[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 Lucy Walk, founder of Normal. On the surface, Normal is a sex toy brand who is reinventing what sex toys look like and who they are made for. However, as you will hear today, their mission drives them well beyond product and into education, research, and, dare I say it, advocacy and representation. They aim to give everyone the information, confidence, and the tools to explore sexuality on their own terms. Normal was founded by Lucy out of a Start mate fellowship and was soon backed financially by the team at Eucalyptus, the team behind Pilot, Kin, Juniper and more. Lucy, thank you so much for joining us on the checkout. We had a brilliant conversation about sexual
Nathan Bush: health and everything that you're doing at Normal. Here. To learn a little bit more about you, I've got five quick questions. Number one, what's the weirdest thing that you've ever bought online?
Lucy Wark: Oh, God. One ramekin, One ramek. What's a ramekin?
Nathan Bush: Again?
Lucy Wark: It's like the thing that you bake eggs in. But yeah, a friend of mine was like, apparently we're only allowed to buy X many of these at a time. I need you to buy me one Ramicus. What? Actually, I've had UberEats delivered from 10 meters from my house, which is pretty bad. I don't know if that counts as online.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, it does.
Lucy Wark: It does.
Nathan Bush: That's good.
Lucy Wark: Good. I like it.
Nathan Bush: All right, number two, who is your favorite retailer?
Lucy Wark: Oh. Oh, that's so hard. I actually really, really deeply admire esop and I think that for Normal, at the point where we move into our own physical retail, which I think will happen at some point, that kind of really smart experiential retail, like, they were so ahead of that trend. They've done such a great job of, like, building a brand that people truly love while, like, building out the product ranges. Yeah. So actually, like, I fucking love Aesop. I can barely afford it, but I love it. And I probably. You know what I mean? Like, it's. I think that there are so many smart things about that brand. And it's also great, fundamentally. It's great product.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. I think they crushed a lot of those rules of traditional retail pretty quickly.
Lucy Wark: Yeah, definitely just kind of going left when everyone else is going right and doing that in a way where you're like, it's correct for your brand, it's resonant for Your brand, it really makes sense.
Nathan Bush: Number three, which E commerce practice do you wish was history?
Lucy Wark: I think treating your email subscribers really transactionally. I love brands like for example like good paydays. They've done an incredible job of creating like long term education and and edutainment style email experiences that I'm actually really excited to open. And I think particularly there's always such a push in like email marketing best practice to do everything up to the point that just before someone unsubscribes from you but like continue like just selling and selling and selling. And I think like that it is just like obviously it is counterproductive to building long term brands. And so you see it juices early growth of brands at the expense of a capital B brand that is generational. So yeah, I hate that It's a
Nathan Bush: really good point because it is so obvious. The retailers who think of email list as what can I get from my customers versus those who go what can I give to my customers?
Lucy Wark: Yeah, definitely.
Nathan Bush: Number four, can you recommend a book or a podcast that our listeners should immediately get into?
Lucy Wark: I really like the rest is history. I've been enjoying that a lot to, to history, academics. If you're like a proper historian you'll probably find it a bit too light touch. But if you're someone who's like has an interest in history, they're really funny and entertaining. They do really interesting deep dives on lots of moments in history. And yeah, I think it's just a great podcast. My sister's a doctor and she recently took a new job where she has to commute two hours a day and she's just like, I'm so glad I found this podcast. It saved me from what I thought was going to be a really hard part of this year and it's made it really easy. So I love that.
Nathan Bush: Amazing. So good.
[Voiceover]: Thank you.
Nathan Bush: Last one. I have for you finish this sentence. The future of retail is.
Lucy Wark: I think the future of retail will be a really interesting interplay between building brands that are very flexible and building brands around people or individuals. And I think the next 10 years will kind of solidify a conventional wisdom around how far each of those things can run or where those things can run and make sense. But I think the world of like consumer retail, we've obviously seen the beginnings of this. We've seen a lot of it in direct to consumer. But yeah, I really am like excited and interested to see where that lands.
Nathan Bush: Amazing. You made me excited. That's great.
Lucy Wark: Yeah, awesome. Love to see it.
Nathan Bush: Thank you so much for joining us on the checkout.
Lucy Wark: Yeah, thanks for having me.
[Voiceover]: To hear more from Lucy, jump back into episode 294 where Lucy shares how she took the leap from her safe consultancy job at McKinsey and over to starting Normal. She also shares how attaching education into the product journey has helped her grow Normal beyond a retail business alone. And we hear how she has a vision for working with universities and schools to reshape what sex education looks like for the next generation. Thanks for listening. And until next time, keep adding to cartoon.
