Sam Penny: It was 4am, it was dark and I stood there looking out, out into the black of the English Channel and I felt so calm. That first step in was a step that nobody else had taken before. Having a human face in there or even just a hand holding the product. That for starters really changes someone's perception. I always like to refer to it as the Etsy of food. Just more curated.
[Voiceover]: Welcome to ADD to Cart, Australia's leading e commerce podcast that express delivers all you need to know in the fast moving world of online retail. Every week, Nathan Bush from E Suite and an e commerce industry expert will share the news, research and insights that you need to know to keep you at the top of your game and of course, keep your customers Adding to Cart.
Nathan Bush: Hello and welcome to Add to Cart. My name is Nathan Bush, host of Add to Cart and director at e commerce talent agency Esweep. Now, what does E commerce, cheese and swimming the English Channel have in common? No, it wasn't the Add to Cart Christmas party, silly. It's today's guest. Sam Penny is the co founder of Artisans Bend, a curated marketplace for artisan producers. He's also behind the great online cheese shop Cheese Therapy. I need some of that. According to Sam, they are now the largest cheese retailer behind Woolies and Coles Artisan's. Bend is Sam's latest venture and just one of the many strings to his bow. He's a former soldier, engineer, extreme swimmer and lifeguard. Oh, and and he also used to own some hair salons. Slowing down is now at the heart of Sam's business and the unique food and drink available through Artisans Bend is the kind that takes producers time to get right. In this chat we talk all about Sam's colorful past lives, discuss how his other business, Cheese Therapy, has led to this successful marketplace, why content creation is a huge part of the business and what it feels like to to go where no other man has ever gone before. So thanks to our partners Shopify plus and Signet, here's our conversation with Sam Penny, co founder of Artisans Bend. Sam, welcome to ADD to Cart.
Sam Penny: Nathan Bush. Thank you very much. I'm excited mate.
Nathan Bush: We've had this lined up for a
Nathan Bush: long time so I'm really excited to have this chat. You are joining us from your warehouse in Geelong, which I understand is the first time you you've seen it yourself.
Sam Penny: It's actually the second time, but the last time was January at the start of the year. Back in the days when a poor little Queenslander like myself was allowed to leave the country of Queensland and travel down and the border has only just opened. And so, fingers crossed, our premier lets me back in.
Nathan Bush: You didn't waste any time getting down there?
Sam Penny: No, no, I didn't. As soon as. And that was always the deal with my team down here. As soon as that border opens, I'm on the first plane down. And I was.
Nathan Bush: Was there any surprises when you got there?
Sam Penny: Luckily, things are better. I think that the guys down here really understand how I think particularly my mind works and how sort of streamlined. I like to see things. I'm an engineer by trade, so I think very sort of technically and with the workflow process. Whereas the guy who heads our operations here, a mate of mine, Adam, he's very much an arts kind of guy, ex military officer and he's good with people, but I give him some great guidance when it comes to workflow. And I now have seen over the last 18 months of working with Adam that he's starting to think like me, the poor bastard.
Nathan Bush: Well, what have you done to him now? Look, let's give everyone the overview of what you're doing because when we started talking about coming onto ADD to cart, you were very much in cheese therapy land and now you've made this big shift to Artisans bend. Can you tell us about that transition?
Sam Penny: Yeah, well, I think so. Going back, Cheese Therapy we launched about six years ago. Right from the start, we are purely E commerce cheese retailer effectively and we've been hitting some really big goals. So now we represent about 20 small artisan cheese producers. We ship cheese right around Australia. About 90% of that cheese is shipped chilled to the door, which is massive, particularly with the issues that producers have with Australia post. And it's just been a phenomenal time where I. I would probably say that we would be the largest cheese retailer in the country behind Coles and Woolies. Just build a great fan base. And it was at the end of 2020, about a week before Christmas, something I had wanted to do for about two or three years was to show Australia that we grow coffee beans in this country and we actually grow some really good coffee beans. So November, I flew around to some of the coffee farmers and filmed there, brought all that content back and just bought some of their, a couple of pallets of their coffee and just showcased it. I said, guys, to Australia. Do you realize that we actually grow a great bean here? So why are we bringing in beans from Colombia or Ethiopia when we've got something just as good here in our backyard and also through the South Pacific specific? And that just Went absolutely nuts. It went so well. We then moved into small batch wines, you know, family owned vineyards, went into sort of crackers and paste and chocolate and, you know, effectively everything that my lifestyle is based on. But what we realized was that cheese therapy was no longer a cheese business. We were becoming, I guess, the centerpiece for artisan producers. And what that allowed us to do was start to think about, well, we can't financially afford to go out and buy the produce of every artisan producer, every good artisan producer around the country. So let's start exploring, developing a marketplace. So pretty much right at the start of 2021, we started doing a lot of investigation into marketplaces, speaking to all the platform providers, getting just a basic understanding of how do people respond to marketplaces. And certainly in Australia, marketplaces are the hot flavor at the moment, but I think at the same time they're vital for particularly small producers. So after speaking with a lot of the service providers, we landed on a firm down in Melbourne called Marketplacer. They run Surf Stitch, Bike Exchange, Myer, Woolworths every day.
