Laura Thompson: That piece of merch was limited. You could only get it if you participated. So it created this strong sense of community, but it also reinforced cultural identity and a sense of team.
[Voiceover]: It felt like there were a whole bunch of other like minded non Aboriginal people like me just waiting in the wings for the permission to be like they were like, oh, finally I am allowed.
Laura Thompson: We're 30 something days to go. There is time for retailers to step up because the last thing you want to do is look back in history and think, I wish I'd done more.
[Voiceover]: Welcome to ADD to cart, Australia's leading
Laura Thompson: e commerce podcast that Express delivers all you need to know in the fast moving world of online retail. Here's your host, Bushy.
Nathan Bush: Today, as always, I'm coming to you from my podcast studio here on Terrible Country. It's a land that Australia's Indigenous people have been sharing stories on for over 60,000 years now. As someone who shares stories for a living, not quite as well as the Indigenous people, I am in awe and respect for the world's oldest living culture. We are so lucky to share this land with them. Currently, I am thinking especially of today's Indigenous communities who may be impacted by by an important but potentially divisive time in our nation's history. That's an acknowledgement or honouring that is new for Add to cart. It's one that I've been thinking about for a while now and it is today's conversation that really challenged me and helped me frame it in a way that is genuine and authentic for me. Today I am lucky enough to be joined by Clothing the Gap's co founders, Laura Thompson and Sarah Sheridan. Started as a Covid hustle when Laura and Sarah were in health promotion 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 communities. From their Free the Flag campaign which ended up freeing the Flag, to this year's Voice referendum Clothing, the GAPS are an inspirational team who won't stop or apologise for standing up for issues that really matter to Indigenous Australians. We cover so much in this chat from the amazing engagement metrics that they generate from we're talking almost 50% customer return rate. We'd all like a bit of that. To their battle with the American clothing giant Gap and to the complexities around the Voice for their mob. While we always aim for a diverse range of guests on Add to Cart, over the next four weeks we've put the spotlight on Indigenous leaders and change makers We've got an important referendum coming up on the 14th of October and we wanted to make sure that that indigenous voices within the e commerce community are heard. So, thanks to our partners, Shopify plus and Paclio, here's our conversation with Laura Thompson and Sarah Sheridan, co founders of Clothing the Gaps. Laura, Sarah, welcome to ADD to cart.
[Voiceover]: Hello.
Nathan Bush: Great to have you here. Sarah, well done on making it to the recording. I understand that you kind of just jumped out of bed and got an Uber just in time to get here.
[Voiceover]: Yeah, it's about 4 o' clock in the morning for me. I've just flew back in from Sri Lanka last night after spending some time with a trade delegation of other really lovely, fabulous, incredible Aboriginal businesses exploring different opportunities in Sri Lanka, but nowhere else. I'd rather be first up.
Nathan Bush: Amazing. Nothing like doing a podcast with a bit of jet lag and on in a different time zone. Well done.
[Voiceover]: It'll be fine.
Nathan Bush: It'll be fine. All right, let's get into it. Laura, I want to start with talking about how Closing the Gaps came about. And obviously it wasn't called Clothing the gaps back then. When you started, how did it come about? What was the inspiration behind the idea?
Laura Thompson: Yeah, well, we started, Sarah and I actually worked together at the Victorian Aboriginal Health Service in health promotion. Like, we're actually health promotion professionals.
Nathan Bush: What is health promotion?
Laura Thompson: Yeah, health promotion.
[Voiceover]: So getting people to drink more water, eat more fruits and veggies, get moving, those sorts of things. So health promotion can be anything from ensuring that there's all abilities, access. So something like a ramp is actually health promotion. A sign that says no smoking here, health promotion, 40ks in a school zone. Kind of like it all sort of those things that create the environments that we want to see kind of fall under that big health promotion banner. And we did that together for a really long time.
Laura Thompson: We loved it. Like, creating environments that make the healthy choice the easy choice. I'm really good at it and it always reminds me we've got some boxes at Closing the Gaps now and they're full of costumes. And why do you have so many costumes? Like, Health Promotion Engaging. Like, I was a carrot a lot.
[Voiceover]: Crown. Yeah, we were like. We had different characters. Deadly dress up as. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So this whole, I guess, like this whole bit of like engaging people in a conversation and then getting them to think differently, perhaps about how we move in the world and what environments look like is nothing new for us.
Laura Thompson: Yeah, so we. So I was Sarah's boss. Sarah started with me on a placement and then we just felt like. This feels weird because I'm talking about my partner, this connection. But no, I think we just had similar work styles, work ethic and energy for the job and commitment. And after working together and really growing the team at the Victoria Aboriginal household, we did a great job there, if I do say so myself. Like, we left at a high, right. We left at a high where we thought we should start our own health promotion business. And that's what we did. So we started a health promotion business called Spark Health. It was, you know, humble beginnings.
[Voiceover]: People really enjoyed our style of community engagement and we got to work with Aboriginal community right across Victoria, really. But we'd always been doing merch, so people often will say to us, like, oh, you, Your health promotion. How on earth. Where does the clothes thing come from? But if you came to four out of six of our health and wellbeing sessions, you got yourself a free piece of merch. So merch is always been there as like an integral thread of the health promotion program, sort of recipe forever.
Laura Thompson: It's a bride, basically. Yeah. We created cool merch. You can only get it if you came. But what, that merch actually.
[Voiceover]: Yeah.
Nathan Bush: Come get bribed by the carrot and the clown.
[Voiceover]: Yeah. What could go wrong?
Laura Thompson: That's why I was successful.
Nathan Bush: Most things were community building right there.
[Voiceover]: Exactly.
Laura Thompson: But, yeah, when we talk about the merch, and I'm joking when it's a bribe, but people wanted to work for it because that piece of merch was limited. You could only get it if you participated. So it created this strong sense of community, but it also reinforced cultural identity and a sense of team. So when you roll that running singlet, you know that those people are going to hold you to account that those are the people that you could call if you wanted a training partner or if you were struggling with your diet. These people have got your back.
[Voiceover]: It's that unspoken connection. Bit through clothing.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[Voiceover]: So it's been really interesting then out of. I guess out of. We used to call it Spark Merch when we. So when we launched the consultancy, the health promotion consultancy, we still launched with a merch range as well. So we had like a hoodie, a singlet and a Frank Green, A customized Frank Green. It was called Spark Merch because we were called Spark Health.
Nathan Bush: Yep.
Laura Thompson: And I couldn't think of anything else better.
Nathan Bush: No.
[Voiceover]: And then we kind of eventually got to closing the gaps. Thank goodness. Spark Merch was kind of bad.
Laura Thompson: And then lockdown happened in 2020 and then all those programs that were running At Spark Health ceased. And they were like, God, how are we going to survive? We've got no soft money, no government funding. What are we going to do?
[Voiceover]: Yeah.
