Vic Gigliotti: What I learned about Rocky, it's not about boxing. It's actually about unrealized dreams. And that's what I love about it. And like we said we want sleeveless shirts, right? They literally made a T shirt. They just cut the sleeves off it. Like it was. It was full dodge. He's like, do not leave the airport. They will kidnap you. And I'm like, what the fuck? And he's like, yeah, do not leave. Get your hotel to come pick you up. And I was like, oh, shit, this is a bit intense.
[Voiceover]: Welcome to ADD to cart, Australia's leading e commerce podcast that expressed delicious delivers
Nathan Bush: all you need to know in the
Vic Gigliotti: fast moving world of online retail.
Nathan Bush: Here's your host, Bushy.
[Voiceover]: What do you need to build a global brand in 2025? Vision, grit. Maybe even a dog. Welcome back to Add to Cart. My name is Bushi joining you from the land of the terrible people here in Brisbane, Australia. Welcome back for 2025. It's so good to be back and to have you with us today. We're ready into 2025 big one in E commerce and I can't wait to bring you a whole bunch of new stories around the future of E commerce in Australia. Today we are kicking off and I'm speaking with none other than Vic Gigliotti, the brain and the heart behind Muscle Republic. This fitness apparel brand is as inspiring as it is successful. I think this is the episode where I actually came the closest to to crying. Such is Vic's journey. And Vic's journey began with a notebook, a dream, and lots of personal transformation. From starting the brand with his beloved dog Charlie Brown as the CEO to now selling into over 200 countries, Muscle Republic has become more than just activewear. It's a movement, a celebration of resilience, community and heart. And most of that, as you hear today, comes from Vic himself. In this episode, you'll hear very honestly how Vic rebuilt his life through fitness and through Charlie. He tells us about how he found his first supplier in a cab in Bali and how he's navigated through countless challenges, including overselling thousands of orders and more recently, the emotional and business hurdles from following Charlie's passing. We also dive into the strategies behind Muscle Republic's phenomenal growth, including leveraging Shopify and integrating advanced tech like PeopleVox and Style Arcade. Now, a reminder for you as we are heading into the new year, if you haven't already, I'd love to invite you to sign up for my weekly e commerce newsletter. We are going to kick off again in a couple of weeks and every week I will share with you industry insights and and five Must read e commerce stories, research or case studies from the past week. My aim is to keep you on top of the game in E Commerce. You can sign up for free over at add to cart.com au subscribe and I look forward to helping you through 2025 together. As always, a big thank you to our partners at Shopify who make this podcast happen this year. We are very lucky to have Shopify continue on on this journey with us as a key partner. I've been so lucky to have them
Nathan Bush: there with us since day one.
[Voiceover]: So thank you so much for the Shopify team for continuing on through 2025 with us. And I'd also like to welcome the team at Klaviyo who have come on board as one of our gold Partners and you'll be hearing so much more from the exciting stuff that the team at Klaviyo are doing. As most of us know, they are the leader in developing digital relationships with customers in E Commerce.
Nathan Bush: So much to bring you from from
[Voiceover]: both our partners, Shopify and Klaviyo this year. Let's get into the first chat of 2025. I want to introduce you to the incredibly humble and determined Vic Gigliotti, founder of Muscle Republic. Vic, welcome to ADD to cart.
Vic Gigliotti: Thank you Bushi. Pleasure to be here.
Nathan Bush: Oh mate, great to have you here. It was fun researching what you and Muscle Republic have done so far. Incredible story but bit confusing if I'm honest, because doing a bit of a LinkedIn stalk on you and the title Dogfather to the CEO Charlie Brown. What is going on there?
Vic Gigliotti: So Charlie was our CEO or always will be our CEO. He actually just passed as we were talking before September 14th. So just recently Charlie and I started the brand and we called him the CEO because I felt like a bit of an imposter giving myself a label as a CEO, which I think a few people throw out there. And I kind of lived the Persona through him as this is our CEO Charlie Brown and I'm just the bloke that does all the work. And it worked. It was just him and I making some T shirts and we decided to start this brand out of just basically a bit of boredom and it wasn't really an apparel brand, it was just more of a transformation of myself through fitness and just found that journey and through the love of the dog. We started walking and moving and training and entering bodybuilding competitions and met all these weird and wonderful people and we found Our community and our space. And that was Muscle Republic. And we decided to brand that on some shirts and roll through it and it eventually sort of evolved into a full on brand as it is now.
Nathan Bush: So I'm really sorry to hear about Charlie and what you've been through the last couple of months. I can imagine that given the role that Charlie had in the business and obviously, you know, that would be a big impact, not only just for you, but for the team as well to have.
[Voiceover]: You know, you wouldn't even call Charlie a pet, would you?
Nathan Bush: Like the way you, you positioned him.
Vic Gigliotti: No, he was a human. Yeah, he was just a beautiful, beautiful soul that brought so much good into this world. And, you know, I walk in the mornings and I see people on the street and they're like, hey, where's the dog? I don't even know these people. And they're I'm like, oh, he passed. And they're like, oh, fuck. You know, like, he was amazing. You know, just his energy and like, the brand is really built to bring the good into the world and that's what our message is. And Charlie exemplified that. Like, he was every bit of real muscle, his heart. And he carried me through dark times and good times. And they say that, you know, you'll never live forever, but you can build a brand that will be. And that's my goal. And in honor of Charlie, that's what we want to do. So, like, he's looking down on us.
Nathan Bush: He's here.
