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Today’s guests join me to go deep into the subject of profitability and separate the layers that hide in different areas of an ecom business.  Carla Penn-Kahn and David Kahn are co founders of Profit Peak, a SaaS tool built to give merchants true visibility on everything that contributes to profitability, all in one place, in real time.  The husband and wife team started ProfitPeak in 2022 to help them run their own ecommerce business and it soon became clear this was a solution that other founders were crying out for.  Today they work with clients such as Arms of Eve and Flora and Fauna.  In this chat, Carla and David share their insights, including the key metrics within marketing, inventory and customer that contribute to profitability.  We hear about their customer-first approach to Profit Peak’s social media presence and what the duo gained from being a part of the Blackbird Giants…that’s the mentoring programme, not a baseball team :)Links from the episode:ProfitPeakShopify Plus (sponsored)Deliver In Person (sponsored)Questions answered:Tell us about your two successful exits as ecommerce business ownersWhen you had the idea, how did you put a plan in place to build and launch Profit Peak? What metrics should retailers be looking at daily when it comes to profitability?About your host: Nathan Bush from Add to Cart Nathan Bush is a director, strategist and advisor. He has led eCommerce for businesses with revenue $100m+ and has been recognised as one of Australia’s Top 50 People in eCommerce four years in a row. You can contact Nathan on LinkedIn, Twitter or via email.About your co-hosts: Carla Penn-Kahn from ProfitPeakCEO for 10+ years with a team in Sydney and Kuala Lumpur. Our eCommerce brands were no1 and no2 according to the independent voice of Australian consumers on ProductReview for our category.  Acquired by Kitchen Warehouse in 2023 to create the largest Kitchenware player in Australia.  Founder of Profit Peak, an operating system for profitable eCommerce businesses. Optimising advertising and inventory for profitable outcomes in real time, with first party data, solving attribution.  Mum to two gorgeous kids.You can contact Carla at LinkedInDavid Kahn from ProfitPeakeCommerce CMO for 10+ years making our business grow from $3m ➡️ $30m+ in sales selling the world's best kitchenware brands for Australia's leading pure play kitchenware stores without external capital before exiting.Now heading up growth as co-founder of Profit Peak with a focus on customer success with a product-led growth strategy, helping e-commerce businesses boost their profitability.You can contact David at LinkedIn

In this episode of Add To Cart, we checkout Dan Ferguson, Chief Marketing Officer at Adore Beauty.  He has over 20 years’ experience in e-commerce and digital marketing. Prior to joining Adore in 2018, Dan had roles leading e-commerce for brands such as Vistaprint, Officeworks and Dell.Links from the episode:Adore BeautyThe Psychology Behind Successful Marketing with Dan Ferguson from Adore Beauty | #390Questions answered in the podcast:What is the weirdest thing you’ve ever bought online? Who is your favourite retailer? Which retail fad do you wish was history?Can you recommend a book or podcast that our listeners should immediately get into? Finish this sentence.  The future of retail is… About your co-host: Dan Ferguson from Adore BeautyDan Ferguson joined Adore Beauty in 2018 as Chief Marketing Officer, doubling returning customer growth and revenue in his first six months. Responsible for marketing, brand, retail media and loyalty, Dan has led high and sustained rates of customer acquisition and retention alongside new income growth through new channels and markets, the launch of retail media, and audience platforms including Adore Beauty’s Top 5 ranked Beauty IQ podcast.  Dan has over 20 years’ experience in e-commerce and digital marketing. Prior to joining Adore Beauty, Dan had extensive roles growing and leading e-commerce, multi-channel and online retail business in Australia for local and global brands, including Vistaprint, Officeworks, Dell with consistent average 2.5x business or portfolio growth across his tenure in these roles.  Dan currently serves as Board Advisor for Preezie and holds a Bachelor of Arts/Psychology (Honours) from the University of Sydney.You can contact Dan at LinkedInAbout your host: Nathan Bush from Add To CartNathan Bush is a director, strategist and advisor. He has led eCommerce for businesses with revenue $100m+ and has been recognised as one of Australia’s Top 50 People in eCommerce four years in a row. You can contact Nathan on LinkedIn, Twitter or via email.Please contact us if you: Want to come on board as an Add To Cart sponsor Are interested in joining Add To Cart as a co-host Have any feedback or suggestions on how to make Add To Cart betterEmail hello@addtocart.com.au We look forward to hearing from you!

