Luke Matthews from Camilla

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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. Here's your host, Bushy.

[Ad]: Today's checkout features Luke Matthews, Head of IT at Camilla Australia. That's the iconic fashion label known for its bold prints and bold plays. In this checkout, Luke shares DIY drone experiments, the piece of tech that he believes every scaling retailer needs, and his leadership mindset that he's using to help support Camilla's international expansion.

Nathan Bush: Luke, welcome to the Checkout. Thank you so much for joining us. We had a great chat in our main episode around how you're leading the technology team at Camilla, powered by Shopify and Netsuite and you really gave us an insight into how data and data reliability and stability is really helping amplify the magic of the Camilla brand that we get to see externally. So it was a great insight into the goings on underneath the brand that brings that to life. But I've got five quick questions for you to learn more about you. Number one what is the weirdest thing that you've ever bought online?

Luke Matthews: Weirdest thing I have ever bought. I think customers would have been interested in me for a while. Before drones were a thing. I was trying to build drones and was importing long range transmitters to try and build autonomous drones to fly out to about 40 or 50k. So there was some weird wonderful transmitter receiver hardware coming through on international post.

Nathan Bush: Did you ever build one that went that far?

Luke Matthews: I did build one, it did not go that far.

Nathan Bush: Are you a drone aficionado now? Like is is that something that you

Luke Matthews: do a lot of central Sydney? It's a little tricky. When I was back over in WA

Nathan Bush: a little bit more you get locked up for that.

Luke Matthews: Yeah, yeah. I think you get in a lot of trouble when you're living not too far from mascot.

Nathan Bush: Number two. Which retailer has most inspired you recently?

Luke Matthews: Look, it's very close to home. I actually, I came from a company called Kitchen Warehouse based out on the other side of the country and I think they're a pretty inspiring story. Incredible growth over Covid able to continue fulfilling and meeting customer expectations over the most difficult retail trading period we've ever had. And really experimenters with tech as well. Building on a stack of commerce tools for web, which I think for a lot of companies in Australia is pretty experimental and just constantly putting tech at the forefront of what they do in terms of enabling the business and enabling customer experience. So yeah, I'll go with Kitchen Warehouse

Nathan Bush: and I could imagine very different experience from where you're at at the moment selling, you know, high end fashion through to selling kitchen goods. Very different customer journey, right?

Luke Matthews: Very much, yeah. Definitely. A different way of trading, a different way of doing business. A lot higher volume, probably slightly different customer expectations.

Nathan Bush: Love it. Number three, can you name a piece of tech that you or your business couldn't live without?

Luke Matthews: For us, it's back to basics for me, but a really strong integration solution and this is a very, very head of tech answer. I'm running a best of breed solution stack and there's a lot of complexity there trying to stitch all that together. You know, we have to have a really strong IPAAS middleware solution. It's something that's up for grabs in Camilla at the mom moment in terms of changes but that is absolutely crucial and I've used Boomi to a great extent in the past for that. It is the single piece of tech that I think orchestrates and is just truly critical to a best of breed omnichannel retailer. And I'd put it at the top of the list in terms of got to get it right.

Nathan Bush: It's a really interesting point because you know, I've been around retail and E commerce long enough to see middleware come and go and you're absolutely right that it is so critical to a business but there is no established leader in that market at all. You know what I mean? It's still very much choose for your business. There's no dominant player.

Luke Matthews: Yeah, there's a lot of different players and you know, they operate at different levels of complexity as well. So I think when you're a smaller business, maybe with just a handful of channels and not too many systems in the stack, you can get away with some players who do that really, really well. You know, shopify out of the box integrations and different solutions are great, but as you grow in complexity, as you add systems, as you go to individual functionality for different teams, it is truly best of breed. You've got to focus on those integrations and yet, you know, various systems at play. But, yeah, no one has got dominance, which, yeah, because, you know, you can't say for a lot of other aspects.

Nathan Bush: Maybe it's just so hard that no one, no one's cracked it properly yet.

Luke Matthews: I've definitely had some late nights struggling with integration, so.

Nathan Bush: Yeah, absolutely. All right, number four, can you recommend a book or a podcast that our listeners should immediately get into?

Luke Matthews: Yeah, I'm going to try and get out of the tech space for a second, but for me, I've been reading Breath, by James Nestler, which I think is a great book. I'm probably a couple of years behind the curve there, but talking about the importance of breathing, breathing exercises and really, it's actually about taking time and learning to de stress. This job and a lot of jobs in the space can be quite stressful. You're dealing with very reactive environments, a lot going on and massive amount of requirement to prioritize and balance everything. So, yeah, fantastic book for helping you to take some time de stress and make the right decisions.

Nathan Bush: I could imagine that's amplified for you. Running around the clock with the global business and often P1s, P2s, P3s, popping their head up. What do you do to relax? How do you de stress and get away from it all?

Luke Matthews: I ride a bike. I ride a push bike. I spent a whole bunch of time riding a push bike trying to go uphill. It's maybe not quite as much in Sydney as I was doing in Perth, but we're working on it.

Nathan Bush: Yeah, Love it. All right, last one I've got for you, Luke. What is your biggest challenge today?

Luke Matthews: Look, I've already sort of said it, but it is prioritization. The list at Camilla for work is enormous and, you know, trying to get to what are the most important aspects and focus on them in order is really tough. And it's a big challenge for me, something that, you know, I get a lot of support from the rest of the team to make happen. And then even for me personally, I mean, that's a little bit easier. I've moved to Sydney. I've got a big list of stuff I want to do as a new resident here. So, you know, just trying to prioritize Key challenge in both aspects.

[Ad]: I hear you, but a good one. Good one.

Nathan Bush: Luke, thank you so much for joining us on the checkout.

Luke Matthews: Thank you.

[Ad]: If you're serious about scaling a premium and creative brand globally, make sure that you don't miss episode 518. Luke Matthews takes us inside Camilla's data strategy, global tech infrastructure, and how they're getting AI ready so they can continue to take on the world.