Luke Matthews: We've done a release for each series of the White Lotus, so the entire collection spans 81 styles. So from initial inspiration to collections release, it's around two years, which is a fairly lengthy period of time. The end goal for everything we're doing is around elevating the customer experience.
[Voiceover]: Welcome to ADD to Cart Australia's leading
Nathan Bush: e commerce podcast that Express delivers all
Luke Matthews: you need to know in the fast
Nathan Bush: moving world of online retail.
[Voiceover]: Here's your host, Bushy Foreign. Welcome back to ADD to Cart Australia's leading e commerce podcast For e commerce professionals who never stop learning, we bring you insights from the top e commerce operators, founders and experts across Australia to help you drive results and grow your e commerce career. My name is Bushi joining you from the land of the terrible people here in Brisbane, Australia and today we have one of the most sparkly, beautiful brands, but we're actually diving deep into the underworld of their tech stack. Today I am joined by Luke Matthews, head of IT at Camilla Australia. That's the iconic fashion label known for its bold prints, celebrity fans and a growing international footprint, including a brand new boutique on Madison Avenue in New York. Before Camilla, Luke was Chief Technology Officer at Kitchen Warehouse where he helped to navigate record breaking online growth throughout the pandemic. And he's previously led global retail tech projects at Retail Direct. So he is deep in the retail tech world. In this chat, Luke shares how he's building a seamless data backbone at Camilla to help support their creative vision and their expansion both through physical stores and internationally. We dive into how Camilla makes enormous traffic spikes with partnerships like White Lotus. I mean, does it get much hotter than that? At the moment we talk about the tech stack powering their global retail and e commerce channels and how Luke's team is laying the foundations for AI and hyper personalization to keep Camilla relevant. Now if you are heading to Retail Fest on the Gold coast in May. On May 28th we are hosting an epic Gold Coast Bogan Trivia night. It'll be held on the Thursday night of Retail Fest at the Currawa Surf Club. Spots are limited, so secure your ticket now. If you're a retailer, we have tickets available for you. They're $20, but $20, that will go towards Thread Together and that secures your seat. Or you can get a table if you want to get your friends together to prove you are the smartest people at retail. That $20 goes to thread Together but also gets you a night of entertainment, drinks and nibbles. Secure your table now@addtocart.com. and if you are keen to check out the innovative retail landscape at NRF 2025 APAC in Singapore, give me a shout out because I am heading over and we are taking an ADD to CART tour group and we have a package available that is less than the standard ticket price. If you want to discover all the opportunities that Southeast Asia has to offer in retail, considering that they might be a little bit more attractive with the recent tariff changes, head over to add to cart.com Register your interest or drop me a note to come along with us. A big thanks as always to our partners at Shopify and Klaviyo for making this episode and all our episodes possible. Now let's hear how Luke Matthews is weaving data, tech and creativity together at Camilla Australia.
Nathan Bush: Luke, thanks for joining us on ADD to cart.
Luke Matthews: Great to speak with you.
Nathan Bush: You too. Now, I was doing my research on Camilla, obviously, much loved Australian brand and I'd be surprised if anyone in our audience does not know Camilla. I think you immediately think of the prints when you think of Camilla, but when I was doing the research, I was like, oh, that's cool. You are doing a partnership with White Lotus, which I think it's very timely. Right. I don't know anyone who isn't into White Lotus at the moment. You must be very happy with how that partnership's gone.
Luke Matthews: Yeah. Being into White Lotus, guilty charge there and it's got me absolutely captivated. I sort of wish we could get advance release as part of the partnership, but unfortunately not. I'm sitting on the edge of my chair like everyone else for the finale.
Nathan Bush: We'll have to say too, because we're releasing this a little bit early. We are recording this before the final episode comes out on the weekend, so we've got no idea.
Luke Matthews: A couple of days.
Nathan Bush: Yeah.