Nathan Bush: Jason, their founder, come on a while ago and we've had Justin from Surf Stitch talk about him. So you're in good company.
Sam Penny: I am, I am. And that was also one of the reasons why we chose them. Sam Salter, who is one of the founders of Marketplace, actually came to our house on the Sunshine coast, sit down with us and just talk through everything. And we recognise that they are the guys with the greatest knowledge on marketplaces in the country and that's why we landed on them. And so we started that process in May. We've only just launched, gee, I think it was about the end of October, so it's quite a long road to implement. Also, just to confuse things for any, everybody, we're actually a Shopify plus site and Marketplacer had never done an integration outside of their own native front end. So we were the guinea pigs for that because they then had another four businesses lined up behind us to go with the Shopify integration. So that certainly has thrown up a lot of complexities to it.
Nathan Bush: What was the reasoning behind keeping Shopify plus and Marketplace together?
Sam Penny: Look, one of the great things is that Shopify, Shopify is just so easy to work with. There's so many great things about it. The ability to create good SEO on their tags, collections, all those kinds of things, which I feel is just far superior to Marketplacer. Marketplacer is great tech for basically capturing the order and splitting that order and pushing that out to, say, 10 vendors. If someone buys from 10 vendors. So we then landed on the name Artisans. Ben, it took as you would expect. Choosing a name for something is a very difficult process, but especially when you
Nathan Bush: come from a name that is as distinctive and has full of energy, like Cheese Therapy. Like, that's a great name in itself.
Sam Penny: Yeah, exactly. So Cheese Therapy still exists. So it is basically one of the suppliers on our marketplace. It manages all of our cheese makers. And we'll never lose that Cheese Therapy brand because we've built up a really good brand there. But Artisans bend. You can't say the word fast or the two words fast. It forces you to slow down. The whole sense of artisan is to slow things down, to make things with your hands. And we want people to take the time to learn about each of the producers. I spent a lot of time getting around the country and filming with each of our producers to learn their stories. Because I believe that when you showcase a product and understand how the product was made, where, you know, what's the provenance of the ingredients, who's the person who is, you know, the face behind that brand, it makes a huge difference to just how something tastes. And we see that all the time. When people understand that whole backstory, they will get so, so much more enjoyment out of the product. And yeah, it could just be a simple cheese, but when they start to get a lot more of that backstory and that understanding, it really heightens all of their senses and they absolutely love it. And the word bend, you know, artisans bend, it sounds like a destination, like a bend in the river. But in actual fact, a bend is a type of notch. And the type of knot that it is is where you get two ends and tie them together. And if you pull that really hard, that knot actually gets tighter. And I really see that as a representation of our producers and our customers coming together and really forming a strong bond. And, you know, with all the market forces that are out there, if we can really get that loyalty right between the producers and the and the customers and us doing the right job of sharing that backstory, then that bend, that knot is just going to get tighter and tighter to the point where it'll never be broken.
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Nathan Bush: I didn't realize there was so much in depth thought behind the name.
Sam Penny: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
Nathan Bush: You mentioned there around. Obviously we're in marketplace frenzy at the moment and everyone's developing a marketplace. Do you think customers always understand the notion of a marketplace? They land on Artisans Bend and know that it's a marketplace.