Vic Gigliotti: We've got murals of him throughout the warehouse. We're building a sub brand with his birthday, which means 712 team MSCR. That means you want to move seven days a week, 12 months a year. And that'll be in honor of him. And he'll always be our CEO and no one will ever have that title. And he was, you know, the founder of the brand, like, you know, alongside myself. And we're literally launching his own collection. So he was a brindle stuffy. His collection coming out in March, we've got T shirts with him on there and it will carry his legacy on forever. And I'll never forget what he did in transforming, bringing me back to life.
Nathan Bush: So that's beautiful, mate. I'm really interested there in you talking about your personal transformation. The research that I did there was a little bit about you, how you started Muscle Republic by cutting the sleeves off some training shirts to enter competitions. But it sounds like there's much more to your story and your journey into fitness than that. What is the transformation that you've alluded to there.
Vic Gigliotti: So the gym for me was something I was in awe of as a young kid. So I'll show my age. There was no Internet when I was growing up. And in order to learn about fitness and health, you had to either have a mentor, you had to go to the news agency and buy Flex magazine, muscle magazine. And I was just skinny kid growing up and loved sport, loved training, joined the gym at 15. I met this amazing community called Tony's Gym, which was a little gym above a fruit market. I met all different walks of life, sorry, people from all different walks of life, ages, religions, creeds, colors, everything and everyone supported each other there. And it's funny, when I started the brand, they all helped me in their own shape. One helped me with photography, one helped me with stock, one helped me moving stuff around. And what I realized was along the way, I'm a big Rocky fan. So I love the Sylvester Stallone. I grew up with that. And what I learned about Rocky, it's not about boxing, it's actually about unrealized dreams. And that's what I love about it. And it's a story of redemption and resurrection. There's the first scene, which he talks about recently in one of his Instagram posts, and there's. It's him fighting in the ring and it's a gym, it's a boxing arena that's in an old church and above the ring says resurrection. And one of the key words when I was trying to transform my life was redemption. So my career after school was wanted to get into real estate. Jumped into that, worked in the city doing commercial leasing. Loved it. But I was trying to fulfill other people's dreams. So my father, my parents, like, get a business card, get a suit, be successful, get a six figure job in the city, live that corporate lifestyle. But I just didn't feel it was me. And entrepreneurship was unheard of back in, when I was sort of like starting out in the late 90s in my career. You were probably crazy to start a business back then, whereas you can do it so easily now. And I started to live a life that was a little bit ungrateful, unfulfilled. Sydney was thriving back then, mixing in the wrong circles a little bit. And you know, you just kind of like, you start drinking, you start partying, and it's very common. But what you don't realize is that it fills your spirit and your energy with a negative energy. And that negativity breeds and it becomes resentful, it becomes ungrateful, and you're looking for materialistic things to fill a void. And eventually I got to my. And you're fudging through, you're making money, but you're spending twice as much and you're thinking you're cool, but you're not. And I literally hit rock bottom in my early 30s, had to move back home, had no money, no savings. And I was laboring for my brother in law at the time in a concrete formwork business. And it sucked. Like I fucking hated it. And I wasn't good at anything. But what I was good at was my background in real estate was people communicating with anyone, organizing, you know, the boys, the team, the materials. I drive the trucks. And where we had the yard for the materials in Oxford Falls, there was a guy that had an excavation business and he would, he had this dog and it was Charlie's mum, her name was Dragon. She was a brindle. And I said, if she ever has pups, I want one. And he's like, yeah, okay. So like I'm coming off a three day bumper and I'm at this job site, funnily enough, at my primary school. We're redoing the, the renovations or something and I'm on the truck, I kind of feel my arms or something. It's like Tuesday, I don't know what day it was. And I see this guy's brother in law and he's. And she's like, hey. I'm like, yeah, yeah. She's like, they had the pups. If you want the brindle, there's only one. And I was like, it's. And I'm like, I couldn't be doing anything. Like, I just want to go home. And for some reason I just go, you know what, I'm gonna go up to the house and see this dog, see these dogs, you know, So I get their chart. The mum's in the garage and the bait, the pups are a week old. And he's one brindle in the middle inside on the mum. And, and he's like. And I'm like, oh. And I picked him up and I put him in my hand like this. And he just fit in there. And I said, yeah, I'll take him. And I decided to call him Charlie Brown. And eight weeks later I get this dog and I don't even know what to do with it. I'm just like. But I'm so broken inside. And that's why I love dogs so much. Because the love, the affection, the energy. This dog was sent from above you know, like. And I'm like, I've got to look after this thing, I've got to feed it, I've got to walk it, I got to hang out with it. And I didn't want to go anywhere. I just wanted to hang with this dog, you know? And I remember taking him to the beach at Long Reef for the first time. I still got the photos and, you know, like, I get out of construction and I go work with my dad in real estate again. And he sold his business and he's opened back up and he's like, just come work with me, I'm busy. And I'm like, oh, fuck, I hate residential real estate. You know, it's. And he's like, just come do it. You know, it's. I'm so broke, right? And the language you talk to yourself, it becomes who you are, like. So you really got to watch the words that you speak to yourself. And at the time I didn't understand this. So I'm like, you know, I'm a loser. I've got no money. But the real estate starts to grow. I'm starting to progress back by a house. I'm renovating that with my brother and living there with a mate. Life's getting better, you know, like, I'm walking Charlie in the mornings. I'm still like, a little bit torn as to what I want to do. And I go, okay, you know what? I want to fulfill this dream of doing a bodybuilding competition. And I'm. So I reach out to a mate and I'm like, hey, can you help me? He's like, absolutely. So, like, this is where the power of surrounding yourself with good people.