Luke Matthews: No. All the listeners know you, but look, disruptive collaborations are a really core part of the Camilla brand. You know, we've done a number of partnerships, White Lotus included, to name a couple. Recently there's been ongoing partnerships. Partnership with Disney, with Robin Williams. I mean, you may have seen the recent Wicked partnership as well. You know, there's been ongoing collaborations and they're a huge part of the brand's success. White Lotus is our first TV partnership. Pretty exciting. And it is such an iconic show in a fusion of fashion, travel, relationships, all the drama, it fits really well with the Camilla brand. And look, operationally, partnerships are a massive effort for the team as well. I've got to call out the broader Camilla team. Like, it is enormous. Every part of the business is mobilized to make it happen. The response we get is just overwhelming.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. And obviously you're on the IT side, so I don't expect you to be the brand partnerships expert by any means. But when you say partnerships take a lot of effort operationally, what do you mean by that?
Luke Matthews: We get enormous demand spikes. So, you know, if I went past the actual collection production side, which is, you know, going on for a long time before I ever have to look at it. When those collections launch, when those partnerships launch, you do see huge spikes that, I guess, coming from other businesses. Black Friday has got nothing on a partnership launch, on a collection launch. The demand that you've got to handle is extraordinary.
[Voiceover]: How do you manage it?
Nathan Bush: Do you do pre release, pre orders or reservations or anything like that?
Luke Matthews: We don't with this. There might be some small events if you're in the right group. But no, it's open to pretty much everyone. And it is just about preparation as a business. We know the expected demand, all of the teams are on board and ready, prepared to handle it, and then it's just a massive couple of days afterwards. Particularly, I would say, for our supply chain team and for the marketing team going live with us. Yeah, it's enormous.
Nathan Bush: I couldn't imagine the pressure on the forecasting team as well, because I suppose they're ordering well before even season three, maybe even the plot is released. You know what I mean? Like, we're now in it, so we know how popular it is. But back then you kind of be like, well, I think it's going to be good because the first two were good and I think three is going to be good. How do you forecast that?
Luke Matthews: From a fashion perspective, it looks pretty challenging. And that collection is quite broad now in terms of, you know, we've done a release for each series of the White Lotus. The Entire collection spans 81 styles across three key prints. Yeah, look, I'm not in that team, but I know they do a lot of work for it. It's not easy.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. And it's not your only project going on. I saw also that you just launched what was a pretty impressive new boutique on Madison Avenue in New York that's pretty iconic. What kind of role did you and the team have in that?
Luke Matthews: Well, I've got one lucky team member who was over there to open it up. I wish it was me because I love New York and I can't wait to visit that boutique. But, yeah, it's a really well orchestrated process for the business. You know, we've Been opening stores in Australia for a long time and also in the US now for a couple of years. And everything's got to align with sort of a one week timeline from handover to getting the place open. So there's a lot that has to happen from a tech perspective, you know, a lot to arrange with those stores. We've got to get everything fitted out, everything installed, and then obviously live launch on the website. A lot has to come together.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, because it's not your typical. I love that you call it a boutique, not a store. When you are opening those stores, what are the kind of different experiences or layouts that you try and incorporate that might not be your traditional retail experience?
Luke Matthews: They're somewhat unique for each store. And look, I probably need Camilla in the room to really talk through this, but the current layout is called Hotel of Curiosity and it really is, you know, it really is that when you walk into these stores, they inspire the, you know, the prints that you're seeing everywhere around the design in the place. It's, it is very much elevated from, and different to, I think, your traditional retail experience and even your traditional luxury experience. We're in a bit of another league with apps.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. And when it comes to designing it from an IT perspective, you've got the functional, you're collecting the money, which is probably the important part of a store. Do you have to think about that any differently?
Luke Matthews: Yeah, look, my team are probably a little bit less creative when it comes to that. We like stability and efficiency and that's really what we're going for from a tech perspective with it. We want everything to be as robust as possible, which I think is even more key when we're a small team supporting stores globally.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, it must be a challenge because obviously Camilla is a hugely creative organization and the brand stands for so much. And like you said, you're very much about stability, predictability, certainty. How do you balance the two?