Sam Penny: It's a very good point. Now, Australia has actually the highest uptake of marketplaces in the world. Australians generally do have a good understanding of what a marketplace is. With our site, we're doing a big redevelopment with our marketing firm which will launch in about two or three months and that will really spell it out even clearer that it is a marketplace. Marketplaces have their place. If you're a niche marketplace, there's no point trying to be that behemoth and have 20,000 products that don't really have a relation to each other. We're a highly niche marketplace. Each producer on our site gets vetted by our team and we do a lot of due diligence on them before we let them onto the platform. So it's not a site for everybody. It's not. You know, I always like to refer to it as the Etsy of food, just more curated. I owe it to my customers to only put up products that are of great quality and that are true artisan producers.
Nathan Bush: How do you determine that? Do you have to actually eat everything that wants to be listed on your site?
Sam Penny: Oh, Nathan, you should see the amount of samples that get sent to me every single week. It is ridiculous. But I think I'd need to go out and find some more wine producers. We do a lot of due diligence going through all their social media, going through their website. We do face to face zooms with every single one of them. We spend a huge amount of time, but it's just how we will ensure the quality of what we're producing so that Artisans Bend doesn't then just become a site for everything and competing against the big guys.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, I loved your point there around telling the story of the people behind the product. And one of the things that you do beyond, you know, just selling product through artisans, Ben, is that you have an Educational series to help other artisan producers tell the story behind what they're producing. What kind of tips do you have for founders and creators who are looking to tell the story? What practical things do you say this gets the best cut through?
Sam Penny: Having a human face in there, or even just a hand holding the product. That, for starters, really changes someone's perception. You know, we're dealing with artists and producers, you know, things that have been made with passion. And usually most of these producers, it's their passion project. You know, one of my producers, Phytohealth on South Coast, New South Wales, Dr. Pia Winberg, she set out to save the planet through seaweed. And so all of her research project has been done on seaweed. But then she realized that, well, you actually have to do more than just growing seaweed. So she then turned it into a whole range of products like pastas and dhaka and all these things, you know, packed full of micronutrients. But if you put up a picture of just a packet of pasta, it's pretty dull. But when you hear about sort of her story, and now that the New South Wales border is open as well, I'm going to get down and interview her. When you understand the story of what she has done so far, she's very accomplished and where she's going, you just want to try it. Tastes bloody brilliant too, by the way.
Nathan Bush: Seaweed pasta, what does it taste like?
Sam Penny: It's just got. Just got a touch more sort of a little bit of umami in there. It just adds another level of complexity to what you have and you don't really need to add a lot of sauce or anything like that. It's perfect. It's just a bit of garlic and olive oil anyway, making me hungry. Oh, mate, I'm making myself hungry. I think the thing to get real, cut through is to really be honest and open with what you do and why you do it. One of the things that artists and producers do is they fall into the trap of talking about the flavours of a product as opposed to why they do it. Now with cheese therapy, because we've been doing cheese for six years, I didn't come from a cheese background and so that means I don't speak, you know, like sort of the wine wankers out there. But to me, I find that, you know, like my experience with wine and also what I found with cheese is that everybody tastes different. Either you like something or you don't. But the important thing is to understand why someone has created that, how they've created it. How the cows treated what. What are the pastures like, all those kinds of things. And then leaving it up to someone to make up their mind whether, firstly, they're going to buy it or not, and how do they like the flavors. So I think it's really important for every small producer, particularly to talk about the important things, unlike the flavors that people can taste or can't taste.
Nathan Bush: I feel that went to another level during COVID when we couldn't travel. And so being able to tell stories and understanding where produce is coming from kind of substituted that travel to go, oh, I'm in the Barossa Valley here. I can picture where I'm at, and I can picture where this has come from.
Sam Penny: Yeah, we, through the first, probably six months of COVID we ran some Meet the Maker zooms for our customers, and they were fantastic. A few thousand people on there, just learning about each of our artists and producers. And so they're filming from their farm, and we get to share that amazing content with our customers. It's always important to get out there and keep producing content. I just came back from two weeks in Tassie because we've got this treaty between Queensland and Tasmania that I can actually travel there, but two weeks down there, and I filmed with, I think, about 12 or 14 producers to capture their stories. And it's just so important for us to be able to do that.