Nathan Bush: Yeah.
[Voiceover]: And at that point, are you into the gym?
Nathan Bush: Are you like, on your way there?
Vic Gigliotti: I'm always in the gym. No matter what. I always went to the gym from when I was 15. That was my identity across my mates. I absolutely loved it. Even though I was partying and whatever. I would always go to the gym on Monday. Sometimes it'd take me to Tuesday, but I'd get there. But that was my. I guess that was my church, you know, and it probably kept me out of a lot of trouble. So I ended up setting a goal in January, the target, September. And I stopped drinking in about March or April. And I'm training, I'm training twice a day I'm training and the mornings, and I'm training at 2 o' clock in the afternoon because that's when my mate had a break in between his clients. And we reach out to another friend who started doing our diet for us. And you start meeting all these different people. But what happened was on Saturday afternoons, a man of ours had a gym and he said, boys, I can see what you're doing. Come down and train with us. And we would post that on socials, we'd go get a feed after. So we're doing something different than what we were doing before. And all of a sudden people used to reach out and say, hey, can I come train you guys on Saturday afternoon? Yeah, absolutely. So we're building this community, right? We don't even know what we're doing. And we're sharing this journey of transformation physically. But I didn't know it wasn't my physical transformation, was my heart and my head that was changing. So along this time in 2012, I'm reading quotes, I'm reading quotes on Instagram, powerful motivation quotes, change your life quotes. And my motto was to. I was watching Rocky one night and I'm like, okay, I want to win this thing and I'm going to give it everything I've got. And it's Rocky 3 and he's, he's, he's in this battle against himself and he's like, I just thought tomorrow. And he's like, Apollo's like, no, there is no tomorrow. I'm like, you know what? That's my motto. I'm going to train for today. Everything I can do today, I'm going to get done, eat my food, train twice a day, practice my posing and I'm going to show the, I'm going to prove it to myself that I can build self belief and by following a program, I can get to that goal. And it was the small steps to get you to a long journey and got on stage and I never felt more proud than I did when I walked off that stage at Bankstown Sports Club in September 2012. Didn't win or anything, but I said I was going to do something and I did it. And I remember my, my younger brother is a lot different to me. He's very structured and sensible and the reason I did this comp was to make him proud of me and like, because he became not so proud of me, you know, so that's a big
Nathan Bush: thing for an older brother to make his younger brother proud of him.
Vic Gigliotti: Yeah, a bit of a shift. So, yeah, I just, I kind of, you know, he was over the moon. Like you could see him wanting to like, really build that relationship again. And so we, we go to Bali with some mates and someone had told me about a dog shop where you could buy dog jumpers. And it was first time in Bali. Went for New Year's with a few friends. We're a couple of Italians and Lebos fucking running a muck.
Nathan Bush: And just a couple of quiet drinks in Bali.
Vic Gigliotti: Yeah, just fucking blind us. But we go to this shop and I buy Charlie Six dog jumpers. I'm buying Bali dog, Bing Tang dog, Dinosaur dog, super dog, Superman dog. Anyway, we stop off and this lady wouldn't budge. There's a power brand and knowing your work, she's like 30, $40 for these little cotton dog jumpers. And I was like, come on, we're in Bali, you know, everything's cheap, you know. No, you want it, you gotta pay. And we were there for like a half an hour. And I was like, yep, fine. I. I just want the best for my dog. So leave there, stop off on the way, and I grab a Bing Tang singlet and a Chicago's Bull singlet and with some mates, and it's six and seven bucks. Get in the car. We've made friends with the driver and we're like, this is amazing quality. And he's like, yeah. He goes, we can make these for you. And another mate's like, yeah, you should do your own brand. And, like, gym sharks popping up around this time, you know. And I'm like, yeah, you know what? It. I'll give it a go. So I get back and I'm scribbling in a notebook that I still have and I'm writing train for Today logo. And I've still got my first shirt that this guy made for us. Start researching suppliers and what's happened. This bloke in Bali, and that's 1st of February 2013.
[Voiceover]: And are you whatsapping the cab driver, is that?
Vic Gigliotti: Yeah, yeah, the driver, yeah, yeah. His name's Danny. I'm still mates with him now. He's a legend. He makes. We make shirts there. We make. We make. I think it was like a thousand shirts or something. And like we said, we want sleeveless shirts, right? He literally. They literally made a T shirt. They just cut the sleeves off it. Like it was. It was full dodge. But it's 1st of March, I think the night. That's a couple nights before I'm training at St Leonard's because I'm going to do bodybuilding the next year as well. So January, I get back from Bali, stop drinking, bang, I'm on. And I meet these young guys that train at St. Leonard's they're bodybuilding coach and I joined their team and they became, like, really integral in, like, helping spread the word initially, outside of my immediate circle. And I'm sitting in the car, about to go train, and I'm at the front of Pacific Highway. I'm at the front of Coco Republic, the furniture store. And I look up and I'm like, the Muscle United, the muscle. And I'm like, the Muscle Republic. You know, I said, that's a community that. So muscle to us means heart and Republic means family. And that's really what this brand is about. So your biggest muscle is your heart in your body, and that's what's going to make the biggest difference. And that's why we say that real muscle is heart, and that's what Charlie left us. So all power, if you want to do something, comes from within. You know, the real strength comes from within, inside yourself and the people you surround yourself with. And I'm like, going manic. I meet my friend, she's a graphic designer at monavar. We have a coffee, I'm got the name, it's called the Muscle Republic. And she's like, drop the V. It's called Muscle Republic. We make this logo. Sorry, I feel like I'm talking too much.
