Alexandra McNab: We're sort of like the anti sales people. All our team members who work in any customer facing role at Baird, like one of the first things they get told is we would rather you talked a customer out of buying a shoe than put them in the wrong shoe and had them walk out the door.
Jordy Heiss: In a sense it gives the team a little black book of retail to be able to write that personal note, to be able to respect that experience and then as a buyer you receive that and you go actually yeah, I really love that experience with that in store team member.
Alexandra McNab: A lot of people sort of say to me, oh, how was the rollout of pos? You know, how much planning? How long did it take? And I was like about 25 minutes in the store the night before it opened. Welcome to Add to Cart, Australia's leading e commerce podcast that express delivers all you need to know in the fast moving world of online retail. Here's your host, Bushy.
Nathan Bush: Welcome to another episode of Add to Cart. I'm Bushie and I'm joining you from the land of the terrible people, otherwise known as Brisbane, Australia on Add to Cart. We welcome everyone to share and listen to e commerce stories. The more diverse the better. I want to especially welcome the traditional owners and the original storytellers of the land that we are on, our indigenous and Torres Strait Islander listeners to join us in our e commerce conversations and our community. Hello and welcome to your Wednesday for a very special bonus exclusive episode of Add to Cut. Today's episode is brought to you by Shopify and is truly an exclusive because we are discussing the launch of Shopify POS Go and Shopify POS Terminal. This is their point of sale systems, both of which have been eagerly anticipated by Australian omnichannel retailers for some time and I have two absolute superstars here to explain it for us. First up, we have Jordy Heiss, Senior Retail Product Consultant for Shopify in Australia and New Zealand. I've been lucky enough to know Jordy for many years and and have had a number of in depth conversations with him following the evolution of the Shopify POS or POS product. This is a very exciting day for him and you won't find many people in Australia who know more about enabling in store tech in retail than Jordi. Joining Jordi, we are lucky enough to have Alexandra McNabb, chief operating officer of Baird Footwear. Founded in 2008, Baird has grown into one of Australia's most respected and successful retail brands with a focus on quality products, sustainable practices and a new level of Customer delight. As you will hear today, Alex is one of the OGs at Baird and takes us behind the scenes as to how they connect the online and offline experience. She shares how they empower their customer service teams to take care of the customer no matter what. And she tells us how they are ramping up to go international with their
Nathan Bush: New York Soho store.
Nathan Bush: Very exciting. Baird runs on Shopify with Shopify pos so we will get to hear firsthand how they are making use of the
Nathan Bush: new developments in store.
Nathan Bush: Now. If you want to learn more about Shopify POS and see all the devices and features we cover in this conversation, head on over to shopify.com au pos we'll have all the links in our show notes for you to follow up yourself. So much to cover. Let's get into it. Thanks to Shopify for bringing us this very special conversation. Here is Jordy Heiss from Shopify and Alex McNabb from Bad Footwear.
Nathan Bush: Jordy Alex, welcome to Add to Cart.
Alexandra McNab: Hi Nathan, how are you going?
Jordy Heiss: Good, thanks. Bushy. Long time listener, first time caller, Very
Nathan Bush: excited to be here, Jordi, Very modest. We've been talking about this for a long time and you've got a grin on your face like a Cheshire cat at the moment. You seem to be a very happy man. What's happening in your world?
Jordy Heiss: Lots happening. But from a Shopify perspective, we're very excited to announce that our point of sale hardware, specifically POS GO and POS terminal is now available in the Australian market. So for those not across what our hardware offering looks like internationally, which it's been available for a while, but having a POS go, a fully all in one mobile device to be able to sell where you stand on the floor, we is now available for our retail merchants as well as having a really consolidated and robust countertop offering to be able to give a beautiful buyer facing display. So full transparency, full confidence, full custom branding at a countertop perspective. So we're very excited to bring that
Nathan Bush: to the Australian market and I know you've been working very hard on this for many years in bringing this to market, so we're going to dive into that. But Alex, you're here too because obviously the bad customer experience, especially in store, is second to none in the Australian market. We're really excited to hear more about that. Can you share with our audience your role at BED and a little bit more around the brand and your point of difference?
Alexandra McNab: Yeah, I sure can. So Baird, at our core we're a fashion brand that makes shoes that are better for you and comfier than the rest of what's on the market. We try, you know, every style we design is designed not just with sort of the look in mind but also how it's going to feel and how it's going to fit the customer. So we've been doing that for oh, nearly 16 years in May, June this year. Started with just the one little store in Toorak Village and now we're out to five stor across Australia and opening two internationally this year. My role, I'm COO. I've been at Baird this time around for about nine years. I was at Baird 14 years ago for a couple of years, went away, came back. Lots of our team members do that. We are the best place to work. Yeah. As coo, I'm across everything across the business. Really, really involved with the customer service team, the retail teams, engineering, e comm, warehousing. I don't tend to touch product and marketing. That's all on our fantastic founder and owner Anna. But everything else I'm quite involved in, which is great, great.
Nathan Bush: And I could imagine with an international expansion on the cards, you might have a few sleepless nights at the moment,
Alexandra McNab: just a few lots to organize. But it's also really exciting like if you're losing sleep because you're growing and you're doing things that are going to connect you more with the customer and you're going to bring the brand to new markets and you're talking to new people, that's the good stuff to be excited about and to be spending your time on.
