Shane Lenton: Only 20% of those customers. So 20 people out of 100 are actually making a purchase during that visit. And unlike the online environment, it's a dead end. It's a black hole for the retailer.
Doug Lowe: They don't necessarily look at customers like people that they can transact with. They look at them as kind of characters and personalities that they can be friends with and learn more about and they're all curious.
Shane Lenton: We've just dropped automated customer engagement tasks with automated lists because we don't want the teams having to think about what they need to do when they come into store each day. Hi, I'm Shane Lenton from the Wish List. Today on the Add to Cart podcast, we're going to talk about how the wish list is solving retail's big black hole, along with Doug from Inku.
Nathan Bush: Hello and welcome back to Add to Cart. My name is Nathan Bush joining you from the land of the terrible people who here in Brisbane, Australia. Now let me ask you something. In E commerce, we all spend real money chasing non buyers online, whether that's through retargeting abandoned cart flows, browser emails. But when a customer walks into your store, spends 20 minutes with your product and then leaves without buying and you've got nothing, no follow up, no visibility, they're gone, who knows where they go? That is the black hole that Shane Lantern built the Wish List to close. It's a real problem. Shane is the co founder and the CEO of the Wishlist. It's a platform that captures and converts high intent customers whether they're on your website or walking your shop floor. Pure e commerce operators like Showpo and Victorian woods use it online. Multichannel retailers use the full suite to bridge in store intent with online conversion. Shane spent over a decade as CIO at Q Clothing proving the concept before spinning it out into a business now running across over 60 retail brands. Joining him today is Doug Lowe, CEO of Incoo. He's got 22 years in the business, starting on the shop floor and now running 14 stores across Sydney, Melbourne, Gold coast and most recently Bondi. Both Shane and Doug have been guests on Add to Cart before, so they are friends of the show and two of the smartest omnichannel brands in Australia. The Wish List. Bringing them together for this one, it was too good to pass up. So this episode which is brought to you by the Wishlist covers what intent capture actually looks like on the shop floor. Why attribution design changes, how store teams behave and the data that they capture, and how first party intent data becomes a genuine competitive moat. Both online and offline. If you're leaving non buyers uncontacted, this one is for you. Here's Shane Lantern, co founder and CEO of the Wishlist, and Doug Lowe Sam, CEO of Incoo. Shane and Doug, welcome back to add to cart.
Shane Lenton: Hey, Nate, thank you.
Doug Lowe: Thanks for having us.
Nathan Bush: Pleasure. It's always that awkward thing, isn't it? When we've got two people on the call, it's like, who says hello first? But great to have you both back. What an absolute treat. It's been a long time since we've spoken, so I'm keen to understand what's been happening in both of your worlds. Because if people don't know you, I don't know if we could have got two people who are more across how to bring together a great Omnichannel experience than you two. So we're going to have an awesome conversation around what that looks like from both the Wishlist perspective, but also from Inku's perspective. Shane, I'm going to start with you. Tell me for people who don't know the wish list and who rudely didn't listen to your episode a couple of years ago, even though I suppose a lot has changed since then. Tell me where you came up with the idea of the Wishlist and what problem the Wishlist is solving.
Shane Lenton: Yeah, thanks, Nathan. So look, if we look at the foundation. So I was. I was at q clothing for 10 years full time and consulted back for around 5 years in a CIO CDO capacity. So looking after everything e com it digital. And that was a great opportunity. Particularly when we talk about Omnichannel or unified commerce, as I often refer to it as looking at initiatives over that time where we could essentially opportunities that would generate revenue and grow the business. That was obviously fundamentally what we're trying to do. And one of those key initiatives was that when I look at an online experience and I think about a customer visits a website, they spend some time on a website, they look at a product, whether that's at a category view or they drill through to the pdp, they're looking at a product that opens up a raft of opportunities if they don't purchase. We've usually got three, four, five different platforms that are tracking that behavior in a different way. And then off the back of that we have opportunities like at a simple level, cart abandoned emails or browser abandoned emails. Then we can look at doing things like retargeting through banner ads or social media. And a lot of retailers spend tens of thousands of dollars on that sort of paid channel and opportunity. And then I thought within store, customer comes in, they spend time, they may have driven half an hour to get to a store, they've found parking. So a lot of high intent.
Nathan Bush: That'll throw a Westfield.
Shane Lenton: Yep, 100%. So they've made a big effort to get there. Even if they're just browsing on their lunch break, they've shown some strong intent to get to store. But if we think for most retailers, only 20% of those customers, so 20 people out of a hundred are actually making a purchase during that visit. And unlike the online environment, it's a dead end, it's a black hole for the retailer team spent time with customer, with the customer or visitor, they're not yet even known whether they're a customer and they leave. So the way I looked at it is how can we create a compelling value exchange between the visitor and the retailer to firstly have an opportunity to identify them, secondly, ideally capture some of that intent data and then the third piece was be able to convert and act on it. So for me I thought, yeah, if we can get two out of that 80 that didn't buy to buy with an average transaction value of the retailer's normal transaction value, that's 10% growth in revenue. So it was well worth going after the opportunity.
