Norm Douglas: I like to have control over my data. The vast majority of our customers wished they never had to buy our products. People are often born incontinent. They'll often die incontinent. I'm Norm Douglas from Connie. In this episode of Add to Cart. I tell you why it's good to control your data and also your pee and your poo.
Nathan Bush: Connie sells the product that most people wish that that they never had to buy. That there is Norm Douglas line, not mine, and he delivers it with a lot of pride. Norm is the CEO of Connie and the case that he makes in this episode is that the least fashionable category in Australian retail can be one of the best businesses as long as you're ready to own your decisions and pick your own path instead of following the herd. Connie is Australia's leading brand of reusable
Speaker C: absorbent product products, privately owned out of North Geelong.
Nathan Bush: Bed pads, mattress protection, absorbent underwear, floor mats, swimwear, toilet training, a disposable range and now a skincare line. It sells direct to consumer, through wholesale,
Speaker C: through grocery, through distributors in the uk, Europe, New Zealand, Japan and the US as well as being a registered NDIS provider.
Nathan Bush: It's a pretty complex organization. Norm himself came in from a communications and IT background in 2016 and worked his way up to CEO, which is why he can talk about polyurethane membrane and a warehouse traffic light system without skipping a beat. He explains why Connie will never be a sexy brand and why he's completely at peace with that because the brand
Speaker C: that he is actually chasing is Mrs. Doubtfire. It'll all make sense, I promise.
Nathan Bush: In this episode you will hear about how to market something that people are embarrassed to be seen buying. Why Norm has stayed on his own custom built platform when the rest of
Speaker C: the industry went the other way.
Nathan Bush: And why he still refuses to switch on subscription in a category that looks
Speaker C: like it is built for it.
Nathan Bush: Now, if this one gets you thinking, come and join the community at the ADD to Cart community. It is free to join over at
Speaker C: add to cart.com au and there are hundreds of e commerce folk in there
Nathan Bush: pulling apart some of the problems that
Speaker C: you'll hear within this episode.
Nathan Bush: And a big thank you to our partners at Shopify and Klaviyo.
Speaker C: They make ADD to Cart possible and we really do appreciate their support.
Nathan Bush: Here's Norm Douglas, CEO of Connie. Norm Douglas, welcome to Add to Cart.
Norm Douglas: Thank you Bushi, longtime listener, first time caller.
Speaker C: It has been a long time coming
Nathan Bush: and I think it's very important that we address your place in the history
Speaker C: books of Add to cart. You've taken out the winner of the karaoke prize at our.
Nathan Bush: At our trivia night, which wasn't even
Speaker C: meant to be a karaoke night. And it turned into a karaoke night
Nathan Bush: and you rocked one of the best
Speaker C: versions of Proud Mary I've ever heard.
Norm Douglas: Yep. I remember it well. You can see that I've got a guitar just there. I always have a guitar in my office, even though I've got other guitars at home and I do play. And every time there's a stage and there's an opportunity, it's hard to keep me off it. I love a sing along, but that was a great night, I tell you, that night as well, without a word of a lie that inspired me to do that type of thing for our Christmas party. Like we got in a. Got in a person, you know someone that did that because I just thought that was. I'd never experienced a trivia night quite like that.
Speaker C: It was fun, wasn't it?
Norm Douglas: It was so good and I was really, really good. I enjoyed it.
Speaker C: We should do that again.
Norm Douglas: Yeah. Anyway, we won't go into that, but you were missed last year.
Speaker C: I know, I know. I couldn't make last Retail Fest because I was just back from the uk, but maybe next year we'll see how we go. And I think Retail Fest is a perfect place for that kind of event. I really appreciate you joining us today because you've been a busy man. You have recently been in China for work. But even more importantly than that, you are in the middle of your final season for your umpiring career that's going on outside of this.
Nathan Bush: The pressure is high.
Speaker C: It is.
Norm Douglas: Look, most people that follow sports wouldn't understand that officiating is a sport.
Nathan Bush: Yes.
Norm Douglas: So whether it's the basketball, nrl, rugby league or rugby union or AFL or Aussie rules.
Nathan Bush: All right, well, let's get into the
Speaker C: day job because it is one of the most fascinating stories I think, in retail and e commerce. Your website, the Connie website, one of the headlines is we're passionate about pee and poo.
Nathan Bush: There's not too many brands that can
Speaker C: put as a H2 on their website. We're passionate about pee and poo.
Nathan Bush: Tell us about Connie.
Speaker C: What is Connie? What do you sell and what's the ethos behind it?
Norm Douglas: We're a multifaceted company these days, but we deal with all things pee and poo. We make products that assist people in their normal daily functions. Incontinence or any type of leaking is a really, really Normal thing. The reality is if you were in a party this weekend or a family gathering or whatever, and let's say there was 20 people, the reality is statistics say at least three of those people minimum would leak at some point in their life when they don't expect to. That's the reality. That's how common it is. Right. And we make all sorts of products from toilet training to you know, postpartum, pre pregnancy, prostatectomy, post surgery, all sorts of things like that. So mattress protection, bedding protection, underwear, adult diapers and also aged care type of products for anti slip floor mats is a big thing that we do. We've been around for about 25 years. We started from. Glenna Stroton was the founder. I reached out to her one day and said, hey, if you need any new websites done, blah blah, blah. And her business had grown. She said, oh yeah, that's great. Anyway, long story short, we got the contract, built the website and then I sat with her one day and said, you know, look, you don't have anyone on staff that can manage these. We'll have to work out some type of management fee structure. And she said, yeah, good idea, let's have a coffee. And over coffee she did the old push the paper across the table and say, tell me what you need to come and work for me. And I said to her at the time, I won't say the word, I said, but I said, that's tough because I could say I was very, very happily self employed at that point. Very happily self employed. And I said, anyone else could have offered me that, I'd easily say no. But for you I'm gonna have to think about it. Because she was just one of those people that, you know, you meet. I know Todd Stanton from Gruen. Yeah, in his books he talks about nodes in your life. You know, certain people in your life that you can remember, she was definitely one of them. Where, you know, she's just such an inspirational founder and leader that I thought, I don't know if I can say no to this and best decision I ever made. Whenever we get new stuff in our business and, or you know, I meet a new rep or something, I always say congratulations and welcome to the best industry you'll ever work in. Because we get to do commercial things in a capitalist flag waving era or day to day functions, but we sell products that actually mean something. You know, we, we don't sell a desire or, you know, the reality is the vast majority of our customers wished they never had to buy our products.