Luke Matthews: Look, creatives lead the brand and have to. And I think our role as tech and a number of the operational teams roles is to support that creative side of the business. So, you know, removing chaos and making it as seamless as possible on those operational aspects to allow the creatives to do their job and do it with as few distractions as possible. So, you know, that is our goal. I know it's the same in supply chain and finance and various other teams. You know, we are not setting a box around the creativity in the business that has to be able to flow through everything. And we just need to make sure that our Key owned processes and our key aspects of the business are running seamlessly, efficiently and. Yeah, allowing everyone else to get on with the real work.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. Have you had any big creative ideas that have come to you or the team recently that you're like, oh, we don't have an out of the box solution for this. Like, we're going to have to jump on board the creativity train and think about how we meet your desired vision here.
Luke Matthews: I think we run into those all the time, you know, when it comes to collection launches and from a tech perspective, some of the equipment we've got to get ready and support those launches can be, you know, quite urgent in terms of how it comes up and what we've got to make happen. I don't think from the broader business side there's a lot in terms of our creativity. We want to be playing around with AI solutions and data and trying to get some incredible insights. There is always scope for that, even amongst technology and operational side. Something that, you know, we're really trying to push into in the next 12 months.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, gotcha. All right, we're going to touch on AI, but I'm really interested before we go further, just to lay down the platform. So you are our kind of person here. You know, you're in the weeds of it, you're in the weeds of digital. Tell us around how Camilla is set up from a tech stack perspective to ensure that the creativity and customer experience can be done on the front end, but there is certainty and stability in the back end.
Luke Matthews: It's a relatively complex stack required to orchestrate that and it's worth pointing out that we've got a lot of different channels in the business as well. We've got our 30 boutiques in multiple regions, we've got substantial global econ presence as well as wholesale and pulling that together requires quite a number of systems. Look at the core of our stack, we've got netsuite, which is a really key partner, obviously acting as erp. We then have a separate point of sale system, separate wholesale transactional side, all getting pulled together and ultimately with netsuite as a single source of truth on the actual customer interaction side, that's where we're really trying to differentiate. And so, you know, we've got a obviously running Shopify for our different websites and different regions, all that data then pulling back to through sort of clickstream and everything else into a CDP running Telium and that is then what's automating and running out of there. Some of our marketing activities and trying to get to really hyper personalization providing an elevated experience that is aligned to our brand, to every customer who interacts with us regardless of the channel.
Nathan Bush: Yeah.
Luke Matthews: Okay.
Nathan Bush: And so it's a pretty modern front end and back end. Where is the biggest challenge for you, especially from a data perspective, to have full visibility?
Luke Matthews: For me from a tech perspective, look integration I think is a challenge with any best of breed stack and it's something I joined the business last year. There's still a lot to be done on that but we're making good progress just around trying to get our integrations as seamless as possible so we can get everything into one place. So you can cross reference all of your inventory data, sales data with clickstream with everything else to be able to gain some really great insights. A lot of work and yeah, with the complexity of the system stack around, there's a lot to be done there.
Nathan Bush: Does international expansion still cause you headaches or do you feel like you've cracked the back of that?
Luke Matthews: From a tech perspective, I think we're getting there but of course as soon as one thing gets stable then we look at another region. So there's always going to be more work and look really exciting to be expanding further globally as well. The focus at the moment for growth is in the US which is a difficult market in a number of aspects. We are getting reasonably stable in terms of all of the multi currency aspects of operations, different entity structure. I've been sitting around too many CFOs lately, so some of the boring financial aspects but obviously extremely important netsuite at the core, solid integrations. We're getting to a point where we can really trust everything that's happening and get real time visibility around everything so that in terms of that multi region operation it's pretty seamless.
Nathan Bush: So we know that running a fashion business at the best of times is difficult and complicated. Multiple SKUs, seasonal products, you add international on top of that and unique product. What are some of the complexities that exist in the Camilla business that people might not realize or understand?
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Luke Matthews: it may not sit entirely in my area, but I think it's worth calling out. The most complex process in Camilla is absolutely the end to end design process. So from initial inspiration to a collection's release, it's around two years.