Nathan Bush: And so coming from Cheese Therapy, which still exists, into Artisans Bend, which is a slightly different model, what's been the biggest challenge in developing a niche marketplace that you didn't expect?
Sam Penny: Well, I think one of the key parts, one of the things. Okay, one of the things that I really hate about marketplaces is that. And they're all the same. EBay, Amazon, Etsy. If you buy from three different producers, you're paying three shipping rates. And that was the hard part, where someone just wanted chocolate from that producer, coffee from that producer, and cheese from that producer, and then realizing that they're up to, say, $45 in shipping. And so that was the important part for us to understand. Okay. That's one of the biggest barriers for us to really drive a great marketplace. But also, at the same time, we recognize how hard it is for artisan producers to ship their product around Australia. Shipping in this country is just incredibly hard. Six years of shipping cheese is certainly like, I've got no hair, and the bit I do have is grey.
Nathan Bush: You're still here. I'll give you credit for that.
Sam Penny: So what we've actually created is a couple of warehouses to do effectively a 3PL service for small artisan producers. And that means that we can ship their product anywhere in the country. 90% of our deliveries are refrigerated to the door. So particularly for someone, for example, we've just brought in a producer called Lardas who does butter. I've got a milk producer, I've got heaps of cheese makers. So being able to help all these small producers and also tap into a distribution system that they don't have the scales to tap into. And we're doing it at a bloody reasonable price as well because we just want this entire industry of small producers to rise together. I want them all to have access to what I have access to our Artists in Ed series. I want them all to improve their e commerce capability. I do each fortnight a webinar. So I've had hosted webinars with the likes of Shopify and Klaviyo Gorgeous and content writers to try and build their e commerce. And getting them to sell product through their own website doesn't help my marketplace at all. But it builds their experience and their know how it builds their content, it builds their product descriptors and images so that it then ultimately does benefit our marketplace. But also at the same time, if we are managing their logistics for them, obviously that has a big improvement as well. Yeah.
Nathan Bush: And I can imagine you smash down a few barriers pretty quickly for them, especially around refrigerated goods and shipping and helping them through those barriers that they may immediately put up and go, E commerce isn't for us.
Sam Penny: Exactly. And in our warehouse, I think in the last week we've brought on about 50 producers into that. Only about 25% of it would be chilled. The rest is ambient. Yes. So they all of a sudden realize that we've got such a great system, just a great capability that, that we just want to share so many of them they cannot get onto it fast enough.
Nathan Bush: As a systems guy, I am fascinated to hear from you how you handle the shelf life on all these different products. Because I can imagine you have some products with shelf life of weeks, if not days, through to ones that have shelf life of years. How do you keep your inventory fresh?
Sam Penny: Yeah, so we're actually building a, a warehouse management system at the moment. This is our own platform that we're creating. We did a huge amount of looking out in the marketplace for something that could fit our needs because we're tapping into not just, you know, 200 artists and producer websites, we're also tapping into our marketplace to manage that warehouse. Their Inventory batches, best before dates. And so my lead tech guy, just absolutely brilliant guy, is building this whole platform from scratch. We've already had our beta mid January. This thing goes into our first actual infield testing. And yeah, it's basically just through his sheer brilliance that we're able to manage all of this and providing then a lot of that data back to to our artisan producers to tell them when to restock if they need to dump a batch, for example, we can easily manage that for them for whatever reasons. We're also heat mapping our warehouse so that we limit the amount of steps that we take in our picking process. I know what we want. And he also understands it. I have never built a bit of tech before. I've never used a warehouse management system before. But at the same time, I had not come from a cheese background before cheese therapy. I think one of the great things as an entrepreneur is that, and I think also a lot of entrepreneurs come from outside the field that you get to build something how you want it built without any preconceptions of how it should be built.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, and I love your background. Right, so you mentioned you come from a cheese background. Having a look at your LinkedIn. Let me list this for everyone who's listening. Right, so you've been a cleaner, a lifeguard in the defense force, as you mentioned, a civil engineer. You've had a medical device company, a chain of hair salons, and you're now an E Commerce founder. Which of those previous lives do you draw most upon in what you're doing today?