Nathan Bush: So yeah, where are you going? What's opening up? What's happening?
Alexandra McNab: So we have a pop up in Soho in New York coming in May, which is massive.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, just we're just going international. We're just going to go straight to Soho.
Alexandra McNab: Yeah, just straight to Soho. No, no problems. No, we don't do anything by half measures. So that's fantastic. And then we're opening our first permanent site in Auckland in sort of mid July. Okay. Two in two and three months. It'll be awesome.
Nathan Bush: And the pop up in Soho, is it a limited time, smaller space?
Alexandra McNab: Yeah, it's going to be smaller than most of our retail stores and we'll have it probably for about 9 to 10 months total just to pop up. We're, you know, trying to feel our way into the market, see what works, you know, connect with a new customer there. Obviously Soho isn't just, you know, center of us. It's, it's massive internationally. So we're hoping that we can really talk to a global customer from that location.
Nathan Bush: Brilliant. And is that as much a research project as it is a sales initiative?
Alexandra McNab: 100%. 100% like we're looking. We're hoping to do that in order to help grow the online side of the business. We already have quite a reasonable number of sales that go to the US and we're hoping that by having a physical storefront there, we can push that even further.
Nathan Bush: Brilliant. Jordi, I'm going to throw a question to you here because Baird have one of the, the best in store experiences I think in Australian retail. From store design to customer service to product display. It's really, really schmick. I'm gonna throw to you to see if you can describe how do you see the bad in store experience differing from other retailers that you work with.
Jordy Heiss: Gee, thanks for that. Straight up bushy. That's just a really nice one too.
Alexandra McNab: You better say nice things.
Jordy Heiss: Just a warm up.
Nathan Bush: It's a warm up.
Jordy Heiss: Jordyn Distill that. That's a, it's a great question. I think, you know, I was listening to, you know, some of the back catalog of Add to Cart. I think something that really stood out for me was, you know, Simon Baird from Culture Kings. He talks about retail being an experience. It's hard to describe but you just, you know it when you feel it. And Baird has an incredible sustainability message. The, you know, well crafted shoes, they take you on a journey. You know, almost like a lot of cross channel purchasing. You research online, you get a little bit seduced in a way and then you go into store and you, you know, you want to, you want to activate it that way if you're a cross channel customer like me. So realize I'm dodging your question, but I think just feeling like you are looked after, you'll be, you'll have a tailored experience and you're going to be checked out in a way that feels, feels great. And you're going to get, you know, having been on some of the marketing campaigns, you're going to get the follow up, the remarking that feels natural. It feels tailored. It's not batch and blast and please come back. It's actually tailored and feels respectful to you. So I think that is some of the secret sauce that bed brings.
Nathan Bush: Is that what you're going for? Alex, has Jordy passed the test?
Alexandra McNab: Yeah, he has. He's passed the test. We're sort of like almost the anti sales people. We would all our team members who work in any customer facing Rollerbaird. Like, one of the first things I get told is we would rather you talked a customer out of buying a shoe than put them in the wrong shoe and had them walk out the door. So that's something that the founder and owner, Anna, has just pushed. Like, it was the same message I got 16 years ago when I first worked at Baird. And that really hasn't deviated. So for us, it's about building a genuine connection with the customer, genuinely helping them. If you walk into a shoe store, you might not be wanting to purchase that day, but you should work out knowing how we can help you in the future if you are wanting to purchase something different about what is different about our shoes, because we do have that strong point of difference. They are better for your feet. They are designed to be more comfortable. You know, we've got a really heavy push on sustainability, particularly in the last few years. That's been an enormous focus for the brand. And we're. We're hoping to. I mean, there's a long way to go, but we're hoping to make a seriously sustainable product in the future. So we would want someone who walks into our store to feel first and foremost that we have heard them, helped them, and if that results in a sale, great. And if it doesn't, then they know what. What our brand is about and what we focus on.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, I can back that up. My experience was online, not in store, but my wife had a couple of your shoes, and she just kept raving about how comfortable they were. I was like, all right, well, I've got to try this. And I bought a pair of boots, and they've lasted me so long and still remain so comfortable, so.
Alexandra McNab: Oh, that's so good to hear.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, they're awesome.
Alexandra McNab: Yeah.
Nathan Bush: So you mentioned the first store at Toorak Village.
Jordy Heiss: Yeah.
Nathan Bush: Was it in store first and then online, or online first, then in store?
Alexandra McNab: Yeah. So we were. We were in store first and I opened that store. Yeah, nearly 16 years ago, and it was this tin, tiny little shop in Terak Village. Like, the stock room is about the size of one of our bathrooms these days. Like, it was a really little. Little thing to start. And then we moved to our first location on High Street, Armidale, a couple of years after that, and then again a few years after that to where we still are on High Street Armidale. And then from there we opened the two further stores in the Melbourne cbd, One men's and one women's. And then we went to Sydney in 2021. And then Brisbane in 2022. So, yeah, we've sort of been late to expand into interstate, but yeah, we're getting there and we've got a really good customer base Australia wide.
Nathan Bush: Now. I could imagine that in transitioning from in store to the online experience, especially when you've got Anna saying it doesn't matter if people buy, as long as they have a good experience, they get the right shoe that's fitted. That must have presented a few challenges, especially with footwear online. Like nightmare category online.