Nathan Bush: Oh, this is great.
[Voiceover]: What a story. I think you could be the first guest to make me cry on my own podcast.
Nathan Bush: Like, what a story.
Vic Gigliotti: Don't cry. Fuck. There's plenty more stories to come. Yeah.
[Voiceover]: Oh, well, I get that feeling. I feel like we only scratched the surface.
Vic Gigliotti: Oh, like, so I just dedicate myself to building the. Starting this brand. I'm writing business plans, I'm YouTubing stuff. I got no idea what I'm doing and I'm just fudging through it. But there was a moment when I put it up on Instagram, when we started the Instagram page and we, you know, we. I sort of started a brand, you know, like. And I remember doing the bodybuilding comp. I said, if I'm going to put it out to the world and I'm going to stand on stage in those little undies, I. I want to really make sure that I'm actually in decent condition because. And if you say you're going to do something, can you put it out there? I'm doing a bodybuilding comp. People are like, are you going to do it or are you just talking shit? You know? So when I said I'm going to do a brand, I was all in. And we really had no idea what we were doing, but we were just failing Forward, failing forward. And we ended up, we launched the Instagram page, we started putting quotes up there, we started putting lifestyle images up there around what we wanted the brand to look like. Now the following is over 250,000. So that's from March 2013. We've organically grown that. And there was something that drove me to build this business. And business to me is such a powerful thing to do because it can change your life and it can change the lives of people around you. And what you can do for a business, you can make a difference in everyone's world. And that's what I love. Like, so we're growing. Sorry, we're growing this Instagram and we're sharing all of the samples and everything and people are like, oh, I love that color and I like this. And the product was shit. And we land these shirts from Bali and I don't know what to do with them. I'm trying to sell them. We had a magento site and like I'm living at my parents house right at this point and me and Charlie are like, you know, this is the CEO and this is where his identity started to create like an identity for the brand. You know, CEO of Muscle Republic. You know, I'm giving shirts out to friends and I'm like, just wear this because I'm thinking in real estate. My dad used to say to me, if you control the sign board territory in a market, if you control the sign boards, you control the territory. So I'm like, where's my customer? They're in the gym.
Nathan Bush: Yep. And you already build that community up? Yeah.
Vic Gigliotti: You know, so we're fudging for it. I'm working in real estate. Like literally six, seven days a week. I'm going to rental houses. Charlie's in my ute, we're rocking up, doing an open house. And it was funny, man. Like, it was really tough. But these were the best times because we were just trying to figure out what to do. Websites. I had no idea about Shopify back then.
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Vic Gigliotti: I reached out to a friend, she was helping me build a woocommerce site. I think we spent tens of thousands of dollars on that site. It was disastrous. Never worked. Yeah, it got me started and finished those comps in November. I did three comps that year during October, September, October, November. And I come back from Melbourne, I'm like, that's it. I'm going full into the business. So I started researching, googling where to find product. You know, Alibaba pops up and I'm buying as color shirts and I'm going to screen printers across Sydney. And I remember I bought this, I rang up as color. I'm like, I need to buy a thousand shirts. And they're like, okay, we'll give you a resellers rate. I'm like, perfect. So I take the shirts, the screen printing is no, you've got to take them to me. I print them. So like obviously there's margin, you know. So I'm like, ah, what do I do with these shirts now? I ring my real estate sign guys like, yeah, I can print them. So I literally picking up real estate signs in the back of my Ute and Muscle Republic T shirts and I'm literally selling them through the website. We had a terrible woocommerce site and I'm selling them through Instagram and Facebook and like people like, yeah, I'll take a shirt and I would package it up and they come down to the real estate. I would drive around after work and drop it in people's letterboxes. And I don't know, there was something about like just the process of it that just engaged me. So and you gotta remember, I mean it's just me and Charles, we're just hustling and it's kind of like, all right, where do we find a supplier? So we find, I look on the back of ace color shirt, it says Made in Bangladesh. So I'm searching Bangladesh suppliers in Onalibaba. I find this guy, his name Sultan of all funny names. I book a flight to Dahaka in February, that 2014. I fly there. I remember the lady at flight center, I said, what the. Do you want to go to Haka for like you go there to watch cricket or to make clothes. I said I'm making clothes. I don't look like much of a cricketer. So she's. I fly there on my own or I never forget you fly from Sydney to Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia. And I'm at the airport, I'm feeling normal and I, I get the connecting flight from Kuala Lumpur to the Haka which is their capital. I'm just like, holy, this is really uncomfortable. And I get to the airport and the guy's like, they wouldn't even check me through customs. I'm like, can someone serve me? And he's like, do not leave the airport, they will kidnap you. And I'm like, what the. And he's like, yeah, do not leave. Get your hotel to come pick you up. And I was like, oh shit, this is a bit intense. So I get to the hotel and they've put me in an internal room with no windows and I started to get really claustrophobic in there, like this mass. I said to the guy said, you just need to move me into a room with a window. And he said the only one we have is the top floor. And I'm like, I don't care what it is man, just put me up there. So I get up there, lo and behold, there's a, there's a nightclub playing Indian music above me full built. And I'm like, you know what, I can see outside. I don't care. I'm so tired, I'm going to fall asleep regardless. So I listened to some mad Indian dance tunes between for that whole week. Yeah.
