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244: The Politics of Online Retail - Grant Arnott
51 Plays1 month ago
Retail has been undergoing an unprecedented transition of late and the global pandemic speeded that up in a way one could maybe not have predicted. Online platforms have led to new sales channels and fresh opportunities to reach out to a world of customers, and over the past 20 years more globalisation has opened markets and introduced new competitors into the mix in ways not seen before. In tougher economic times we are also seeing a wave of online brands come and go faster than ever as competition for our money gets harder. How can they win us over?
Grant Arnott is the CEO of Global Marketplace, an Australian-based e-commerce group with businesses in Australia and New Zealand. He is a highly respected veteran of online retail and business media, and an accomplished entrepreneur.
Grant is the founder of Click Frenzy, Australia’s original and best-known online shopping event, and Power Retail, the dedicated media and insights resource for the e-commerce industry. He also launched the E-Commerce Leaders’ Playbook in 2012, the Power Retail Top 100 in 2013 and the All Star Bash in 2016.
His pathway into e-commerce and entrepreneurship was somewhat unconventional – a university dropout, Grant spent six years in California teaching water skiing before deciding to get a real job (and that Americans were in fact quite looney). Qualified to drive a boat and yell “Arms straight!”, he returned to his hometown of Melbourne to try his hand at freelance writing.
Some initial gigs in tourism writing led to a real job with a publishing house specialising in business media, where he learned the craft of working with niche professional audiences to deliver engaging and useful content. In 2009, Grant helped launch the first Online Retailer Conference in Australia, and there he saw the greenfields opportunity for e-commerce at that time. He launched Power Retail in 2010 as a way to bring a burgeoning but fragmented e-commerce industry together, and the site soon became essential reading for Australian retail professionals.
Grant is married with two spoilt Golden Retrievers, plays Over 50s AFL (badly) and also has a commercial helicopter license, moonlighting as a tourist pilot on Phillip Island.
We discuss:
1. What is the current state of play for online retail locally and globally? Is it thriving?
2. Supply chain resilience was tested greatly during the COVID-19 pandemic when nations like Australia shut borders. How have retailers and brands learned from this?
3. I read in one McKinsey report that more big and small retail players are being pressured to reduce their environmental impact, with a special focus on climate change, biodiversity, and scarce resources. Fashion alone accounts for 4 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. Indeed, consumers are paying increasing attention – and sustainable retail is here to say it seems. It feels like we now have a generation that is extraordinarily focused on ensuring that waste does not exist in our fashion, furniture, etc. How are these factors driving businesses to leaner and greener?
4. The best trends or innovative tools in online retail right now?
CONTACT DETAILS
https://www.linkedin.com/in/grantarnott
Power Retail | Stay Up To Date On All Things Ecommerce
Click Frenzy | Australia's Favourite Online Sale
POE listener offer: Zencastr is my podcast platform of choice. Use my special link (zen.ai/thepoliticsofeverything30 [http://zen.ai/thepoliticsofeverything30]) and use code "THEPOLITICSOFEVERYTHING" to save 30% off your first three months of Zencastr professional. #madeonzencastr
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Transcript
Introduction to 'The Politics of Everything'
00:00:02
Speaker
Welcome to the politics of everything. I'm Amber Danes, your host and podcast producer. This is a half hour of power podcast dropping every week where I unpack the politics of everything from money to motherhood, nutrition to narcissism, startups to secularism, the environment, quality and much, much more.
00:00:22
Speaker
Our guests are seasoned in the field of topic of their choice, even if you've not heard of them yet. This is a nonpartisan show. So while I love exploring varied views and get a buzz from a healthy debate of ideas, this is not a purely blue, white, green program. Please subscribe, tune in and enjoy the politics of everything.
Pandemic's Impact on Retail Transformation
00:00:46
Speaker
Regional has been undergoing an unprecedented transition of late and the global pandemic sped it up in a way maybe no one could have predicted. Online platforms have led to new sales channels and fresh opportunities to reach out to a world of consumers. And over the past two decades, more globalization has opened markets and introduced new competitors into the mix.
00:01:05
Speaker
in ways we maybe haven't seen before. In tougher economic times, like we're experiencing now, we're also seeing a wave of online brands come and go faster than ever as competition for our money gets harder. I wonder how they can continue to win us over.
Meet Grant Arnett: From Water Skiing to E-commerce
00:01:18
Speaker
Today, I'm speaking with Grant Arnett, who is the CEO of Global Marketplace, an Australian-based e-commerce group with businesses in Australia and New Zealand.