Laura Thompson: And we're like, oh, everyone's going to be on their phones. Content is going to be king. What about we put a little bit more effort into our online brand. We don't have a whole lot more. And that coincided with the Black Lives Matter movement and the murder of George Floyd. And then every person wanted a black T shirt and we had some.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, okay.
Laura Thompson: And that's kind of how we started
Nathan Bush: for so much longer than that.
Laura Thompson: No. 2020. We started cleaning the gap pretty much. And since then Spark's been sort of tucked in and put to bed.
Nathan Bush: Okay.
[Voiceover]: And Spark Health has essentially become. What we really did was we transitioned all of the health promotion programs. So what we did in Covid as well, we, we pivoted early. Like really early. We were, it was like, I think I'd been watching too much contagion. Like I knew what was coming. It was fine. I was like, we, we really, we switched all of our programs to online really fast. Like we were the ones buying one of those things called cameras and mics and stuff. Like before, they all got sold out and pushed all that programs online pretty quickly. But we knew that there was no more after that. So that's where the importance of really strengthening the brand was vital because we were kind of also kind of like looking at the team being like, oh my God, we are not going to be able to keep the team.
Laura Thompson: And there were three people at the time like Sarah and I and one other two others.
[Voiceover]: We had Lena at the time. Yeah.
Laura Thompson: And I think what happened with Spark Health, essentially we turned it into not for profit. And it is now the closing the gaps Foundation.
Nathan Bush: Gotcha.
Laura Thompson: So essentially the T shirts now fund the work of the clothing. The Gats Foundation.
Nathan Bush: Ever scrolled through an e commerce packaging website for fun? Nah, me neither. Until today. Paclio is putting the Joy into the packaging game. So let's play a game. I'll tell you the name of the Paclio product and you have to try and guess what kind of product they are. Fairy floss, Compostable mailer, Queen bee Honeycomb padded mailer. Here we go. Gummy shark water activated tape. Now if my Jade itself thinks that this packaging is fun, imagine what your customers will think. Paclio is also eco friendly Australian owned and operated with same day dispatch and 14 day returns. Now that's pure joy for everyone. Check out the Paclio range of Ecommerce packaging options@paclio.com that's Paclio P A C K L E O paclio.com. How long did it take you to realise that closing the gaps by itself was a big enough business to go after?
Laura Thompson: I think along the way it'd be amiss of me. Not to mention that we had two lawsuits in between that time. One with the Gap Clothing America because we're closing the gap and they've trademarked the work.
[Voiceover]: Gap and clothing.
Nathan Bush: What was your initial reaction when you heard that was coming at you? Did you go, this is ridiculous that I'll never stand up or were you like.
[Voiceover]: It was pretty funny. So Gap Gap Inc liked one of our photos or started following us or something on socials and one of the team screenshotted it and sent it through I wish I saw the text page and they were like woohoo, how cool is this? And my brain was like that's not good. That is not good. And then yeah, we got that.
Laura Thompson: We got the cease and desist because we're so little.
[Voiceover]: Got the notice of intent to defend their trademark. Yeah, yeah.
Laura Thompson: So we just chucked it in the drawer for a bit and we thought we didn't have enough money because we'll still spark merch. Covid. We're in the middle of COVID How are we going to fight this back? Let's just change our name.
[Voiceover]: They gave us six months, we're like, we'll just, we'll try and come up with another name.
Laura Thompson: And we did that for a bit and you know, all the other names felt like they'll trademarked as well. But in between then we also received a cease and desist for using the aboriginal flag on clothing. So we got the copyright and we started the Free the Flag campaign. And it really said we've got a lot of media attention from the campaigning and advocacy work that we're doing. 150,000 people signed our petition, Pride not profit. And we found ourselves dead set in the middle of a whirly thing cyclone for two years as we fought for equality with copyright with our flag. And we realized that the name become much more important to us because people were recognizing us because they were not just because of the clothes, but because of the work we're doing in the advocacy space.
Nathan Bush: You're starting out, you've pivoted the business during COVID You're essentially starting a startup again, doing it for all the right reasons, got a foundation behind it and then you hit with these lawsuits and you're like, oh, we're just trying to start something which is pretty, pretty simple really, and then it's just become overly complicated and legal.
Laura Thompson: We never felt, honestly like, I never felt sorry for us in all of it because the eye was always on the prize. And I was always sort of surprised at the amount of people who say, I'm so sorry Jack did that to you. That was the worst thing. I'm like, that was. That only impacted on our business personally. Whereas the flag copyright issue was impacting on Aboriginal people and essentially Australians, the footy clubs, everyone nationally. And we had a community of support. So I, I would say that I think the way that we sort of process stuff, you know, we're so small and we're so focused on the bigger picture that we don't really dwell in the details and get stuff done.
[Voiceover]: And like, people often say, like, oh, you know, you fought for the flag for two and a half years, good on you. I'm like, we actually fought Gap for over three, but we didn't talk about it publicly until we had a solution because, as well said, that was a. That was a Laura and I problem.
Laura Thompson: Like that.
[Voiceover]: That really did. What we called this, really did. You know, at the end of the day, we knew that our incredible community of supporters would hopefully come with us wherever we called ourselves. So really, it was just. It was more of an internal issue than anything else. However, when we did reach an agreement with Gap, essentially we lost a. A court case to. It wasn't a court case, but we lost a trademark tribunal hearing. It was declared that our brand names were deceptively misleading and similar, which is obviously ridiculous at this point. Gap had like, they'd closed all of their stores in Australia as well. Anyway, it was really interesting. And then when we went public with it, I think if. I really hope that it reinforced for people the why behind what we did and we didn't want to talk about. They were like, why didn't you tell us this was happening? Like, we did not ever want the Gap issue situation to detract from the conversation about the flag. Like, we know that people have only got a certain amount of attention for things. If they were going to action anything, we didn't want them to write a nasty letter to Gap. You know, we're big enough and mean enough and ugly enough to look after ourselves. We wanted them to focus on the flag. Yeah.
Laura Thompson: And then our outcome that we were able to negotiate was to add the S. So we're closing the Gaps.
Nathan Bush: Yep.
Laura Thompson: And obviously there was conditions around what that looks like going forward. But for us, we knew it was similar enough to, you know, we're happy with that negotiation.
[Voiceover]: Yeah. But I guess what we really learned within both of those pieces was the power of fashion to create change as well. So I guess before, perhaps before the Free the Fly campaign was when we sort of thought that, you know, that the T shirts were just the vehicle to get to the bucket of support, AKA profit, to then be able to run the foundation. Whereas within those campaigns and those moments, we really learned the power of the T shirt itself to do the impactful work and then the foundation gets to add to that in the work that it does as well. So every single person who bought a T shirt, so this is the power of ecom, right? Like when we're talking about add to cart, like, you know, have to remind myself, what are we talking about again?
