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[Voiceover]: Welcome to the Checkout. We catch up with previous Add to Cart guests and ask them five quick questions to get to know them better and leave you with a little extra inspiration to get through your Friday. Here's your host, Bushy.
Nathan Bush: Today's checkout features Vic Gigliotti, the founder of Muscle Republic. Muscle Republic is a fitness brand built on heart hustle and one unforgettable four legged CEO. From starting the brand with his beloved dog Charlie Brown as the CEO to now selling into over 200 countries, Muscle Republic has become more than just activewear. It's a movement, a celebration of resilience, community and heart. Today we hear from Vic who opens up about the tech that's transformed his business, the retail brands inspiring him right now and and the surprising rituals that help him stay grounded and focused.
Nathan Bush: Vic, welcome to the Checkout. Great to have you back and thank you for joining us. We had a awesome, awesome chat on our main episode where you shared everything from the special role that your dog Charlie has had in your business and personal journey so far, all the way through to finding your first supplier in a cab in Bali to where you are now selling it to 200 countries around the world. What an incredible journey we're but we are here to learn a bit more about you. So I've got five quick questions. Number one, what's the weirdest thing that you've ever bought online? Here we go.
Vic Gigliotti: I bought this fucking weird dog bed that never arrived. Actually it was meant to be one of those calming anxiety dog beds. Oh yeah, I fully got stitched up from a Facebook ad. I fell for it and it just never came. Nah, I spent 200 bucks. It never came.
Nathan Bush: I've got a mate who owns one of those companies.
Nathan Bush: I hope it wasn't his.
Vic Gigliotti: No, there was a guy there was an awesome company called Snupps from Adelaide that actually sent Charlie one up because he was an influencer. I think he sold about 10,000 of them.
Nathan Bush: Charlie. His legacy just lives on in so many different ways, doesn't it?
Vic Gigliotti: It does.
Nathan Bush: Number two, which retailer has most inspired you recently?
Vic Gigliotti: I'm a massive fan of Nike and Lulu. That's like my original. Like if my brand could be something it would be Nike and Lulu having a baby. But there's a brand called Vuori coming out of the. An activewear brand that's doing over a billion I think. Or something real sleeper brand. Really exciting. But you look at the likes of gymshark and what they've done from the garage, that's super inspirational. And it sets the benchmark for what people like myself that didn't have any experience in retail apparel can do just through the passion of community and brand.
Nathan Bush: I love it. What do you make of Nike's recent troubles? Call it troubles. But the hype around their direction obviously that backflip on wholesale. Do you feel their brand is as powerful as it was before?
Vic Gigliotti: I think the big four brands are always going to be as strong as ever. It's now what's going to happen is brands like ourselves or Gymshark can take a customer and build a community around them. It's going to be too difficult to try and catch a $35 billion ginormous brands such as Nike. But the one key thing that resonates with myself and brands like us is their founder led. Just like Phil Knight led. I think I watched the air movie about 22 times because I'm so passionate about how they were the original online brand. In a way. People are always going to tear down the big guns and say that wholesale they did the wrong thing and the market value didn't do this. And they got all these execs in there that are trying to make these decisions but they never actually own their own business. It's gonna. He should just step in back to that business for two weeks and say this is what we're gonna do and watch how that thing will turn around.
Nathan Bush: Be great experiment. Be great to watch, wouldn't it?
Vic Gigliotti: I would love it. But no. You can calm down. We'll try and take a little bit more market share first.
Nathan Bush: Maybe come work for you. Number three. Name a piece of tech that you or your business couldn't live without.
Vic Gigliotti: PeopleVox Definitely in the warehouse. That's been incredible. Gorgeous for customer service. And Shopify is my baby.
Nathan Bush: Nice. And we heard about Shopify. And your experience and how that took your business to the next level in the main episode. Tell us about PeopleVox. Like, what's PeopleVox do?