Speaker C: That's a great line.
Norm Douglas: The vast majority. Yeah. So we're there when they, when they absolutely need us. We often say that the majority of our customers by the time they decide to buy they, they probably needed a product four weeks ago. You know, people don't wake up one day and think oh you know what I'm going to need incontinence products today. They don't wake up one day. It sometimes happens dramatically and other times over a period. And sometimes it can be a short lived thing and other times it can be a lifelong thing. And so the notion that people think, oh you know, I'm going to research that product and yada yada, we'd like to hope that people come to us because we've been around for a while and we make great products but we also make sure we're there when, when they need us. We try and you know, have a presence across obviously e commerce as well as marketplaces as well as retail even believe it or not, even mail order still. Did you know as Australia's foremost expert on anything e commerce, did you know there's still mail order in Australia?
Speaker C: I did know because I did some work with innovations. Right.
Norm Douglas: It fascinates me.
Nathan Bush: Is it significant?
Norm Douglas: It's one of the things I'll tell you about, but I can't go into great detail about it. We have a wholesale partner who has a mail order business that would shock most people. It certainly shocked me. I couldn't believe it. This person has a sizable warehouse in Sydney and wow, there we go. Wow. Wow is the correct. Because you know, I always say, well, I like to talk about that E commerce is not new. E commerce has been around for a long time. We just change the word. Maya started I think kind of the starts of e commerce in Australia with mail order. Mail order was a massive thing for Myer in the, in the 20s and 30s.
Speaker C: Yep, there we go. That's our tip today. That's the episode. If you've got anything out of today's episode, it's go start mail order as
Norm Douglas: part of your episode. Absolutely. Blows me away. Anyway, we try and be where our customers are.
Speaker C: Tell us, is there a certain stigma that you have to overcome especially for those new customers that you know your line around you sell the product that most people wish they didn't have to buy.
Nathan Bush: Is there a different journey that you
Speaker C: think you have to take people on compared to fashion brands to get them comfortable? Because it's essentially signaling for a lot of people this, you're entering a new life stage.
Norm Douglas: Bushy. Even sometimes within our own industry we have to do that like people within our industry are sometimes. And I'm talking about the home healthcare industry, Right. So home healthcare can be lots of different things. It can be handrail in your shower cause you need one. It can be an anti slip floor mat like we have and it could be a full catheterization, I don't know. But even within our own industry we find some retailers will actually hide the incontinence products. Now when I say hide, you know, they put them around the corner, they don't put them out in the display. So it's even for us in for our brand in retail stores that you'd expect to find our products. It can still be challenging. Supermarkets sell a lot of these products. But if you think about your own supermarket, I'd challenge you to remember where those products are.
Speaker C: I'd be going straight to baby diapers. But that might not be fair or not always.
Norm Douglas: No, not always. Sometimes they're tucked away near, you know, feminine hygiene type of thing. But it's a department, but it's often tucked away. So you're right. We've always tried to, as a brand, tried to destigma fy the language. I think there's been a lot of brands that have tried to do it and some have done it really, really well and others have tried to do it well and the audience just wasn't ready. Tena had a ad campaign a thousand years ago with Whoopi Goldberg.
Speaker C: Oh yeah, you must be too young. It's a sister act.
Nathan Bush: Come on.
Norm Douglas: Yes, that's right, Whoopi Goldberg. And it was, you know, a full ad campaign about sneezing and coughing and that type of thing. And people have tried that. But we try in our, in our office, in our business to talk about it normally, not to make any innuendos and that type of thing because it's. It is a normal thing. It's a totally normal thing. We often say that people are often born incontinent, they'll often die incontinent and somewhere in between they'll leak when they don't expect to. That's the reality of.
Speaker C: Yeah, far out. So what does that mean then for your marketing? Where do you put your marketing efforts when you don't know exactly when someone is going to reach that need point? And are there sensitivities that you have to abide by when you talk about things like social advertising or even retargeting? Because it could be, I don't know,
Norm Douglas: off Putting or no, no, you're absolutely right. You've hit it. We have a number of challenges. One, we sometimes get people messaging us quite firmly to stay the hell out of my feed because I don't need
Speaker C: your products, you know, so you've offended them.
Norm Douglas: That's right. They're offended that, because maybe they suit the demo or maybe they've searched for something and, you know, so they're offended. Then there's the other element where Google. Not always we've got better at it, but it's challenging. They'll label our products as nudity and they'll limit our ability to advertise. So that's a challenge. And we don't show faces and that type of thing. Typically as a brand we make that decision, but so we show torsos or underwear because underwear is a big part of what we do. But yeah, there's many sensitivities and that's why we try, where possible, to not use innuendos. We try and just use normal language. We like to say, you know, right nor wrong, we're never going to be a sexy brand ever. I like to say that we're kind of the Mrs. Doubtfire of our industry. I won't go into great detail, but about seven years ago, everyone's heard of Modibody and they're sort of in the same industry. Not quite, but sort of, you know, to their credit, I think they did a great job of trying to bring more normalized language to our industry. And I genuinely mean that and they'll love me for saying that. And we went down the path because, you know, there's a few things where we've seen competitors over the time come in in the industry and say, oh, you know, we're the first ones to do this, or there was nothing available. Well, we've been doing this type of thing for 25 years. It's just that sometimes our marketing style, our style, our fashion style doesn't always lend itself towards that. One of our number one selling skus is still a pair of beige, what some people might call grandma undies. It's very comfy cottontails. Some people might call them absorbent underwear. And the reason is because they're comfortable in their work. You know, and here's the kicker. That style hasn't changed in over 20. The skew has not changed.