Nathan Bush: And you had the perfect playground with Q as a leading omnichannel retailer there to prove that, which you did. I'm very keen to understand because since that launch, I think you launched in 2020 and then we've had Covid since then, feels like there's been a thousand wishlist apps that have sprung up in that time. Is your differentiation around bringing that physical experience and that online experience together to have one view, the customer and what they're very close to purchasing.
Shane Lenton: Definitely from an omnichannel perspective or an omnichannel retailer who has an online online stores and also physical stores, that's definitely a significant game changer. We're the only wishlist platform with a full clientele in suite. And conversely, if we think about all the tactics online, you look at the iconic, well publicized now that 25% of their revenue is originating from wishlists online, there's still a massive opportunity online. So we've set out to build what we see as the best in class wishlist app from online. We also add things like notify me for sold out items coming soon and a preference center. So it's a bit more than a wish list as options we have. But at benchmark we still have a lot of Fuel Play retailers using the platform like Showpo, Outcast and others. And not every retailer that's multi channel uses us yet in store and online. But when you do open up that if I think about businesses are still doing between 20 and 30% of their revenue online, some even less, some even more, but if we can have an impact on total business and increase that by 10% of the total pie, you can have a pretty profound impact.
Nathan Bush: That's a crazy stat. 25% coming from wishlist for the iconic. So, Doug, welcome back to the show. Lovely to have you back here. Last time we caught up was just post Covid, I think. Or was it pre Covid? You were one of the first episodes. You were in the, in the, in the 50s. During COVID maybe it was during COVID And obviously as an omnichannel retailer who I would say has, I'm going to put it out there, the best in store experience in Australia in terms of a unique in store experience. When Shane talks about capturing that intent when a customer walks through the door that might not be identifiable straight away, how important is that to you?
Doug Lowe: It's so important. I think the intent, I kind of look at it like, you know, when you go to a really great restaurant and they ask you your dietary requirements, they ask you who's coming, they ask you what it's for. I always dreamt about being able to deliver that kind of service because it's such a, I don't know, like you feel so welcomed into a environment and I think if, yeah, if we were able to do that and move retail into that space, I think yeah, the service levels would increase tenfold.
Nathan Bush: So how do you do it at the moment? Talk us through the incubation process because I think we'd all love to hear it. You've come up so often in our conversations since our episode. How do you train your team on how to give that restaurant experience in store? Because you do it so well.
Doug Lowe: It's. Well, I suppose one thing is we don't always get it right and I think that's always one of those things. We always talk about this Japanese principle of kaizen. I think we spoke about it last time, but just continually looking at how we can incrementally get better and better and better, I think we're lucky because some of our staff, or actually a lot of our staff and the way that we train them, they probably, and this is probably right or wrong, but for us it's right. They don't necessarily look at customers like people that they can transact with. They look at them as kind of characters and personalities that they can be friends with and learn more about and they're all curious and so I think then it's a little bit easier to remember people and faces and what they've purchased and if they've got kids and where they're going and where they're taking their gear year on holiday and vice versa. So I think that that's helped a lot.
Nathan Bush: How do you do that?
Doug Lowe: Well, one of our brand values is curiosity. So I think it's just the more interested that we can show we are in the team. I think they are able to do the same thing with customers. And also I think it's when you go in the store and you're chatting to the staff and if there's a customer there who isn't being served, then you jump in and you help and you show them and you kind of lead by example.
Nathan Bush: Shane, you've seen more than your fair share of in store experiences with all the retailers that you're helping and you're on the boards, boards of a couple as well. When Doug says around understanding the characters and the personalities of his customers, is that common in Australian retail or has Doug got something special here?
Shane Lenton: I'd definitely say it's not common, so no way is it common. And as Doug touched on it, it needs to be like the sort of experience that INCU delivers holistically beyond even our platform is, you know, it's in their vision, it's deeply embedded in their culture and their principles and that's evident from the minute you walk into their head office and you know, the greeting you get, the experience you have there, high level of engagement, people really do remember people and, you know, it's quite amazing. And that comes through every part of the business. When we speak, we catch up with Doak's team on a monthly basis, just a regular sort of account catch up I suppose, and as we call them, optimization sessions and we have so many people from across the business and that's the exciting thing with the platform and these teams are highly engaged, it's not a burden for them to jump on the call and they all want to provide great feedback and they're all collaborating and I think even us, for someone as amazing as Incu, it sort of helped to nurture that collaboration between teams and remove some of those potential silos across touch points and channels. But yeah, second to none in the level of engagement and culture they've definitely got the magic source or secret sauce
Nathan Bush: is it hard to keep that magic source. Doug, as you keep expanding and growing, I mean, up to 14 stores now and being able to have that relationship with customers where it's beyond just demographics and purchase history. Does it become harder?