Nathan Bush: All the inspiration you need to become
[Voiceover]: an E commerce entrepreneur.
Nathan Bush: I love it. Now as we sit here, I can see that you've got a beautiful office behind you. You're now selling into 200 countries which is a huge, huge cry from starting out, from finding a supplier in the back of a cab in Bali. You must be incredibly proud of how far you and the team have come so far. What's been the secret to your E commerce success so far? So if you think about moving from that startup stage into running full blown E commerce brand, do you have any moments in there where you're like, when we did this, this was the moment that it went to the next level?
Vic Gigliotti: Yeah, there's, there's a couple of key moments. So I get to 2016, we've got a woocommerce site running and I'm doing, sorry, 2014. I started, I'm doing a course called the Entourage and I'm sitting with about 200 people in a room in Ultimo. Guy called Jack Delosa. A friend of mine pushed me to go to this conference at Town hall in Sydney on a Saturday. And I remember saying to her, I can't go to the on a Saturday. I've got to do open houses for rentals. And she's like, no, go. You really need to go because they're going to teach you about entrepreneurship and brand building. I was like, I've got no idea what you're talking about. But I go on my own. And I sit next to this guy, and we became friends. And they rev you up, you know, like, they got Mark Boris on the stage, lady from Red Balloon. And I'm just in awe more of these people. And I joined this course, and I started integrating into this, and I'm like, okay. I start learning, and I'm the dumbest person in this room. And I feel so stupid. I'm just quiet. I'm like, okay. And to be honest, I'm one of about five that are still going out of those 200. And it's that perseverance and persistence that you really need to build a business. And it's not pretty. But we get to 2016, and I say to my old man, I'm out of real estate. I need to get out. I can't do this anymore. Anymore. I want to go full time into muscle. So we sell our rent roll, and all the money I made, I poured into Muscle. And it's 2017, and we transfer from WooCommerce to Shopify. It's September that year now. Mind you, it went so bad in the beginning of 2017 that I moved into the warehouse with Charlie and we lived there for six months. Yeah. And I got so sick because I tore my teres muscles because the stress that building a business can put your body under. I didn't realize it had nerve pain. And I've got the same nerve pain right now in the other arm. It's happened again, funnily enough, but it's broken me, and I don't know what's happening, but I'm just turning up. And I find a podcast called the MF CEO, which is Andy Fazella. And he's talking, and I'm never one for podcasts, and I find him through Instagram, and he's really. I feel like he's talking to me. Every challenge, it's how to overcome this. Everything is follow the power list. This is how you make progress. And I'm like, okay, progress. To me equals happiness. If I just do like I did in bodybuilding, one thing every day to move me closer to my goal, I'm going to get there. And he just teaches you to do five things. To be honest, I still do. Every day I write five things in my notebook and I tick them off and I feel like just, just win that day. And I match that to my business and I match that to my personal goals. So it's training, it's, you know, anything else outside of my business that I'm aligning to, I write them down and I've crossed them off still with a pen. Now in 2017, when we went in September to Shopify and I saw how Plug and Play worked on Shopify, I was like, oh my God, I understand this myself. This is incredible. I was like, okay, now I'm watching the High Smile boys and they're doing vlogs. I'm building the brand with Nick and Alex. I'm racing home to watch vlogs of them every night. And they're talking about digital and they're talking about, okay, you need a funnel, you need awareness, relationship and conversion. And I'm writing notes like this, right? So I'm going, and I still have it. So I'm learning about digital. So I'm like, okay, well how am I going to reach people to get to them on my website? Now I start to understand that it's traffic to website and conversion and AOV that are your key metrics in E Com. So I'm like, I'm focused, I'm a product person, I'm brand, you know, like, I'm passionate, I'm persistent. But let's just work a little bit smarter here. You know, you can do hand to hand combat and try and sell to everyone or you can drive people to your website and build an experience and build a community. So all of a sudden that shift starts to happen and I'm working with an agency at the time and it's not working out. It was a terrible experience and that's just what I had. And I was trying to put a bundle app on my website and it was called Bold Apps and I was like, oh man, it's going to take me forever to figure out this. So I find I used to use upwork freelancer.com a lot. So I put this, I look for need help putting Bold app onto Shopify site and this, this guy reaches out, he's from Canada and he's like, yeah, I can help you do that. So we jump on a call and he still does our digital ads till today. So he puts this app on and he's incredible. I actually flew him and his wife out last year to Australia and he's my longest standing employee. Pretty much he runs, spends all our digital money, which is quite a lot.
[Voiceover]: So you've got an upwork from Canada
Nathan Bush: spending all your digital money?