Today’s guest owns a business that sells fight gear, but don’t worry, we won’t be quizzing you on how well you know your MMA from your Muay Thai, but we will be bringing you plenty of knockout ecom tips.  Brendan Gillen is Chief Ecommerce Officer at Fight Gear Direct and CEO and Founder of The Ecommerce Factory, delivering advice and coaching to help store owners, ecommerce businesses and founders grow, optimise and scale their ecommerce businesses. You might recognise him from his black hat and outrageous facial expressions in his YouTube clips.  His client list includes The Horse and Superdry and he’s been in the Top 50 people in Ecommerce list for the last three years running.  In this episode, Brendan shares why it helps to care about the product you’re selling, the importance of owning your supply chain and the way he’s using ChatGPT for data analysis.Links from the episode:Shopify Plus (sponsored)Deliver in Person (sponsored)Questions answered:How important is engagement?What are the most common myths in ecommerce?What’s your favourite story of a founder you’ve been able to coach to turn something around? This episode was brought to you by…  Shopify PlusDeliver In PersonAbout your host: Nathan Bush from Add to Cart Nathan Bush is a director, strategist and advisor. He has led eCommerce for businesses with revenue $100m+ and has been recognised as one of Australia’s Top 50 People in eCommerce four years in a row. You can contact Nathan on LinkedIn, Twitter or via email.About your co-host: Brendan Gillen from Fight Gear DirectWorking with some of the world's leading and most iconic brands, Brendan strives to help them lead the way in innovation and best practice digital marketing and ecommerce.  As a digital professional,  he has a strong background in technical project delivery, creative marketing concepts and hands on digital design.  Throughout his business career Brendan has worked in, led, started, built, invested in and successfully sold a number of businesses both online and offline which has given him real world, tangible learning that he can now apply in my everyday work.You can contact Brendan at LinkedInPlease contact us if you: Want to come on board as an Add To Cart sponsor Are interested in joining Add To Cart as a co-host Have any feedback or suggestions on how to make Add To Cart betterEmail hello@addtocart.com.au We look forward to hearing from you!

In this episode of Add To Cart, we checkout George Hartley. Co founder of Bluethumb, Australia’s online art marketplace.  Representing over 20,000 emerging and established artists from Australia, Bluethumb’s mission is to make discovering artists and buying art easy.  They have on boarded a third of Australia’s Indigenous Art Centres and have recently launched in the US. Links from the episode:BluethumbThe Power of Dumb Ideas with George Hartley from Bluethumb | #388 Questions answered in the podcast:What is the weirdest thing you’ve ever bought online? Who is your favourite retailer? Which retail fad do you wish was history?Can you recommend a book or podcast that our listeners should immediately get into? Finish this sentence.  The future of retail is… About your co-host: George Hartley from BluethumbGeorge is co-founder and CMO/CPO of Bluethumb, Australia's largest online art marketplace. Prior to that he founded SmartrMail, a marketing automation company that was acquired by Relay Capital in 2022. He has a masters in Computer Science (Intelligent Web Systems) from RMIT, and is a (very) amateur musician.You can contact George at LinkedInAbout your host: Nathan Bush from Add To CartNathan Bush is a director, strategist and advisor. He has led eCommerce for businesses with revenue $100m+ and has been recognised as one of Australia’s Top 50 People in eCommerce four years in a row. You can contact Nathan on LinkedIn, Twitter or via email.Please contact us if you: Want to come on board as an Add To Cart sponsor Are interested in joining Add To Cart as a co-host Have any feedback or suggestions on how to make Add To Cart betterEmail hello@addtocart.com.au We look forward to hearing from you!