Vic Gigliotti: PeopleVox is a warehouse management system that integrates directly into there. I will tell you another one. I'll give you a couple actually, if you don't mind. Style Arcade is a software that we integrated into the business. It's a fashion analytics and arrange planning. It's built by a merch planner that we met. We met them in 2018. This is Mikayla. She's incredible. And Phil. Their team is amazing. Their software, their reporting, the clarity I get from analytically looking at every metric on a product because I'm the product nerd and I just love metrics now because what I do is I look at stock on hand reports and I'm like, sell through units sold. I reckon I could sell triple that next year if I did this, this and this. So I apply an inventory report. You've got to take data and you've got to apply it to creative. And I think when you do that, you can astronomically excel in your business. You can look at data all you want, but if you're not ballsy enough to go well creatively, if I send this to another hundred influencers, that means traffic to the website is going to do this. But you need the data in one place and Style Arcade gives you all of that. And it's like it's historically perfect, tracks every cost against your product. It tells you your gp, your margins. You can see where you're, you know, you've got improvements to make and you can strategically do bundles that makes still make more sense. Like it's, it's once you've got the data in place and that you can understand those metrics, you can do anything.
Nathan Bush: That's cool. We had Mikaela on a couple of years ago and I was like actually speaking to Phil. Phil was helping me with a couple of things earlier this week. So really cool that you mentioned it.
Vic Gigliotti: Yeah. When we started with. And then we've done another one called Globally and Globally is a international vat. Taxes and software. Took about six months to put it on. DHL introduced us to them. That has significantly increased our international expansion. So one of the biggest sticking points for international expansion from such a remote place where we live in Australia is getting product through the import duties, taxes and customs costs that used to get to the UK, get to France and say, well, I'm not paying £60 for this, this, I'm sending it back. It Integrates it in, creates a duties paid platform and delivers it straight to the customer. All integrated through the amazing service that DHL provides. And that's been pretty much a game changer for our international expansion before we're ready to plant product into fulfillment areas into those regions.
Nathan Bush: Awesome. Such great tips. Asked for one, you gave us five. Brilliant.
Vic Gigliotti: Sorry.
Nathan Bush: No, don't be sorry. That's five times extra value. So thank you. Can you recommend a book or a podcast that our listeners should immediately get into?
Vic Gigliotti: Yeah, MF CEO was a game changer for me. I really enjoyed Startup Diaries with Kyle from Melbourne. He had some amazing guests there. Jack DeLosa's podcast on there, which was zero to $100 million CEO or revenue, is something that I have on repeat. Powerlist, which was episode 16 on the MF CEO, which is now called Real AF with Andy Fazella, has been amazing, but just I think you've got to find what resonates with you, which I have. Ed Mylett, who's from the States as well, has really dropped some bombs. One thing I didn't talk about is how I brought prayer into my life and my business. I still pray every day. I'm not religious, but I believe in a bigger faith. And you got to bring God or your own faith into your world because the energy that you have inside means that that's what Remus Heart is. Energy you have inside is what you exude out to the world. And I'm talking, I don't sleep much, so, you know, you wake up with like, oh, fuck, how am I going to get through this day, this week, whatever, how am I going to pay that stock invoice? How am I going to do this? Once you fill your heart with the right energy and like, I get that from prayer and you got to like release all that, you're okay. I'm ready for the world today. When I enter the like and I move and I walk every morning or I train when I can because I'm physically immobile at the moment. But yeah, those two podcasts were amazing. But like, definitely, Jack Delosa speaking on Startup Diaries is a cracker for entrepreneurs.
Nathan Bush: Man, you strike me as someone who has put a lot of systems or processes into your life. Even though you said that you're not the structured person, but you mentioned a fair few already. Whether that is prayer, whether that's exercise, whether that's having your five things that you tick off every day, it feels like you've got a lot of things there to keep you on track and to Keep you focused to achieve those big goals.