Nathan Bush: Wow.
Luke Matthews: Fairly lengthy period of time and there's massive amount of stuff that goes on in that period. You know, the creative process behind the designs is largely appreciated. The actual operational complexity that bringing that to life is required is really significant. So one of the most complex elements is around managing the intricacies of our supply chain. Goods are bespoke, very, very limited run. Getting the right pieces in the right place at the right time is an incredible challenge for the business. And then also in the production process, ensuring that we're using the right materials, like diversity of materials, shape of each collect. I think the actual process, I'd love to be able to talk to you in depth about it, but it is a little out of my world. But it is incredibly complex and there's an awful lot of people that are required to bring that together. From a tech perspective, ensuring seamless flow of information is really, really key. And transparency across that process and then also the life cycle of the product once it does get into the business, I think it's probably not fully understood broadly just how complex that can be as well. So yeah, with the nature of our product, with the nature of the design cycle, with the nature of low stock, many, many locations, a lot of complexity, a lot of challenge there.
Nathan Bush: And tell me about stock management. Towards end of season, towards end of range, it feels to me that at Camilla there is not a clearance or a discounting culture. Is that correct?
Luke Matthews: Yeah, I think that's fair to say. And certainly in some regions more than others, you know, full price markdown mix is an incredibly important KPI in terms of running a fashion business. I think we do a good job of managing that.
Nathan Bush: You touched on AI before around the impact that you see it having in the Camilla business. I'd be interested, especially from that design process and the creativity. Do you foresee any opportunities and speaking off the top of your head here, obviously no plans in place. Well, I don't think there are plans in place, but in terms of AI and how it could integrate with systems to help in the design and creativity process, do you foresee that, that being a big piece for Camilla or is it always going to be very artist, kind of human based?
Luke Matthews: I think it is always going to be human based and, you know, that's an incredibly important part of the brand DNA. With that said, we do want to experiment and Camilla herself has been very open to experimenting with some of those tools to see what we can get out of it in terms of making that process more efficient, more effective, helping the artist to make the right decisions. We really want to explore it and for me that's about getting the right data backbone to enable that sort of exploration in the years to come.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, great. And AI outside of creativity, where do you see it making the biggest impact on business operations?
Luke Matthews: So I think for me it's going to be around process automation. There's a lot we can do with just pure rpa, but then also with AI elements overlaid in terms of potentially, let's say, our customer service experience, customer care, making sure that every interaction with our customers is elevated is conforming to the brand's tone of voice and trying to make it easier for our internal team as well. So really, for me, the focus is going to be around efficiency and it is in the way. We're trialing a couple of initiatives around that at the moment.
Nathan Bush: And when it comes to AI from your perspective, heading up technology, do you prefer to come at it from a case of awake tool? Our partners like NetSuite or Shopify have features and we want to be kind of out of the gates first to try it. Do you go, actually, I'm going to go out shopping for specific AI additions to the tech stack. Or is there potentially things that you would develop yourself?
Luke Matthews: I'd love to say I'll develop them myself. I think at the moment, with our global expansion, there's probably not all the capacity I need to be able to do that. But more than happy and I do often look on market for specific AI use cases to support specific issues or specific things we want to improve in the business. With that said, from my perspective as a tech leader, getting the data in the right place, real time, with the right level of consistency is absolutely critical to supporting any good AI use case. And that for me has got to be the focus. You know, we need to be ready to launch something to implement incredibly quickly. And to do that, you've got to have your data right I think a lot of companies don't necessarily get that right. They start with AI without the backbone to sort of support it and you know, just end up not driving results because for any of these cases I really want to be driving a clear roi.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, I think that's a really good point is that the AI is nothing if you've got rubbish data going into it.
Luke Matthews: Yeah, absolutely.
Nathan Bush: When it comes to it though, you obviously can't wait till you have perfect data because that's never going to happen when you're talking about getting your data right. Are there any particular types of data or areas of data that you like? As long as this is right, then I think we've got enough to be playing reliably.