Nathan Bush: Don't worry about that.
[Voiceover]: Every single person who bought a free to flag T shirt, that whole product page, that product description was filled with information and facts and links to, here's how to write a letter to your MP and have you signed the petition yet? And then every single person who wore that T shirt out in the world was a roving billboard having those exact same conversations to, you know, bring together people for social change to see the outcome that we eventually saw on the 25th of January, 2022.
Nathan Bush: So tell us about that outcome because, Laura, I can see you've got the new T shirt, the Yes T shirt with the flag on it. Tell us about the outcome. So I'm assuming it ended favorably.
Laura Thompson: Yeah, look, it was an emotional day, I'd say. I remember it because it was the day before Australia Day or Invasion day, Survival Day, 26th of January. And yeah, it was an emotional day because it felt like finally there was, we could stop fighting for free the flag. We could stop fighting and we could now use our platform to elevate other Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander causes and campaigns and people that we could finally lay this to rest. And what we saw is that the Aboriginal flag returned to the world pretty quickly. People started using it again. We saw it back in Indigenous round in our national sports and what I will say is, you know, we realise the power of the T, but we also realise the power of allyship. And that was something new for Sarah and I. I mean, even though I'm Aboriginal and Sarah's non Indigenous, we had this, you know, partnership, but in our work at vaas, we hadn't really invited non Indigenous people to step into that. Our programs were just focused on the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community. But closing the gaps was very much about uniting people through fashion accords and that was new. So it was like so cool to see non indigenous people step into this space and say hey we're going to support you and these causes. And that was different for me. I think that's when we talk about the power of the T is actually about how do we activate the non indigenous community. They share some of these loads and carry these conversations to for the betterment
[Voiceover]: of the whole of Australia into places perhaps where walls doesn't normally or you know, other aboriginal people normally perhaps don't hang out too as well. Like that's the really cool part about wearing your values really is that you get to and for me as an Aboriginal person like I'm, I'm in different spaces that that laws is perhaps not in as well and being able to wear my values is a way of being able to ensure that that conversation comes up wherever I go.
Nathan Bush: Yeah and you do such a great job of that on the website around labeling which products are ally friendly, which ones are for mob just to help people feel comfortable and to navigate it in a respectful way.
Laura Thompson: I mean that decision to do that in the business really come from you know, our community saying am I allowed to wear it?
[Voiceover]: Hundreds of DMs culturally inappropriate.
Laura Thompson: I don't want to, yeah, I don't want to offend anyone.
[Voiceover]: I care so much about this but I just want to make sure that I'm doing it in the right way. So it really came from that piece of and I can speak to that very clearly as a non aboriginal person. It comes from that place of wanting to do the right thing but wanting to ensure that you don't offend people in the process which is coming from a real genuine place of care. But it was also just getting a little bit annoying in the process.
Laura Thompson: It was really shame and I guess for people listening you're like if you're getting that same question you DM probably is a really great sign that if you address that sales would probably go up. And I certainly for us once we started labeling things as allo friendly and mob only we saw an increase in sales because it made people more confident to fill their cup.
[Voiceover]: It felt like there were a whole bunch of other like minded non aboriginal people like you know, like me just waiting in the wings for the permission to be like they were like oh finally I am allowed, I need that.
Laura Thompson: It was just so weird that we needed to create a for me a logo like you know, like we talk about like the health logos, like a five star. Like we have to fully brand it. Like you can wear it like on a menu when you, you know, when
[Voiceover]: you gluten intolerant or vegan, like you just look for the little like no week symbol. Like that's pretty much I feel like what non aboriginal people do on our website now and it's just like scanned like me, me, me. It's great.
Laura Thompson: Yeah, we made it.
Nathan Bush: I think that's important because you know what you've created is a brand and a label that is, you know, and you said it yourself when we had our conversation, always with the mob at heart first, you know, that's where you're coming from and I think that's really good and it's really important that mob have something for them. Like, you know what I mean? That, that it is special and that it is a community. But it is. But still if you want to be involved, there is a way to be involved. But it is still for mobile. And you talking about your backgrounds in health engagement really puts the pieces together for me around how you've been able to bring this community together so well and get them engaged in a passionate way. One of the things you were talking about though was from an E commerce perspective, some of the metrics that you were talking about in terms of engagement, purely from an E commerce perspective, open rates, click throughs, et cetera, were phenomenal. Not coming from an E commerce background. Tell me, how did you, how did you go about getting some of those metrics?
[Voiceover]: Well, I guess we didn't go out lo and I absolutely do not wake up in the morning being like, do you know what I want to do today? I want to get an open rate of 22%.
Laura Thompson: Like what's that? Is that good?
Nathan Bush: Oh, you're not, you're not living. You're not living. If you're not waking up with click through rates on your mind, it's like
[Voiceover]: written on my bathroom mirror. No, what we do is I guess like as, as you said, like, you know, and we all the time about everything we do, we do with mob in our heart. And I think when whatever those values are as a brand, if you keep those values and your purpose and the why really strongly at the core of every single one of your decisions, the outcomes follow from that. Whether those outcomes are, you know, seeing the aboriginal flag be back in the public domain or being able to have a really, a really great business that's doing great stuff out in the world because that's really Important too, it just, it flows through. So we've got a returning customer rate of almost 47%. Is that good? Nathan, is that good?
Nathan Bush: That is good. That is really good. Hang on to that.
[Voiceover]: But what that speaks to and that's what the one that I'm leaving with, I've got a list, don't worry because I had to write them, I'm not even joking. I could find them and write them down. Before we do this, why I wanted to talk to that one is I think we, what we do and I think this is one of the key things of that I think has transferred across from health promotion is that one of the key things of health promotion is you build a community of people who are on a journey towards something together. Because we know that we get the best change when we've got peer to peer support and you've got other people that are trying to make the healthiest choice, the best choice. Right. So when you've got a community of supporters, we don't call our customers customers, they're our community of supporters. Or you know, for Luz, it's just this is her community and we know that when we keep them as a priority, they will want to spend more time with us, they want to be involved in what we're doing. They're on the journey with us, we're on the journey with them. It's a two way relationship. It's not, it's not this top down. We sell stuff to you, you buy stuff from us, we don't see you again.
Laura Thompson: We actually don't know what we're selling. Next week. No, I made this last week.
Nathan Bush: I wasn't.
Laura Thompson: Sorry, I'm pointing to my yes T shirt. And you know, we talk about mob at the heart and I think that's why we've been so successful is because we're responding to the issues that are happening those conversations in the moment. So if the nation's talking about it and it's impacting on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, we think, well, how can, is there a piece of merch that could create a conversation about that in the world? And most importantly to Sarah's point, what's that action that you can take whilst you're wearing the T shirt? So I think the success of the business has been built around not about the clothes, but around the education, the campaigning, the resources and building this community because we spend more time thinking about education and content and less time about clothes. You know, and we were like yourself, Nathan, you're wearing our voice Treaty, truth shirt. And for a while we thought, you know, they've three very important conversations and perhaps we wouldn't make a T shirt that told people, you know, how to vote. We weren't always certain that that's what we're going to do until, you know, we, you know, I'd like to say it was more thought out until all of our guts were like, no, it's like actually we feel like we need to take that step right now and it's important that we make this tea and you know, for the add to cart people, you know, we. This is our favorite, favorite button.