This bonus episode brought to you today was recorded live at the Mumbrella Retail Marketing Summit in Sydney and features one of the great speakers there, who knows more than most about our evolving relationship we have with our pets.  Jon Wild is Chief Growth and Marketing Officer at Pet Circle.  Started in 2011, the company opened its ecommerce doors three years later and now lists 13,500 SKUs: the largest offering of online pet products in Australia.  In this chat, Jon shares all the tips around successful content creation, how to get the stickiest customers and the unique way millennials and zoomers parent their furbabies.Links from the episode:Pet CircleEmarsys (sponsored)Tik Tok (sponsored)Questions answered:How does Pet Circle go above and beyond for its customers?How do you know where to focus with content creation?What business and customer data is critical to you for making marketing investment decisions? About your host: Nathan Bush from Add To CartNathan Bush is a director, strategist and advisor. He has led eCommerce for businesses with revenue $100m+ and has been recognised as one of Australia’s Top 50 People in eCommerce four years in a row. You can contact Nathan on LinkedIn, Twitter or via email.About your co-host: Jon Wild from Pet CircleJon Wild is the Chief Growth & Marketing Officer for Pet Circle, where he leads the performance, creative, merchandising, category management and supplier marketing teams. His current focus is reshaping the retail experience for the next generation of pet owners to achieve unparalleled growth.  With more than two decades of expertise in marketing and advertising, he has navigated various industries and worked with international companies, ranging from established corporates to innovative startups, including Groupon, Unilever, Mattel, British Telecom, O2, Telstra, and Orbitz.You can contact Jon on LinkedInPlease contact us if you: Want to come on board as an Add To Cart sponsor Are interested in joining Add To Cart as a co-host Have any feedback or suggestions on how to make Add To Cart betterEmail hello@addtocart.com.au We look forward to hearing from you!

In this episode of Add To Cart, we are joined by Anthony Seymour-Walsh is CEO of Cashrewards, an Australian cashback website with over 2 million members and partners like Apple, Amazon, Myer and Liquorland. The scary thing is, Australia is around 3% in cashback purchases - compared to 15% in the UK - we are only at the start. For those who don’t know, cashback sites act as a kind of marketplace for bargain hunters where shoppers access shopfronts via the store and claim a percentage of cash back - from 1% to 20% on every purchase. In this chat, we hear about Cashrewards’ charitable beginnings, Anthony shares the metrics that retailers are using to measure success and the way in which Cashrewards tailors benefits to customer lifestyle.Links from the episode:CashrewardsDeliver In Person (sponsored)Shopify Plus (sponsored)Questions answered:How do you differentiate from other cashback offers in the market? What kind of return or engagement should retailers expect? What tips do you have for retailers to protect their margins?This episode was brought to you by…  Deliver In PersonShopify PlusAbout your host: Nathan Bush from Add to Cart Nathan Bush is a director, strategist and advisor. He has led eCommerce for businesses with revenue $100m+ and has been recognised as one of Australia’s Top 50 People in eCommerce four years in a row. You can contact Nathan on LinkedIn, Twitter or via email.About your co-host: Anthony Seymour-Walsh from CashrewardsAn experienced commercial leader with a passion for building high performing teams and delivering great customer outcomes. Anthony has extensive experience across several industries, including loyalty, retail, telecommunications, mining and professional services.  A finance background (Chartered Accountant) supports Anthony’s consistent focus on adding value, from initial strategy development, business case development and approval through to execution and delivery of outstanding results.You can contact Anthony  at LinkedInPlease contact us if you: Want to come on board as an Add To Cart sponsor Are interested in joining Add To Cart as a co-host Have any feedback or suggestions on how to make Add To Cart betterEmail hello@addtocart.com.au We look forward to hearing from you!