Luke Matthews: I think probably two areas, one of which we're down and coming down the path, the other still a ways to go. But in the first would be customer interaction data. I think most businesses at this point have reasonable visibility over their inventory, over their sort of transaction flows across channels. Most, maybe not all, but you know, certainly at Camilla we do. Trying to overlay that with customer clickstream data and every customer behavioral interaction with the business is really, really important. So a lot of effort on our side at the moment going into making sure we've got that and got that ready. And then secondly for us, and I think it is very much a Camilla use case is around product cases. So looking at all of the attributes on some of our prints, on some of our garment types and looking at what we can do to get insights about performance out with potentially looking at all of those attributes, overlaying it to your sales data and finding trends that potentially a human is just not going to be able to find.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So in terms of those that technology stack, so netsuite in the back end running operations, giving you one single view over what's going on and then having Shopify at the front end. How do you divide and conquer between the teams to make sure that everyone knows the responsibility is there? Kind of like a cutoff point that you go, okay, this is an IT area and then this is a marketing or an E comms own platform. How do you divide those platforms?
Luke Matthews: Yeah, look, we do have clear delineation between and I think I've come from businesses with a slightly different structure in the past. At Camilla we've got a fantastic digital team who really take ownership of that full web end to end experience and we're very close with them and the technology team within the business support that. But it is the E Comm team who are able to really take it and drive it forwards and own the outcomes. And I think that goes for a lot of other teams in the business as well. We do have that clear delineation of what is owned by whom, which is something that I think business, once you get to a certain scale, you can support when you're sort of smaller and when you're very much in that startup phase, obviously there's everyone chip in on everything.
Nathan Bush: Everyone's in, yeah.
Luke Matthews: Which you know, good and bad to that. But as you mature you have to get that level of delineation between and clear ownership in the teams. I think that's even more critical as the business expands and when you start to go global, that ownership, because inherently the complexity you're dealing with as a business really requires that.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. And do you find that there are often requests that the digital team can't execute themselves on a platform like Shopify versus when you have to do changes to the integration or something from an operation perspective to give them access to new data that they didn't have or connect systems that they might not have been able to before or are they pretty autonomous?
Luke Matthews: Reasonably autonomous most of the time. We've got a great head of ecom in Tracey and she does an incredible job with her team in terms of owning a lot of that. Now, you know, they do sometimes come to a point where hey, we can't execute on this and we need help. And that's where tech step in and assist come up with a holistic solution for the business really around ensuring consistency. So whatever we implement for one region, one side is going to be consistent across all and consistent then in terms of how it flows through to the rest of the business. Because obviously some of those changes that you're making from a front end experience perspective, you need to be able to replicate that back end and right the way through the stack or potentially across entire customer experience, even into retail.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, that makes sense. And I'm curious to get your thoughts around businesses who may have gone onto Shopify originally. Business has grown, moved into Shopify plus and then all of a sudden they're going, they reach that point and they go, maybe I need an erp. You know what I mean? It gets to that point, especially around product management, inventory, multiple markets. In your perspective, what's the point where you go, actually you can't have it all within one E commerce platform. An ERP might start looking like it'll make investment sense to kind of make that investment in something more significant like
Luke Matthews: That I think when you're single channel and particularly when you're single channel E Com, you can very much just operate in a Shopify world with a GL accounting system outside. When you're looking at a broader business where you've got certainly multi region but even just multiple channel retail stores, that's when I think the business case really starts to stack up. You could run some of those solutions directly out of Shopify. Obviously Shopify have got their pause and offer a decent solution but not suitable for all businesses. And when you start talking about that multi channel operation, you've got to have something that's going to consolidate it all. It's really key for delivering on customer experience. So the alternative is that you can end up with really siloed segmented systems where you can't see behavior across channels. A lot of businesses are in that position and it's not a great one. You know, if you have that experience as a customer where it's like you're fine with two different businesses, it's not what you want. I think you want that holistic, seamless experience across all those channels and that's the key driver. That's when you start to say a single point of truth, a single source of truth to unify all of that likely in a, you know, a high functioning ERP is what you need and it becomes very much justifiable from a business perspective.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, that makes sense. When it comes to handling a source of truth around product details all the way from product descriptions to inventory to media. Where do you think that should be housed?