Speaker C: It's good for you.
Norm Douglas: Well, yes, it helps forecasting work better because what we want to do is we want to be there when people need us. As I was saying earlier, we want to be Reliable to the point where we spend a lot on branding, but we also spend a lot on traditional digital marketing, as in when people know they now need the product, we want to make sure we're there.
Nathan Bush: So are you trying for a push
Speaker C: or a pull strategy when it comes to your marketing? Are you trying to pick up on signals and pull them in or are you pushing to people who may not realize that Connie is an option? Like you said there before, we've been around for 25 years and are you pushing towards them?
Norm Douglas: Yeah, that's a great question. Two different markets. There's more than two, but we'll just talk about two. New mothers form a very big part of what we do. Very, very big part. Because new mothers are probably going to need our type of products, not just for themselves, but their children for maybe the next sort of six years type of thing. It's also one of the challenges with our industry is sometimes people only need you once or twice. You know, lifetime customer value starts to have a new meaning, you know what I mean? So for that type of audience, mothers then, you know, we're trying to educate people on what our products can do. An absorbent bedpad. The vast majority of new parents don't even know it exists. And that's our fault. Our whole industry and we, you know, we take on a leadership role and we think it's our fault. A highly absorbent, reusable bedpad you'll buy today, you'll have for the next 10 years and you can use it for lots of different stuff, you know, and it's super absorbent, waterproof, and you throw it in the washing machine when you're done. Great. So there's a bit of that push. And then on the other hand, some people have a dramatic situation in their life where all of a sudden they're leaking on a regular basis.
Nathan Bush: Imagine knowing your customer is thirsty before they even do. Sounds a little bit creepy, but how dare you? It's actually genius. Dr. Hydrate, the hydration brand founded by competitive swimmer Cody Simpson and Ironman Kane Eckstein, makes supplements that get you drinking more water. But like a lot of fast growing brands, they had loads of awareness, but were doing a fair bit of guesswork on the sales side. So they leaned into Klaviyo and its predictive analytics specifically to work out exactly when a customer is likely to run dry and need a hydration top up. Time that reminder, right, and you nudge a one off buyer into a loyal subscriber and the results speak for themselves. A 26% jump in revenue from their most loyal segment, Klaviyo driving 37% of
Speaker C: total E Commerce revenue.
Nathan Bush: And a little bit ridiculous. 46 times ROI. 46 times. See, no one needs to go thirsty with Klaviyo. Head on over to klaviyo.com au and see how brands like Dr. Hydrate are doing it.
Norm Douglas: Right. As I said earlier, sometimes it happens over time and other times it can happen pretty quick. And that's when you. You just need to be right there when they start searching. So when I first came along to Connie, that was a big part of what I was brought on to do was to improve the D2C. We didn't call it D2C back then, but the DTC and to really, you know, get things working. And I remember the first time I said to Glenys at the time, and I said, listen, I think we're right to go. I think we can start spending some money. And she was like, you know, what's this digital stuff you talk of? So she said, oh, what do you mean? Some ads on the side of websites like Google, you know, shopping ads. And we started doing it and I think we were, you know, kind of first in our industry to start doing it on a sort of a systemized basis, you know, and back then, geez, it was somewhat easy.
Speaker C: What's the best performing channel for you today?
Norm Douglas: Best performing is probably email. Okay, look, we do a lot of advertising. We advertise on tv, radio, buses. We do some line advertising. We do obviously Google Meta. We do some OpenAI. We've done TikTok in the past. We're not currently doing TikTok, but we're. We've done it in the past.
Speaker C: We've done Pinterest with your own content or influencer content.
Norm Douglas: We had a very good agency who were very capable and they had some great ideas and we did all of them. Some of it included yours truly being in front of the camera doing semantics and stuff. Look, I don't know what it did for our brand, but, you know, we did it at the time. I don't quite know if it suits the Mrs. Doubtfire quite as much.
Speaker C: I'm getting mixed mental images here with you in front of the camera, Mrs. Doubtfire. Leakage. I'm gonna leave that there. You mentioned their OpenAI ads. You're pretty early on that. How are they performing for you?
Norm Douglas: To be honest with you, bushy, I'm not even measuring at the moment.
Speaker C: Yeah, okay.
Norm Douglas: Because I'm not spending. I'm spending very, very little. Yeah, so we used agencies. You know, I've been building websites since 1997. I have a big history of being involved in this stuff. There was a time in my career with Connie where I decided, okay, I think I'll use agencies. Stop trying to do everything myself. However, I still like to dabble. So AI is my little dabble at the moment. Look, I don't think the whole agentic type of search, I always like to say I'm lucky that I was born in 1970, so that makes me older than many of your listeners. I think that was a Goldilocks zone because we not only got to experience technology for the first time, we freaking invented the shit. At times, you know, we speak about things like, oh, you know, search has changed. I honestly don't believe it has. I can remember reading the Google Webmaster guidelines in like, I don't know, 1998, 1999, whatever it was. And it was basically a document that says, this is how you should build content and a website. And if you do this and your content's good, we will rank you. That's basically what they said. Now, sure, things might have changed, you know, don't do evil or whatever's gone out the door and yada yada. But I still think the same thing applies. If you have good content, you structure it in a manner that makes sense. Although I've got other thoughts on that now then, which, regardless of what the surface is, whether it's AI, whether it's Google, whether it's, you know, YouTube, whatever it is, I think your content can still get found.
Speaker C: Yeah.
Norm Douglas: So therefore the OpenAI ads on there, I'm literally just playing with that at the moment. And yes, I've done some things to improve our, you know, presence or whatever on. On AI, and the stats tell me that we're doing well and the sales don't yet tell me that. But anyway, that's maybe another story.
Nathan Bush: I suppose yours is perfect for AI
Speaker C: too, as people turn to their trusted assistants for those personal problems. You are set up for success there.