[Voiceover]: Continue.
Laura Thompson: The sell went out of stock. So we've got a great manufacturer. We knew we could turn this T shirt over really soon. We sold it through just putting an image on photoshop. We sold 500t straight away and we knew this was going to be a winner. But before we even made any beautiful. And then we made our manufacture work all weekend.
[Voiceover]: And that is the beauty of local manufacturing, my friends. But like everything that we do comes from conversations that are happening in community.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, yeah.
[Voiceover]: As Lil said, like voice, treaty, truth that they are three really important conversations. And where we started with that is just that the voice and seeing, you know, October 14th be a successful referendum is the conversation that we want to have right now that we hope will then lead to treaty and truth telling in the process of that as well.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, absolutely. And you're in a unique position there because yes, you are an E commerce retailer, yes, you're a fashion brand, but as you said, indigenous issues and awareness raising is at the heart of everything that you do. So you firmly really plant yourself out there. I can imagine that as you are now starting to take a stand and you're putting out a position of yes, but also free the flag. You've done it. You know, you've got a history of that. There must be a certain amount of backlash that comes with that as well.
[Voiceover]: I mean it's never any, you know, cause that's happening within a space isn't without its complexities. And I really hope that people who know Laura and I really well and have been following the brand for quite some time understand the integrity with which we try to navigate those complexities as well.
Laura Thompson: Yeah, I mean, I'm not going to sit here and say it's easy for businesses to take, you know, take on social responsibility, but certainly what we've learned through the brand and like Sarah and I've never ran a business before, Sarah come to me as a uni student and you know, Certainly I spent a life working in aboriginal community control, but people, we talk about self determination a lot and I always say I've never felt more self determined than I have in business. And that is why I love being part of the business community because other businesses can do. What we're doing as well, is really step up and think, hey, you've got a reconciliation action plan, you've got corporate social responsibility. How can we and might not be to the extent as closing the gaps because that's one of our core values, but how do we use our platforms and businesses to create social change? Because you know, I heard this quote once that brands have more power than, or influence than politicians. We certainly have more followers or brands. So you think about that though, you know, people listen to brands and they're a big part of our lives and we can use our businesses to actually
[Voiceover]: as a force for good. Really. And I, I love, absolutely love business in that we have the opportunity to do good within the way that we do business as well. You don't have to be a not for profit or you know, you don'. Even have to be a social enterprise to do good. Every single dollar, as a, as a human, as a consumer, every dollar that you spend shapes the way that this world looks. But as a business, that buying power, those dollars are more and that buying power is bigger and that ad spend is bigger and that platform is bigger. We don't exist as individuals in silos and businesses shouldn't have the privilege to sit back and say this is not my thing to be a part of as well. Every single business in this country and around the world has the opportunity to, to choose how they show up in spaces, in every moment, whether that's in their procurement or whether that's in who's on there, who's in their ads, who's making their ads, who's making people gorgeous for their ads. And we really saw this sort of conscious consumerism shift throughout Covid as well in that people took to brands with a different lens and really asked them what they were doing and how they were doing it. So there's, you know, brands have a responsibility and it's not okay to sit behind the C suite door anymore and go, not my problem. Yeah, yes it is.
Laura Thompson: And like it's not just because it's good for like it is good for business. I'd say that when you lead with your values, but you've also got an opportunity as a business to do this. You're not restricted for someone who come from government funding where the government told me what I had to talk about and when and how. And in business, we don't have any of those constraints, so we're free agents.
Nathan Bush: Do you feel there's enough businesses out there that are using their voice for good?
Laura Thompson: Yeah, I think there are lots of. There are great examples of that.
[Voiceover]: Yeah, absolutely.
Laura Thompson: We think about some of the. I'll share with you some moments for us when we think about the free the Flag campaign. Minor figures. The Coffee Coffee company.
Nathan Bush: Yep.
Laura Thompson: They used leveraged their advertising spend on billboards and gave us some billboards.
[Voiceover]: Yeah. So say if they had 100 billboards in Melbourne, they allocated as a percentage of those to us. So they use their buying power to go back to their billboard supplier and be like, throw in a couple of extra for us, will you? And they gave them to us.
Laura Thompson: You know, we've seen there's practice, there's so many examples. Be good to give people real, like more real life examples of what some of those things look like.
[Voiceover]: Other people have done a really great job of resharing and supporting us. We'll go supporting us with content as well. We worked with Key, the sunglasses brand,
Laura Thompson: I will say for a while
[Voiceover]: and they were really incredible. A couple of years ago in for a Jan26 campaign, they came to us and literally said they were like, we want to do something about this. We feel like you guys are, you guys are already doing it. We just want to do what you're doing and help you do it bigger and better. And they essentially gifted us a videographer and like a production team for the day. And together we made this really great campaign about January 26th. Never once was that about product. It wasn't about what can you do for us. It wasn't. Can you put this, now that we've done this for you, can you put this slip of. Get 15% off your key sunglasses in all of your orders. Nothing about that. We just partnered together on content. Incredible content. That made a huge difference. That lightened the load for us. You know, we're tiny. We don't, we don't have, you know, at that point we didn't have videographers and full scale production teams. That was amazing.
Laura Thompson: The thing I love about that partnership with Key was that they just didn't
[Voiceover]: make it for us.
Laura Thompson: They shared it on their platform too and they had, you know, I don't know how many followers, but a lot more than us. And they were reaching international audiences and
[Voiceover]: made it super normal for non Aboriginal brands and non Aboriginal people to be talking about down 26 as well. Like this was, this was two, this was nearly three years ago now. Like, this was before it was a bit more normalized for people to be talking about. Like, oh, you know, like we don't really do the Australia Day thing. Like they were really early, they were really early in that.
Laura Thompson: And it's not just about people sharing content, working with, closing the gaps. Like, you know, if we talk about the, you know, the referendum for a First nations voice to Parliament. What we've seen in the retailer space is a lot of businesses doing a lot of internal education with staff, which is super important. Big organisations with tens of thousands of employees using the workplace as an opportunity to educate people is really important.
[Voiceover]: People say that workplaces are one of the biggest sources of information for how they make their decisions about things in the world as well. So not only as a business do you have an outward opportunity, you have an inward opportunity as well. So you have an engaged pool of people that, you know, when you think about your open rate or your click through rate, you would hope it'd be pretty high for your internal staff team. Right. So maybe start using those as well. That's great.