Luke Matthews: Okay, it depends on the business and the level of complexity. You know, we have very, very complex content across our products. Some designed for the wholesale channel, some designed for E Comm. And at the moment we don't bring everything into one source. We don't necessarily have the business need to do that. So we can have really high functioning systems sitting outside that are for specific use cases. You know the key for us is that where we need access to that data as a whole as a business, where it's going to be used multichannel, that's when it's all going to transit in via the erp. But for specific use cases, you're happy to support it in the more siloed systems.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, cool, that makes sense. So I could imagine with big platforms there, Netsuite, Shopify, there is a continual development. These are the platforms that never sleep. There's always new features, new things available to you and like you said before, there is only so much capacity that you and the team have what is on your radar for new features that you would like to add on to these platforms to enhance that customer experience?
Luke Matthews: Yeah, look for us, it's all about data at the moment and it's all about trying to get the richest possible data into one source to be able to derive some great insights out of an act to really elevate the customer experience. The end goal for everything we're doing is around elevating the customer experience. And so all of the activities that are taking place at the moment are just laser focused on that. And so for me, for a tech perspective, it is about getting all of our data into the one source. For anything that is going to help us to better support our customers and provide a better experience, you must, because
Nathan Bush: you would see a lot, right? You'd see a lot of what's coming down the pipeline. You must have some big ideas around how to improve that customer experience, especially when it's enabled by tech. How do you share them with your team and the wider team around you of what's possible to start kind of sharing that excitement?
Luke Matthews: Look, we've got a really collaborative culture in the business. I think it is a big differentiator. So none of the teams are operating in silos with their own ideas and sharing that into tech. Look, it happens naturally as part of the sort of Camilla way of operating. We have some pretty broad conversations with the exec and senior management team around what we want to do, how we want to differentiate, what our key points of difference are as a business. And I think naturally out of that, the key ideas fall. So the list at Camilla, like in a lot of businesses, is endless in terms of what we could do, what we want to do. But, you know, through those conversations, the most important bubble to the top and then we can take those forwards and push them down to individual teams for execution, which, yeah, look, we do really effectively.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, great. Awesome. Tell me about metrics. We talked a lot about data already. But for you, as an IT leader in a business, what are the metrics that you look at daily to know if you and your team are on track?
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Luke Matthews: okay, I think for me it's something that is always changing depending on the focus for the team. There's some core metrics around stability and from pure IT elements that we will ongoing look at in terms of, you know, all of our various stability metrics, tickets coming through, making sure that, you know, the business is being well supported. From an IT side, broader tech that's really around speed of delivery and everything for me is built around that. Trying to make sure that we've got the minimum possible lead time on implementing new ideas, taking it from initial single line idea right the way through to valid use case implemented, impacting and improving that customer experience or internal our tribe experience. Measuring that and focusing on that is key for the team.
Nathan Bush: For anyone who might be in a position where they're running projects within organizations and they're struggling to get them completed and through in a reasonable time frame. And there's a variety of reasons why this can happen, right? Communication, technical issues, partners, the whole lot. What's your advice for running a IT project that can run at a decent clip? As in, you know, are there any things that you've learned in your career that you're like, I wish I knew this earlier because it helps run projects so much more smoothly and decreases the time to delivery.
Luke Matthews: Yeah, look, it's define your methodology for a start. So what you're going to actually use to execute the project, but you know, also as part of that, how are you running the project? What's the communication cadence? What are all of the expectations around it? Secondly, really clearly define the outcomes. I don't think that's rocket science, but in a lot of projects you won't necessarily have that and that, you know, that can be really, really challenging. So just really clearly understand what is it we're trying to deliver in a practical sense, you know, both from metrics and maybe from certain experience less quantitative pieces. But just getting all of those down on paper first and then separately, just keeping to that agreed methodology as you work through the process, ensure that we are communicating we are achieving those deadlines if we're not for valid reason, you know, accept it, talk about it, realign and keep moving forwards. I think in a lot of businesses, you know, some will go for full waterfall type methodology in terms of project implementation, which can be incredibly difficult in a retail context where you do have to be quite reactive. So for me it's around taking a more agile approach but being really clear on what the end goals are.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. And does that help you avoid scope creep as well?