Norm Douglas: Yeah, it's a very good point you make. And we're creating some content which makes sense to the reader, and I think if it makes sense to the reader, then it should make sense to the bots. Whatever you want to call.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, I reckon that. I agree with you on your point around.
Speaker C: You create good content, it'll show up in the right context rather than trying to game the system. What I'm hearing a lot of though is that the traffic that is coming from those early OpenAI ads is converting a lot higher because there's more intent there because you're coming from more of a recommendation than you are a blue link or like one of 10 blue links. It's like actually no, this is what we recommend for you and I trust this bot because I've been talking to it for a few years now, so it feels like you almost skip a few stages. The value of those links are worth more.
Norm Douglas: Yep. I don't necessarily disagree. I will add one thing though. The testing and the deep dive I've done suggests to me that from an Australian audience point of view that all of them are still geo confused. I'll say. Yeah, that's the year back to all of that. So maybe it makes sense for, you know, offshore. We, we don't sell. Well, we do sell DNC offshore, but not, not a hell of a lot. So Australia is our, is our audience. So that makes it, I think a bit more challenging. Who knows what's going to happen there?
Speaker C: Now I want to dive into the tech stuff. In saying that Australia is your audience, I know that you also do have a presence in the UK and the Europe through distributors, as I understand. On the tech side, I think it's fascinating your background that you've given us around building websites and your involvement in technology. Pre Connie, you are on what I understand is a custom built website in the UK and through Europe on Shopify through your distributors. What's the rationale behind staying custom built and for you managing it internally?
Norm Douglas: Yep, it's easy. I like to have control over my data. I help my brother manage a Shopify website and I must admit the more recent version I'm more impressed with. But I've never been impressed with the structure of the old Shopify. I'm sorry, I know it's.
Nathan Bush: No, that's what we're here for. We're here for all opinions.
Norm Douglas: I know I've never been impressed with it, the way it went about its business and I think, you know, I've got a little note here about. I've never really liked technology for technology's sake, even though I'm a technologist and I like to tinker. Technology should solve a problem. So the first time I ever discovered what we should refer to as a cms, which is one of the failings I think Shopify has always had is I was trying to solve a problem for a customer of mine at the time who was a, an auction house and would need to put up their listings each week. And so I built a very simple php actually it was an ASP system back then, Microsoft and a quick editor, basically a quick, you know, web based editor and the customer asked for a certain problem and I was trying to research it and lo and behold I found something called Mambo, which Mambo was actually an Australian cms, very, very early one which became Joomla and Joomla. I'm surprised you research didn't find that. There was a time there where I was very heavily involved in that community and Joomla was a CMS. Now WordPress is a CMS, Drupal is a CMS and they're true CMSs. Create the content and put that content where you want it on a website. That's essentially what a CMS should do. That type of control of your own content, not being limited with that. It's what I love about open source is that open source will often give you a whole bunch of toys that you can play with. If you don't like those toys, you can make your own toys. Now I know there'll be plenty that say you can still do that and of course you can. The particular toy that I've enjoyed playing with for a long time now is OpenCart. OpenCart is not perfect. None of them are. OpenCart's got many flaws, not least of which. Anyway, it doesn't matter, but we know how to run it. And FYI, the front facing of our website is just what you see. There's a whole data engine behind it where we then use a combination of off the shelf applications to manage our stock and yada yada. But we're bringing everything back to one data engine so that we can always, you know, like I've got a screen there that's got up to the minute sales data right there that's produced just raw data that I can then present it in a nice way that makes sense to people because I've always wanted that, you know.
Speaker C: So it sounds like you've created a business system so it's less so much thinking about it as a website and shuffling website technology in and out.
Norm Douglas: Absolutely. And I think, you know, there's plenty of systems around and I'm sure they're all great where you can bring it all in one ecosystem. And I've had new staff say to me at times and my IT manager Ray say, oh, you know, there's so many disparate systems. How do I keep up with everything? Well, what we do is we find a system to do that thing and then the system to do this thing and Then we just bring them together. The data should still be able to flow backwards and forwards, which we do. If I showed you the ecosystem, you'd probably say that looks like a spaghetti breakfast. And maybe it does. There's been plenty of times, bushy, over the past six, seven years where I've thought I should probably just join the masses. Because you go to, you go to, you know, the big eight, like conferences and stuff and it's all. And I'm on the, I'm the lone wolf and you know, what are you doing out there? And you miss out on stuff.
Nathan Bush: I think it's a really good point
Speaker C: that you make around content because Shopify is not made for content. It isn't. It can do content and you can customize your way to it. I think it does product and payment incredibly well.
Norm Douglas: It does. They reinvented the checkout and I will tell you straight out, I have followed their methodologies of how to do checkout for a long time. I think I had a conversation with you once, maybe it was middle of last year where I laugh that you know, they announced that you could kind of customize your checkout, you know, whenever it was maybe 80 months. And I was like, oh wow, you know, oh revolutionary. You know, you can put your own content on a checkout. Because one of the things they did that I certainly followed was making that clean checkout. Don't get the distractions. When I first started building e commerce websites, the first e commerce website I ever built was on FileMaker Pro. And FileMaker Pro had the ability to be able to publish to the web. And it was a comic website, it was a customer anyway, you know, you'd always get the checkout and don't forget this and you might like that and how you about this. And Shopify taught us all don't be in their way once they're there. Just get em to fill in the details and do nothing else. Now recently they've decided that's that they've gone against that system.
Speaker C: There's a lot of apps out there that. And we've actually got one coming up on the car. We've had checkout components on before so it's definitely swinging back the other way.
Norm Douglas: Yeah, but look, the thing about you know, Shopify is it would now take us a long time. And look, I remember looking at Magento and I remember looking at at all of them and we've been on a backbone of OpenCart for a while now. We really know how to use it. We really know how to manipulate it in the way that we like. Will that be forever? Probably not.
Speaker C: Yeah.