Laura Thompson: And like, for us, like, I always push for the visibility piece but, you know, the more I talk to other businesses, I realize their apprehension of, you know, specifically like talking about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander issues on their platform. Should they. And are they, do they know enough to do it? And certainly I think people can navigate both at this stage right now. We've seen, there's probably others, but I've seen Sports Girl make a public statement on their Instagram. I've seen Country Road do the same. We saw Qantas do a yes plan. We've seen other people take visible public stances and share them publicly. And that show of support, especially when we're visibly campaigning, I kind of, it
[Voiceover]: just helps lighten the load a little bit. I feel like we're not alone in this. But also shout out like these are some, you know, some huge retailers in the country, but shout out to, you know, the small businesses or the other, you know, the SMEs that are doing this work fearlessly as well, that haven't hesitated in the slightest. Like they're the ones that are, you know, when you walk down your high street shopping strip and you know, they're the businesses that have got their, we're running yes, we're voting yes. And they're, you know, they've got the pamphlets on the, on the counter. Like you do not have to be a conglomerate, to have influence in this space, Every single person has a circle of influence. And you know, there's a really Incredible stat from yes 23 that if everybody who's a die hard yes spoke to two people that were unsure about how they're going to vote or what were they going to write in that ballot box on October 14, we could see a, you know, we could see a yes referendum. So when you break it down to the circle of influence influence that people have, it doesn't matter whether you've got 10,000 staff or two having those conversations. We've been saying for the last little while, like every conversation counts at this point and it really does.
Laura Thompson: You know, one of the things though, that I have noticed, and I think other people will too, is thinking about your business, specifically retailers, thinking about what you did during the Black Lives Matter movement. Did you place a black square? Think about it. Did you post about NAIDOC week? Do you have a reconciliation action plan? Did you support marriage equality? If it's yes to all of those things or to some of those. And you know, someone described it beautifully and I really love this. There is a lack of colour and movement in the retail space for a voice to Parliament right now. We think about you going to your local shopping centre and you think about what it looked like with rainbows and that invisible support. There is not that there. And I don't want to be disappointed about because not too late, you know, we're 30, I don't want to know. We're like 30 something days to go. There is time for retailers to step up because the last thing you want to do is look back in history and think, I wish I'd done more.
Nathan Bush: Shopify have put together their version of the Australian e Commerce Avengers. 10e Commerce experts including me. Unfortunately, I think I'm the hawkeye of the group to give you tips on how to set yourself up for success this year. You'll even recognize some of the contributors from past Add to Cart episodes. Mark Bartzer, Kelly Slessor, Paul Watti, Lisa Jones and more will share tips from how to create great discounts, how to boost conversion rates, optimize email and sms, even use AI to drive sales. It's all in there. I share how to set up your team for success. I can guarantee you will take at least two to three tips that you can use to optimize your sales this peak season. So put on your Spanish index and join the E Commerce Avengers with Shopify's free Peak Season Playbook. Download it at shopify.com/guides forward/peaksalesseason2023 or just follow the links in the episode. Show notes from the device you're on. Why do you think it is invisible?
[Voiceover]: I think there's fear of getting it wrong as well. I think which we see from non Aboriginal people and businesses around lots of different Aboriginal causes is that they, they don't, they don't want to get it wrong. And I think too, perhaps some of the media's portrayal of the complexities of the conversation hasn't helped either.
Laura Thompson: Yeah, I would say that the nation's divided on this issue and that racism is heavy in this country right now. And for some of the retailers, and this is public, like Big W for example, and Wesfarmers has come out and supported the Voice Parliament and funded it and they had some in store promotion and they've removed it in fear of like the impact on the psychological safety of staff. So we've seen people play in the space a little bit and then retract. And I think for people who are actively campaigning for a yes, it's how do we not pull a bit? What are those other strategies that we can put in to support conversations in those spaces that reduce the load on staff and sort of recognising that a certain amount, a huge amount of privilege comes with those organisations to actually be able to say it's too hard, we're not going to do it, because certainly for Aboriginal people and black organisations like ours, it's hard for us too, especially with so many Aboriginal staff that are feeling that the decision's about them and we're still doing it. So this allyship in retail, I really believe, like post referendum, I know personally, I will look back on those retailers and say thanks for standing with us. And I think Community will as well, because there's a certain sense of bravery that comes in it, but there will be a sense of respect for them as well.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, I was really interested by the term that you used before around complexity of going out with a message of yes from yourselves. And in our initial conversation I was expecting to get on and you. And I was like, oh, of course you'll be supporting yes. And you're like, well, actually it's not that straightforward for us. Can you tell us more around the complexities behind you taking a position like
Laura Thompson: yes, I think when you talk to Aboriginal people around it, it's just probably a sense of understanding for Aboriginal people who are voting no, for a lot of Aboriginal people voting no. And it's often referred to as a progressive no is that they're voting no, not because they don't want a voice treaty or truth. They just think there's a different pathway to that. But essentially we want better outcomes for mob and we don't think that the status quo is okay. So certainly, you know, we're just being sort of respectful about how do we make sure that on our journey to making a public statement we're respectful of the mob, that we keep in the heart to them and that we're not further alienating Aboriginal people who are working towards best outcomes for mob. Yeah, that's where we're, that's where we've been. And we're doing lots of listenings, internal surveys, surveys with our community online as well around how they're feeling about it.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. With Australia's indigenous population representing about 3% of Australia. Is that right? The reality is that the vote is going to come down to non indigenous Australia, really, isn't it? At 97% with equal vote, how are you seeing the positioning there between the types of groups out there that you're seeing voting yes and voting no at the moment?
[Voiceover]: I guess what we're seeing is we're seeing four sort of pretty clear, pretty clear camps and on either sides of, you know, of the four. And for your podcast listeners that aren't watching this, I'm holding four fingers up in the air. On one side is people who are just like, yes, this is. This is it. There is no questions. I. This is it. Makes perfect sense to me. Great decision. Love it. Voting yes on the complete opposite side of that. So podcast listeners put four hands up in the air. One finger on the other end is absolutely yes. The other side is absolutely no. And I would, I would call this a racist no. Essentially it's, it is a hardcore no. It is no. That is filled with fear and division and coming from, you know, places of, you know, and I'm using quotation marks now for our listeners, things like, you know, Aboriginal people already get enough. This is too much. They'll have too much power, all of those sorts of things and they will not be swayed. They are no. And that's, that's a scary no. Right. Terrifying. Then there's the, I would say like the yes and which is sort of in the middle but leaning, you know, they're next to our yes. Hardcore yeses. Yes. And is yes. And there needs to be, you know, more, more accountability from the government. Yes. And this is not it. This is not going to solve everything. Yes. And there has to be a pathway to. To treaty. And yes. And we need more truth telling. And yes. And there needs to be bigger change. And then there's what we'll call the progressive no or the aboriginal no. Is that this is holding government. This is no. Because what is offered on the table right now is not enough. This is. Do you want to talk to this progressive no. Just you can talk to each other.
