Add To Cart: Australia’s eCommerce Show

Nathan Bush
  • 4.2 (5)
  • MARKETING
  • UPDATED BIWEEKLY

Add To Cart is Australia's leading ecommerce and retail podcast, hosted by Nathan Bush. Over 600 conversations with the founders, operators and digital leaders building Australian ecommerce. Episodes cover ecommerce strategy, DTC brand building, omnichannel retail, email and SMS marketing, performance marketing, fulfilment, and the tech stack decisions that shape how retail brands actually sell online. Free community, newsletter and resources at addtocart.com.au. Proudly supported by Shopify and Klaviyo.

  1. It's Not Digital, It's Just Retail with Freedom's Paula Mitchell | #624

    2D AGO

    It's Not Digital, It's Just Retail with Freedom's Paula Mitchell | #624

    The whole ecommerce industry is racing to ship faster. Paula Mitchell thinks that's the wrong race. Paula came to that view the hard way. After building ecommerce at Rebel Sport, Dan Murphy's and General Pants across 25 years, she joined Freedom as Digital GM and spent the first few months driving home wondering what she'd walked into. Furniture is not fashion. Made-to-order lead times run 12 to 16 weeks. Customers plan their lives around delivery windows. A $10,000 sofa carries emotional weight that a $70 t-shirt just doesn't. Five years in, Paula is running one of the most-awarded omnichannel operations in Australia: 50 stores, six distribution centres, 160 third-party vendors, 70,000 SKUs, and a digital team of 12. Nathan Bush and Rosa-Clare Willis sit down with Paula to dig into why the industry's fixation on speed misses what furniture customers actually need, and how Freedom built the stack and team culture to move fast without losing brand trust. Today, we're discussing: Why certainty beats speed in high-consideration ecommerce, and what last-mile delivery in big-ticket categories actually demands [10:15]How Freedom chose dropship over marketplace to protect brand trust, and why that meant owning returns in-store for third-party products too [14:47]Running 30-plus ad variations per campaign with the same team size, and what AI actually changed about how Freedom's performance marketers spend their time [29:44]Attribution across omnichannel: why last-click would have defunded every social channel, and what mixed media modelling revealed about TV [35:55]A digital team of 12 managing 70,000 SKUs, how they're structured, and why Paula thinks the job title itself might be a legacy item [47:46]What's next: a kiosk trial across 7 stores, an AI-driven inspiration mode for the website, and the feature Freedom just decommissioned [55:22]Connect with Paula | Explore Freedom | Connect with Rosa-Clare | Connect with Nathan This episode is supported by Shopify and Klaviyo. Subscribe to the Add To Cart newsletter Connect with Nathan Bush on LinkedIn Join the Add To Cart Community

    1h 8m
  2. How to Go From eCommerce to Physical Retail #623

    5D AGO

    How to Go From eCommerce to Physical Retail #623

    Customer acquisition costs on paid social have been rising for years. The channels that drove efficient growth half a decade ago are harder to justify today. Physical retail is starting to look genuinely interesting to founders who would never have considered it before. But there's a gap between finding physical retail interesting and actually making it work. Most e-commerce operators approach the move with a revenue mindset they've carried from online. They measure store performance the way they measure a channel. And they treat the first store like a proof of concept rather than v1 of a repeatable system. The brands that get it right do three things differently. In this playboook, based on a conversation with Guy Nappa, COO of Oz Hair & Beauty, we cover three things e-commerce operators need to know before making the move into physical retail: Know what the store is for before you sign the leaseModel rent as a customer acquisition cost, not an occupancy expenseBuild the store-opening playbook before you need to run it fast Connect with Guy Nappa Explore Oz Hair & BeautySubscribe to the Add To Cart newsletter Connect with Nathan Bush on LinkedIn Join the Add To Cart Community

    12 min
  3. Why Most Ecommerce Brands Get Fulfilment Wrong with SKUTOPIA's Talea Bader | #622

    MAY 3

    Why Most Ecommerce Brands Get Fulfilment Wrong with SKUTOPIA's Talea Bader | #622

    Talea Bader is the founder of SKUTOPIA, a tech-led fulfillment platform rethinking how e-commerce brands scale their operations. What started from running co-working spaces for e-commerce businesses quickly turned into a much bigger opportunity solving one of the most consistent pain points founders face: fulfillment that can’t keep up with growth. In this episode: SKUTOPIA is building an “intelligent logistics network” powered by robotics and AI, and why operations not marketing might be the biggest unlock for e-commerce growth. How own e-commerce frustrations led to building SKUTOPIAWhy most e-commerce brands outgrow their fulfillment before they realise itWhat actually breaks behind the scenes when brands start to scaleThe hidden cost of bad logistics on growth and customer experienceWhy visibility and real-time data are critical in modern fulfillmentWhat to look for (and avoid) when choosing a 3PL partner Connect with Talea Bader Explore SKUTOPIA Subscribe to the Add To Cart newsletter Connect with Nathan Bush on LinkedIn Join the Add To Cart Community