Luke Matthews: I mean, I'm not going to say we don't get any.
Nathan Bush: You'd be lying if you did.
Luke Matthews: I just could not tell the truth with that. Yeah, look, we do of course get a bit of scope creep, but it's about trying to limit it wherever possible and also accept it. There's cases where, hey, we did not consider this at the start, but actually that customer experience that we're trying to improve, if we do this little extra piece and we all agree and we all acknowledge that, hey, it's going to take a little bit more time, the end outcome might just be so much better.
Nathan Bush: Do you budget that in knowing when you're costing up projects and time and effort that you go, actually what we're designing here and all the information that we have in front of us, it's best to our knowledge. It always is in any organization you feel, no matter how deep you go in the pre stages, you feel like you've got a good grip on what's required, there are always things that come up that surprise you. Change in an organization. Do you build in a little bit of buffer around time and cost to kind of counter for that?
Luke Matthews: Absolutely. And look, it may not always be super obvious on the spreadsheet, but I think it's good practice to do that and to keep a really close eye on it because yeah, look, things will shift. You've got to have that buffer in place and you definitely run into troubles if you don't.
Nathan Bush: Do you have a go to number, like a percentage buffer number that you kind of lean on?
Luke Matthews: Oh, like 2%. Of course. We run things very efficiently.
Nathan Bush: No one, no one from inside your business is going to listen to this. Don't worry about it.
Luke Matthews: I'm not taking the risk. I'm sticking with 2%.
Nathan Bush: Very good. No, I think it's a risk. Really good lesson is that no matter how confident you feel, things change and things should change absolutely. During a project as well. Especially in retail where everything moves so fast. Tell us about sustainability because I know that's a big Part of the Camilla story. And on your website I can see that there's compliance and publications around Modern Slavery Act. You're certified B Corp and you've got initiatives with great partners like I Equal Change. From a tech perspective, what are the considerations that you and the team need to be aware of to ensure that you're upholding and doing the best that you can to ensure that everything that you're doing is sustainable as well?
Luke Matthews: Yeah, look, sustainability is an incredibly important part of the business and we do have some great partners there as well. You know, very proudly B Corp certified and I certainly wouldn't want to understate that it's a really significant commitment that certification isn't easy. Maintaining that both for the business and also as a technology team takes real dedication. The things we focus on is really going to be continuing to be leveraging our third party partners who can support our compliance, making sure internally as technology, we understand what those compliance requirements are. It's around sustainability and all other aspects of compliance. Building our data systems to be able to support that and provide real time insights. I mean, I know you've commented on some of the information that we share on our website, but being able to see that internally is really, really critical for a business. So everything we build has to align to that goal. As a technology team and as a business, we're really very aware of all of the global regulation requirements ahead of us. Sustainability and compliance perspective across a social and environmental operations. We're really working on an internal framework to ensure that we're giving accurate information internally to our customers, to everyone involved and from my perspective, streamlining the systems to make that as easy as possible.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, it's really interesting because the bulk of our conversation, what I'm getting from you is that the platforms are obviously very important and the technology is very important, but underlying all of it is quality, visibility and use of data within an organization. If that's broken, then it doesn't matter how good everything else on top of it is. And I guess is the same when it comes to sustainability. There's obviously going to be more legal obligations around understanding sustainability metrics within your organization, every organization in the coming years and yours is going to be even more complicated because you can have different regulations over different markets as well. Have you had to make any technology changes or additions to make sure that you're compliant with sustainability practices around the world?