Norm Douglas: You know, I'm not one of these card carrying open source people that you know like die in the trenches for open source. But I do like the idea of owning my own, my own data.
Nathan Bush: We've all been there, right? Slipping on a great looking pair of shoes, only to regret it a couple of hours later. Who knew that blisters could get blisters? Well, the founders of Frankie Ford did. And that's why they've created a line of stylish podiatrist designed footwear that don't just look good, they actually feel good too. But what began as an online success story quickly stepped into the real world with retail stores opening across the country. And when they moved to the Shopify plus plan and rolled out Shopify POS in store, Frankie4 really hit their stride. Now everything works together from online browsing to in store buying. It's one smooth, unified commerce experience for both customers and the Franke 4 team. And with the Shopify Shopify app store, they're able to test new features quickly to see what works. It's paying off too, with 170% increase in site visits, a 25% drop in return rates, and more happy feet than ever. Streamlined, stable, seriously stylish. That's Frankie 4 on Shopify. To read more success stories like this, search Shopify case studies online.
Speaker C: Because you've got a pretty complex setup, right? Because as I understand, tell me if I'm wrong, you've got the DTC channel, you've got the retail wholesale channel, you got the distributor model overseas, plus you've got ndis as well. Do you think if you weren't so complex you would give up more control? Like have you had to build a custom system for you to serve all of those shopping channels?
Norm Douglas: It's the thing I love about our business is we don't just have one revenue, not just revenue stream, but how it actually even comes in. You know, we have small B2B customers, we have large B2B customers, we have large grocery retailers. So when an order comes in, one of my goals with our technology and our systems is if someone's already filled in the data for you, we should never touch it. Typically speaking, when you have many different sources, typically speaking, I know businesses that have to employ people to fix that. What we've been able to do over the time because I've always thought about, my philosophy is to build the technology before you actually need it. That way you can grow into it. And learn the problems and. And you're not spending a fortune on a. You know, when we needed a wms, like a warehouse management system, I remember some of the quotes we got were like in the, you know, there were hundreds of thousands and our business was nowhere near that size to be able to afford that back then. So we found something smaller. But anyway, the point is, you know, if you build technology before you need it. That's why Ray and I, I employed Ray many years ago and we've been able to do that slowly over time to the point now where we have our own pick pack system, our own order picking system on scanners, our own packing environment that then uses Starship it. Sorry, I don't know if I'm allowed to say.
Speaker C: Of course you can.
Norm Douglas: Friend of yours.
Speaker C: We're all friends. We're all friends.
Norm Douglas: George Plummet. Great guy. I remember when I first found them and they were like 80 bucks a month. And I'm like, woo. Then I got 80 bucks a month anyway. And we also use Unleashed as our primary stock management system. But what we do is we use those systems to push our data to where they make sense for that function. But we still link them with our own system. I don't know if that makes sense.
Speaker C: No, it does, it does. I think what I'm getting is controlling the data is super important for you through the whole process and everything from making sure that data is clean, as the customer puts it in at the start, all the way through, then how you distribute it out to the pieces of tech that need it to do their specific job correct.
Norm Douglas: And you know, Connie started as a wholesale company. In fact, we started as what you would call a bulk wholesale company. We were selling head pads to laundries by the pallet load. I don't know, you probably had 20 customers, you know, and then we've morphed into obviously something much different. But when you have different types of customers, you can't guarantee their data from the other end. So we build a system particularly for our inbound wholesale orders. We build a system where everything gets digitized on the way and just, just with an email because it's easy for then to send us a PDF mostly. And then we digitize it from there. And then we have like a traffic light system that the warehouse team leaders manage where the orders come in and there's either a green light, an amber light or a red light. So green light means everything's good to go, all the data, everything matches the sku. They're using the price they think they're about to pay versus what we're going to charge them and the totals and we've got stock. So that's just literally a matter of ticking a button. And then it goes into the unleashed ecosystem, which then forces it into the starship system, and away it goes. Amber, there might be something wrong. Maybe there's a little bit of a price difference. And then the red means there's something really wrong. Now, in between that, we also use some what we used to call fuzzy logic. We now use AI to do this, but we've actually had it running pretty well for about five years. And that is a methodology of looking at a skew and trying to guess what they actually mean if it's wrong.
Speaker C: Okay, yeah.
Norm Douglas: So the AI does a beautiful job. We think it's this. So the amber one might be. And I think this customer's got the wrong skew. It might be this, which can happen. So. And then the red one means that we have to intervene for whatever reason, you know, and look, it works very, very well. It means that we can train staff pretty quick in the warehouse. It means that we process orders really, really fast. Our customers, whether they're wholesale customers or, you know, consumers, they always tell us how impressed they are with how. How good we are at processing orders, which is another reason why we've never gone to. The other darling of our industry is 3 PL. I won't name names, but I recently had a need for perhaps using three pl for something, and it was just too hard for them in terms of dealing with this little weird black duck over here, which has sometimes, you know, bigger boxes and they're not just a little T shirt in a package and that type of stuff.
Speaker C: I like your AI example of being able to put that fuzzy logic over the an order that may not be your regular D2C order, which is very much tick box, tick box, tick box, three you go. Whereas if you're having PDFs and B2B orders come through, it could be a little bit more manual.
Nathan Bush: Are you now focused on potentially, rather
Speaker C: than changing those systems up front? It's actually, well, can we just decipher it in the back end rather than disrupt the customer?
Norm Douglas: It's like you've been in my staff meeting. That's exactly what I say.
Speaker C: I have been. You just didn't see me there.
Norm Douglas: There's been times in my past career where maybe I was a little bit, you know, harsher about that. They should get their data right. You know what, they're customers. We're Just one element to them, you know, particularly some of our largest customers. You know, we've got some very, very big customers and they're massive distributors that you would never have heard of, but not in this industry. But why get in their way? You know, there's one in particular who has always ordered a particular product from us. They've got it wrong, first of all. They always order it by the carton. They send us a carton, we know they mean one. You know, what do we do? Do we argue with them or do we just change our systems to match them, you know, and that's what we've done. And it's the same with our packing staff that are on the bench. I'm sure your listeners know that. It's no secret that so many people don't actually know where they live, do they?
