[Voiceover]: Welcome to the checkout. We catch up with previous add to cart guests and ask them five quick questions to get to know them better and leave you with a little extra inspiration to get you through your Friday.
[Voiceover]: Today's checkout features Sean Broughton, managing director for APAC and Japan and Shopify. With previous roles at Lego and Microsoft, Sean is now spearheading Shopify's expanding presence in the world's largest market for retail, e commerce, amounting to nearly $2.9 trillion in 2021.
Nathan Bush: Shaun, welcome to the Checkout. Thank you for joining us. We're here to learn more about you. We've heard all about Shopify's 2022 and your view on the Australian e commerce market and what you predict for 2023. But here to learn a little bit more about you. So five quick questions. Number one, what's the weirdest thing that you've ever bought online?
Shaun Broughton: I went through a period where like I love fancy dress parties. Like, I love them. There was one that I just really had to, had to, had to be the guy from where the wild things. Is the little boy in like the outfit?
Nathan Bush: Yeah. With the tail and the dog ears.
Shaun Broughton: Yeah. But I didn't want some like naff budge one. And so like when scouring the Internet, I found this lady in like Nebraska that like I just entered my size and height and she custom made this like beautiful. Where the wild things are total outfit was. So it's not. Some people think that's weird. It wasn't too weird to me but a lot of my friends think that weird, like going to that level of effort. That's amazing.
Nathan Bush: What's your go to? Like custom like fancy dress theme. Like what's the funnest?
Shaun Broughton: Oh, anything. I think for me I'm a bit of a raver. Like rave inspired. Like. Yeah, I think is pretty good. For me, the weirder the better.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, that's cool. I wanted to have a wet, hot summer party theme like this this year. I don't think it's going to happen. All right, number two, we're off track. Who is your favorite retailer?
Shaun Broughton: Obvious. But I'm never changing it till someone does it better. Just Patagonia, like and just the way they built that brand, the way they ran the company, what they've done, he's done now giving it to, to the earth. I mean, hard to beat, man. Like, I don't know. Yeah, hard to beat. If Elon could like just stop focusing on weird wax stuff and get me from Sydney to London in four hours, he'd be my favorite. But.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, what happened to the tube? Remember he was going to. Yes.
Shaun Broughton: Like last I heard it was in LA and was underground and it was working. So. Yeah, I don't know, it's kind of fallen off the radar, but he's definitely got. That's not going to get me to London in four hours.
Nathan Bush: That's true. Okay, all right, I hear, I'll hear Patagonia. Great example. All right, number three, which e commerce
Shaun Broughton: practice do you wish was history 20 many millions ago? Call it 20 years? I remember launching. We were moving from above the line, below the line and through the line as a way we described, like just marketing. And we came up with this new term at Microsoft called Omnichannel. I hate the thing like from Microsoft around that time. Debatable around that time. And at the time I was launching Xbox and getting that into the market here and Omnichannel was everything. And like half the retailers in Australia didn't even have a website back then. And that's still around. I just really wish someone could come up with a different term for it. That just grinds me. Omnichannel.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, that makes sense. It's almost like a lazy fallback now for.
Shaun Broughton: Yeah, it's for everything. It means just everything. It just means Internet.
Nathan Bush: I remember once having a meeting and I went for like two hours debating the difference between multi channel and omnichannel.
Shaun Broughton: You know who could do it? Paul Goldston. You mentioned him earlier today.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, that's because he just uses robots to argue for him.
Shaun Broughton: Yeah, Goldie, plug that into your robot. Plug that into your AI robot and see what terminology you come up with. We need a new word for omnichannel.
Nathan Bush: That's true.
Shaun Broughton: He'd do it.
Nathan Bush: All right, number four, can you recommend a book or a podcast that our listeners should immediately get into?
Shaun Broughton: I've got a two year old and I can't read books. So he's fall asleep instantly, like within one page. And so. But I'm an audiobook, like fiend. Like I am if I'm walking, going, washing clothes, like anything I'm doing, I've got an audiobook in. And because of just a lot of the. The world in the state it's in right now, I've just been kind of lately obsessed with like, I don't know, this is really nerdy, but like Marcus Aurelius and he was a general and he invented like stoicism and he wrote a book way back then called Meditations.
[Voiceover]: Yeah.
Shaun Broughton: And I've been listening to that if you haven't listened to that, like, give that a crack. And it's all about stoicism. And so that right now has been really kind of. I'm like, wow, this is really having an impact on me. And so I've really enjoyed that.
Nathan Bush: That's a great recommendation because it's one
[Voiceover]: of those books that you hear referenced
Nathan Bush: a lot, but you don't actually think of reading it or.
Shaun Broughton: Yeah, yeah. Because you go like, some Roman Empire emperor wrote that hundreds of thousands of years ago. Like, what's he know? And you're like, wow, this guy said that all the way back then.
Nathan Bush: Geez.
Shaun Broughton: So, yeah, it's pretty good. Pretty good.
Nathan Bush: Great tip.
[Voiceover]: Thank you.
Nathan Bush: All right, last one I have for you, Sean, finish this sentence. The future of retail is everywhere that
Shaun Broughton: consumers are, but in a way that's not annoying. Yeah, you should be able to connect and interact with a retailer or a brand pretty much now in the means anywhere, but not finding ways to do it that aren't intrusive or annoying. Maybe direct mail.
Nathan Bush: I mean, I couldn't put that on a T shirt, but it still rings true for me.
Shaun Broughton: They're just stealing other people's ideas right in front of them.
Nathan Bush: Sean, thank you so much for joining us on the checkout.
Shaun Broughton: Thank you very much for having me.
[Voiceover]: To hear more from Sean, jump back into episode 253, where Shaun shares the all important and often surprising stats from Black Friday in 2022. He also shares why he thinks that value and longevity are the key customer propositions that we should be sprouting, and tells us about his plans for a spot of revenge travel in 2023. Thanks for listening. And until next time, keep adding to carpet.