Laura Thompson: I mean, it's the. We deserve more than crumbs. We deserve more than to give advice. We don't want to be part of your racist colonial constitution. It will, you know, impact on our sovereignty in this country. And we've heard people saying, sort of talking about, like, we don't need a reckoning in this country, we don't need reconciliation.
[Voiceover]: Reconciliation's done.
Laura Thompson: We're reckoning this kind of. And these are the often the same people who have been challenging and fighting for justice, first nation justice in this country their whole lives. They don't necessarily trust the government and they don't believe that the voice will deliver and that perhaps it's a distraction from the real issues that are going on and continue to go on. For example, like black deaths in custody. And if you really wanted to listen to Aboriginal people, know, all the debates,
[Voiceover]: then just listen to one of any of the Royal Commission's recommendations.
Laura Thompson: Do that first, you know, so I fully get that.
[Voiceover]: Yeah.
Laura Thompson: Personally, right now, what we've got is, you know, a once in a generation chance to sort of be able to have something. And it's, you know, I was listening to one of the senators, Jana Stewart, she said, look, if we wake up the day after the referendum with a yes, we'll wake up with more than what we had before. I see it as a small step. It's certainly not the answer. I guess you would say I'm a yes, and it's. And I guess I'm also a pragmatist at heart. And I like to think that. I like to work towards the steps to make things better. And I see this as one small step for the future.
[Voiceover]: Yeah. And I think in this. Yes. And takes into consideration all of those concerns of this progressive or aboriginal.
Nathan Bush: No.
[Voiceover]: In that this, you know, blindly running towards yes. Yep, go for it. Yep. They're like, yep, no, get it. Yep. But this, yes. And is like, yeah, hear you. Absolutely. And this, yes, this, yes. And I think is a really powerful place to be sitting in as well, because we do have to hold government to account. That is so important, you know, the role of, you know, when we think about politics, like the role of an opposition party is so important because they push for the government of the day to be better because they ask those questions. They don't just let them do whatever they want, they ask those questions. So opposition, when we think about it, you know, from a broader perspective, is actually so important. It's just. I just really hope that when we vote for yes, we're not voting yes to government, we're voting yes to trusting mob in this process that they know that those concerns of the, of the progressive NOA are genuine and real and must be taken into consideration in this process.
Laura Thompson: It's just really, I think, scary to sort of look at the polls right now and see the latest poll. The only state that's, you know, above 50% is Tasmania. And one would have thought that.
[Voiceover]: Which is hilarious because they're the only liberal state in the country right now. Good bless Tassie. They're so progressive. But it's really. But the really just back to this, you know, four camps bit. The really challenging part about that going into that ballot box on that day, it's not yes and please write an essay or no and please write an essay. It's just yes and no. And, you know, so often really complex issues get brought back down to this binary option of just yes or no. And I think that's the complexity of this referendum.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. What do you think the impact will be on the indigenous community if it does come back as no?
Laura Thompson: People have sort of said, either way, whatever happens, there's going to be a lot of people hurting. Yeah, I would agree. I'm not going to be having a yes cupcake if, you know, I'll be thinking about yeah, yeah. The progressive no. Who. It's just. I hope it gets up, but I think it will. It will be disappointing because, you know, we spoke about the progressive no, but it's such a small minority of people, then it's not them. That's actually their numbers don't make up anything in swaying the no vote. Essentially it will mean that Australians don't want to listen to Aboriginal people on issues that are impacting on them and they don't want to see us recognised in the constitution. That's what that will mean. And, you know, we talk about it being a very modest ask. It is so for Australians to vote no to that. I think it would be shameful.
[Voiceover]: I think we will look back on this moment. If it's a no, I think we'll look back, history will look back on this moment and really question what the heck was going on in the country at the time. And they'll be right. Because I think one thing that this referendum has really uncovered is there's a lot of work to do in this country, and that's exactly why we do what we do. I'm going to cry mostly because I'm really tired, but I think something that this referendum really has brought to life very, very quickly in this country and, you know, for Aboriginal people, you know, I will never speak to that experience, but I'm sure this is not a foreign, unfortunately foreign experience, but Australia is a really racist country, and that's the center. Like that is a statement that for so many white Australians, they are very uncomfortable to hear. But if you look at the media right now, you look at, you know, anybody's Facebook feeds, it's there, it's blatant. And it's time for Australia to sit back and look at that and go, we can choose right now whether or not this is how we're going to continue or whether this is the line in the sand that I hope this reckoning comes from, to be honest, that this is enough.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, it's a huge moment for Australia and I think, you know, what you said there around, it's not so much about the Constitution and, you know, this isn't the moment that we've ticked the boxes and, hey, we're all. All together. It is a symbol of how open we are to proper reconciliation. So, yeah, I hear you. And I think it's really important that people use their. Use their vote well, Nathan, do you
Laura Thompson: mind if I ask you a question?
Nathan Bush: Yes.
Laura Thompson: You know, you are wearing the Voice Treaty Truth T shirt. Have you worn that out in the world? And has it sparked any conversation?
Nathan Bush: I. To be honest with you, I haven't, because I ordered it just before our chat.
Laura Thompson: I love it,
Nathan Bush: absolutely intend to. Because I went to buy one. I went to buy a yes one because I read the book around Voting for Yes that was written by Kerry o', Brien, I think, and that. And I can't remember there wasn't. It was someone else who wrote it as well. But I read that in one day and I totally understood, actually how simple the question was and the impact that it can have and how it was wrapped up in the Uluru statement and the context of it to exactly what you've been talking about, that this is just one thing that we're talking about. This isn't everything. This is just the start of everything. And that's where I went. Voice Treaty Truth is actually More important than saying a yes shirt for me. So this is something that I bought because I go, I can wear this well beyond the vote. So I absolutely intend to. And I got inspired because at my gym, there's actually someone who wears. Has started wearing a yes shirt to the gym every day without fail. It's not a gym shirt. And it's like, I'm like, yes, that's what we're going to be doing. So, yeah, absolutely. My intention. But I only arrived. What was it? What are we recording now? Tuesday arrived on Friday. Good delivery.
[Voiceover]: That's good.
Nathan Bush: The other thing you did, and I like being challenged. I think it's really important. The thing you challenged me on in our initial chat was why I don't have an acknowledgement of country at the start of Add to Cart. So I am totally open to it. And I think if I'm honest, there's that sense of not wanting to be a tokenistic ritual or something that you record once and then go, yep, Gil, my producer, just put this at the start of every episode to make it look like we're doing something. And then there's also the thing of, you know, where does it go? Does it always. Is it just for physical events? Does it belong on a podcast? Will listeners go, you know what I mean? Where does it fit? So I'd love to understand more from you around acknowledgments to country, why they are so important, firstly and how to do acknowledgements that are meaningful and relevant, whether you're an ally or whether you're mob.