Alexandra McNab: Yeah, yeah. Look, if you're trying, if you're trying to make an easy ecom business, footwear is not what you would choose. 10 sizes, bulky boxes, like expensive freight, like it's not, it's not an easy product to sell online. So we basically our approach with online is that we try and bring the in store experience to the online customer as far as we're able. So we have really long live chat hours like we staff at, you know, Australian Eastern Time, 8am through to 10pm every day. You can jump on live chat. Phone calls are, you know, beyond the nine to five as well. And we, we basically do everything we can to bring the in store experience to the customer. So we've got live virtual fittings, you know, you can book one. We can be showing you the shoes from our warehouse, you know, talking you through when you buy something and you're like, oh, I'm not sure about this fit. You know, we'll be looking at, looking at the shoe on your foot via camera and our customer service team, like, you know, I sound like I'm bragging, but they are really the best in the business. I'm so proud to work with them. They're just incredible. And you're always going to have that issue with sizing with footwear. You'll buy a size 39. Oh, actually the size 39 is a little bit bigger than my other size 39s. What do you do? All our shoes come with because we've got the customized, well fit. A lot of them will come with a removable footbed that you can take out. You can put in a thinner one to give you a bit more width in the shoe. You can add some padding to make them a little bit narrower. But you know, sometimes if you buy the 39, what you really need is the 40. So what we generally do with customers, we say, hold on to the 39, don't send it back, we'll send you a size 40. You can compare the two of them. Give us a call if you want us to talk it through it. And then whichever one you feel is the right one, keep that and send the other one back. So they don't pay for that additional transaction, they don't pay additional shipping. They basically have the opportunity to have the store experience comparing sizes in their own living room or bedroom or wherever they're trying it on. And then they can send back what doesn't work for them. So yeah, we will bend over backwards to make sure that they are in shoes that are the right shoes for them and for the right purpose and that they fit them really well.
Nathan Bush: That comes with a high level of trust to send out a new pair of shoes without getting the old ones back. Because then not low price point items.
Alexandra McNab: No, they're not. But we have really great customers and people like you got to have a bit of faith in people. People, people want shoes and they want to do the right thing like most people do the right thing. And it's really beautiful to see.
Nathan Bush: Fantastic.
Alexandra McNab: I think it builds trust with them because the number of people that we get saying, I can't believe you did this. So thankful that you did this. You made the whole opportunity to buy these shoes so much easier than it was before. Like it really works.
Nathan Bush: And tell us more about your customer service team. I love that idea of being able to connect via video and do a fitment online. I can imagine even that's not easy. What are some of the things that your customer service do that you think isn't normal for a customer service team?
Alexandra McNab: Oh, their care factor is through the roof. We don't have black and white rules for our customer service team. We basically say you listen to the customer, you hear what they want and you do whatever you need to do to help them. So we don't have a playbook. You don't get a set of rules. When you come and work in customer service at Baird or in the shop at Baird, you know, if the customer is unhappy, then listen and treat them how you would like to be treated. So it's very freeing. And if you're someone who genuinely loves people and that's really what we look for in team members. Like we, we don't train people. You know, something that is always bandied around is their parents train them, their parents train them to be lovely people and then we get them and we get to work with them. So it's really listen to the customer. What's going to help them, what's going to make them thrive and do what you need to do.
Nathan Bush: How do you work out who's a lovely person from an interview.
Alexandra McNab: Oh, you do it when you've been doing it long enough. You know, like, it's, it's flowers, it's buzz, it's sparkly eyes, it's smiling, it's, you know, when you ask them what makes them tick, they'll go, oh, I love helping people. And it's so good. It's such a satisfying feeling when you know, you, you're with a customer for two hours and they're really struggling and then they walk out and you know that they've got the right product for what they need. Like, you can tell, you can tell when they, when they love what they do and that really, that's what you need. You need people who love people to work in retail.
Nathan Bush: That's awesome. And so today, with the in store and online presence, what's the makeup of your sales?
Alexandra McNab: So we're about 70% online, and we were like that even before COVID Obviously, during COVID we were 100% online because at the time we only had stores in Melbourne, so they were all shut down. But no, we're about 70, 70% online and 30% retail. Week to week, it's about 60 online, 40% retail. But we have a couple of online sales per year that are usually really big events for us. So that pushes it.
Nathan Bush: Gotcha. And I could imagine that you get a lot of return customers once they find that perfect pair of shoes.
Alexandra McNab: Yeah, we try. We do.
Nathan Bush: Is lifetime value pretty high?
Alexandra McNab: Yeah, we do. We often observe that by the time a customer's on their second and third pair of bed shoes, they're really with us for life because shoes are hard and leather is hard and it can take a while to break a shoe in. So, you know, it. It's not always going to be comfortable right away. Sometimes you have to, you know, if you want longevity and you want something that's got structure and, you know, if it's something your feet aren't really used to, it can take three or four wears to break something in. But then the experience when you're wearing it once it is broken in, so many people are like, oh, I had to wear them a couple of times. But oh, my gosh, they were fantastic afterwards. So, yeah, we do get a lot of repeat customers. We've got an incredibly loyal customer base and we love them and they love us and it's. Yeah, it's a really nice, nice relationship.
Nathan Bush: Just sounds like a perfect world of retail.