Doug Lowe: Yeah, definitely. I think it relies on just a really great team. That's helped. I think it has kind of gone in waves like coming out of COVID especially down in our Melbourne stores, which we couldn't visit as much. It was harder to communicate the culture to them. So we had to put a lot of effort. We spent a lot of trips going down to Melbourne, working with the teams, helping them understand our level of service that we wanted. But then I think the special thing is that when you start to overlay Wish List and tools like that over the top of things. So in the past, a lot of the data that we would have was just in people's heads. And so, you know, I might serve bushy and so I know exactly what you want.
Nathan Bush: I don't know, just pluggers and Speedos usually.
Doug Lowe: Exactly. But then you'd go down to our Melbourne store and the service would be so inconsistent because they would see you as another customer, but they don't have that data on you. And so I think having wishlist and being able to use client telling tools has enabled us to be a little bit more consistent across the service levels.
Nathan Bush: So how do you use wishlist? Does it go on top of your existing systems both online and offline? Cause I know you're on Shopify. And then how does wishlist plug into everything from both an in store and an online experience?
Doug Lowe: Yeah, it's interesting one, like if you speak to us, I think I would say 99% of everyone else that you speak to would be technologically advanced. Compared to us, I think we're brick and mortar through and through. And I think we're very much in terms of tech stack and things like that. We need it easy. We don't have, you know, Shane was a cto, cio. We don't have anything like that in the business. We don't even have an IT department. So we're. We're on the very kind of Luddite end of things. So everything is literally plugs into Shopify, but it also connects up to AP21. And so that's helped as well.
Nathan Bush: And obviously, Shane, you are the IT brains behind all of this when you came to creating this solution. Because I can imagine it'd be a nightmare when you're thinking about that Omnichannel or unified experience as you Call it, how do you create something that can fit into both the online tech stack, which is probably a lot simpler because if you take the standard tech stack, Shopify, Klaviyo, et cetera, et cetera for the majority, but then you layer in ERPs and POs as well, which is where it gets very complicated, especially for fashion. How did you think about this to make it simple for retailers?
Shane Lenton: Look, I suppose the first part is I was probably, I was blessed in the sense that I came into sort of from, you know, from finance, retail and other verticals into retail about 16 or 17 years ago in a time where most retailers were, and a lot still are to this day, sitting on some legacy platforms, particularly around ERP and positive, probably from the get go, I was really unpacking these platforms and sort of getting a reasonably deep understanding of the nuances and some of those challenges. It was interesting. So a quick story, a sidetrack story, but when we were setting out with my co founder, Matt, and he's got sort of a systems integration, e commerce, more big enterprise platform experience previously, but there was a. And it's funny you say that, you know, I've. I'm a CTO or CIO and cdo and I've got that background, but I'm also a realist and we can't do everything. So we wanted someone best in class in cloud infrastructure at the time to come on board and, and do some initial advisory and consulting for us essentially to make sure we got the tech stack right at the start. And this guy said, it's fine. Like, we'll build this platform that's, you know, composable and everyone can build the integrations into us. I laughed and I laughed and I laughed and I said, you don't know ret to you? No. So I knew, I knew at the start, and that's been strong in our vision with Matt and I, and we're 100% on board with it, that we need to make things simple, even with teams, but with different businesses with big technology departments, there's a roadmap and it's difficult to get on it. And you might have it disconnected from retail, disconnected from, you know, digital. So we needed to make it really, really easy. So what we did is we went after the, the main platforms that had the lion's share of the market, and we got a lot of those integrations done through partnerships and otherwise. And for us, it's all about the ecosystem. If we don't play well, we wouldn't survive. But the bigger, the challenge around some of those POS platforms and things can't get done. I almost look at it and say, well, it's a moat. It's an opportunity for us to get a solve and get a solution there. But when I had a conversation with Doug and said, you know, hey, I'd love for you guys, they were already using the Wishlist online and getting some great results in that Shopify Klaviyo sort of playbook. And then I said, hey, we've extended the platform now to be beyond just wish list install. We've got clientelling and there's no heavy lifting for you to do. You've already got a great partner in your website development company in Jock Collective. They've got a connector with AP21. We can utilize that. And we've got all the other pieces. And we're up in a matter of weeks without his team having to worry about the technical challenges.
Nathan Bush: Thank goodness. Because he doesn't have an IT team.
Shane Lenton: Exactly, exactly. And we need to almost treat. Obviously we need to go through a process depending on the different retailers, but we need to make sure we're doing the heavy lifting and making it really straightforward. We don't want to be a headache or a burden. We need to be an enabler. And that's, you know, that's when we talk about our sort of vision and culture as a business, we solve problems and create opportunities.
Nathan Bush: And I suppose your background in retail, especially with Q and the position you had before, that would give you great empathy for other teams who are like, when you're having those conversations to go, this is hard. We've got this roadmap or we don't have the expertise. You would have seen all that before.