Laura Thompson: Might let says take chat to this, but I might just start by saying, Nathan, thank you. Thanks for being open to having this conversation and to exploring it and to sort of doing that internal reflection yourself about what it looks like for your podcast.
[Voiceover]: I think they're all really common questions. I'm actually really glad that we're having this chat because. And it's that same exact same piece we were talking to before about non Aboriginal brands and, and trying to work through how they talk about the voice, they don't want to get it. They care so much about it, but they don't want to get it wrong. So often when I ask people, when I ask other non Aboriginal people, like, oh, you know, I just noticed that you didn't do an acknowledgement. Do you want to chat to me about, like, do you have any questions about, like, you know, safe person to chat this through? Like, let's chat. Like, I just, I didn't want to pronounce it wrong. I didn't want to offend anybody, all
Laura Thompson: of those sorts of things.
[Voiceover]: So they're super normal. And I've been there too. Like, I've absolutely been there. When I first did an acknowledgement, I was like, I have got no idea. And I really don't want to stuff this up because it comes from a genuine place of care. But I think one of the things that I have found really, really helpful in this whole navigating the acknowledgement of country pieces is that shifting the word acknowledgement to honouring has been a huge change, I think, in the way that I think about an acknowledgement of country. When you acknowledge something, it's got that. Even the way that you say acknowledge, like, it's kind of a bit like, ooh, when you say honour, you actually have to smile when you say it. And it's this heart shift I think of when you really think about what it means to honour something. And it is an honor to live on unceded, sovereign Wurundjeri land, where Laura and I are coming to you from right now. Like, I think about living on Wurundjeri country every day, and that's. That's a privilege and I want to honor that. And Wurundjeri elders and I can't encourage people enough to shift away from. I would like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the people that we'd like. You don't need to say that. And honouring of country could be as simple as, you know, we get to have these conversations with you on unceded, sovereign Wurundjeri land. And, you know, it's a pleasure to get to do the work that we do. And we're grateful for the. For Wurundjeri elders that share their knowledge and stories with us so that we can, you know, we can have that connection to this land through them as well. And it doesn't have to like. And it could be, you know, I went for what Whereabouts are you again, Nathan? Whose country are you on?
Nathan Bush: And Terrible People.
[Voiceover]: Terrible people. So it could be this morning, you know, I was running on Terrible country and I was just thinking about this podcast today and, you know, I was. I was, you know, watching, you know, the sun come up over. Over the river, and I was thinking about how terrible people have watched that sunrise for tens of thousands of years before me.
Nathan Bush: Yeah.
[Voiceover]: Hey, Laura and Sarah, where are you tuning in from? Yeah, but it doesn't have to feel stiff. It can be like it should just be weaved into a natural opening of thinking about who we are, because it's that. It's applying that decolonization lens of we were not, you know, for me, as a. As a white settler on this land, I was not here first. There's a deep, beautiful, rich history that we can speak life into in so many different moments throughout our days. And an acknowledgement of country is one way to do that, but just shifting away from the stiffness so that it doesn't feel tokenistic, so that it feels like a part of your, you know, your reflective practice in the morning or when you're opening up a chat, like, rather than saying, like, oh, you know, where's your favorite coffee shop? I'm like, oh, it's amazing. It's on Wurundjeri country. It's just down the road. Like, how do you, like. Do you know what I mean?
Nathan Bush: Yeah, yeah. I love that. I love that. I love that shift from the acknowledgement to honor, because I. I feel we've kind of got to that point with acknowledgement where before it was unusual, but now it's. You kind of see it everywhere, which is good. But now, because there is such a templated version of it out there that it can become wallpaper if no thought or heart has gone into it as well. So I love that version of going to an honour. What do you honour about the people that have come before you and what you are doing today?
Laura Thompson: Yeah. And I think Sez is right, like, for today, Nathan, you could have started with honouring the country that you're on and honouring Aboriginal people in the middle of this national debate and thinking about them, like, how is it relevant? How might this honour and country be relevant to what's happening in politics? What's happening in the community around you? It's NAIDOC Week, celebrating, you know, whatever it is. Like, I think moving away from that, giving an opportunity to think about how it connects to your day or an opportunity to reflect at that time is important. Certainly for me, even starting this podcast, not having that acknowledgement at the front, I personally, I'd say felt it.
Nathan Bush: Yeah.
Laura Thompson: For me, it really, as an Aboriginal person, sets the tone of creating that safe space to sort of step into. To delve deeper into the issues, because we started on, I'd say, common ground, that we've got this respect for first nations people and acknowledgement that we'll hear first, and then being able to lean into that then feels like we've created a safer space. So I would say, as an Aboriginal person, it's noticeable if it's not there. Not to say that you want it to be tokenistic, but it is, it feels like a missing and it does allow you to lean in to that person a little bit more, knowing that, you know, they've at least taken the time to know whose country that they're on and all those things. So that makes building a relationship. You've got a nice day point.
[Voiceover]: And I think for, for other guests as well, it's an opportunity to either knowledge share about the countries that you're, if you're coming from different tuning in from different places, it's a really lovely opportunity to knowledge share. And then for you, Nath, if you're chatting like doing your pre chat with guests, that, and letting them know that at the start of our chat, you know, I'm going to talk about terrible country and I'm going to share something. I'd really love for you to start thinking about the country that you're on and perhaps that might challenge them a little bit and perhaps might, if they're a non aboriginal person as well, it perhaps might actually require them to go and do some homework. And that's an opportunity as well.
Laura Thompson: I love it for businesses, you know, it's the something that it's low risk that they can easily build into their, you know, into their carts. I want to say into their carts with Australia's post traditional place names that they've got, you know, we've, you know, we're early adopters of that, adding an extra field.
[Voiceover]: So shout out to the incredible Rachel McPhail Australia Post eventually came on with the program. So all it is. So if you're in Shopify, all you need to do is. And like any of your major ecom platforms will have the exact same process in the background. I'm assuming all you need to do is you just need to jump into your language settings and just change company name to traditional place name. And that will enable people when they're filling out their address to say like, so it'd be for us, it'd be, you know, send it to closing the gaps. We're at 744 Sydney Road, Brunswick, Wurundjeri country. And then you can put in the rest. So being able to just layer those, those decolonized moments into every single day and to make it really normal to, to center language and truth telling essentially in so many different ways is so exciting.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, it is. Do you have hope that say, even one generation's time that Australians will be more connected to the traditional names and backgrounds of the land that they're on? A lot of people at the moment are still learning what land they're on. But do you think that will be natural in one generation? Two generations?