Speaker C: No. Especially in New Zealand, or they think
Norm Douglas: they live in, I don't know, Camberwell, Melbourne, you know, or. Or Belmont, Geelong. No, you live in Belmont, you live in Campbell, or you don't have to put Melbourne, you know, so. But that's another example of let's just deal with it ourselves, you know, the idea of trying to get in their way, it's not what we like to do. We made a charter about two years ago where we would make our customer service even better than what it was and really become a champion and really become, you know, the darling of our customers, that we would just change our systems. And what it forced us to do is to get better at handling their data, regardless of how it was. And our goal is always when someone sends us data. Really the only thing that our packers are entering really is the box dimensions that we're about to put it in. That's the only time they're touching data. It generally should be that we've already fixed the problems. Now, does that mean we're perfect? Course not. We still occasionally get things wrong, but our error rate's so small, you know, the negative reviews we get is. Size, obviously can be a challenge with underwear, but from us point of view, it's delivery because of the last mile person, whatever. You know, we. We deliver all over the country and we deliver big boxes and last mile could be a challenge. Bushy can be a challenge.
Speaker C: You're not alone there. But yes, I could imagine yours would have some. Some extra pieces there. One thing that I did notice on the website, you don't offer subscription as far as I can see. Is there a reason for that? Because I could imagine that yours would be ripe.
Norm Douglas: Two things we're working on it. But. But second thing is I've been in a situation where I've had a subscription arrive at my door and I should have canceled it four months ago. I hate that. I never want that for our customers. So we do it another way. We send them a reminder with a link that's already got a pre filled cart yet we are on that other marketplace, what's the little one called? Amazon.
Speaker C: Amazon.
Norm Douglas: And they offer our products FBA on subscription.
Speaker C: So there's ways to do it correct.
Norm Douglas: And look, you're absolutely right and many of our competitors do it and that's fine. And it's not to say we'll never do it. We've been working with some of our good people at Stripe. We use Stripe as our payment and they've got some really good tools that allow us to do it in a means that makes sense to us.
Speaker C: Yeah, that makes sense.
Norm Douglas: That won't just simply be order gets shipped out.
Speaker C: No, it's smart because subscription isn't something you just turn on. Because once you enable it, it can either upset the customer or upset your customer service team pretty quickly. It can throw things off the rail if you do it badly. So it's about empowering your customer service team to make the right call for the customer.
Norm Douglas: Empowering them, allowing them. You know, I have a, I have a philosophy management style that says if someone's made a mistake, like, okay, beat yourself up for 20 seconds and then let's move on and work out how we can not do that again. I just think if a customer's ordered the wrong thing, then it's probably our fault. You know, I don't think customers deliberately go out of their way to order the wrong thing. Sizing's a challenge. It really is. Particularly with underwear. Our underwear has a polyurethane membrane in it that allows it to be waterproof as well as allow it to be comfortable. Underwear of that nature doesn't stretch as much as the undies you'll buy from. Step one, maybe, I don't know, wherever you buy them from. So therefore the vast majority of people. Here's a quote for you. Vast majority of people buy undies too small for themselves. They do all their life, particularly their adult life. They do, because undies stretch. They're perfect at stretching. Typically speaking, men included. I'm not just talking about women. Men included. Wear a size too small for them. So what we have to do is tell customers to, hey, size up. Even just size up a bit more because it doesn't stretch as Much.
Speaker C: I mean, that could be seen as a compliment when you're saying it to the men, but probably a bit more difficult to land for the ladies.
Norm Douglas: Our industry is full of challenges. Full of challenges. But we love it for that.
Speaker C: I love it. That's fantastic. We've got some good insights.
Norm Douglas: Yeah. Look, typically speaking, our customers have a great experience from our products. We haven't even spoken about that, so forgive me for banging on for a second, but we seriously make. We make the best products. The founder Glenys, who passed away three years ago, she was a genius in our industry, an absolute genius, and she made the greatest products. She gave me a gift that I used to say to her when she was still here. Glenis just gimme a few new products a year and let me do the rest, you know, and she was brilliant at that. And as a company, we've had to really adapt to that, and we have successfully. It's been part of our. Part of our growth strategy is width within product range. And we're doing that so that, you know, that includes our disposable products was a big thing for us to do because we were very, very well known as a reusable company. And you probably understand there's a bit of a decision to be made there. And when we started making disposable products, it was a bit of a thing in our industry. And the reason we do it is because people have different needs. That's the reality. Some people need a disposable product, other people can use a reusable product. Some people can use both as well. So our breadth, that's part of our growth strategy, is expanding the range, giving people more choices, giving them the ability to. If they want to buy at that location, then we should be able to. You know, even. We've had a relationship with Aldi Aldi now for well over 15 years, and it's terrific. People get to, you know, find our product in a major grocery chain in the specials aisle, and it's sold out
Speaker C: in a week and away you go. How does that work? How do you get invited into the specials aisle?
Norm Douglas: Oh, you don't get invited. You fight hard for it 15 years ago, and then you make sure you do a good job every year. You hang on very much. Yes.
Speaker C: It's like staying a member at the mcg.
Norm Douglas: Well, I wouldn't know about that. I'm a kid from Broadmeadows without a. Without even a year. 10 pass. So I wouldn't know about the MCC members, mate. You might.
Nathan Bush: I do not.
Speaker C: I Do not. I wish I did. I wish I did. But I'll be down at the sidelines yelling at you on the weekend with a tinny on the hill. More likely than being up in the mcc.