Alexandra McNab: Honestly, it's so nice. There is a reason that, like, all our team stick around like we've got people five, six, seven years, it's, yeah, people don't leave.
Nathan Bush: Amazing. And so when it comes to serving those customers, whether they are online or in store, with that makeup and now, especially with the expansion internationally, I could imagine that you'd want to make sure that customers have a seamless experience, whether they are online or offline, and making sure that, you know, they pick up from where they were in the last channel. How have you approached that from an in store perspective to bring that data through and to help your customer service team on the floor?
Alexandra McNab: Well, I will say it's been a lot easier since going to shopify. Pos we rebranded our website to Shopify in 2020. So we've been online with Shopify for a number of years now. But there was always a little bit of a disconnect because we were running through a separate point of sale system in store. So everyday scenarios like a customer comes in store, we don't actually have their size at that store, but we've got it at another store. So they want to pay for it, we want to send them out, send it out to them. Like ship to customer through pos makes that so easy. Whereas when you're running on separate systems, you've got to transfer the stock in your main system, wait for it to show up in, in the new system, transact, then take, get all the customer's details and then manually put them into the shipping platform for the other store to then send the order and the number of steps involved in that, the amount of margin for error, the. Oh my gosh, I put that transaction through at 2 o'. Clock. I forgot I didn't put it through like a busy Saturday. That's a hard thing to do. And it's a very hard thing to train the casual who works 10 hours a week for you in all the steps that's required to do that. And I mean, you've worked in retail. If it's a hard process for someone to follow on a busy Saturday at the store, they're just not going to do it. So, you know, it's going to mean that you aren't helping the customer get the shoes they need, that you are losing sales because of it. So having a very seamless in store online, just having a seamless tech architecture that's the same across the company, eradicates a lot of training, a lot of fuss, a lot of error and just, yeah, it's, it's far easier.
Nathan Bush: And do you store product data and inventory in a Separate system or in Shopify?
Alexandra McNab: Yeah, we've got a source of truth, we've got an ERP that feeds everything into Shopify. But Shopify runs all our online and all our pos.
Nathan Bush: So essentially anything that interacts with a customer.
Alexandra McNab: Yep, yep. And because we, I mean a lot of our team members, particularly in Melbourne, work across our online customer service team and in store. So for them and hybrid people are phenomenal because they know everything about all of it. But it just means training them and the, oh, we need, we need some extra help and customer service who from stores can pop in. They're already across the platform, so the overheads of training and moving people around
Jordy Heiss: are much lower, I think, I think bushy. Something we hear a lot of is that the time allocated for staff training on point of sale is actually in excess of the time it actually takes. So we get a lot of the in store team that are digital native, grew up with a mobile device in their hand. They're actually sort of after, you know, 15, 20 minutes, gently nudging, nudging the store manager away saying, hey, we've actually got this, we've got this mate, we know how to drive this. We're actually excited by the platform and I'm sure, you know, a lot of your listeners would be familiar with Ms. DOS based, you know, point of sale devices out there.
Nathan Bush: So there's a real appetite calling our listeners old Jordy.
Jordy Heiss: There's a subsection, I'm happy to put myself in that category and roll the bus over myself, but no one likes to work to use platforms that don't serve you. I think that's what's incredibly empowering for us to put a piece of technology in a merchant's hands that allows them to drive maximum value for the merchant, but also deliver that experience to a customer. Whether the stock is in the store right now or whether you need to ship that to their home. You're giving those tools in a unified way to the in store team which is, you know, incredibly, incredibly powerful. So they've got full visibility to that customer's history, the order history, the stock, the inventory. You're able to build that experience based on whether they're a first time buyer in discovery mode, wanting to know a little bit more about the brand and how can you be, you know, turn me into a fairly fast second and third time customer versus I'm a vip, you know, I know exactly where the shoe type is, here's my size, here's my details. You can actually. The technology empowers that customer journey and allows the brands to build the theatre around that Persona and what they want to deliver. So I think that's incredibly powerful for me in terms seeing that and hearing that at a, at a merchant lens level.
Nathan Bush: And is that the typical journey you see a lot of the retailers going on is a migration or a buildup via Shopify online and then a replacement of in store technology or is it generally all bundled together from the start?
Jordy Heiss: It's a really good question. I think. I narrow it down to sort of three buckets we see we, you know, we've got the, the digital native darlings that have grown up online, they've accelerated, they've done really well out of COVID and they're looking for a first time pop up experience or they want to invest in a flagship because surprise, surprise, once you do the numbers, it's actually cheaper at a certain plateau to go old school brick and mortar and acquire customers that way. So for those merchants that are D2C first come into flagship retail via a pop up or a flagship, it's not really a choice because it's so easy to sort of add a channel and really go flying there. I think even to speak to the utility of the platform we have, just recently the team at quadlocker are deploying the POS go devices through a shipping container with, you know, Oscar Piastri coming out and, you know, speaking to that sort of brand ambassadorship. So to be able to serve that buyer on the flow, whether in your, in a shipping container or whether you're, you know, in a full time retail store is pretty phenomenal. I would say also that the other bucket we see is those traditional brick and mortar retailers that are incredibly frustrated when things are disjointed from a customer profile perspective. They've got gift cards that only work in one channel, not the other. They don't have true accuracy of stock, so they can't leverage things like click and collect or ship to store. And it's just really a challenging experience depending on which channel they sort of operationally serve. So there's a big migration of merchants that are traditional brick and mortar. They want to consolidate their systems into one simple stack to give that buyer a beautiful experience that respects them no matter what channel, but also operationally consolidates and frees them up to be able to spend their time doing more high value and interesting things for their business to drive that growth.