Shane Lenton: 100%. And we were doing things on platforms that the vendors didn't even know were possible and we'd go and speak to them after. Over the years. And it's just about having the right people, the right approach. Everything's possible. You've just got to find the path of least resistance, which is not going to create headaches down the track. But ultimately we need to be the, you know, the enabler here and not the headache.
Nathan Bush: So, Doug, I can imagine that you don't lay awake at night thinking, oh, I wish I could have more technical integrations and do more IT projects. What was it about the Wish List that you were like, actually, this is actually worth the effort in extending it in store as well. Because I can imagine online you go, yep, that's fine, we can add that. That's pretty low Lift, especially when you've got great partners. But in store is another. Another thing. So what was it that you like? This will unlock this for us.
Doug Lowe: At Enku, I think part of it was Shane's background. He's worked in all areas. Yeah, we've kind of talked about the tech side of it, but he's worked in all areas of retail. And I think, you know, we'd previously crossed paths before, and I think he knew how to execute things from an e commerce level, an operational level, a marketing level, and to make it successful. I think the other thing for us is that, you know, e commerce is 20% of our business, but if you can start to affect that 80% of the business, then, you know, we're really talking. We're really getting going. We'd been talking about clientelling because I think it's. It's what you were talking about before. But, you know, it's fine for me to remember who Bush is, but if nobody else remembers who Bushy is or is able to deliver service or help him in the same way that I am, and then I leave the business, you know, it's all for nothing. Over Covid, I actually think we talked about it last time, but over Covid, we tried a video platform called Hero. Yes. Which was like a form of clientele and digital clienteling. It didn't quite pan out for us at the time because it just didn't feel right for us. Whereas I think the clienteling element of Wishlist is now for our business, it's just as if not more important for our business. And so the way that the guys are using it is able to do like, kind of client outreach. So in the past, for instance, let's say, you know, you've got three favorite brands. I know Patagonia might be one of them, but when stock comes in, it'd just be a list, an Excel list, and it'd just be on the phone. And if you were in two stores, you might get two calls, which kind of feels a bit salesy in a way, if you keep being bombarded with things. And so now to circumnavigate that, everyone across all stores can track these conversations with, you know, who's had that with Bushy? And if I've been on holidays, someone else can pick up on that and make sure that they contact you to make sure you haven't missed out on your favorite piece.
Nathan Bush: Because that would be huge for you, wouldn't it? Because a lot of your customers, I suppose, would be very keen on Discovery and new drops and being at that forefront of fashion. So you don't want them to miss out.
Doug Lowe: Exactly. And I think one of the things that the really good staff can do is pick what to kind of recommend to you and what not to recommend you. Because I think sometimes with our email platforms, they're great, but the way that, you know, our marketing team is quite small, so we probably don't have the element to segment right down to a very, very minute segments. Whereas this feels very personalized. You know, if I can still add a nice little comment about your last trip or things like that and make it feel quite personal.
Nathan Bush: So talk me through what that looks like in person. So customer comes into the store greeted by one of your team members. Where is the data being input into the wish list?
Doug Lowe: It's being input into the app.
Shane Lenton: Yeah.
Nathan Bush: Okay. So on a handheld device by the
Doug Lowe: team member, We've got a couple of handheld devices because we do RFID stocktakes and things like that. We're probably more using it at the pos, but that's probably something that we're looking at. Exploring down the track is having them
Nathan Bush: on the floor and is that common? Shane, how are you finding that, you know, this enrichment of customer data is coming through the platform?
Shane Lenton: Yeah, so I think it's a bit of a mixed bag. So as a starting point and again, for retailers, we want to be able to work on any device that they have in store. So as a starting point, default position, we've got a web app that works on any browser as long as there's Internet connection on any device. So if we're talking to retailers and we really want to demonstrate initially return investment and get the tool in and getting the modules up and running, definitely the starting point can be a point of sale, and that works really, really well. And then as the teams start to get more mobilized and out on the floor and more comfortable. Look, in a perfect scenario, everyone would have a device that spent a few months in the UK and Europe back into last year, and you'd go into a lot of stores and people have that. Some of the better stores have done a great job in sort of custom making some straps and holsters and things like that where they've, you know, they've all got a device on their, on their body where they can look at it. They're generally using it for transactions and other things. That's fantastic. But we've got to be real here. And for a lot of retailers, whether it comes down to their budget, we can certainly help with return investment and as they build out their offering. But it can very much work so successfully at a retailer like Inca or any of our retailers, purely from point of sale. But like I say, the more that the team member is able to do, the more out on the shop floor as they're in a natural interaction with the customer, the better. But yeah, it's a bit of a journey and obviously costs come into it and all the rest, but the return investment is there and as teams get more and more, I suppose, familiar with the platform, the results are there. And then, you know, Doug and I caught up last week and we're sort of talking about that next stage and maybe targeting a particular store and. But it needs to be done right. It's not about just putting a piece of technology in someone's hand and hoping that, you know, we can give it to everyone and suddenly we've got a solution. It needs to be supported by a clear playbook that's very much aligned with the, you know, in this case, Incu's vision and complements. It doesn't distract or create. And that's really important. It's gotta be really natural in the environment. And then people are asking these questions. If you think about it, someone comes in, I'm already sort of asking how their day is. I'm asking, you know, have they shot with us before? You know, what are they looking for? And they're going through that client telling experience. And what we're trying to do and what we're doing very successfully with our retailers is we're complementing that experience and we're empowering the team member to have more information. Because if you come in and you're looking for your pair of your pluggers, bushy and designer pluggers.