Vic Gigliotti: They're my non negotiables to myself. I feel like if I'm not doing these things, I'm not going to achieve where I need to be and I'm not going to be the leader that this business needs to be or my staff and my team need me to be. Because, like, I used to look at them go, what is like? They look to you for guidance, they look to you for leadership. They look to you go, well, the way I treat people, the way I speak to people, the way I manage myself or carry myself is the way they're going to walk past them. I pick up rubbish in the warehouse all the time. I sweep the. I'll sweep in the loading dock today because I want, when the load, when the truck comes, for my team to feel that it's clean there. I make sure I wipe down the kitchen or I take the bins out every other night, you know, and then I watch them and they go and grab the bins, you know, it does. You're a mirror, you know, that's another key value of ours. The world is a mirror. What you put out to the world is what you're going to get back.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, I love it. Love it. All right, last question. I've got for you, Vic. What is your biggest challenge today?
Vic Gigliotti: It's a personal one because Charlie just passed. Like, I'm not one to break, but what that dog gave me was incredible and I'm struggling to really fill that void and I can't train at the moment because I've got a nerve running down my leg. And that happened just after Charlie passed. And then my C6 in my neck is causing my shoulder to run into my hand. Now, I know this is the universe's world way of saying to me, you're being challenged right now. You need to either find a way through this and this is going to make you the leader you need to be. So I've been physio, Chiro, MRIs, doctors, and I haven't been to the doctor in 10 years and I never get sick. So I need to overcome this emotional challenge that I'm going through, all the while carrying this business for our grand final, like to call it Black Friday and making sure that I'm still leading my team. Like, I'm hobbling. I was saying to you before, like, I'm walking yesterday and people want to start a business. And what you don't see behind the scenes is how broken your business can get from financial stress, from going through Challenges, be it people, product operations, and how it can break you internally. To you just go, fuck, I don't want to do this anymore. You know, but you've got to stay calm. You got to look at the good in it. You got to look at the lesson in it, and you just got to work through it step by step. And if you do that, when you come out the other side, you come through like a soldier, like an absolute machine, and you can take anything on. And I've been through these storms before. This is probably my biggest challenge because this is my first Black Friday without Charles. Like, and it's not to be a sad, you know, punk or anything, but it's just. That's my biggest challenge right now. You know, Like, I live very, very, like, moderately. Like, I. You know, my biggest thing is Uber eats and ribs and burgers at Chatswood, because we used to go there with Charlie. But it's. It's. How am I going to take this business to the leader in the space? And I'm still figuring out, like, my strategy a little bit. Where this physical impingement is doing my head in means that I can't. Like, I work at 1 or 2 in the morning. I'll plan six months. It just drops, you know, But I can't sit. Like, sitting here is killing me because my arm's on fire. That runs into my head, and sitting hurts because my leg's on fire in terms of nerve pain. So these last eight weeks have been so challenging. Like, the week after he passed, I got so sick, I ended up in hospital because I just couldn't stop vomiting, and my head felt like it was going to explode. And that's, I think, when you hang on to things for so long, like, I knew he was sick and everything else, or you hang on to emotional stress in the business or anything else if you don't deal with it and work through it. So I'm working through it by just. I walk as much as I can every day. I try and make sure I'm eating enough or drinking 4 liters of water, which is part of the 75 challenge, which I never saw through, which I need to do. If I'm doing those things and ticking them off and I tick that list off, and I'm just trudging that one step closer every day to where I need to be. When I get through this, I'm going to become unstoppable, and so will this brand.
Nathan Bush: Be your own Rocky, mate.
Vic Gigliotti: Yeah, that's it.
Nathan Bush: Well, we really appreciate you sharing your story, the story of Charlie and the amazing impact that he's had. You strike me me as someone who is incredibly resilient, incredibly self aware and humble at the same time. And I've got no doubt that what we've got now is only a fraction of what Muscle Republic will become and your story. So thank you so much for for sharing that today Vic.
Vic Gigliotti: We hope so. No, thank you very much. We really appreciate you having me on.
Nathan Bush: To hear more from Vic, jump back into the incredible episode 483 where Vic shares the amazing journey of Muscle Republic and his personal story which just needs to be heard to be believed. He tells us all about the grassroots beginning to becoming a global fitness brand selling into 200 countries. You'll hear how his dog Charlie's legacy lives on in the brand and he shares some of the grit that it takes to overcome challenges in both life, life and business. It's an incredibly inspiring story. Don't miss it.
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Nathan Bush: keep adding to cartoon.