Norm Douglas: Yeah. Look, that whole data ownership, I think, you know, part of my philosophy with Connie, I don't think any company is of any use to anyone unless it's profitable, because unprofitable companies quickly go south. Recently I finally learned what the word bootstrap means. I actually had never quite understood it from my generation. Everything was bootstrapped, you know, pretty much. Particularly small business. I didn't know there was a word for it. And when you're using your own money, profitability is crucial. You know, for me, having that data, that's what we did many years ago, is make sure that we had the data to make forecasting decisions really, really well. And I knew back then when we started collecting good data, that I'd benefit from it five years away. You know that old saying, what's the best time to plant a tree 20 years ago? What's the second best now? You know, sort of lets us make forecasting decisions, which allows us to be more profitable. It lets us make sales decisions, which allows us to be more profitable. And I think at times, you know, particularly consumers, they can think profit's a dirty word. Profit's so crucial, it's way more important than revenue because it allows you to be here next week. And if you're not here next week, then you can't service customers.
Speaker C: Do you find it bizarre how much we're talking about profit in the last few years? And I'm like, when has the goal of business never been about turning profit?
Norm Douglas: Totally agree. Well, if I'm cynical, I could say, because some businesses maybe start out not with that as a goal, because they're after growth.
Speaker C: And.
Norm Douglas: That's. Right. They start out with growth. And that's, you know, Amazon. Was that right? Amazon didn't. You know, I've got two figures here that I just wrote down in preparedness of this 1370 and 2739. That were two figures when I started trying to get Connie into a D2C space to become direct to consumer is 1370 is what you need per day to do half a million dollars online.
Speaker C: Okay.
Norm Douglas: And 2739 is what you need per day to do a million dollars online. You know, there was a time where I used to just stress over those numbers every hour because that's where we were starting from. We're starting from nothing. I remember listening to Someone on maybe on your podcast once and they said, you know, don't obsess over the numbers. You'll do your head in. I think totally different. I just think I have to know the numbers because it's like the heartbeat of the business. You know, DTC is extremely important to us, but it's not the only important thing. But it is the heartbeat of the business. It tells us what's happening with our consumers. Our brand drives our consumers to our website, but it also drives them at times in our retailers and our distributors and whatever else. So if I'm not on top of those numbers, you know, those numbers are long ago, but they were so important because it allowed us to get to a point where, okay, we now think we've got some data that we can start playing with. You know, the trouble when you're small is you just don't have the data to be able to make sense from it.
Speaker C: Yeah. So that's really interesting, I think, because with that focus on data and the control of the data, that's definitely a theme coming through today. I want to go back to your marketing channels because you talked a lot about obviously doing a lot with Google, doing a lot on email, but you also mentioned a lot of the above the line activity that is really difficult to measure and hard to get data on. Do you have to be a certain size of business before you can even think about those activities where there's no hard and fast return on them?
Norm Douglas: I don't think so. Maybe you need to be a certain size business before you can have that as a marketing spend. But if you started, because in my view, there's a few important numbers on the whole list. The one right down the bottom is probably the most single important one. That's the net profit. But along the way there's the. I measure a few different things. I measure, you know, what some people call mer. But basically, what are we spending as a percentage of your revenue? And that can be applied to a lot of things. It can be applied to staff, it can be applied to shipping, it can be applied to warehousing costs, it can be applied to marketing. And there was a time, eight years ago, maybe nine years ago, I sat with Glenis and we started spending money and I said, okay, we need to think about this because we can measure all the granularity if you like. But ultimately some are going to work, some aren't, and you need to be able to measure the whole lot. So that whole lot, if it's okay with you, I want she with you what my number is, but you know, there's a number that is overall and D2C. So D2C keeps me honest and I build a dashboard for our marketing, our agencies, and that's the number they follow. And then there's an overall and that overall allows me to say, okay, we're within range this last three months. There's an opportunity over there. What's it going to cost and how much will it affect that number there?
Speaker C: Yeah.
Norm Douglas: Now that might seem naive to some of your more sophisticated listeners, but ultimately that's, that's what it is, right? It's how much am I willing to spend as a percentage of that revenue?
Speaker C: Yeah, I think too there's a level of maturity too that comes with being able to do that, because marketing efficiency ratio, MER that you referred to has come up a few times. I think where people get really nervous about MER is when they're swapping and changing between channels constantly in order to try and find the right channels. But if you have an underlying belief in where you're advertising, you just need to make tweaks to improve that more over time. You're probably in a better spot.
Norm Douglas: I learned very quickly when we started spending money that don't look at today's or yesterday's results. Go like, skip at three to four days and look at three to four days ago. Because if you look at every day, you'll switch off the spend. Do you know what I mean? You'll just, you'll just can it.
Speaker C: Yeah.
Norm Douglas: You need to be able to have, as you say, the maturity to be able to, okay, today might be bad, but what's going to happen tomorrow? You know, some people don't like all the data that we have and say, you know, conversion time, where they call it the window of conversion, who knows? You know, I could be having a conversation with someone today in a supermarket and they buy something 12 months time. Where do you measure that thing? You know?
Speaker C: Yeah. Well, Norm, I hope that I don't need you anytime soon, but I really enjoyed this.
Nathan Bush: I can tell your website is true.
Speaker C: You are very passionate about pee and poo.
Norm Douglas: That's a good point.
Speaker C: And data and customer experience and the whole lot. We've covered a lot of ground.
Norm Douglas: Yep, yep. Now look, I'm really proud of, of not only Connie, but also the industry and what we're doing. We know that we pay the different path to other people, but we're privately owned, which is really passionate about that. You know, we've been profitable for a long time now and we Employ people. The vast majority of our staff come into the office on a regular basis. Not all the time, but on a regular basis. And we make great products and people enjoy them and they help people. You know, people wake up one day and they've got a really serious situation in their life. They buy a product and it helps. How. How good's that?
Speaker C: It's very, very good. So congratulations on selling the product that most people don't wish they had to buy and a lot of people haven't have the guts to sell. So well done. Well done to you and for continuing to innovate. Like, and I think there's that really nice story in there around controlling the data and controlling the customer experience, but also from a product perspective, around knowing which products just need to stay constant. Like you're talking about your Bridget Jones undies and just go, well, I've been around for 25 years. There's no need to change them because they work and people need them first. There is the need to continue to adapt. So understanding which of those products are
Norm Douglas: stable completely because there's. There's a new customer every day, right? There's a new customer born every day. Just because you sold 100 of them last month doesn't mean there's not 100 new customers this month.