Luke Matthews: Absolutely. And it's an ongoing process to ensure we continue to uphold those practices. I would say even externally our customers have really high expectations around that as well. So we really need to conform to the very highest levels, you know, ongoing. We've complete materiality assessments to understand all of those requirements and make sure that we continue to be in compliance with them. And it comes not from a requirement perspective, but really from a wanting to support our customers and operate transparently in a way that is in line with our values as a company and also our customer values.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, brilliant. Luke, I've really enjoyed this chat because you've given us a good insight into Camilla. Obviously we see the creative, shiny, bright, beautiful brand on the outside and you've given us an idea on the inner workings and the discipline and structure that's needed behind the scenes to actually support the creative and help make it shine. So I think that's a really awesome perspective. Thank you very much for that. What is next? What's on your roadmap for the next 12 months? As much as you can share for yourself and the Camilla team?
Luke Matthews: I'm pretty excited for the next 12 months. I joined the business in the last 12 months and getting a lot of the foundations in place as we move forward. Look, no surprise for me, it's going to be all about data and providing the backbone to get some incredible insights out for the rest of the business to make sure we're enabling the creative side as best as possible and also as a team to really focus on some of those stability aspects to make sure that we are doing a great job of letting the operational side of the business run seamlessly. And as you say, allow the Camilla magic to happen, allow the creative side of the business the freedom to explore, to experiment and to build some Camilla magic with our prints.
Nathan Bush: Might need a New York trip to make sure that happens.
Luke Matthews: Without a doubt.
Nathan Bush: Awesome. Luke, if people want to check out Camilla, see more, keep in touch with what's happening in your world, what's the best way for them to do that?
Luke Matthews: Look, the Camilla website's your number one touch point, you'll see, as well as Instagram for us. Really, really key channel. So have a look online, sign up for us, you'll hear all about the goings on at Camilla and yeah, engage with Insta and our socials. The team are incredibly active on there and there's some great things coming as well.
Nathan Bush: Beautiful. Luke, thank you so much for joining us on Add to cart.
Luke Matthews: Thank you. Great to speak with you.
[Voiceover]: Now that was a fascinating look under the hood of Camilla. I think we all know the Camilla brand and an image immediately comes to mind of the beautiful, bold patterns, amazing design, beautiful fashion, but I loved hearing how much tech and operational discipline it takes to actually make all of that come to life. A really nice blend of tech and creativity. Here are the three lessons that I'm taking away from that chat Number one Prioritize data infrastructure early Luke made it crystal clear a strong data backbone isn't optional, it's essential before layering in AI tools, hyper personalization or advanced analytics. His focus is on getting clean, consistent real time data all across customer and product touch points. If you're battling siloed systems or patchy integrations, I will bring it back to there. Audit where your data lives, identify the gap and build a roadmap to unify it now. Otherwise, as AI continues to advance and the pressures of more reporting and more insights that are required are needed, you are going to be scrambling to keep up. Number two Plan for traffic spikes Beyond Black Friday Camilla's White Lotus collaboration created demand surges bigger than Black Friday for them and Luke's team had to be ready and their secret was relentless preparation and system stability. Sounds boring right? But is so essential. So whether it is a new product launch, an influencer collab or a sale event, e commerce brands need to stress test their infrastructure before launch day. Luke's advice was to build resilience into your POS supply chain and website systems now and involve your IT ops and marketing teams early to plan for impact. It's not just it's job to make sure the sites are stable and ready. And number three, Best of Breed needs best in class integration with netsuite as an erp, Shopify for e Commerce and a separate CDP for marketing. Camilla is running a modern best of breed tech stack, but Luke called out the hidden challenge integration. Without a strong middleware or connecting layer, the whole thing can collapse under its own weight. If you're scaling, don't leave system integration as an afterthought. Invest in connecting your systems properly. Bring in an expert if you need to so that you can actually use the data that you're collecting across sales, marketing, finance and supply chain. If you're putting the investment into the platforms themselves, make sure they can speak to your other platforms. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider sharing it with a friend or a colleague or leave us a review on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. It really helps us grow and add to our amazing Add to Cart community. As always, a big thanks to our partners Shopify and Klaviyo for making this episode possible.
Nathan Bush: Thanks again for listening and until next
[Voiceover]: time, keep those customers adding to Cart.