Nathan Bush: Thank you.
Shane Lenton: I want to have a look at, you know, what your size is, potentially, if you like. Oh, I haven't got them on today, but I have purchased four. No problem. Let me have a look. I can see that. And it's a natural reason to look up. And then suddenly I've now can see a full picture on other categories. You may have purchased some preferences. You have your average transaction value. Are you a VIP customer, what you've recently viewed online. So it's all about empowering that engagement. And then let's say that you have a great experience, you're not quite ready to buy, or you buy one piece and you're thinking about some others. That's where it's the opportunity now to say, no problem. Let me add it to a wish list for you. You'll get an email after the visit and best of all, you'll be the first to know if they've almost sold out. It's a change, it's a natural, because consumer behavior is, I'm taking a photo of that product and the price or swing tag and leaving. And then the retailer doesn't know whether I go back or not. That's a really powerful engagement that's traditionally lost from a. It's a black hole, as we refer to it. So it's creating those moments. And like I say, if you convert two more people out of that hundred, there's 10% growth across the business. Like, the numbers really, really do stack up.
Nathan Bush: Absolutely.
Doug Lowe: It's really interesting what Shane was saying, because I think overseas it's. That whole experience is much more evident. I'm not sure why it hasn't kind of filtered down to Australia yet. I think the luxury guys are doing it. They're doing it in a particular way where because everybody queues up at the door, they kind of do the clientelling at the door. I don't know if necessarily if you shop under luxury, if it's a great experience to be able to line up
Nathan Bush: to go inside a store, I've always laughed at that. When you go past the luxury stores and everyone's lined up and you've got to go through a security guard, I'm like, well, I feel really special right now.
Doug Lowe: Yeah, yeah, yep. $10,000, please.
Shane Lenton: Yeah.
Doug Lowe: But, yeah, I think for us, and especially the kind of culture that Australia has, it needs to be quite down to earth. So it's how you kind of bridge that gap. But I was speaking to a mate, Lloyd, when he came back from America, and he had two really great examples of it. One he used for Glossier, and he said that when he was at Glossier, he did get greeted at the door. He was looking for a gift for his wife and they used to live in New York, but they'd moved back to Australia. And they looked it up and they said, oh, you know, your wife hasn't shopped with us for five years, but here's a couple of products that I'd recommend. And he said that was an amazing experience. And then he was at another store that we run in Australia, but in America called apc and they were a lot slower store, so they didn't need to have anyone at the door. But the person behind the counter said, ah, you know, do you want to just give me your name so I can get a couple of suggestions for you and I thought the way that they did it was really clever. So they looked up his profile and they realized he'd only purchased products on sale. And so they actually said, you know, this rail here is actually going on sale tomorrow, but if you want, you can purchase it today. And I thought that was really great because often we think about, you know, it is the upsells and things like that. But I thought Lloyd, at that moment when he was explaining, he was like, you know, they just understood me so well. They didn't make me feel bad about only buying things on sale, but it felt like such a service offering. Do you know what I mean? Like, and he actually, yeah, it was such a good experience for him. So I thought that was a really clever use of the data.
Nathan Bush: So we want to create great experiences for tight asses as well.
Doug Lowe: Great experiences for everyone. We don't discriminate.
Shane Lenton: Do you think part of that, Doug,
Nathan Bush: is the way that we incentivize our teams as well in store? Because, you know, around Shane's point around, we get a lot of customers who are browsing in store and they get great service and they have a great experience. They take the photo, but then they buy in store. And someone in store may never see the result of their hard work or that interaction that they had. Is part of this around incentivizing team members to put in that data and to almost claim the customer so that wherever they transact that can be tied back to them.
Doug Lowe: We're pretty lucky. Maybe it's down to the way that we're running incentives at the moment. So often this is kind of off topic, but often a lot of stores or retailers will have issues when stock moves from one store to another. And you do internal transfers because people want to hoard all the best stocks. Our guys, well, not that I know of, but I don't think our guys have really had a problem with that. I think what usually happens, what we find is the people who are using wishlists the most usually have the highest portion of VIPs and it's. It's less about the sale, but they understand that it's a connection with that customer. And often if you build up a really strong connection with that customer, majority of the time, that customer want to come back to you or your store. And I think the way that our incentives are done at the moment, it's done per team versus done per individual. It's just the way that we run things. But what we found is that there's one store, our galleries, women's Store that's been, you know, elite in the way that they're using Wishlist. Since they've been using it. The ratio of VIPs that have been coming in because they've been delivering really great service off the back of Wishlist and some operational changes, it's got TO I think 30 to 40%, which is really, really high for our business. And since that point, they've been smashing their targets as well.