Nathan Bush: Alex, in terms of physical hardware, and I know this is something that gets Jordie very excited, so I'm keen to Hear your opinion too, Jordi. When you are looking to set up soho as a pop up store or Auckland as a new store, what's the hardware considerations there? What do you physically need?
Alexandra McNab: So we are in one of our stores, we're trialing a POS go device and it's really good. We definitely are going to go talking to the store managers at the site. You know, what do you think? And they're like, it's fantastic for this, this and this. They love that. You know, things like in store pickups, you know, you just take the device with you, you mark that you've. You mark straight away that you've the customer's picked it up, you know, you take it back to them. There's no dealing with the customer and then going over to POS separately to run the transaction through AutoClick that it's been collected and shoes are bulky like you'll typically have a customer sitting in a chair surrounded by eight boxes of shoes that some are open, some are not. You know, we've packed up the two that they're taking but again you don't want to then bump them to the counter to then go and put the sale through. Having a handheld device that you can take around on busy days is really fantastic. You still probably need like we'll probably go with a blend. We'll probably have a couple of Posco devices and a couple of iPad devices simply because of the way we utilize Shopify and not just as a pos. We've done a few sort of hacks with it that are really handy around giving our in store team members visibility of what's coming soon in the range. We'll publish it on POS channel only. They'll get the images, it'll be populated, they can scroll through, they can see what's arriving soon for women. So that's obviously better on a bigger screen. But yeah, it's a very handy device and yeah, we will be getting them for our stores.
Nathan Bush: So you're using it not just as a transaction device but also as an information device to help your team talk to the customers as well.
Alexandra McNab: Yeah, the easier you can make it for the team members to get the information they need, the happier they are, the easier it is to manage team and information flow and everything. Give them what they need and people do wonderful things.
Jordy Heiss: I'd love to hear that. Alex. I think something was, you know, I mentioned at the start, POS Go has been available for 18 plus months in the in the U.S. so you know, whilst we're little old Australia and 2, 3%, 2 3% of GDP. We, you know, we do get products sometimes a little bit later, but they are, you know, more fully formed and we get better insights and, you know, consumer insights as to how things are working. So definitely the hybrid approach is incredibly valuable. We know that, you know, traditional serving at a countertop isn't necessarily going away. There's reasons that a countertop needs to stay around, you know, returns, exchanges, gift wrapping, those sort of service elements. But I think with the POS Go, we are seeing a lot of industries, particularly sort of fashion, footwear, apparel, where there doesn't need to be sort of a special spray in the box or it doesn't need a specific additional bag that really the countertop, whether it stays or whether it goes, is really up for debate. So seeing visual merchandising decisions, way finding being able to give a bit more breathability to the space and not just stack it high and watch it fly is really interesting from a buying psychology perspective. So, and you look at the utility of POS Go. So, you know, Alex mentioned being able to serve the customer where they stand. So there's the ability to, you know, line bust. So if there's five people in line, there's, you know, someone with, you know, 10, 5, 7, and then one with, you know, one pair of socks, they just want to get in and out. You're able to sort of let them go and let them be and also a VIP experience. So, you know, there might be reasons where you want to give a discretionary experience or a discount. You're able to do that in the intimacy of where that location is. You're not having to, as Alex said, walk them up to the corner, walk them up to the counter, try and butt them in in front of, you know, five or six people, explain they've got a discount, and then all in sundry behind are like, oh, okay, well, I know what to say when I get to the counter. So there's an ability to serve customers in a respectful way that, you know, builds the experience for them and makes it special and remarkable, like Bear already does.
Nathan Bush: And do you have that ability, Alex, in terms of being able to recognize different tiers of customers and speak to them differently? How do you organize that with your customer service teams?
Alexandra McNab: Yeah, so again, because all our transactions run through Shopify, it's quite. If you're looking at the customer profile, it's quite obvious to see, you know, this is their first purchase. I need to, I need to give them lots of information about us as the brand, you know, they need to know what they're. You know, how to care for these shoes, you know, how to. What they might need in terms of, you know, making sure they have longevity and all that sort of stuff. Versus oh, yeah, this is a customer who's purchased 15 pairs of shoes. Yep, they know all about us. They're going to be interested in what's new and what's coming soon as opposed to knowing as much about the brand. They're already there. So having that visible to the team members in store is really, really useful. And again, you don't have this. This is only what they've purchased in store that you would get if you were running off a separate. And the other thing that just makes online exchanges and stuff so much easier. If they go in store, they're not referencing a separate system. They're not like, when did you purchase this? It's all there in front of them. It definitely streamlines the customer experience.
Nathan Bush: And to get that information, when your team are speaking to customers in store, if they've got a POSGO device, are they generally going, oh, can I just get your email or your phone or your name to start pulling up that information? What's the way of broaching that?