Laura Thompson: Hope so, yeah. I really hope so. Look, there's more and more of it happening in kindergarten, in school, Qantas changed their flight, their flight paths to the traditional name and lots of people miss their planes. But there's more and more companies too, that are willing to like step in and try and at least use English name and a traditional place name. So we start to build that education. So for me, those shifts, they're your baseline. And for businesses you could definitely, you can definitely start there and build.
Nathan Bush: Sarah, Laura, we've run out of time. I love this chat and thank you for everything that you've shared. You've been incredibly open, honest, and I know you've got a lot going on at the moment, so I appreciate your time. Tell me what's coming up next. What's your focus for the next 12 months for closing the gaps?
Laura Thompson: I just wanted to say, because we never talk about it, that we're a B corp and a social enterprise and actually do really good business. But we talk so much about the issues. I guess our focus is. It's hard to think for us post referendum, but that's only like 30 days away. I think that continuing, I think, to a knuckle down internally, I think for us. And still we still have grown quickly, I think.
[Voiceover]: Yeah, we've grown, we've grown. We've grown enormously over the last couple of years. So I feel like, I guess as well for your listeners. So Laura's our CEO and obviously we're both co founders, but Laws is our CEO. But I would say your role is really around like brand and cultural and creative direction, really. And then I look after sort of more of like the operational side of like stuff that happens in the back end for two reasons. One is because if I was left to design the T shirts, we wouldn't have a brand. But also because as you know, being an aboriginal social enterprise and B Corp, it is actually really important that Laura's leading all of what that looks and feels like. And then for me, I look after, yeah, as I said, like the operational behind the scenes sort of stuff. So for the last 12 months we've been working really hard at scaffolding some very quick growth and ensuring that our processes and governance and structure really hold that, as Laura said, we're a B corp, we certified with an incredibly high score in the top 5% of B Corps in the community. Category around the world, not just in Australia.
Nathan Bush: Well done.
[Voiceover]: Yeah, we're in like the top 10 big hops from a school perspective in Australia. So yeah, I'm pretty proud of that. And I guess for the next 12 months, you know, we do everything that we do and we've spoken about a lot, we do with well in our heart. But our core values are to elevate, educate, advocate and motivate. And I don't see any of that, any of that changing at all.
Laura Thompson: We want to, you know, we've got work we need to do around education campaigns, around no room for racism. We want to see our platforms, our social media platform safe for mob. That's important for us. So it's about, you know, finding space to actually create good content that, you know, hopefully we can share with businesses as well so they can make sure that that's something we're passionate. Their platforms are safe for aboriginal people and pro shadow and people to visit
[Voiceover]: and all platforms should be. If you're a business, I think this is probably like the last thought that I want to leave businesses with right now. If you are a business and if you have social media, it is your responsibility to moderate the comments. It is not your supporters responsibility to go in there and fight for you or fight for what's right in your comments. You post it, it's yours. You leave it there, it becomes your opinion. Racism is not free speech. Racism is actually hate speech and hate speech is a violation of human rights law. It is illegal. If you have racism living on your platform, you need to block and delete those people and you need to make sure that you're setting the standard of what you want to see happen in your social, it is not good enough. You have a duty of care and you must do it. So when we see people like Stan Grant leave, you know, mainstream media because they're done with the social media environment that is horrific at the moment and in the lead up to the referendum is only getting worse. It is so important that if you moderate a social media channel, you must be doing it fiercely and consistently.
Laura Thompson: Finally, I would say there's power in that. There's power and control in that. So if you're a business and you want to post about something in support of, you know, the yes campaign and a voice, do it. Turn your comments off.
[Voiceover]: Yeah. And if you're not sure how you, how the people that follow you are going to do that, just turn the comments off.
Laura Thompson: It's really interesting country road. I've heard one of the directors twice Say l there said, if you don't want to shop with Country Road because we're supporting a yes vote, then you're not the customer we want to have.
Nathan Bush: Yep. Beautiful. And like you said, we've got one chance at this to be on the right side of history. All right, if people want to learn more, maybe even get in touch, maybe even go out and buy a Yes T shirt to show their support, what's the best way for them to go about it?
Laura Thompson: They can even get a pin. Start with a pin and give us a follow.
Nathan Bush: Just buy a T shirt.
Laura Thompson: Yeah, like follow us. And that's because we want more followers. We're just pumping out great content at the moment. I will say it. We've been spending all our time doing content and yeah, we've got great information and that you can sort of, you know, we spend a lot of time that we've curated for an audience that we think will, you know, move hearts and minds, learn more.
[Voiceover]: Come on the journey. Follow us at Clothing the Gaps and then you can find us@clevelandgutch.com beautiful.
Laura Thompson: Or visit us in Brunswick.
[Voiceover]: Come see us in Brunswick or Wurundjeri Country.
Nathan Bush: There we go. Laura, Sarah, thank you so much for your time today. I've loved our chat and good luck for the coming weeks. And I've got no doubt your mission's only get bigger and stronger from here.
[Voiceover]: Thanks. Pleasure.
Nathan Bush: I am so incredibly grateful to both Laura and Sarah for joining me for that conversation. When I was discussing discussing the potential of doing this episode with them, we had a really lengthy chat. We booked it in for half an hour. We ended up talking for an hour and a half. I went in with a lot of preconceptions that were overturned or challenged. And I'll always be grateful to both Sarah and Laura for taking the time to share their viewpoint. It's not their responsibility. After all, they're running a business in a difficult economy. That's enough burden. They're being extremely generous and vulnerable in doing so. Here are three of the many lessons that I took from our conversation. Number one, fix it. Don't DM it. When Sarah and Laura kept getting asked the same question as to which piece of clothing Allied supporters could wear, they bit the bullet and labeled them on the site. Not only did it reduce the customer service time, it actually immediately increased sales. Maybe it's time to look in your inbox for sales ideas. Number two, deliver to traditional lands. I didn't realize that it was so simple to be able to change delivery addresses to traditional place names, Australia Post are on board and most e commerce platforms such as Shopify will allow you to do it with a simple change in language settings. If you want to show your support every day, this is a very visible and meaningful way to do do it. And number three Brands have powerful voices While we individually get one vote brands have a much larger influence. Sarah and Laura gave the example of Minor figures, key Sports Girl, Country Road and Qantas using their voice for good. It doesn't even need to be a hardline position. It can be purely used to spread truthful information to help customers, teams and communities make informed decisions choices. If your brand is an advocate for indigenous communities, there's never been a more important time to get vocal than right now. To get the highlights of today's episode, head on over to add to cart.com and sign up for our free newsletter each Tuesday. We will send Monday's episode summary links and discount codes for you to go next level on. And if you're looking to explore your next e commerce opportunity, come and Visit us at eSweet. We're a dedicated ecommerce talent agency connecting the best e commerce talent with the fastest growing brands in Australia. Head on over to esweettalent.com where you can download the free e Commerce Salary Guide and sign up to our weekly ecommerce job emails. Thanks for listening and until next time, keep the those customers adding the card.