Sam Penny: My medical device company. So I had this product called the Circulation Booster that I created. At the time, it was a $400 product. It was effectively a new type of technology that I wanted to take into pharmacy. So it was twice as expensive as anyone had ever sold in a pharmacy with a technology that nobody had ever used before in a pharmacy. And also we're a company that had zero experience of being in pharmacies, but I recognized that that was where I wanted to be. In three years, I got a distribution of about 1500 pharmacies. So about a third of Australian pharmacies stocked my product and also demonstrated the product in there. I didn't have a sales team on the ground. It was a marketing led system that I had because I do not believe in sales teams being out there pounding the road, basically shopping around a catalog. What I strongly believe in is getting the customer to go in and ask for that product. And my TV advertising that I was doing was go into terawhite Kenmart or Sol Patterson and have a free demonstration of it. And so people would sit down with their feet on the circulation Booster for about 30 minutes, hop up and just feel amazing. And then everybody else in there wanted to try it. And I think that experience of being able to get that distribution, that was a really incredibly successful product. In the stores we were in, we rival Panadol sales because it takes a lot of boxes of Panadol to make up 400 bucks. But also I got fan mail every week, handwritten fan mail from little old ladies who used to write in every single week to tell me how I had changed their life. People just telling me how for the first time in 10 years, they have left the house and walked down to the corner and back. Something as simple as that that we all take for granted so much. And it really brought a huge amount of joy to me. And I think that that's what I also see in Artisans Bend, being able to help all these small artisan producers. I videoed interviewed a producer from Tassie Settler, a small town called Kempton in Tasmania, about three weeks ago. Erin and I asked her, why did you create Tassie Sedley? It's a range of barbecue sauces with quite a bit of spice to them. She said, well, I couldn't find a product that I really wanted it. Nothing really met my needs. But also at the same time, I wanted something that could take my family on a holiday once a year and also put Christmas presents under the tree and that there, if I can help her to take her family on a holiday and do that across a thousand other producers, I think that's a really amazing thing. And, you know, we work with a lot of producers throughout the South Pacific because they've been pushed back economically 10 years. And I know that in our small way, if someone buys, say, a 1 kilo bag of Tanner Coffee that supports 1,000 small coffee growers on the island of Tanner in Vanuatu. Nobody's visiting Vanuatu at all. And they won't be till about July. But I know that if we can just get some trade going into there, I believe that trade is far greater than aid. And if we can support those 1000 small producers with the simple act of buying a 1 kilo bag of coffee, it makes a world of difference. So Artisans Band is just. It's going to be something that will really, I think, benefit thousands of people right around the country.
Nathan Bush: It's always good to hear the bigger why of why people are doing things. And no doubt you'll Continue to grow and expand and who knows what's next. But it's nice to hear that you're always connected back to the stories of the people you're benefiting and doing it for. It was funny that you mentioned the blood flow circulating device because I saw on your LinkedIn recently you can tell that I'm a LinkedIn stalker. You're a real survivor of work from home. You said that you combine six Zoom meetings a day, immobility and dehydration from not getting up to get water that
Nathan Bush: left you with a clot that extended up the back of your left leg.
Sam Penny: What happened? Oh, far out. Okay, so in my sporting world, I do stupid stuff, right? So back in August, I was training to swim around Great Kipple Island. We had a snap lockdown in Southeast Queensland, which then meant I missed my window to swim around there. Then my next challenge was to run from Georgetown, which is basically bass, straight down to Hobart. 287km as a, as a charity run for just like Jack. If you've ever seen me run, I run like an Oompa Loompa. And so I thought, well, okay, well I'm gonna, I need to now switch from doing stupid kilometers of swimming to stupid kilometers of running. And I went out with my 9 year old Tom on my first run in preparation for this charity run. And two K's in, stood on the edge of the footpath and tore all the ligaments in my left ankle. It was just horrific. Just the amount of swelling and bruising. At the same time, I was recruiting producers to come onto our marketplace, which hadn't launched yet. So I was doing six Zoom meetings a day and because I was on crutches, I couldn't get up. My ankle was just throbbing big and swollen. I ended up with a dbt. And this DBT came all the way up to the back of my leg and just a bit of experience so that nobody, if someone does get a dbt, they understand how it feels. Each morning when I got up out of bed bed, I'd get a pain in my leg and a bit of pressure. If I lay down, it'd relieve that pressure. And it was about the first day where I thought, this feels like it could be a DVT. Took me 3 days to end up seeing a doctor and get a scan straight away. Yeah, DBT is actually really not popular. It's a common thing, particularly when you've had an injury like I had, when you go from stupid activity to absolutely nothing. I've had one of My close mates die from a dbt. I've met other people since. You know, another lady who lost her husband DBT and he was an incredible athlete. I've met so many other people who have had them that have has now changed their life. I'm very lucky where my clot didn't cause any long term hassles. But what it has really highlighted to me is just the need to not chain yourself to the desk. And if you do, I'm constantly jiggling with the ultrasound. The lady showed me the blood flow behind my knee when I'm just sitting in a chair and the blood flows at about a snail's pace. It's unbelievable how slow it moves. But if you move your calf just a little bit, all of a sudden you see it squirt, squirt back up. So yeah, just simple jiggling at your desk. It doesn't look like you've had too many coffees or need to go to the toilet. It's really important.