    49 min
  4. How to Turn Resale Into a Customer Acquisition Channel | #621

    APR 30

    How to Turn Resale Into a Customer Acquisition Channel | #621

    The conversation in most ecommerce businesses right now is about which channels to double down on. Meta is getting more expensive. CAC is going up. Every dollar of paid spend aimed at reaching a customer who hasn't found you yet. But some of those customers have already found you. Through a different door. Right now someone is buying your jacket secondhand on eBay. Someone is renting your dress through a peer-to-peer platform. Someone is picking up your shoes from a Facebook buy-swap-sell group. For many of those people, that's their first real experience of your brand. That's acquisition. It's just acquisition you're not in. In this playbook, we cover three things ecommerce operators can take into their business: Your secondary market is already running without youSecondary buyers aren't defectors. They're the top of your funnel.The brand experience of the secondary sale is yours to own or lose Connect with Bernadette Olivier Explore The Volte and SeamlistSubscribe to the Add To Cart newsletter Connect with Nathan Bush on LinkedIn Join the Add To Cart Community

    13 min
  5. How Naternal Vitamins Grew to $8M Without Paid Ads for 2 Years | #620

    APR 26

    How Naternal Vitamins Grew to $8M Without Paid Ads for 2 Years | #620

    Most ecommerce founders start with a product and work backwards to find the customer. Melanie Nolan did the opposite. As a practising naturopath, she watched the same problems show up again and again in her clinic: iron deficiency, prenatal gaps, supplements that caused side effects bad enough that patients would just stop taking them. The market had answers. None of them were good enough. So she built her own, funded by selling her house, and sold her first batch in three months when she expected it to take two years. In this episode, there are three things ecommerce operators can take into their own business: Education-first marketing can drive better conversion rates than paid acquisitionRadical transparency in a crisis is the most powerful retention strategy you haveTrust built in one life stage becomes your greatest asset for long-term expansionConnect with Melanie Nolan Explore Naternal Vitamins Subscribe to the Add To Cart newsletter Connect with Nathan Bush on LinkedIn Join the Add To Cart Community

    52 min
  6. How to Fix Invisible Conversion Problems | #619

    APR 23

    How to Fix Invisible Conversion Problems | #619

    Most ecommerce conversion work targets the same moment: the customer who is already close to buying. But the most expensive conversion problems happen before anyone adds anything to cart. That customer doesn't show up in your abandoned cart report. They just don't show up. In today's Playbook:  Your real conversion barrier is probably invisible to youThe best experience investments solve a functional and emotional problem at the same timeThe data you collect through the experience is worth more than any third-party signal you're buying Connect with Chloe De Winter  Explore NalaSubscribe to the Add To Cart newsletter Connect with Nathan Bush on LinkedIn Join the Add To Cart Community

    13 min
  7. The 80% Problem: How Incu Captures the Customers Who Don’t Buy | #618

    APR 21

    The 80% Problem: How Incu Captures the Customers Who Don’t Buy | #618

    Shane Lenton, founder of The Wishlist, and Douglas Low, CEO of Incu, are tackling one of retail’s most overlooked problems: what happens after a customer walks into a store, and leaves without buying. Between them, they’ve seen both sides of the equation. Shane built his career inside omnichannel retail before launching a platform designed to unify online and offline intent. Doug has spent over two decades shaping Incu into one of Australia’s most respected retail experiences. And the insight they keep coming back to is simple. Retailers are obsessing over the 20% who buy, and ignoring the 80% who don’t. In ecommerce, every click is tracked, retargeted, and optimised. But in-store, most of that intent disappears the second someone walks out the door. That’s the “black hole” Shane refers to. Customers spend time, show intent, even try products… then vanish with zero follow-up or visibility. The opportunity isn’t marginal. Converting just a small percentage of those missed customers can unlock meaningful revenue growth across the entire business. Today, we’re discussing: Why in-store retail is still a “black hole” for customer data and lost revenueHow capturing in-store intent can unlock an extra 10%+ growth without more trafficThe difference between data-driven personalisation and real human relationshipsWhy most retailers struggle to deliver consistent service across locationsTurning staff intuition into scalable, trackable customer dataWhy first-party data is becoming retail’s biggest competitive moatHow AI will enhance retail teams, not replace themSubscribe to the Add To Cart newsletter Connect with Nathan Bush on LinkedIn Join the Add To Cart Community

    47 min
  8. Lessons in Scarcity and Live Commerce from Australia's Biggest Trading Card Store | #617

    APR 19

    Lessons in Scarcity and Live Commerce from Australia's Biggest Trading Card Store | #617

    Grayson White, founder of Cherry Collectibles, has built Australia’s leading trading card business by doing something most ecommerce brands overlook: he turned shopping into entertainment and community into a growth engine. What started as a side hustle to make an extra $100 a week quickly evolved into a category-defining business, spanning ecommerce, live shopping, and physical retail. But the journey wasn’t linear. It included shutting the business down, nearly walking away, and betting everything to go all in. Today, we're discussing: How Cherry Collectibles started from a $0 opportunityWhy supply and demand drives everything in collectiblesThe rise of live shopping and “breaks” as entertainment commerceBuilding trust in an emerging categoryWhy physical retail is back (and stronger than expected)How to create a community that actually convertsThe future of live commerce and content-led sellingCherry is offering 10% off with code ‘ADDTOCART10’ for the first 100 users. Connect with Grayson Explore Cherry Subscribe to the Add To Cart newsletter Connect with Nathan Bush on LinkedIn Join the Add To Cart Community

    47 min
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4.2
out of 5
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About

Add To Cart is Australia's leading ecommerce and retail podcast, hosted by Nathan Bush. Over 600 conversations with the founders, operators and digital leaders building Australian ecommerce. Episodes cover ecommerce strategy, DTC brand building, omnichannel retail, email and SMS marketing, performance marketing, fulfilment, and the tech stack decisions that shape how retail brands actually sell online. Free community, newsletter and resources at addtocart.com.au. Proudly supported by Shopify and Klaviyo.

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