Nathan Bush: What makes someone a VIP?
Doug Lowe: Pretty simple. If you spend over $2,000 in a calendar year, you become a VA. Yeah, well, I mean our stuff isn't cheap anymore, so it is significant, but it's also not significant.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, Lloyd's not welcome in your store.
Doug Lowe: Lloyd's always welcome.
Shane Lenton: Just on that as well. I mean fundamentally like across the board. So if we think about INCU experience and then we think about consistent experience across the board with the raft of retailers, we're really seeing a gravitation towards stronger client telling or that desire for retailers sort of, you know, high street and above. And we find most retailers are doing this in some way and Doug touched on it before, in a sense that everyone's trying to capture intent or build a pipeline in the spreadsheet. The communications disjointed, it's often not compliant based on customer may or may not be opted in for comms. And having that unified across all the platforms is critically important. So. And then ultimately like outside of, you know, the INCU example, vast majority of retailers are still managing on individual productivity and store level productivity and all the rest. And that has been a. Is quite a, you know, it's, it's almost a bit of a sledgehammer that's constantly sort of hit to meet those things. And what we're trying to do is. So there's a couple of key things. So the first thing is, and I touched on the fourth, so it's gotta be easy to use. Powerful but easy to use. And intuitive's probably the best word to use that attribution that what's in it for me is something I learned very early on and that was a business that drove productivity pretty hard. But that's what's in it for me for retail team. And when we're hearing it consistently across the board and it's that visibility and that channel conflict and if we can dilute that. So if I add an item to a customer's wish list and they go on to purchase that at another store within the retailer's network or online, it's having that visibility going all the Way back to the individual that did that heavy lifting. And attribution is always a really interesting one. The other one is if I send an MMS or an email or an SMS to a customer with a product link in it and that customer goes on to buy that within an attribution window that's configured by the retailer, so might be 7 or 14 days gain its track back. We're starting to do payment links in, you know, via Shopify pods and share them. And again, if the customer purchases, the transaction can be attributed back. Now, with a lot of retailers, that sort of shadow reporting and it's all KPI based is critically important. And probably the other thing I'll add there is you get the attribution right, I think it's a real game changer and can be the difference between success and not success. And then the second part is the retailers have so many dashboards and reports and things like that. But for measuring all the customers that didn't purchase today and how many of them the team interacted with, it's just been so difficult to monitor and benchmark. Whereas recently we brought out the customer Engagement Score and we're really focused and with an integration with the likes of Kepler analytics, other people can attack that. We're integrating two way with our data so it can be reported both sides. What we're able to say is say 100 people came in, 20 purchased, 80 didn't. But of that 80, the team engaged with 30 or 40%. And they're the sort of numbers we're seeing now, which now at a store level, an individual, at a company level, at a state level, the retail team, the management can now report on that and set proper KPIs and targets. And again, like culture and behavior is the foundations of everything. But more broadly, particularly with bigger store networks and even small store networks for that matter, if it's embedded into the culture, and then there's also really clear measurable results, it dilutes that conflict, it solves that. What's in it for me? And the team can get oversight and coach and train off the back of that and develop that behavior.
Nathan Bush: I think that's interesting what you said there around getting those metrics around what happens in store. Because traditionally we've always had the door counters, right numbers, how many people walk through your store, that's fine. And then you always get the transactions in store, but you don't get much in between. So being able to see almost that funnel approach around who was actually engaged, you know, where did they drop off all the way through the transaction and then being able to see actually if they just dropped off here in that one visit, did they actually come back on another visit on their next lunch break, or did they then go online and purchase? That's interesting to see the real impact in the ROI of a store footprint, not just from the sales that go through that register, isn't it?
Shane Lenton: Yeah, it's a game changer. Like, I speak to some of our retailers using the platform and both on the shop floor, and to be honest, the feedback we're getting from the retail teams themselves, which means we must be doing something pretty right because we're getting a lot of strong feedback in a positive way from the teams, but they're also heard, which is probably that hasn't been in place. Like, when we have these optimization medias I've touched on before, we're getting shop floor direct feedback that we can act on and evolve. And this platform is about a retailer building a platform for retailers with that constant collaboration and iteration. And that's, you know, I wouldn't say it's necessarily always been 100% by design, but that's certainly the way it's worked out and now we're embracing it and it's core to what we do.
Nathan Bush: Doug, has it changed the way that you measure the effectiveness of your store footprint? Like, I know that you opened a new store last week in Bondi. Has that come from new insights or new ways of measuring how effective a store is?