00:01:26
Speaker
He's a highly respected veteran of the online retail and business media and an accomplished entrepreneur. Grant is the founder of Click Frenzy. Most of you would have heard of that. It's Australia's original and best known online shopping event and Power Retail, the dedicated media and insights resource for the e-commerce industry. He's also launched the e-commerce leaders playbook in 2012 and the Power Retail top 100 in 2013 and the All-Star Bash in 2016.
00:01:52
Speaker
His pathway into e-commerce and entrepreneurship it was somewhat unconventional. His university dropout and Grant spent six years in California teaching water skiing before deciding to get a real job, and in his own words, found that Americans were quite, in fact, loony.
00:02:08
Speaker
Qualified to drive a boat and yell arms straight, he returned to his hometown of Melbourne where he is today to try his hand at freelance writing. Some initial gigs in tourism writing led to a real job with the publishing house specialising in business media where he learned the craft of working with niche professional audiences to deliver engaging and useful content. In 2009, Grant helped to launch the first online retail conference in Australia and there he saw the Greenfields opportunity for e-commerce at that time.
00:02:35
Speaker
and the rest, as they say, is history. He's been doing lots of things over the past couple of decades, and in his personal time, he is married with two spoilt golden retrievers, plays over 50s AFL badly in his own words, and has a commercial helicopter license moonlighting as a tourist pilot on Phillip Island. So today, our topic is around online retail, and I welcome you, Grant, to the politics of everything. Well, thanks, Amber. Great to be here and speaking to everyone.
00:03:04
Speaker
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Speaker
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00:04:04
Speaker
to get 30% off your first three months of Zcaster Professional. How good is that? I want you to have the same easy experiences I do for all my podcasting and content needs. It's time to share your story. You've obviously had a very unconventional path to what you're doing now. When you were a lot younger, did you have an idea, you sound like you're quite sporty, but did you have an idea what you thought you might do in those early years, maybe as a teen and that sort of formative period?
00:04:31
Speaker
Yeah, um look, it was touched on already. So I always had a a talent for writing from a from a very young age, always scored um really well in English and and just loved creative writing. So I guess that was that was my talent without necessarily being my my first love, but something that I knew I was i was good at. um So really thought someday I'd parlay that into a career. so it was And my uncle was actually a journalist for The Age in Melbourne, which you know made you a bit of a celebrity at that that time. So I had you know a good good mentor there that steered me in the direction of of journalism. And so that's really what I wanted to be and actually had, you know a stint as a journalist, the water skiing bug came from just an opportunity
00:05:18
Speaker
again, when I was in my teens and just became obsessed with that, that sport and found myself, you know, getting involved at university level and then getting an opportunity to coach overseas was just, just too good to pass up. So you want an adventure. Like it's an amazing thing to be able to do when you're young. And I also lived overseas in my early twenties and never regretted. I think um it's very formative and obviously You have an appetite for entrepreneurship and and that's obviously testament to what you do today.
Online Retail's Post-Pandemic Landscape
00:05:45
Speaker
Looking at the topic of online retail, how would you describe the current state of play for online retail both in Australia and globally? We do have a huge audience in in the US and parts of Asia as well. Holistically, is it thriving or are we in sort of a bit of ah a plateau at the moment?
00:06:00
Speaker
Yeah, it's a really good question that it is thriving relative to pre pandemic time. So if you actually look at if you said there'd be no pandemic and you were looking at current you know growth rates and trajectories of online retail.
00:06:15
Speaker
you'd say it was thriving. The the perception is that it's yeah that the the conventional wisdom suggests that online retail is in struggle town. Yes. um But it's it's relative to the tailwinds of of COVID. What you saw through that period was just you know unprecedented growth in e-commerce businesses, some of which were were completely unsustainable. And and one what also happened is from a general markets perspective, both in Australia and and certainly internationally,
00:06:43
Speaker
You saw outsized valuations um and outsized investments in businesses due to the the runaway growth. that know ah In hindsight, you say, okay, it was only going to last as long as the pandemic. Once stores reopened, people would be back to their normal shopping habits in droves. That's what eventually happened. but the Those who suffered were those who over invested in e-commerce, over invested in stock on the premise that the tailwinds and the and the growth rates of the COVID period were going to continue once you know normality resumed and and they haven't.
00:07:20
Speaker
yeah It's still been good. So again, I say so it's like a correction really, which I think we see ah economically broadly speaking as well. Obviously within that, you know, there's winners and losers. we We do know that, you know, for example, some some major fashion brands that have lasted maybe 10, 20 years.