Vic Gigliotti: Yeah, yeah, we have a digital coordinator, obviously, you know, our head of marketing, digital Lauren, who runs all that for us now, she's got the biggest team here. But this was like understanding digital of a metric of. Okay, so you want to get people into your retail store, which is your website. How am I going to get them? You've got to get organic, but you've got to get them through the door through paid, you know, through digital. And you've got to make sure that you have a combined strategy. I learned this along the way through many sort of trials and errors. But that around 2017 was the unlock for me. I started traveling to China at the same time. 17, 18, 19 can't afford staff so I'm using freelancers. Funnily enough, I use a fashion designer from Canada as well and she was incredible. We would do Tuesday night calls at 10 o' clock at night I'd come home from packing orders, trying to build product, trying to do marketing, photo shoots, serving people in the warehouse. Like and I remember you talk about like organic and digital, right? I didn't know how to get people to my website, but I knew that if I took a photo with someone when they came down and tagged them on Instagram and they would then share that image to their friends and family. So I was like, listen, if you come down, the CEO will have a photo with you. If you spend 100 bucks like it was this gimmick, you know, and it start and what happens is if someone's wearing other people want to wear it and it builds social proof, then you put that into digital and everything else that's UGC now. And it's kind of like obviously we've built out that strategy over many years now. I wish I'd have known a little bit earlier, but that shift into Shopify and understanding the power of digital and driving people to your website. I was very fortunate that I met a gentleman through LinkedIn who reached out as a local who was a big partner at PwC. Gregory Will, his name was. He just reached out love bodybuilding, used to work with big apparel brands, Came and saw me and just said, hey, can I help you? I'm like, yeah, I just need understanding about inventory and product buying and everything else. He referred me to another guy called Neil Livingston, who was the CFO at MJ Bale and C. Foley. And they would reach out, and Neil introduced me to the weird and wonderful Paul Waddy, who was still at Chopo running operations at this time. So I'd go see Paul and had a coffee with him in Clarence Street. Their office was in the city. You got to remember, I think I'm turning over about 20 grand a month, and I'm spending double that. You know, I'm losing money hand over fist. And Paul's like, listen, you're a brand guy. You're a product guy. You got something here. You can do this. I believe in you. You just need to understand your metrics. You need to understand digital. You need to understand your P and L. And I was kind of like, what's my P and L? He goes, ask Danny. He's your accountant, who we know. And Danny was my biggest advocate and still is.
Nathan Bush: That's Danny from Kelly Partners, and he's the one that connected us.
[Voiceover]: So I'm excited to see how these
Nathan Bush: threads are all coming together for you, Vic.
Vic Gigliotti: Yeah, it's the power of good people, and good people want to see you grow your business, and they'll really help you. But you got to be genuine, and you got to be real, and you got to be willing to take the hits and go through the fire. But it's like 1819, and I just get back from China. I'm reinvesting into product. Everything that comes in goes into product. I did not pay myself out of the business until 2020, and at that time, it's $500 a week up until 2022. So this whole period, I'm living very, very quietly, moderately. I'm building this business. People are seeing that there's a few T shirts out there and everything else, and the sense of not believing in who I was. I believe the brand would be as big as what you it is now. I think we can grow it to five times more in the next couple of years. But you have to have a sense of belief, right? Because everyone tried to get me to stop at this point. They're like, listen, it's okay. Just take the loss. I remember sitting in Danny's lounge room. It's like a Friday night. We're reconciling everything. I've put all the POs incorrectly into our inventory management system. I haven't recorded our freight costs, which is a cost of your good. And I'm like, hundreds of thousand dollars at a loss. And it's one o' clock in the morning and me and Charles are there and I look at Danny and he's like, what do you want to do? I said, this is good. We know where we're at now. It's only up from here. Because what people don't realize, I'd been at rock bottom in my personal life before. Being at rock bottom in my business was really difficult. But I was a different person now. So I was like, I can turn this around. And I go to China and I fly Connie there from Canada. It's end of 2019 and we've got new suppliers. We're driving collections all the way through to May the following year. I get back, we launch a collection. This is like another turning point. Working with an influencer called Mickey Parker. And there's only three of us, right? It's myself, a part time marketing person and a warehouse guy. And we launched this collection and it's, it's February and it does quite well. We run into March and this is like we're planning an event in the Gold coast where it's a big collection for us at the time. And Covid hits like literally that week. And as we launch it goes bananas. In 20 minutes we sold more product than we did in a month. But I didn't realize as traffic comes to your website, if you haven't got the right systems and software in place, your website will break, you will oversold. We oversold 250 orders. So I'm in 100 meter warehouse. I spend my whole weekend laying them out on top of each other. I'm working for everything and I'm writing back the customers and refunding them. And my optimistic head says, well fuck, what about if I had four times the amount of stock, what I could have made? And I always saw a problem like in every crisis there's an opportunity and you've just got to see it for what it is and you've got to stay calm. So at the time I had like these investors in the business and they wanted to get out. They were like, we're getting out. And I said, no, no, this is going to work. And they're like, nah, we're getting out. So I had to withdraw everything I had out of the business and pay them out. And I moved the warehouse to a larger place so went from 100 meters to about 400 meters. And I remember them saying to me, you wouldn't do this number. And I did. I think it was four times that Number the following financial year. I was grateful for the understanding they gave me around business and strategy and structure and I always try and take the good out of every situation. And we hustled like we hustled through Covid. We expanded, we grew and I was pushing. It was the belief that I had in the brand and the community.