Doug Lowe: I think the fundamentals of retail are the same for us. It has in that I think you can. Like, we would really look at the portion of VIPs, the portion that have been using tools like Wishlist to do clientelling. Because I think generally speaking, the more that the guys are using Wishlist, the better they're servicing their VIP clients and their key customers, which generally leads to better revenue. So, yeah, it kind of. That's the way that we would be looking at it.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. Okay. And Shane, how most people I know you mentioned there before, actually, if we go from 20% conversion in store to 22%, then it pays for itself. How are most of your retailers justifying the additional cost and effort of adding the Wishlist into the mix?
Shane Lenton: Yeah, certainly. So from an online perspective, if we just put that in isolation for a moment, we're seeing ROIs of 300 times. And I think the last data we looked at well above average of over 150 times as a sort of minimum baseline is what the data's telling us. So. And that comes down to implementing with the right, you know, the right approach to implementing, making sure the journey's, you know, optimized. From online perspective it's getting your marketing automation set up but that's again a differentiator. We help whilst retailer plays sort of signs up to a platform fee and based on the average monthly sessions from an online perspective. But we're actually helping them get set up for success. So we're having those ongoing conversations. We are helping them initially get their marketing automation set up and firearm because we know that's what success will look like. And then the next part is from an in store perspective we're seeing similar numbers and the exciting thing is that it's in comparison like we've got retailers with one store, we've got retailers like Freedom and Lorna Jane and some big retailers and a lot in the middle as well. It's a true SaaS platform. We're not a services business. The services if ever are really, really minimal. But it's, we're not. It might be a new integration that is a retailer wants to fast track that in front of others, there might be a small cost associated. But generally speaking it is a SaaS platform first and foremost and if incoo put a request in for something that we believe is viable for the platform, everyone gets it. It's not like it has a different build to everyone else. So where I'm getting that is we don't have a lot of overhead where relatively speaking from the, you know, over 60 brands on board and growing rapidly, we don't have a lot of the overheads that traditional legacy tech raw we've got that benefit of coming in over the last few years and obviously being cloud first and AI is playing a significant role in dev cycles and things like that. So yeah, really affordable and like I say approachable for someone with one store. True to people with hundreds of stores and we license it per store. But again it's obviously depends on the size and scale and pricing's match to that. But traditional six month implementations we're talking weeks, not even a month or months. The change management, we've put a lot of effort by design to make this an easy process and put a lot of the hard work in getting things right previously that sort of set us up now to not have that big cost base which in turn for the retailers mean that they're not paying crazy big numbers that traditionally were charged for clientele platforms.
Nathan Bush: I think it's really interesting the approach that Doug, you and the INCU team took around putting it online first, which I could assume is a simpler lift, and then proving it there and then expanding it out into stores where there might be a little bit more change management involved in a little bit more tech integration. But you've proven it before. You actually make that effort to go that step.
Doug Lowe: Yeah, definitely. I think one of the most interesting things I was just thinking about it then when Shane was speaking, but with Wishlist, is that it's used by our marketing team, it's used by our clienteling manager, it's used by the retail ops team and yeah, of course it's used by the e commerce team. And I think everyone's getting a benefit out of it. I don't know if like we use some other tools, but they're always used by one division or sometimes two divisions. So it's kind of cool to see how this has spanned over a lot of different divisions and there's different ways that people are using it. But then it all crosses over because it's all kind of customer at heart, I suppose too.
Nathan Bush: It then becomes a business asset. The more first party customer data that you get, that becomes your competitive moat.
Doug Lowe: Exactly, yeah.
Nathan Bush: Great. Doug, you are coming up to 10 years as the CEO of incoo. Congratulations. That's a crazy stint.
Doug Lowe: Do you know what the craziest stat is? What Is that I've turned 44 this year and in October I would have worked at enque for 22 years.
Nathan Bush: Holy moly. There's a lot of way that's cool. What keeps you motivated?
Doug Lowe: I think just keep getting better. There's always new challenges. I feel like you can never get it right. And I think that's the most exciting thing. It's like the first wave was, you know, just growing incube and growing it to have stores in multiple states. And then what we'd find is that a lot of the international brands that we stocked, they started to come out into Australia. So there was competition there, then digital through Covid then now, you know, the downturn that we're just about to have and we're having at the moment all of those things that make it interesting for me. But yeah, the thing I'm onto at the moment is, which we probably should have thought about a long time ago, but just knowing what you're good at. And for us really we're great at curation and store experience and then just focusing on that and not to worry too much about what competitors do and leaving them to do what they do really well. But knowing, you know, there's certain Things that we can do really well also. And knowing how to leverage those well,
Nathan Bush: you do a phenomenal job of it. And I think you are one of the most humble retail operators in Australia. And if you haven't been into an Inquew store, do yourself a favor, go in and have the Inquew experience because it is absolutely phenomenal. You've created something totally unique. Everyone feels special when they walk in there, so you should be very proud of that.
Doug Lowe: Appreciate it.
Nathan Bush: Thanks Pushy and Shane, tell me what's next for the Wishlist. Obviously coming out of 2020 you rode the wave of COVID and everything else that came out of that, the ups and the downs. Now we're retailers on the platform. What does the next stage of the Wishlist look like for you?