Alexandra McNab: Yeah, we go with email. That's like our individual differentiator. And again, for us, we prefer to email things rather than print things because sustainability. So, you know, that's the way we do all our receipts and so forth. But, yeah, it's a very quick check. If you shop with us before, you know, and our team will already know that because they've been talking to the customer for 20 minutes, half an hour, two hours even, and, you know, they'll know where to go and where to find that info.
Nathan Bush: Great.
Nathan Bush: And Jordi, when you were speaking to
Nathan Bush: retailers about implementing GO devices in storefronts, how many is generally a good number for a store? Is it one per sales assistant? Is it, you know, a handful overall to share?
Jordy Heiss: Yeah, it's a little. It's always the depends question in terms of, you know, square footage and of the retail space. I think I've worked with, you know, 30 early access merchants quite intimately in Australia, as we've tested that and seen how they've used it in market. I think definitely that hybrid approach and having sort of one or two countertop devices where you can serve them in a way that they used to traditionally, but also having, again, sort of one or two devices that can be the runner, devices that can serve on the floor, that can be utilized when Potentially foot traffic is down, you've got time to go and meet them where they are. So it really depends on size and also again the appetite to remove that countertop and how you sort of serve that customer from a bagging perspective, returns, exchanges sort of thing.
Nathan Bush: And from a commercial model, obviously merchants who are just online at the moment will be very familiar with the Shopify model or the Shopify plus model. How does that change when it comes to in store?
Jordy Heiss: It becomes easier I think obviously being being on platform, being familiar how the tools work. From an admin perspective it really is as you know, as simple bunny rabbit is as adding a channel. We know there's a lot of operational components, complexity and decisions that go into that. But being able to drive that channel, to be able to see again that visibility across that store. I think from a. Probably the thing that takes the time is understanding. Okay, what does leveraging Shopify POS in store unlock us and enable us to do? Is it ship to home? Is it click and collect? I think probably one of the sleeper features that doesn't get a lot of airtime is the ability if someone's in store and shoes are a classic but also bedding and line. And if you're wanting, if you're in store, you've created this cart with the team in store. You built this cart, you need to get secondary approval at home or you need a color match, something you're able to actually take that pre built cart and the in store team can say hey, I know you need a little bit of time to think about this and get that budgetary approval as you need. Let me just email you a link. This card is preloaded so when you're ready, when you've made that pairing decision, if you need or you want to go the whole hog, you can actually do that in the, in your own time, which is, which is beautiful I think and doesn't lose the time and effort and expense you've done from going in store. And just again it's a way of respecting that buyer and how far along the journey that they've already come.
Nathan Bush: I love that example.
Alexandra McNab: Yeah. And we definitely use it that way. Back in the day I remember working in store and you know they'd try on these two boots and they were umming and ahhing and they're like oh, can you just write down the color and the size and the style for me and you know how you fitted me and you'd be writing it on these little notes all the time and yeah, these days it just Sort of that you create a cart, you email it out to them. They know what it was they tried and they can buy it if they want online. And it helps if you're not a business that really cares which channel the customer shops through. And we certainly don't. As long as they're happy, we're happy. And yeah, it's definitely, definitely handy in a sense.
Jordy Heiss: It gives the team a little black book of retail to be able to write that personal note, to be able to respect that experience. And then as a buyer, you receive that and you go, actually, yeah, I really love that experience with that in store team member. And whether there's a discretionary discount or however you want to phrase that from a buying perspective, that's respectful in the time that suits you to check out.
Nathan Bush: Do you allow your team members, you said that you kind of don't give them a lot of rules that they can use their judgment. Alex, do they? Can they do the discretionary discounts?
Alexandra McNab: Absolutely they can. If you've got a customer who. They've been there, look after them. Like if they're buying three pairs of shoes. Yeah. Give them a cheeky 10%, why not? They deserve it. Throw in some shoe care. Like something that's going to make their experience and make their shoes and make them. Make them love the product. Like it's, it's. Yeah, it's simple. Look after people.
Nathan Bush: Jordi, I love that you brought up those sleep of features because we talked about, you know, the, the ability to see the tiers of customers, the lifetime value, whether they're a new customer or a long term customer. We also talked about the ship to store and making sure we know where inventory is across the network. Alex, are there any other kind of sleeper features, as Jordi said, that you've realized at Baird, especially around football, that you go. Actually just connecting these systems together has just made this little feature so much better. And we wouldn't be able to offer it otherwise.
Alexandra McNab: Look, the big one for us is ship to customer. Like that's about 4% of our in store transactions are done through that particular feature. And that, yeah, the time that that's stripped away. But the big one that took even me by surprise was we were obviously shipping from our stores, you know, all our stores at dispatch points before we went onto pos. But it, a lot of people sort of say to me, oh, how was the rollout of pos? You know, how much planning? How long did it take? And I was like about 25 minutes in the store the night before it Opened like we. It really was that we did a sort of pilot launch in our Fortitude Valley location when that opened. Thought, we'll give this. We'll give this a turn, you know, we'll see how it goes. We'll try it for a few months and then we'll bring the rest of the business onto it if it's successful. And honestly, myself and Nicole, who's our E Commerce manager, was. We were teaching the team how to use it at six o' clock the night before we opened, and we opened the next day and it was, you know, it was opening day and we'd promote it and it was the biggest day that we'd had in a retail store outside of sale periods and no problems.
Nathan Bush: I can just hear some CIOs heads exploding as they're listening to this, thinking about some of the previous implementations.