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Vic Gigliotti: we're tacking on things. We're building new website, we're adding software for customer service like Gorgeous. We're hiring different, but we're hiring at the moment. We're hiring people around us, you know, like, so we get to, I think it's 2022 and we move into the warehouse next door. We run into Black Friday and we get to Black Friday and we land about half a container of stock, which was a lot for us back then for context. Like that's half a. Half a 20 foot container. We literally just landed, I think five 40 foot containers in the last three weeks before COVID And we go to launch and we're ready this year. We're like, yep, nothing's going wrong this year. And we use an inventory management software called Sin7, which was great for us at the time. And there's a button on the back of syn 7 which is called Auto Sync. And we know at this time it prevents your stock overselling because it allows Shopify to control inventory. So once you push the stock in, as soon as the sale gets made, it doesn't try and update it, it just lets Shopify drive. One of the team have said, yep, I've done it, I've saved it. The night before, it didn't save. We launch at 7 o'. Clock. The sales that we did were incredible. We sell like 20,000 orders, right? And I'm like, something does not feel right. And as we start picking, like we're picking and packing from paper slips, right still and we oversold 3,000 orders. So I've got all the marketing team, all the product team, everyone on customer service. We write back to every customer. It took two weeks to get all those orders out. I didn't really have an operations manager at that time. It was a Sunday afternoon. I finished getting the orders out with 22 staff at the time that were just literally hustling. And I said to myself, I'm never going through this again. So. So we implemented PeopleVox, which is a warehouse management system. We hired an operations manager who's still with us. Today is incredible. We had our biggest day two days ago ever in the business. I don't pick one order anymore. I don't even know how to use the system. They were left at 6:00'. Clock. Yeah, they're smashing targets now. You know, we're inbounding stock correctly, we're outbounding stock perfectly. We're making sure the customer stays full and first and foremost at the front of our business. So it's going through those fires and then making that call. So for context, we were in 400 meters of warehouse where we were, sorry, 550 square meters. We took next door, so they're 270 side by side. We just moved to a brand new three and a half thousand meter facility. We moved within two months. So we just moved the office just moved in last week. The team are incredible. We have 25 staff that are just spread across marketing, products, operations and cx. We're staged for growth now. Like the next phase is so exciting for Muscle Republic.
[Voiceover]: So that's so mate, thank you so
Nathan Bush: much for taking us through your story like from Woe to Go because it's rare that you ever get the ups and downs and everything, all the little stories in there around what it is today because you look at what Muscle Republic is today and it's beautiful brand. One of the leaders in the health and fitness apparel space. But you would never point all those setbacks and hurdles along the way to
[Voiceover]: your story question that I've got for you.
Nathan Bush: And this might be the last one we get in there, but at the start I'm really curious because we talked about Charlie and the incredible impact that he's had and how you have him as your CEO because you felt that you're an imposter, to use your words as a CEO.
[Voiceover]: But we also talked about the power
Nathan Bush: of self belief and the words that you use to yourself. Hearing your story today. I think you've been through so much in life and business that others will Never, ever go through. And if there was ever anyone that could call themselves a CEO and a true leader, those experiences lend themselves to someone like you calling themselves a CEO. Do you ever see the day where you can where you'd feel comfortable calling yourself a CEO?
Vic Gigliotti: So I'm undergoing like another transformation right now, so I need to step up to another level. You know, they say like a business will never outgrow its leader, and that's so true. So managing people is probably the most difficult part in a business. And you have to be very genuine and you have to build a brand that they can build their vision within your brand. So my brand needs to be as big as it possibly can for them to build their vision and goals within that. So if I'm not growing as a person and not understanding that I need to lead them and they look to me for leadership, this business will self implode and not grow. So I work on myself more than anything at the moment, looking at coaches, courses, anything I can do. My words are so powerful in how I articulate my message. You have to have hard conversations with some people sometimes, and it's difficult. Like I only call myself the founder of the business, not the CEO. I think the CEO title will always be on the mantelpiece of Charlie. He's in our. He's in our foyer here. But definitely one day I'd like to take that over. Not right now. It's funny because Charlie got us here. He came to the warehouse when we were just moving in. And there's a video on my Insta of me and him being in the warehouse and him lighting up. And I feel like it was a message to say, I got you here, dad. Now I'm going to hand it over to you. I've managed. You've transformed your life, you're transformed this business. It's really for you to go. My job is done. And for him not to be here for this. Black Friday is probably the hardest bit for me because nothing means more to me than what he did. All the revenue goals or the growth of the business will fundamentally only be secondary to the feeling I always had when I had my dog. But I always said to myself that I'm going to owe it to him to live up to his expectations. And what I see the brand being CEO title is nothing to take lightly. It's, you know, I think titles are titles. You know, we work on a level playing field here at Muscle Republic. I make sure I go down the warehouse and shake everyone's hand every day, all Our casuals. We just bought everyone lunch today. I know it's not. Not much, but everyone feels like an equal here. But in terms of, yeah, definitely leading the brand to the next level. As the owner of the business, it's my. It's my role in my duty to make sure I'm living up to the expectations of that business and role. So maybe one day. Maybe one day.
Nathan Bush: So just incredible. I've never heard a founder speak about the CEO role like that, so I really appreciate that. It's great insight. So you talked about growth and stepping up to the next level. Next 12 months for muscle Republic, what's on the cards?
