridan: My favorite retailer that I feel like is doing really cool stuff at the moment. They're quite small. They're, they're based in Australia. They're called Worn for Good. What they do is they work with and they just, they nail it. They're home center the Prof. Go into a different charity every quarter. What they do is they take excess. So they're solving this really amazing circularity gap and they're taking excess product from like high end brands and then offering it in sort of like a resell market, but essentially as a fundraiser. And their comms are just, they're beautiful. So Worn for Good.
Nathan Bush: Okay.
Laura Thompson: And one of the things about Panagodi that I love is their loyalty program that sort of rewards you for actions you take and not just what you buy.
Sarah Sheridan: Yeah, yeah.
Nathan Bush: They do it so well. All right, number three, which e commerce practice do you wish was history?
Sarah Sheridan: Oh, we'd have to know what they were to know.
Laura Thompson: Yeah. I mean, things I don't like on E commerce maybe. I don't know.
Nathan Bush: Yeah.
Sarah Sheridan: Genuinely, I think people often say to laws and I like, oh, you know, you do things outside of the box so often it's because we actually don't know where the box is. We just do. We both shop a lot.
Laura Thompson: You know, we know what a really
Sarah Sheridan: good experience looks and feels like. So I honestly think if we didn't think that that e commerce practice made sense, I just think we've worked around it and got it out of our process because we don't think it makes any sense.
Laura Thompson: There's some things that I think are harder than what it should be in Shopify still. Like, you know.
Sarah Sheridan: Oh yeah, like back in stock stuff. Like, why isn't that just easier?
Laura Thompson: And bundles are still tricky.
Sarah Sheridan: There's like weird things around pre sailing. Like there's things that are just annoying.
Laura Thompson: Why can't we just date of birth straight away so we can do loyalty? Like some of those things I think could be easier and built into the program that aren't separate apps.
Nathan Bush: And you gave a great tip in the main episode of how easy it is to add traditional place names into delivery addresses as well using Shopify integrated into Australia Post as well. So that was a great tip as well. So lots there. All right, number four, can you recommend a book or a podcast that our listeners should immediately get into? Goodies.
Sarah Sheridan: The new Cool. It is this amazing, amazing book and the two fellows that wrote it. My brain always skips them, but goodies. The new Cool speaks about businesses essentially doing better, but also just go through the ethos of you can't be a crappy product in the process. Like you have to have a kick ass product and a kick ass purpose. The two are not mutually exclusive.
Laura Thompson: Yeah, look, I would second says on that like there's a lot of merch with a message and a lot of it's really, it's giveaway and it's a shitty quality and it's bad for the environment. It's not made ethically and most people just wear them as night is too bad. So we're really about how do we create cool merch that people look good in and you know, hand down for generations and I'm good as a new cool really talks to that. And for businesses who want to, businesses can be both cool, make money and make a difference.
Nathan Bush: Brilliant.
Nathan Bush: Last one, finish this sentence. The future of retail is really exciting
Sarah Sheridan: if people do it well.
Laura Thompson: I guess the first thing that comes to mind is the future of retail can make history and make change beautiful.
Nathan Bush: And there's no one making a lot more change than you guys. So congratulations on what you're doing at the moment and your plans for the future. Really exciting and good luck over the coming weeks as it's going to be no doubt a bit of a turbulent time. So thinking of you and hope it goes really well.
Laura Thompson: Thanks, Nathan.
Sarah Sheridan: Thanks, Nate.
Nathan Bush: To hear more from Laura and Sarah, jump back into episode 337 where they share the amazing engagement metrics that they generate. We're talking almost 50% customer return rate.
Nathan Bush: We'd all like that.
Nathan Bush: They also share their battle with the American client clothing giant Gap, and how to meaningfully acknowledge or honour Australia's indigenous
Nathan Bush: culture within your business. Thanks for listening and until next time, keep adding to Carpenter.