Nathan Bush: You've got me stretching my knees out now listening to this. I'm sitting here stretching out, jiggling around.
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Sam Penny: As someone who's been in the defence
Nathan Bush: force, I'm assuming that you are really strong on habit forming and I'm assuming here, tell me if I'm wrong. Are there any other daily habits that you have that help you manage and get through?
Sam Penny: I think the key thing is I get up quarter past four every morning at the pool at five with a squad, get a whatever it is, an hour and a quarter, an hour and a half in I was swimming. That really sets me up for the day and that's pretty much the only habit that I have. I think that I really love going off to do stupid adventures, stupid activities and I think that that's the part that I don't know sort of keeps me sane, but at the same time it's pretty insane sort of stuff.
Nathan Bush: Speaking of insane and stupid adventures, you swam the English Channel in winter. What made you do that?
Sam Penny: That was okay. So here's one of the things, Nathan. Something that I really love, a passion of mine is to try new things. I do it all through our business. Let's try that. You know, is it going to work? Is it going to break? Let's just try it. We have no idea what the outcome is going to be. I feel like we're very much positive, pioneering and so many things and English Channel so I swam the English Channel in normal time of summer in 2018. The following year I did an ice mile which was 1600 meters at Lake Krakenbach in 3.9 degree water. And it was snowing. When I swam that that seriously nearly killed me. That was just horrific. But after I had. I was also at the same time training for a double crossing of the English Channel. And you know, that's 68 kilometers. And so I was getting super fit, getting a lot of speed up. I sat in a chest freezer in my garage at one degree for half an hour about every second day. So I built up this great tolerance to cold and I looked at doing a double crossing and I just thought, you know what, there's 30, 40 people who've done that. I want to try something that nobody has done before. And I recognize that, well, I've got speed, I've got endurance, I've got cold water acclimatization. I then did, you know, being a civil engineer, I did data analysis on daily water temperatures of the previous 11 years and had forecast that the water in the start of December was going to be 12 and a half degrees. And I thought, nobody has ever tried to swim the English Channel in winter. I thought, that is going to be my thing. I'm going to go out for this thing. And so I landed in the UK on 1 December. Water temp 12.5 degrees in the middle of a cold snap. I Swam on the 4th. In those four days the water temp dropped down to 10 degrees. And I knew that I couldn't postpone my swim because the weather was blowing out to about 100k an hour winds. For the next two weeks. I had a medic, I had a whole safety team on the boat. We had lined up the French Coast Guard and English Coast Guard. We had so many things lined up for this swim. And so we motored out 10 degrees. And it was just this moment of I said to my team, we have no idea what's going to happen, so let's just try it anyway. There is no precedent. Nobody's going before us. So I jumped into the water. It was 4am, it was dark, and you have to swim ashore first to England to start. And I stood there looking out into the black of the English Channel. The air temp was only 6 degrees and I felt so calm because there was then no pressure on me. Nobody had gone before me. That first step in was a step that nobody else had taken before. And at that moment I felt like just an absolute adventurer. It was a phenomenal experience to be able to be that first person in the world to try something. I got to about three hours and there was this orange glow. The water was super rough. There's this orange glow in the north. And I just go, what the hell is that? And for 20 minutes I thought it was a nuclear explosion in France because it's winter, the sun should be coming up in the south, and I couldn't work out what this glow was. And then all of a sudden the sun popped up and I was completely confused. How on earth did the sun get up there? What's going on? At the same time I was taking on all this water, I was starting to feel really sick, felt like I was starting to drown. And so three hours, 20 minutes and about a third of the way across 10Ks, I called it quits. I thought, nobody's gone. Three hours, 20 minutes, nobody's gone. One minute. I could push out to six hours, but I was still only going to be about halfway just because of how rough it was. And, yeah, I called it quits and pulled out. I recognized that hypothermia was really starting to set in. But after feeling sad and sorry for myself for about an hour and a half, I felt like I had failed. But then I got a thousand messages from around the world, people just saying how inspiring it was. And I just thought, oh, yeah. Then I sort of had a quick change of perspective and going, yeah, actually, I am proud of myself.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, that's amazing. What a brilliant story and what a great metaphor for business, especially what you're creating at artisans. Bend around, taking a team on a journey that hasn't necessarily been trod before, that you're doing new things, having to find new ways of going about it and just giving it a go like it's brilliant.