In this episode of Add To Cart, we checkout Karen Lawson, an award winning business executive and leader in the digital, technology and startup industry and currently the CEO of earth-wise home care brand Nontre.  Previously, Karen launched and led Peloton Australia (in the middle of the pandemic!) and prior to that was the MD of Spotify ANZ. Today, we tap into all of the incredible experience Karen has amassed over the years. Links from the episode:Leadership Lessons from Spotify, Peloton and Beyond with Karen Lawson | #386Questions answered in the podcast:What is the weirdest thing you’ve ever bought online? Who is your favourite retailer? Which retail fad do you wish was history?Can you recommend a book or podcast that our listeners should immediately get into? Finish this sentence.  The future of retail is… About your co-host: Karen Lawson from NontreKaren Lawson is an award winning growth & transformation leader in the technology industry. Driving reinvention and transformation to help the world’s biggest brands to stay ahead of disruption.  Karen most recently launched and led Peloton Australia (in the middle of the pandemic!). Prior to Peloton, Karen was the MD for Spotify launching podcasting in the AU & NZ markets.You can contact Karen at LinkedInAbout your host: Nathan Bush from Add To CartNathan Bush is a director, strategist and advisor. He has led eCommerce for businesses with revenue $100m+ and has been recognised as one of Australia’s Top 50 People in eCommerce four years in a row. You can contact Nathan on LinkedIn, Twitter or via email.Please contact us if you: Want to come on board as an Add To Cart sponsor Are interested in joining Add To Cart as a co-host Have any feedback or suggestions on how to make Add To Cart betterEmail hello@addtocart.com.au We look forward to hearing from you!

This episode of Add To Cart is brought to you by Shopify and is a true exclusive, because we are discussing the launch of Shopify POS GO and Shopify POS Terminal - both of which have been eagerly anticipated by Australian omnichannel retailers for some time. And I have two absolute superstars to explain it for us. First up we have Jordy Heis, Senior Retail Product Consultant for Shopify in ANZ. I have been lucky enough to know Jordy for many years and have had a number of in-depth conversations with him following the evolution of the Shopify 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 Jordy. Joining Jordy, we have Alexandra McNab, Chief Operating Officer of Bared Footwear. Founded in 2008, Bared 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 OG’s at Bared and takes us behind the scenes as to how they connect the online and offline experience, how they empower their customer service teams to take care of the customer no matter what and how they are ramping up to go international with their Soho store. Bared runs on Shopify with Shopify Plus so we get to hear first-hand how they are making use of the new developments in-store. 

In this episode of Add To Cart, my guest is here to explain how ecommerce brands can increase profitability by understanding what’s going on in customer’s brains.  Sonia Friedrich is a behavioural science strategist with a background in business marketing.  She works with academics, data scientists and tech experts to harness the power of behavioural economics for business and brands and works with clients such as NewsCorp, AstraZeneca, Volvo and Nespresso.  In this chat, Sonia reveals the world of nudges and sludges, she tells us how a friction audit works and she shares the website feature known as the $300 million dollar button - has your site got one?Links from the episode:Shopify Plus (sponsored)Deliver In Person (sponsored)Questions answered:How can ecommerce brands make money with behavioural economics?How does a friction audit work?What are dynamic nudges?This episode was brought to you by…  Shopify PlusDeliver In PersonAbout your host: Nathan Bush from Add to Cart Nathan Bush is a director, strategist and advisor. He has led eCommerce for businesses with revenue $100m+ and has been recognised as one of Australia’s Top 50 People in eCommerce four years in a row. You can contact Nathan on LinkedIn, Twitter or via email.About your co-host: Sonia FriedrichSonia is a behavioural strategist and Global Keynote Speaker. She has been called a ‘Revenue Rockstar’ and Growth Hacker. She works with Fortune 500 companies and start ups to add the edge with behavioural science for immediate impact to the bottom line. Sonia is also the Global Strategic Partner for behamics -leaders in AI + BeSci for eCommerce and on the Faculty for KPMG Upside Founders Program.You can contact Sonia at LinkedInPlease contact us if you: Want to come on board as an Add To Cart sponsor Are interested in joining Add To Cart as a co-host Have any feedback or suggestions on how to make Add To Cart betterEmail hello@addtocart.com.au We look forward to hearing from you!