Vic Gigliotti: We're looking to pretty much double the business. So the first thing was we needed an operation facility that could facilitate holding the stock and the growth and make it fun for the team. Taking this warehouse was not something we took on lightly. We looked for 12 months. So it goes back to that whole, okay, what's your end goal? What do you need to do to get there? And then you can have the facility, but you got to fill it with the right people and you got to work as one. One of our key value is we move as one. And the reason I say that for because if you move together, you move a lot faster, you get a lot further. I find that I'm hiring people that are incredibly highly skilled and intelligent that come to me and say, I want to work for you. And I'm like, holy shit. What the fuck? This person's worked at, like, one of the best brands in the country. What the. In my head, I'm like, what the fuck? We love how authentic you are. We love that you actually put your journey out there. And I'm like, oh, yeah, that's cool. I just want you to come love doing your work, you know, like, you're an incredible designer, you're an incredible marketer. You're amazing at operations. Like, what these individuals can do and how they love coming to a workplace and feeling valued. I think it's one thing I didn't touch on in the beginning. The thing that I took away from myself was my own personal value when I was living a lot unfulfilled life. When fitness came back into my life with a vengeance and my dog gave me value, he'd saw through all the bad, and he said, I see the good in you. Fitness put the value back into myself. So I believed in myself. It's my job to put value into the people that work for us now. They're the ones that talk to the customer. Like our CX team today, I'm on the chat, on the slack chat with them. They're like, we got 11 tickets. I'm like, this is our biggest days ever, how you guys got 11 tickets, you know, because they're just loving it, you know, like when people love what they do, they do it authentically and without even thinking about it. So the goal for us is to keep building out our team strategically, making sure we're growing our database and our community as much as we can and expediting the mission of the brand and that's to connect the world through the heartbeat of fitness. And when you do that, you connect people through with a common value that believe in the good, the fitness brings into their world and their lives. And they spread that message out to everyone else and hopefully we can make sure that we're in the right clothes at the same time.
Nathan Bush: I love it. You talked about real muscle is heart as what underlies Muscle Republic's ethos and you've shown that plenty today and it comes through in everything that you talked about in terms of how your team's connected to you, the other people that have helped you out in your journey, Plenty of heart in your journey and your mission. So, Vic, thank you for sharing all that for us today.
[Voiceover]: If people want to get in touch
Nathan Bush: or learn more about Muscle Republic, what's the best way for them to do that?
Vic Gigliotti: Obviously, we've got all our channels. Musclerepublic.com is our website. Muscle Republic, Insta, Facebook, TikTok apparently is a thing now. I'm still learning TikTok, but the team love it.
Nathan Bush: Mate, you would fly on there. You would be, you would be star material on TikTok, I reckon.
Vic Gigliotti: It's funny, it's an amazing channel that drives so much awareness and I think that's the one thing that people need to know when you're building a brand. Product is integral. You've got to have a good product to sell, but you can't sell a secret. So you need to make sure you're on the right channels and putting a out there to the world to see. Yeah. So basically my Insta is Vic mscr. I'm a massive introvert, so I don't like socializing, don't like talking to people.
Nathan Bush: Like you've done a good job of it today.
Vic Gigliotti: No, no. People laugh, they're like, hey, you want to come out? You want to catch up? I'm like, no, like five friends, like, just.
Nathan Bush: Well, mate, I appreciate the time you've taken today. Thank you.
[Voiceover]: Very much for joining us on Add to Cart.
Nathan Bush: Your story so far is incredible and like you said, it's just the start. Plenty more growth, plenty more good things to come.
[Voiceover]: Thank you for sharing and we'll catch up again soon.
Vic Gigliotti: I hope we delivered some value today. And yeah, thank you again for having us on. We really appreciate it.
[Voiceover]: There you go. I bet you weren't expecting that first episode back of 202025 and to get hit with such an emotional and inspirational story as Vic's. I just feel so fortunate to have met someone like Vic and it just shows how much love and how much passion goes behind a brand like Muscle Republic. Alright, here are the three top tips that I took away from that chat. Number one Build a community, not just a Brand I know a lot of people say that they're a community, but Vic really does create a community, whether that's with his customers or with his team. Vic's story shows the power of creating a genuine community around a shared value. In his case, fitness as a form of transformation. From day one, Vic focused on bringing people together through Instagram posts featuring their journey, customer meetups with Charlie the CEO, and even his early strategy of personally delivering orders. These grassroots efforts helped Muscle Republic grow its Instagram following to over 250,000 loyal fans, proving that real connections lead to real growth. Sometimes you have to think beyond the transactions and do the unscalable to foster real relationships with your audience that will stand the test of time. Number two leverage tech to scale Smart Vick's transition from a WooCommerce setup to Shopify was a game changer for him. He called it out himself, cutting out inefficiencies and unlocking new possibilities for growth. But it didn't stop there. Tools like PeopleVox for warehouse management helped eliminate errors during Black Friday chaos, and Style Arcade gave VIX team the insights they needed to optimize product ranges and drive sell through rates. In fact, Style Architecture Arcade revealed sell through rates that helped them confidently scale collections which contributed to doubling their business revenue in a year. In fact, you can go Back to episode 251 if you want to hear more about Style Arcade, where we interview their founder Mikaela Wessels from a couple of years ago now, but really gives a great insight into the brains behind what it takes to manage inventory well and to forecast really well. But the lesson from Vic the right tech at the right time can absolutely unlock the game. And number three, grit and resilience are superpowers. From navigating a flooded warehouse during Black Friday to battling personal challenges after Charlie's passing. Vic's ability to persevere through tough times is a big reason he's done so well. During COVID when many businesses were closing their doors, Vic saw a four times increase in sales from one of his collection launches. By staying focused and resourceful, Vic's mantra is every crisis is an opportunity. And this is something that's helped Muscle Republic not only survive but also grow during tough times. But what I love most is that you can tell most of it comes from Vic's personal journey, which is all too happy to share. Vic's an amazing leader and his story should be heard by more. So I'm so glad today that we got to hear it on Add to Cart. Before you go, we'd love to invite you to join our free e commerce learning platform Add to Cart Campus. Meet other professionals and learn from e commerce experts to take your business and your e commerce career to the next level. Register to join join campus@addtocart.com now. If you enjoyed today's episode, make sure you share it with a friend or a colleague. Or even better, leave us a review on Spotify or Apple. It really makes a difference.