Shane Lenton: It's just constant iteration. So I'll say that that never stops and it should never stop. We're all, as I mentioned, we're always listening. I'm always looking for opportunities. Matt's, you know, my co founders put in so much work in their report in Sweden and unlocking some capabilities there, there'll never be a shortage of platforms in the ecosystem to integrate with. So some do more and more with planning tools and things like that. Because this intent data can be used everywhere and even as Doug said, lots of areas of the business like literally even into buying teams and merch planners and things like that. What we want to continue to do is we've got a playbook that we work with for each retail and we want to constantly evolve that because that's different for Incu. There's foundations but it's different for Encu than it is with Beacon Woods. It is, it's is different for Camilla and Mark. So we want to constantly evolve that because we know that is also a key recipe for success. Obviously AI we did well, didn't we?
Nathan Bush: Like it was right at the end that you dropped the AI bomb.
Shane Lenton: It wouldn't be a podcast if we didn't talk about it and the tech platform. So for us we have again, I mean we've been had the product, the online wish list for three years in market. We've had the clientele in just over two years now. So we have the luxury of having new technology. And so for us, embedding AI in the sort of fabric of our platform and in all facets has been great. We're now moving across into some of the front end capabilities that will just further unlock our team members using the platform. But most importantly is we want to give retailers, you know, Retailers always say the top 1% is driving. So much experience, so much revenue. How do we get the rest of the team up to speed? So we've just dropped automated customer engagement tasks with automated lists because we don't want the teams having to think about what they need to do when they come into store each day. We want these actionable items with predefined templates ready to go. Reach out on someone's birthday, you've just received some new stock, you've already got a pipeline there of customers that shop with you and your store. So we just want more and more enablement and things like the customer engagement score, which is a first in market initiative around having oversight in, you know, how do we KPI these things and how do we work with our retailers to just continue to evolve? I love it.
Nathan Bush: I think that's really important. And I know we joked about AI, but everyone will be able to personalize with AI in terms of the, you know, using transactional data, behavioral data. But what I loved Doug, when you said around understanding the characters and the personality of our customers and I think for those with retail stores, by being able to capture characters and personality that just go beyond clicks and transactions is a huge competitive advantage and something that will actually deliver true personalization, not just data personalization. And I think the Wishlist can help people capture that and have those one on one relationships. You're a great example of how you can bring that to life, to have relationships that last years and years, which is fantastic. Doug and Shane, thank you so much for joining us on Add to Cart. That was an awesome conversation. I really loved hearing more around how you're both working together, how you both raising the bar for retail and E commerce in Australia and what we can expect moving forward around our relationship with our customers.
Doug Lowe: Thanks Bushi. Thanks for having us.
Shane Lenton: Thanks Nathan. Cheers, mate.
Nathan Bush: What I loved about this conversation is how practical it was. Shane and Doug weren't just talking theory, which is very easy to do when you start talking omnichannel. They were talking about what actually changes when you give store teams the right tools and most importantly, the right incentives. And for any retailer running physical stores alongside an online business, there were some really, really useful things to take away. And I don't think you can get anyone better to learn from from those two. Here are the three things that I took. Number one, the 80% rule. Only about 20% of customers who walk into your store actually buy on that visit online. You've probably got five or six platforms chasing that other 80% through retargeting, abandoned flows, browser emails. But in store, most retailers have built nothing. And Shane's point was pretty simple. If you can just convert two more people out of that non buying 80, you've grown your revenue by 10%. The opportunity has always been there. Most retailers just haven't had a way to act on it yet. Secondly, attribution changes behavior. One of the most deliberate design decisions in the wish list is that when a staff member captures a customer intent in store, they get credit if that customer buys later, even if it's online, even if it's weeks down the track. Shane was really clear about why without it, store teams have no reason to put in that work. But with it, the way they show up on the floor completely changes. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if they don't get the sale straight away. They're interested in the long term impact on that customer. It sets the tone for how you do customer service. And lastly, know your customers as characters, not just profiles. I love this. This was Doug's line and it stuck with me. Enque trains their team to see customers as people that they're genuinely curious about their personality, where they're going on holiday, what they care about, not just their transaction history or their demographic bucket. The magic of that approach is that it's always memorable. And when you layer a tool like the wish list over the top, that knowledge stops living in individual people's heads and starts traveling with the customer across every store and every interaction in the network. Now, if you want to know more about the Wishlist, including seeing some great case studies and seeing how the platform works, head over to TheWishList IE. That's TheWishList IO and check it out from there. Alternatively, you can shoot Shane a message on LinkedIn and I'm sure he will respond to you in no. All right, that's it for this week. If you want to discuss anything about Omni Channel customer profiling, collecting customer data, personalized interactions, come on over to the Add to Cart community and discuss it there. We would love to have you there. It is free to join and there are conversations like this happening every day. Head on over to add to cart.com and join up for free. I'll see you next week. Rain.