Alexandra McNab: Yeah, it was very easy. I mean, it would be different if you weren't already on Shopify and you weren't already dispatching from stores, but it was very easy if you're doing those two things already.
Nathan Bush: So nothing's perfect. And let's pretend Jordi's not in the room for two minutes. Is there anything that you go, I hope this is on the roadmap for POS especially.
Alexandra McNab: Look, I'm pretty noisy and as mentioned before, Toby's very patient with me and so is Jordi and everyone else I deal with at Shopify. The things that we've been saying, we really need this feature. When is this coming? Are you guys working on this? Are actually all on the roadmap. You know, there's been some discussions around parity of. For example, at the moment, you can't really do exchanges on the admin of Shopify. You can only do them on pos. So then when you've got an online customer service agent who's dealing mostly through admin, then they want to exchange something for a customer, they're having to log in on a different device on pos. So there are things like that where we're like, we just sort of want parity between the two systems, but that's all rolling out.
Jordy Heiss: Look, we love feedback. We love merchants like Bed and operators like Alex that really push us. I think it gets pretty boring if you're not getting people that are trying to push the bleeding edges of where the platform goes. So certainly I think it's. I really love what this new hardware will do. It's almost sort of our Tim Cook Apple announcing on stage that we're here and here in Australia. Now we first launched our card reader that helped us commercialize a business in May 21 which was probably the fourth of six lockdowns in Melbourne which is quite challenging to push a retail product. But now with again Alex spoke before around okay, it feels like Shopify has been really building the platform for a while. We completely rebuilt the platform. You know start of COVID 2020 we were running on four disparate code bases. Old and new, iOS and Android. But we actually consolidated that into one platform and react for those sort of wanting to nerd out on what that looks like. But being able to build once and have 250 engineers building in the same direction has unlocked that proficiency to really level up our offering. And even you know there is a bit of a taboo in market we're not shy. Probably used to be true where Shopify POS was only for smaller retailers. So you know we've unlocked the. We used to have a 20 limit location cap that didn't bring retailers of we know we could serve really well. Essentially we're now a business. We're now open for business for merchants up to a thousand locations. So with that brings a lot of promise and a lot of interesting conversations we're having at the moment and we're excited from what that hardware will bring. And I think what's you know, if I'm sitting and I'm listening to to me speak in hyperbole. If you're, you know, you don't make a buying decision based on the hardware, you make it based on the software. And I think that's really critical. And if you think about what that can unlock for you from a total cost of ownership to unlocking ways of fulfillment that you've never been able to do. The the ability to not be encumbered by middleware and disparate integrations we've talked about before. I think that's where we're having a lot of fun conversations and I think that's where a lot of merchants across the board that are coming to us and talking about it and just to be a little bit indulgent, a lot of Shopify's bias but best in breed in terms of E commerce. So we see a lot of our digital and E comm teams bring Shopify POS to the rest of the business. They're like look at what this can empower from empowering my digital and my econ perspective but also all of us from a retail perspective. And then that often gets carried from the digital component to the retail manager and then we take it to CFO and the CFO is like okay, well how much does it cost? And those sort of conversations. But then when you start explaining hey, you're not having to run and wrangle pivot tables that end of month and backward looking and not quite the true picture of what's happening in the business. You can actually take real time insights and drive based on what's happening in the business right here and right now. It's a very interesting conversation and one that sort of CFOs start to open the purse strings a little bit more towards in terms of what that'll open up for them individually but obviously across the business. So it is super interesting depending on which sort of seat you sit in the business. But yeah, we're seeing a collective power at the moment that would really want to come on board with, dare I say, Unified Commerce.
Nathan Bush: You did it. You brought that word into it. You had to, didn't you?
Jordy Heiss: I did. Look at subjective, we have our version of Unified Commerce. We think it works really well. There's lots of names for it, there's Harmonize, there's multi channel, there's Omnichannel. But Unified sits well for us and we think it's delivering in market on that value for our merchants and for those buyers in association.
Nathan Bush: Yeah.
Nathan Bush: And Jordy, you probably don't want to
Nathan Bush: think about this given this has been such a monumental launch here in Australia. But on the roadmap to what Alex was talking about, what are you most excited about seeing rolling out in the near future?
Jordy Heiss: Yeah, I think for us it's strengthening those muscles around Omnichannel fulfillment. So making that more intuitive for in store teams and admin to understand what truly ship to customer means. Be able to look at stock across different locations, to be able to offer ways to collect that stock, whether it's sort of cash and carry or pick up or ship across the network. So that sort of visibility and access is you know, I suppose incrementally increasing day by day. But I think it's sort of something that's sort of caught up to me, you know, having been at Shopify for. We just talked about before lapping on long service leverage, you know, sort of these things can, can creep up on you.
Nathan Bush: It's.
Jordy Heiss: It's incredibly empowering what you can do when you have that full visibility of not just the customer but also the stock across your business. So I think I can't speak too much of it, but there's always been a lot of value from a shop pay and shop payments perspective from an online perspective. And there's an incredible network effect and utility for customers to be again, respected in the channel they shop in. So we've got some pretty cool stuff that will again bring the value and sort of the flywheel effects of what that looks like from an online perspective to an in store team that we think will be really powerful for merchants in terms of attribution. But clt that customer lifetime value and retention aspects that, you know, we've built really strong network effects in that will come to a retail environment. So, yeah, there's some. Some fun stuff. So stay tuned.