00:07:38
Speaker
globally in Australia and some online platforms that they're associated with have actually been casualties. I saw one article which talked about in the corporate world, we hate the great resignation after COVID-19, but the fashion industry particularly is having its own great reckoning. Obviously, that's a lot to do with the economy, and there are certain categories or verticals, if you like, like fashion, I imagine, which, you know, people, the the first thing that people wouldn't stop buying, as opposed to groceries, which we all just have to buy, even if they're 25% more than they were two years ago, there's obviously different categories within that. But I imagine, you know, overall, there's a bit of a correction happening. And and do you think that that's kind of just the way things are? And that's, that's where it will be for the next couple of years?
00:08:19
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. um Everything you said there is is correct um in terms of the the word correction and you know what what's happened with online retailers, as as you said, being exacerbated by the almost immediate follow on of higher interest rates, higher fuel costs, in inflation, higher costs of living, all of those things that dampen spending and and particularly discretionary spending, as as you were talking about with with fashion, a real casualty. And again,
00:08:47
Speaker
over investment leading to then a big backtracking of stock levels and things like that, that they're they're trying to to move and and can't move. So it's a real challenge for the fashion sector, but but all of those discretionary categories, whether that's and cosmetics and and fragrances, homewares, things like that. If you think about online retailers who are also in um categories like like furniture and homewares and home wares and you know that that COVID period. ever Everyone bought stuff. Everyone bought stuff for a home office. I remember you couldn't get a standing desk for love or money. But it invested not just home office, but in the home, you know, they were buying couches and running on all these purchases that aren't going to happen again for another, you know, five to 10 years um in a lot of cases, whether it's white goods or or furniture. So there's a lot of categories other than fashion that have been you know really
00:09:37
Speaker
really hit by all the disruption of COVID and then the subsequent yeah know decline in consumer spending on on discretionary items has definitely had a dramatic impact on online retail and yeah we we continue to see businesses going under sadly that you know just just don't have the ah margins and and the capitalisation to be able to ride it out.
00:10:01
Speaker
Absolutely.
Supply Chain Challenges & Local Manufacturing
00:10:02
Speaker
Supply chain resilience was obviously tested greatly during the COVID-19 pandemic. Everyone remembers people kind of fighting over toilet rolls of all things and pasta. I thought no one ate carbs anymore, but here we are. But you know, the idea that nations like Australia, we shut our borders and then we had to become so-called self-sufficient. We weren't great at that. There were certain things we couldn't even get PPE, you know, into the country, which was necessary from a health point of view. Obviously, we're back to normal and new normal and hopefully no more pandemics for a while.
00:10:30
Speaker
But there must have been some lessons learned for online retailers and brands in terms of that self-sufficiency. We do need the rest of the world. We need things like manufacturing in China to make it cost efficient for a lot of businesses. But there has been some talk even politically you know amongst the government in Australia about some kind of localised manufacturing sector coming back and and being you know something we can focus on for the future. What are you seeing from from the insider's view on that?
00:10:58
Speaker
Well, I think um supply chain and cost of supply, cost of logistics has been one of the great challenges and ongoing challenges for for online retail. so not just COVID related, but just inflationary related as well, where um yeah the cost of of landing product into Australia has has increased dramatically. and And so that's just putting pressure on margin. So you've got this challenge on both sides where the cost of doing business is rising, but revenues are a struggle. sales are Sales are a struggle for just about every business for for the reasons we we mentioned earlier. So
00:11:36
Speaker
ah Most businesses I speak to a really walking a tightrope at the moment where they've got to manage rising costs in an environment of declining or flat revenues and it's making it you know really tough and and and this is where you know the cracks are really starting to appear and I guess um in terms of the lessons learned, yeah you've got to um Your supply chain is everything. you know frontend so So when we're talking online retail, your front-end website, your marketing practices, you know everyone's using the same marketing channels, largely Google and and and Meta. It's all very commoditized, so it's all very same-same, and the costs are very similar. I think those businesses that will thrive are those who have excellent supply chain
00:12:21
Speaker
efficiencies and and management. And that's right through the the entire supply chain from sourcing through to to logistics being you know the management of your outbound deliveries to consumers, the management of your returns, all of those things. That's to me where the tests will come in terms of survivability and in again, a tough environment. And I think you know we will so continue to see the consolidation of those who don't understand that and focus too heavily on, you know and this will be an unpopular opinion but there's such a huge focus on customer excellence and customer service and customer experience.