Sam Penny: Thanks, Nathan.
Nathan Bush: What's the next stupid adventure for you?
Sam Penny: Well, a mate of mine got me At a weak moment two weeks ago, you know, sort of late at night, couple of wines and said, this guy's a Latvian ex Olympian swimmer. He said, sam, come and swim the Derwent river with me. So we're swimming that at the start of February. It's 34k, same length as English Channel. So, yeah, I better start getting some decent long swims in.
Nathan Bush: I reckon you need to hang out with better people.
Sam Penny: Yeah, I know. But, hey, this guy loves his cheese and he keeps buying a lot.
Nathan Bush: Good. And so back to something I can relate to.
Nathan Bush: Can you tell us what's your favorite
Nathan Bush: cheese or what have you stumbled across recently of artisans that you just have to shout from the rooftops about?
Sam Penny: I tell you something that has really impressed me is crackers. It's a sourdough cracker. Now, this lady, Christina, she's on the Sunshine Coast. She first came to us about July 2020. She'd been stood down from her construction job. She'd been in construction for. For 10 years. And she's Croatian. Her and her family fled Croatia after the Croatian War and she came out here with her whole family. She always used to bake in Croatia alongside her uncle, who was master baker there. And when she was feeling stressed or anything, she would always go back to baking. And it really brought a lot of passion to her. She'd always take a lot of breads, and particularly sourdough breads in to work. People always wanted to buy them, but for her, it was just her passion. So she dropped off this packet of crackers at our place. She messaged us through Instagram. We had no idea who she was. She goes, I want to do this. Can you tell me what you think? And these things, seriously. Her business is called Silver Tongue, Silver Tongue Foods. Her crackers are the best thing I've ever tasted. We have mentored her all the way through her and her partner Andy. She's now In, I think, 50 IGAs. We would sell, I'd probably say 2,000 packets a month of her crackers. We can't get enough of them. She's really been struggling to scale up, but at the same time, keep the quality. And what makes her really proud. Yeah, it's just everything about it. The story of meeting her and hearing where she came from, but also backing that up with a bloody ripper. You know, I can't believe I get so excited about a cracker, but it truly is. It's. It's. Over the last 18 months particularly, it's been one of my standouts.
Nathan Bush: That's Amazing. It reminds me of when I worked at a big retailer and we were out in the middle of absolutely nowhere. It was a warehouse in the middle of nowhere, absolutely nothing around.
Nathan Bush: And the highlight, every couple of months,
Nathan Bush: we'd have this guy rock up in an old, like, Corolla and he'd pull up, open his back boot and he'd just have bags of beef jerky in it. And the announcement would go over the speakers in the office. It was like one of those ones where I had intercom still around everywhere. And it would be. You'd hear a little, Tim, the Beef Jerky man is here. Tim, the Beef Jerky man is in the car park. And you just see people rush out. But it is the best beef jerk
Sam Penny: you've ever had and I've never been
Nathan Bush: able to find it since. So if he was ever to hook up with you and Artisans Bend, he'd obviously be able to take it to the masses and he wouldn't have to be the Beef Jerky man who sells it out of his boot in the middle of nowhere.