Nathan Bush: You're not slowing down.
Jordy Heiss: Well, no people emailing you if you do. Yeah, exactly.
Nathan Bush: That's right.
Nathan Bush: I'll try to let you know.
Nathan Bush: We email.
Nathan Bush: Coming at you.
Alexandra McNab: Yeah.
Nathan Bush: Alex, we talked a little bit about the international expansion. What else is ahead for yourself and the Baird team, whether it's to do with in store online or otherwise.
Alexandra McNab: Oh, look, we probably will open another couple of Australian stores. Not really sure where at this point, nothing's. Nothing's firmed up, but we're definitely looking at that. And really it's about consolidating the range and making a better and better product, a greener product, a product that's better for the environment, better for the customer. That's always the. The focus. Like when you're a brand, it all starts with the product. And you know, for us, it's about our customers, it's about our planet. Yeah, just. Just making a product that's better and continuously improving it.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, Just landing in soho. Love it.
Alexandra McNab: Yeah. And yeah, just cruising into soho.
Jordy Heiss: Yeah.
Nathan Bush: Setting up pause the night before. Easy.
Alexandra McNab: Well, look, we'll try and do it a week out this time, but it's generous.
Nathan Bush: I like it.
Nathan Bush: I know, I know, Jordi, if people
Nathan Bush: are listening and they want to get in touch to learn more around the new releases and Shopify Pause and how to connect all those disparate systems together, what's the best way to get started on that journey?
Jordy Heiss: Yeah, absolutely. So, Jordi Heiss on LinkedIn. Happy to have a conversation about what that looks like drc. There'll probably be a link in the show notes that we can direct you to a lander and see if POS is for you. But yeah, more than happy to chat to anyone that's interested. I get really excited about this stuff, as you can probably tell. Bushy over the years.
Nathan Bush: That's right. Put half an hour in the diary and you'll probably need an hour.
Jordy Heiss: You're not wrong.
Nathan Bush: Alex, Jordi, thank you so much for joining us on Add to Cart. It's really great to be able to speak about new technology arriving in Australia like Shopify. Pause when it's fresh, you know, when it's exciting and it's new. And to hear your journey so far, Alex, of how you're bringing that together for not only, you know, what I got out of it was not just for the customer's benefit, but also it seems like everything is to do with keeping your team really happy and engaged and making customers lives easier. And it just seems like they just don't have to think about tech. It's just not that that kind of, you know, that that thorn in the side. So that was lovely to hear. And Jordy, I'm just glad to see you with a weight off your shoulders to have this in market and I know how excited you are about it. So thank you for joining us.
Jordy Heiss: Thank you mate.
Nathan Bush: Now I knew Jordy was very excited
Nathan Bush: about this POS announcement, but there is
Nathan Bush: a very good reason why. Just like Shopify made it easier for brands to create an online store, taking away technical knowledge and coding, remember the days where you actually had to know how to code to create a website? POS is creating top notch in store experiences without the need for large tech teams and infrastructure. I mean, as we heard from Alex, setting up the New York pop up store in less than a week would have been unheard of a few years ago. If you want to learn more about Shopify POS and see all the devices and features we cover in this conversation,
Nathan Bush: it's always nice to see them, not
Nathan Bush: just hear about them. Head on over to shopify.com au positive. All the links will be in our show notes. You can also get in touch directly with Jordy via LinkedIn and like he said, he'll be more than happy to
Nathan Bush: talk you through it as well as
Nathan Bush: your favorite AFL team if you're up for it. All right, here are my three biggest takeaways from that discussion. Number one, be an anti salesperson. I love that term. And that's the bad philosophy. And let's face it, we're all in sales in one way or another. I love the bad flaw philosophy of trusting the customer, empowering the customer service teams and ensuring the customer leaves with the experience that they want, not the end outcome that you want. This is a long term relationship. Number two, team user experience. We have rightly spent so much time on user experience and customer experience, but what about the employee experience? Jordi made a really good point. About reducing team training and confidence with in store tech with natural devices like Shopify POS Go and Shopify POS Terminals. If we want the most out of our people, we need to give them tools that mirror what they are using in their daily lives rather than clunky and complicated industry solutions. And number three, creating personalized VIP experiences. While this is relatively easy to do online, some might not agree it is hard harder to do in store. Alex gave us a peek into how Baird approached this with personal devices, asking for emails to be able to identify first time customers, one time shoppers or loyal customers. This allows the in store team to pick up the conversation in a natural place and continue the journey with the
Nathan Bush: customer rather than starting it all over again.
Nathan Bush: Really great advice. Thanks for joining us today on Add to Cart to listen to all our e commerce conversations now in the hundreds. You can head over to addtocart.com au there. You can also join up to our free private Slack community to share e commerce ideas, tips and questions with other listeners. You can also subscribe to the Add to Cart weekly newsletter and browse some of the video highlights from our chats. There is a lot there that's add to cart.com and if I can ask you one thing before you go. If you enjoyed today's episode, make sure you share it with a friend or a colleague who could benefit or leave us a review.
Nathan Bush: It really makes a difference.
Nathan Bush: Thanks again for listening and until next time, keep those customers adding to cartoon.