00:12:59
Speaker
which comes at an enormous cost and there's you know sometimes this insane race to be the best at customer service at all costs, but the the yeah the true cost is no profitability or negative profitability and that's... In which case you don't have a business to service anyone at all, do you? So I think while it might be an unpopular opinion, it's an honest opinion and I think that's what you need in this environment.
00:13:23
Speaker
Yeah, I think if you look at businesses yeah that offer free shipping, free returns and the benefits for customers, it catches up with you and and they've set this baseline expectation that the customers expect that now. And if you're not offering that,
00:13:38
Speaker
well, you're not making any sales. So it's ah it's a vicious fishious cycle that I think we're we're seeing seeing it now. It's it's really bringing you know a lot of businesses unstuck. And I think it will be become very soon a a survival of of the fittest. And I think we're going to see that play out you know this Christmas and into next year.
00:13:58
Speaker
Absolutely. I read one McKinsey report which talked about you know both big and small retailers being pressured at the same time as all the other things you've talked about, being pressured to reduce obviously their environmental impact. and There's obviously lots of focus on things like climate change, resource management, biodiversity.
00:14:15
Speaker
I know fashion and particularly fast fashion accounts for 4% of greenhouse gas emissions, for example, which is is is a fair amount considering you know fashion is only one category. Consumers obviously pay attention to that. Being sustainable can be a bit of a marketing greenwashing thing, but it also it actually matters. I think it's interesting because when I look at, say, for example, I'm a Gen X, but I look at the younger generation, when we never had fast fashion growing up, it wasn't just wasn't around. so This idea of you know daily drops in shopping centers of of certain brands. It's so much waste. We do know that even furniture, not people, people just buy new furniture like they're buying you know new clothes, new fashion every year. We just throw out that old bed or we just, you know nothing's really refurbished.
00:14:57
Speaker
How are those competing factors driving business? We know one hand, consumers want to feel good about what they're buying. They want to know their environmental footprint, their supply chain source, where stuff has come from. They don't want child labor, all those sorts of things.
00:15:12
Speaker
You know, but to be greener and leaner is obviously a cost, an actual real cost to a business as it's kind of going down that pathway. What are you seeing in that space? Is there something across the board, not just in fashion, but you talked about things like, you know, obviously furniture and other areas as well. Are you seeing still a demand for that or is that just a nice to have because of all the other things that are happening at the moment with the economy? Yeah, this is such a polarizing topic.
00:15:38
Speaker
Amber and and such a ah
Sustainability vs. Cost in Retail Strategy
00:15:40
Speaker
major topic of conversation that I have with our our audience over. um you know many many years now particularly the last four years. I think you know what we're seeing is yes there there is pressure, there is an expectation that brands have to stand for something and and have to have a sustainability policy even even ourselves you know we um publish something called the sustainability index where sorry the sustainability spotlight where we we call out retailers who are doing well you know it's not a name and shame
00:16:10
Speaker
list, but it's um those who are doing well in terms of appropriate investment in sustainability initiatives. The consumers say they care and probably do, but... Are they willing to pay more? That's always the question I have. ray more And this comes up primetime again in conversations with retailers. I was just at a conference recently where, you know, one of the heads of of Puma internationally was talking about this very matter and was very adamant that what they say in every survey versus
00:16:40
Speaker
what their actions indicate commercially are two very different things when it comes to consumers and their their willingness to choose brands on the basis of their sustainability or or spend more on you know a brand because it's it's sustainable is is just not the case. So again, that poses a real challenge for retailers trying to be good corporate citizens. And and we want them to, you know we want we want to have you know sustainability initiatives in place. And this is why I'm i'm personally opposed to brands who say,
00:17:11
Speaker
online retail businesses who call themselves out as being sustainable champions, but still offer free shipping, free free returns. Those two are ah mutually exclusive. You can't move that and have parcels flying around everywhere um ah without you know significant environment environmental impact, no matter what you do with your packaging or something like that. so and And I also don't think that, you know, consumers see it as environmentally friendly. They see it, ah you know, they are an unpopular opinion, but I think um people are self-interested by nature. and And convenience matters and cost, let's be honest. That's right. That's right. And and even more so, you know, as you as you mentioned, in tougher economic times where you don't have a lot of
00:17:58
Speaker
spare change, you're going to first and foremost choose brands on the basis of price and and and just whether you like it or not. And sustainability, even though every survey suggests that it's a top priority for consumers when it actually comes to the point of purchase and checkout, it just does not appear to be a differentiating factor or a de determin deterrent if a brand doesn't actually have a sustainable practice at that point.