Speaker C: Yeah, love it.
Nathan Bush: So, Norm, you just got back from China, next 12 months. What's the big things on the radar
Speaker C: for yourself and the team at Connie?
Norm Douglas: It's new product. That's what the China trips are all about. We try our best and we do, we succeed. Some of your listeners will understand when I say we deal directly with factories, we don't deal with trading companies. So that takes more time. You've got to build relationships. You've got to go and see the factory. You've got to be in your heart that you understand what's happening there. And, you know, we've got great partnerships. We've got some of our factories we've had for almost 20 years, which is unusual in a manufacturing industry. You know, we make physical products, so it's a matter of making sure we continue to expand those products and also to where we're. Where we have any type of factory challenges. We go out and deal with them head on and have fun doing it. You know, life's short, Bushy. Life's really short. My founder, Glennis, is another one that proved that point to me. She passed away of cancer at 67. That sucks.
Speaker C: Yeah, that sucks.
Norm Douglas: You know, so it's just so important to not take things too Seriously. And, you know, I've got. I'm so lucky. I've got two grandkids that I just love the bits and I see them a fair bit and footy and music and whatever else. So I try not to take what we do here. This is so important to me, but it's not my whole life. This is just. Just an element of it, you know.
Speaker C: I love it.
Norm Douglas: Yeah. You should be really proud of yourself too, mate.
Speaker C: Oh, thank you, mate. I'm just lucky to.
Norm Douglas: You know what I think about you and your position in this industry and you should be really proud of yourself about what you're doing. It's a fantastic thing. And. And you are the face of E Comm in Australia, mate.
Speaker C: I appreciate that. Thank you, mate. But I wish E Commerce got a prettier face.
Nathan Bush: Well, more importantly, Norm, thank you so
Speaker C: much for sharing all your insights today. Fascinating business like. That's one of the things that I love about ADD to Cart is that we don't try and always go out and interview the brands that are doing all the case studies and being held up at, you know, all that. And that there are some really amazing businesses doing important work. They probably don't get the recognition they deserve and I think Connie is one of them. So thank you for sharing that.
Norm Douglas: You know, so. Right. And I think it's for small businesses, which we are still. When I see some big businesses and they do big things and you think, oh, you know, like when small businesses do the big things, we can't afford to fail. Yeah, Yeah. I love business and I love what we're doing here and thanks for the opportunity.
Speaker C: Pleasure, mate. And even, even more importantly, good luck in the coming weeks. I hope you get the granny.
Norm Douglas: Yes, me too.
Speaker C: Thanks for joining me on ADD to cart.
Norm Douglas: Right, mate, thanks.
Speaker C: Tell you what, that was a bit
Nathan Bush: of an effort to keep all my
Speaker C: pee and poop jokes out of that
Nathan Bush: conversation and to keep it as professional as possible. A couple slipped through the crack a few times, but overall I think I
Speaker C: did a pretty good job.
Nathan Bush: All right, here are the three things that I took out of that conversation with Norm. The first lesson is to decide how long you will wait before you judge a result and then actually wait. Norm skips the last three or four days of data entirely and looks at where things sat before that. His reasoning is pretty straightforward. If you look at every day, you will switch to spend off immediately. You'll overreact, you'll jump at shadows. Most of us have killed a campaign on the back of one bad Tuesday. So pick your win window before the money goes out. Tell your agency what it is and hold to it when the daily number looks ugly, especially on those big sales days.
Speaker C: Hold your nerve.
Nathan Bush: The second lesson is to buy the system for the problem you're about to have, not the one right in front of you. Connie went looking at warehouse management systems years before the business could justify one. They found six figure quotes at point a certain time where they were nowhere near spending that amount of money and they bought something smaller that they could grow into. So have a look at where you're heading. When they made that decision, they knew the trajectory of the business and what
Speaker C: they were going to have to build
Nathan Bush: for D2C wholesale accounts, grocery, overseas distributors,
Speaker C: NDIs, ordering all off one system even
Nathan Bush: if it wasn't all there on day one. None of that gets retrofitted cheaply. Wait until it hurts and you're going to be buying in panic ripping out systems and it's probably going to be more expensive than buying small and building
Speaker C: up to big over time.
Nathan Bush: And the third one is the one that I keep coming back to. When a customer gets an order wrong, look at your system before you look at them. I love Norm's line around. Even if a customer has ordered the wrong size, that's probably on us, not on them. Connie has a large wholesale customer base who has ordered by the carton for years when what they mean is a single unit. And Norm has never once corrected them. He changed the system to understand what they meant instead of correcting them. His line was that if a customer has ordered the wrong thing, it is probably our fault. Worth counting how many times a week you ask a customer to do something a particular way purely because it suits your back end and isn't right for them. Maybe you should change your systems instead. Norm threw out way more numbers than I could write down. So if you want the short version of everything that we discussed today, the cheat sheet lands on the day the episode's released. Head on over to addtocut.com to sign up for our newsletter and we will send that to you on the morning that the episode drops in future sign up and you'll get the learning even if you never make it through through the whole conversation.
Speaker C: What a cheat code.
Nathan Bush: And also thank you to our partners at Shopify and Klaviyo. We get to go and find businesses like Connie and speak to leaders like Norm. They're often the ones that aren't getting all the accolades and are the ones that are quietly doing some really interesting things behind the scenes. And it's because we're backed by Shopify and Klaviyo to make these conversations possible.
Speaker C: Thank you very much for doing that.
Nathan Bush: Thank you very much to you for listening. If you got something out of this episode, please forward it on to a friend or a colleague. Hit like or subscribe or shoot me a sneaky little note in those Spotify comments.
Speaker C: I do read them.
Nathan Bush: All right, until next time. I'll see you on Add to Cart.