Sam Penny: I love that. Yeah. You know, you look at businesses like Cotton On. You know, the guy who started Cotton on was just selling T shirts out the back of his dad's station wagon. And now look at them. We're actually going for their COO's taking us for a tour of their. Of their warehouse here in Geelong or Avalon to see how they operate. And they're just about to expand into the us. It's amazing where a business can start and where it can, you know, where it can lead to. Yeah, absolutely.
Nathan Bush: So speaking of businesses continuing on their success, what's next for yourself and Artisans Band?
Sam Penny: Yeah, we're just finishing off a capital raise with Artisans Bend, and that's really to accelerate our push through 2022, building our team so that we can bring on a lot more of our artisan producers, but also so I can get around the country and spend time with them a lot more and really capture their stories and share those stories. Really developing a lot of that great content that sets us apart from Coles or Woolies. Building out our three PL and really starting to make that a slick, efficient operation. And our bit of tech really will also help when we're ready to do that international expansion. So, yeah, there's a. There's a lot going on. A lot going on. But we're building everything in our systems now for the future. When we started Cheese Therapy six years ago, we always built it so that when we had the right catalysts, we could scale really fast and we had two catalysts. First was Australian bushfires, the second was Covid. We had a 24x increase in our business but all of our systems were built to be able to handle that and now we're basically building systems so that we can now do this again.
Nathan Bush: Brilliant. Now if we've got artisans producers, artisan producers in particular who are listening to this, this sounds fascinating. I'd love to speak to Sam around how we might be able to get involved. What's the best way to get in touch?
Sam Penny: Look, just connect with me on LinkedIn. I have a good LinkedIn connection. Drop me a message there. I love speaking to producers. It's a real joy to find out what makes a producer tick and why is it their passion to do what they do and also just jump onto artisansbend.com if you want to sell on our platform you can jump on there and go for it.
Nathan Bush: Beautiful.
Nathan Bush: Sam, I am out of here.
Nathan Bush: I've got some seaweed pasta and some what else? We got some crackers and some barbecue sauce to go and order. You made me really hungry.
Nathan Bush: So thank you for sharing your story.
Nathan Bush: Really exciting and can't wait to see
Sam Penny: what happens in 2022 legend. Thanks mate.
Nathan Bush: Honestly, I'm just so confused. After this chat I don't know whether to set myself a big ambitious physical goal and get training or sit down, crack a bottle of wine and just enjoy a nice bit of cheese. I think I'll do the latter. While I ponder it, here are my three takeaways from our chat with Sam. Number one Verifying partners and stockers when creating suppliers and brands to be part of your online experience, whether it's retail or a marketplace, it's worth getting to know each of them so that you can tell their story properly and make sure that they are giving you a point of difference. You heard Sam goes through their website in in detail and organizes a zoom call with every producer. How could you do this with onboarding and selecting your retail partners? Number two Technology as an asset. You heard how Sam got artisans bend up quickly using off the shelf technology like Shopify and Marketplacer. However, when it came to warehouse management, despite his lack of technical experience, he has decided to invest and build something custom custom. Because it's a unique part of his business, he worked out where the differentiator was and is building technology as an asset to emphasize this differentiator a great strategy. And number three, this really hit Hunt get jiggling. Sam's DVT story scared the bejesus out of me. And in E Commerce, no doubt we are all guilty of spending too long behind our desks. Make sure you give your legs a little jiggle. Matter of fact, I'm jiggling now. To finish up, I have three resources for you. Firstly, if you're a first time listener of Add to Cart and you want to stay up to date with new episodes, head over to addtocart.com au and you can sign up for our weekly newsletter. We'll let you know every time a new episode drops as well as giving you my three takeaways from each episode and along link to the transcripts so you can know that this is an episode that you want to dive straight into. Secondly, if you want a weekly roundup of the best e commerce case studies tools and research, sign up to the High Five Friday newsletter which is delivered to inboxes at 8am every Friday morning. I read all the e commerce news and send you the bits that I think you can take action from. Sign up at at 12high12h I g h.com au high five and the last thing if you are looking to explore your next e commerce opportunity, head over to esweettalent.com we are a dedicated e commerce talent agency connecting the best e commerce talent with the fastest growing brands. Check it out. Sign up to the email and get in touch with me me if you want to discuss your next move. Until next time, thanks for listening and keep those customers adding to cartoon.