00:18:27
Speaker
Yeah, and are you seeing it? Is there a differentiation within different categories, for example? Like are people, for example, happy to have the $5 t-shirt, you know, that they don't really know where that cotton's come from, all the processes involved because it's it's just fashion and they got like 50 t-shirts and, you know, it's not something versus investing in, you know, and say a bed or something they're going to have for years. is it Is there ways in which you're seeing there's nuance within that or is it overall the same thing?
00:18:56
Speaker
like I couldn't honestly answer off the top of my head now just in terms of category differentiation. I suspect, you know given those two that you you mentioned and and others that I could think of, I suspect it would just be pretty even across the board in terms of, yeah, there there there will absolutely be an element of customers that will you know look at the brands and and and buy from brands that you know they want to feel good about purchasing from because they are ethical. you know they ah I think ethical sourcing is is one that yeah there is a lot more consumer interest in perhaps than sustainability because you know people I think there's ah there's a big difference between, okay, you know is this packaging ah renewable versus has this shirt I'm wearing been made by someone who's been beaten in a factory in some third world world country. I think there is definitely a little bit of a um
00:19:50
Speaker
a preference towards yeah brands demonstrating ethical sourcing. And so yeah I would suggest that that's that's perhaps a bit more of a priority over environmental concerns just from what ah what I've seen. Yeah, anecdotally, that's what that's what you're saying. And I guess, yeah, well time will tell where that where that lands. But I do always think it's it's sort of, to me, it mirrors a little bit what happens in political cycles when times are good.
00:20:15
Speaker
Things like, you know, you do polls and you'd see like climate change is the number one issue of our time. But because of where we're at, people would now say cost of living is and those other things kind of move down, you know, in terms of their priority for people. Yeah, again, it does come back to self-interest at the time. And that's that's right. And people you know are always concerned about climate change and and and rightly so. And and yeah what what is great is what I've seen evolve over the last 15 years in e-commerce now is the the evolution of the the consistent you know focus and and the agenda item that is sustainability. So it will have impact, lasting impact, and and it does move brands to do the right thing because no one wants to be seen as you know the one outlier that's not actually investing in that area, but it is hard to commercialise it and monetise it. But you know it's still something that I think good businesses are all all committed to and that's a good thing.
00:21:11
Speaker
Absolutely. Moving in the right direction.
Innovations: Loyalty Programs & AI
00:21:14
Speaker
What are some of the best or most innovative trends or tools that you're seeing in online retail right now? You touched on earlier this idea of customer experience and and bricks and mortar stores. I remember doing an interview with with another expert in in a similar space a few years ago, and they were talking about you know versus the online experience, people wanting to go in and have something different in a store. Are there things in online retail that you're seeing that are kind of moving the needle and and keeping us interested? Because it is hard to compete. And I think now more than ever, we get fatigued of of everything, including online shopping after a while. Yeah, there's a couple of areas of you know really strong focus and investment currently. and And one is loyalty. So I think there's
00:21:57
Speaker
in a time of challenging economic times, loyalty becomes really important. There's plenty of loyalty. From what being rewarded for our loyalty, how are you seeing that play out?
00:22:10
Speaker
Yeah. um loyalty technology that makes you know it's I guess if we're talking about technology um in terms of tools, loyalty technology that makes it much easier to implement you know rewards and and points and track track spend and and things like that for consumers where yeah you are going to be rewarded for ah repeat spending. So I think retailers have really worked out that there's now pretty full penetration in terms of online shopping.
00:22:37
Speaker
so It's slowing down in terms of new customer acquisition opportunities across the board. So then they're turning inward saying, well, we need to protect and derive value from the customers we've got rather than spending a lot on customer acquisition. And hence there's been an increasing focus on on loyalty and and loyalty tech emerging loyalty technology that just makes those that that customer experience of of buying from a retailer more fun, more rewarding, more often as as well.
00:23:09
Speaker
So that's one area. And then and then the other the other big one that's you know an ongoing buzzword in 2024 is. um AI and and artificial intelligence. I don't see anyone that's completely cracked it from a strategic perspective, but there's just a lot of interest and investment in AI as you know a means for optimizing workflows for um customer service for content creation. So again, if you're an online retailer utilizing AI to to increase the efficiency of how much content you can get on your site, whether that's product descriptions or
00:23:42
Speaker
um yeah blog posts or or FAQs and things like that, um chat bots you know becoming imperative for for customer service. So I think there's a lot of investment and interest in that area. i don't As I say, I don't think haven't seen any breakout strategies yet that in the online retail space that are using AI brilliantly, but I think that's a huge area of focus for for retailers at the moment and certainly something that everyone seems to be really focused on i'm delivering on.
