Ryf Quail from NRF APAC

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[Voiceover]: Welcome to the Checkout. We catch up with previous add to cart guests and ask them five quick questions to get to know them better. Leave you with a little extra inspiration to get through your Friday.

[Ad]: Here's your host, Bushy Today's checkout features Reef Quayle, managing director of NRF 2025 APAC, the retail event that's shaking up the Asia Pacific region. We dive into Reef's world hearing about his weirdest online purchase for his son, the online store that fuels his motorbike obsession, and his take on on the future of global payments. Brief welcome to the Checkout.

Nathan Bush: We had an awesome conversation around what's coming up at this year's NRF APAC in Singapore. Everyone who wants to know what is going on in the region, that is the place to be. We've got all the details there. We'll link to it in the show notes. But I've got five quick questions for you now. We might get some good answers because you're in the flurry of organizing one of the biggest conferences in the world. So who knows where your head's at. Number one, what is the weirdest thing that you've ever bought online?

Ryf Quail: Well, it's not that weird, but it's weird for a 52 year old guy to buy. So I've got a 10 year old son and a whole he lives in a virtual world so I'm buying robots and avatar kit the whole time as rewards. So my life is about bribing my son to be coerced into the things I want him to do and that involves buying a lot of stuff on Minecraft, on Roblox, all that sort of thing. It's constant.

Nathan Bush: I bought way too many V bucks and

Ryf Quail: exactly. I don't even know I'd called. I'm like oh My God. I tell you what I can say for his generation. They are going to shop completely differently because they are all living in virtual worlds. It's insane.

Nathan Bush: Oh, it's a status symbol, you know what I mean? Like, I talk to him a lot about it and I'm like, yeah, but mate, this is just virtual stuff and

Ryf Quail: it's going to go away.

Nathan Bush: It's like, yeah, but I can trade it and I can do this and if I hang onto it, it goes up in value and I'll sell it later. I'm like, all right, it makes you happy. Let's go. All right, number two, which retailer? And you gave us some great examples of some of the retailers in the APAC region that will be speaking at nrf. But which retailer has most inspired you recently?

Ryf Quail: You know, many people know that I'm just a completely mad motorbike rider. And so one of my favorite websites, it sounds naff is MX Store. Because what you can do is you put in your motorbike and then it just spits out all the stuff you can buy. And then right as this is also unlike 50 or 2 year old man, I can hide all the purchases on afterpay and have parcels arrive of all the different parts of my bike that have been spat out to me by MX store. Because I've got this type of bike. So therefore I have to buy this stuff. But I can't have my wife discovering that I'm buying this much stuff.

Nathan Bush: You've got a problem.

Ryf Quail: Correct? I do. There are some unopened packages still floating under my desk at home, which I can't talk about.

Nathan Bush: That is dangerous when you're traveling so much as well to have random packages turning up left, right and center MX stores.

Ryf Quail: It's like the fact that you can put your motorbike, the type of motorbike in the year, the model and then it just presents all the kit you can buy and all the things you can bolt onto it. It's just a complete trap and it's addictive because it keeps updating the whole time.

Nathan Bush: They do an awesome job. Number three, name a piece of tech that you or your business couldn't live without.

Ryf Quail: Actually it was last week I went to a power retail lunch in Melbourne. It's not so much for me, but it made a lot of sense to me given I talked about cross border trade before. One of the things and concepts that came up that was presented was orchestrated commerce. And so think about this, right, Orchestrated commerce. So if you're a retailer in Australia, you might Rely on say one payment mechanism to take your payments in Australia. Right. But you can't use that payment mechanism in Indonesia or Japan. Right. So orchestrated commerce turns the whole thing on its head and empowers the vent the retailer to have a middleware layer and then plug in the payment platform that's appropriate for that shopper. So whether in Australia you're presenting an array of payment options to target a particular section of the consumer or you're going after a country, which case you can be an Australian retailer. But go, well, I'm chasing, as I said before, Malaysians. And by the way, Malaysians are all about digital wallets. Right. I can present when someone hits the site from Malaysia, the array of payment options I play is controlled by the retail through orchestrated commerce, that middle layer that allows them to present the payment options to that particular market.

Nathan Bush: Very cool.

Ryf Quail: So orchestrated commerce is something I've only just learned about, but I think it's going to be a winner for a lot of retailers trying to expand cross border.

Nathan Bush: I feel we've got a new 2025 buzzword coming up.

Ryf Quail: I know, I heard it. I was like, that's cool. Every day is a school day.

Nathan Bush: Number four, can you recommend a book or a podcast that our listeners should immediately get into?

Ryf Quail: I'm listening to an audiobook at the moment. I'm part of a CEO group and I heard this woman speak last week. It's a book called Grit by Angela Duckworth and Grit talks about her core of her study was she looked at US Marines, West Point and the likelihood of those people not dropping out, progressing and completing. And there was no causal link between making it between ability, physical or iq. It was all about Grit. And so she's actually defined and put a measure around grit and the things you can do to that you can do to build that score and then also use it to hone your skills and the types of practice you need to do to hone those skills to be an expert in a field. Yeah.

Nathan Bush: Nice. I like it. Sounds like. Is it a kind of a natural evolution from stoicism? Kind of, yeah.

Ryf Quail: It's more about understanding how to play to be at the top of your game. And for me, you know, if you're looking at it from a leaders point of view, it's not just about doing it every day. It's practicing at a level that allows you to improve because you can practice for lots of hours and plateau.

Nathan Bush: Yep.

Ryf Quail: What's the style of practice you need to execute to actually get better?

Nathan Bush: There we go.

[Ad]: And we talked about that.

Nathan Bush: You know that challenge to go from Imedia here, such an established part of the E commerce in marketing and retail community and take it to the next level with nrf. Reef, last question I've got for you. I think I know the answer. What is your biggest challenge today?

Ryf Quail: Well, my biggest challenge today is I can do content, I can do sales, I can look after help with marketing, but I can't do execution. I'm not a project manager so my biggest challenge is just maintaining my anxiety while things get executed. That's the thing that stresses me the most. And that's more of a personal challenge for me because events attract a very diverse group of people. But for a show like ours with so many moving parts, you have to trust others to execute on your behalf. I mean, you set the rails. But for me, execution is my biggest headache because it causes me the most anxiety.

Nathan Bush: So only running the biggest retail show in apac, you'll be fine. Like nothing could go wrong.

Ryf Quail: Thank you for the reassuring word, but it doesn't help

Nathan Bush: reag. Thank you so much for joining us on Add to Car. We're going to see you in Singapore. Can't wait.

Ryf Quail: All right, thanks Puji. Awesome.

[Ad]: Want more from reef? Jump back into the main episode where we explore the game, changing trends coming out of apac, the rise of quick commerce and why Australian retailers need to think beyond the US and the uk. Also don't forget that as mentioned in the main episode, we have a very exciting Add to Cart first where we are taking an Add to Cart tour group over to NRF 2025 APAC in Singapore this June and you're invited to join us. If you're a head of E Commerce marketing or a tech leader or an E Commerce manager, this is your chance to immerse yourself in the future of retail. We're talking full VIP access to NRF apac, an exclusive behind the scenes retail tech tour, a networking dinner with top Aussie E Com leaders and a take home insights pack so you can bring all your game changing ideas back to your team and prove to your boss that you learned a lot. Plus, we're going to throw in a few surprises along the way. Spots are limited so register your interest now at add to cart.com au.