00:24:11
Speaker
Yeah, watch this space. I think it's still evolving, the AI thing. And um I think everyone's trying to be in the race to the top. But who knows you know what that looks like, I guess, at the moment. So what's been your number one tech tool in either your business or your personal life, Grant, that you've really found useful? And why has it been so good for you? Look, um yeah as a CEO of a startup, I probably go to go to zero, frankly. for That's a far more boring answer than I thought you'd give me, but I'll take it. Yeah, but I'll tell you what, nerdy as it sounds, zero can be pretty sexy. Look, I think what zero did was revolutionize accounting software. and I would agree with that.
00:24:54
Speaker
yeah But what it what it brought was the ability for a business owner like myself to have so much greater instantaneous visibility over um every aspect of of the business. and And if I think about know my go-to tool on a daily basis, sadly, is is zero. and And it's just, I'm fascinated by by trend data and and I just find that know from a business owner's perspective, monitoring all the all the trend data within our financials and and being able to um cut you know different parts of the business up and and do trend analysis. We have, you know as you mentioned, like Global Marketplace is a head company of three very different businesses, including a business in New Zealand called Grab One. So for me, that's yeah know something, if i if I had one thing I couldn't do without, I would say it's zero at the moment.
00:25:48
Speaker
um But yeah, in terms of other ones that that we use, and again, pretty boring, but but Microsoft Teams is is is really valuable. In terms of, you know, one that's, I suppose, outside what what most people are using would be Monday for um workflow management, we just find that tool fantastic. and Yeah, I agree. But look, you know, I'm um a 52-year-old man who's not on the tech tools that often, so I don't have anything sexy to do. No, that's good. aah I mean, to be fair, there was a stream of people that I think I had three, four guests in a row that all said Canva. So there you go, but they were sort of... Oh, there you go, yep. No way I can use this Canva reducer. See, I'm still a sad old PowerPoint guy.
00:26:32
Speaker
But um one one thing I saw the other day that I don't have yet, but I attended a um ah video meeting and one of the attendees basically had a bot attend the meeting on his behalf. Oh my goodness. Taking notes for him. I thought, wow, that that was that was pretty cool. And there was no shame in that, which is interesting, right? No shame in that. That's like I am representing Me. And I will be taking notes on his behalf and and away it went. who know How funny. I thought that was the way. Oh, I've not heard of that before. So that's definitely novel. What's been your best life lesson so far and what has it taught you?
00:27:09
Speaker
Look, I think I love impact. I love being on the cutting edge um and doing new things that people haven't done before. Personally, that's in that's in business and yeah maybe sometimes in life as well. And I think there was a quote from me that I heard that was, it's better to be first than it is to be better.
00:27:27
Speaker
So we've always sought to to break new ground, even if we've got you know a minimum viable product just to get in market. And we've found yeah great success with that. and And we like to just do things that, well, I really pride myself and us as a business on doing things that aren't the same as everybody else, except using Xero because we believe in that. Absolutely. Back to Xero. And just a final takeaway message for us today on the politics of online retail.
Business Management: Cost & Efficiency Tips
00:27:56
Speaker
Oh, look, you know business is tough, but I think clever businesses are absolutely going to survive. Profit is everything at the moment. I think, you know, and in in times like this, you've really got to run a lean, intelligent business. You've really got to look hard at costs. I was speaking to someone from a major retailer the other day that said, you know, they're doing exactly that. they're They're factoring in. They're not, you know, creating ambitious growth targets that are unrealistic in the current climate.
00:28:24
Speaker
Instead, they're actively looking at operational ph efficiencies across every component of the business. I think that's, you know, the the times that we're in are very, if you're going to thrive and and there's thriving available, it really comes down to you ruthless attention to to every cost right down the line because when you can um build good profits and and and grow your profits, even if your bottom, even if your top line growth is not growing, you will be in fantastic shape and and be
00:28:58
Speaker
very much in favour with investors who are looking for those types of businesses, not those that you know continue to burn cash um and haven't adjusted to yeah know the current current climate and current market. Sage advice for tough times. Thank you so much for being on the show. If you do want to connect further with Grant or his businesses, there are details on the show notes. Until next time, do take care.