An Irishman, a Wallaby and a Springbok walk into a pub

Welcome to another edition of The Ostrich Report with me, your host Vinny O Brien, and with me as always is my wingman, my co-host. I don't know what to call you anymore, Hendrik. How you keeping?

Friend would be good, Vinny. Thanks for having me. Can I just state the obvious that I'm sitting down and I see an Aussie standing. I don't know if he's standing in a photo booth or in a cupboard, but Can you help me here, dude? I'm lost.

Well, we're delighted to welcome today with us, it's Luke Hilton, who is Global Vice President of Solution Engineering at Markiplacer, someone we've got to know a little bit over the last few months. But I have to say that we really missed a trick, or I did, not opening the conversation by saying an Irishman, a wallaby, and a springbok walk into a bar. The rest is history. But Luke, thank you so much for joining us today. We can see you're a stander, not a sitter.

That's true. It is. I'm all about the ergonomics and I'm also quite old, 49, nearly 50, February, size medium. Thanks, Hendrik, for my t-shirt.

Are you an Aquarius or an Aries?

I am an Aquarius and I also like walks on the beach. So, but yes, no, I do. I try and do 2 hours sitting down and then 2 hours standing up. And when I'm dealing with two fast cats like you both, I need to be on my feet and on my toes.

Yeah, that's what we're aiming for. But you Australians, you've always been ahead when it comes to health and happiness and mindfulness. So you're after embarrassing me enough that I promise I'm going to do one of these standing up. What's it do for your mentality? Does it make you sharper? Sure.

No, I was just finding out. You know, I'd get up and I'd go try and do some exercise and I'd feel like I was sitting down all day. Keeps me moving.

Amazing. So Luke, maybe you could start off a little bit and tell us about Marktplacer, an Australian-born platform but now very much centered in Europe. Can you tell us a little bit about the journey, your background as well, and where Marktplacer find themselves today?

Yeah, so, so yeah, as you said, my role in the business is VP of Solution Engineering. So I mean, essentially a part of a sales team, but we, you know, we're the technical people that get brought in and help qualify and work with prospective customers to help them understand what Marketplacer is and the value that we bring. Um, I've been in the company nearly 5 years. It'll be 5 years in December, and, uh, I've been in the UK for nearly 3 years. So when I joined Marketplacer, um, I've been in commerce for 18 years, I think, and in technology for about 20. And then when I joined Marketplace, um, it was off the back of some big wins of new customers in this region. And we've always had that plan of you win some customers and then you land and expand. And so we was given the opportunity to come out to the UK with my beautiful wife and now 10-year-old boy And as I said, I've been here for 3 years. It was really about setting up Marketplace in this region to support getting these customers live and to start winning some new business as well. But it's been a really interesting journey. When I first joined Marketplace 5 years ago, they were starting to get some wins in enterprise, but they were really dominant probably in the kind of mid-market. And it was about how do we actually take the company upstream and start winning more in the enterprise. And feels like we've done that really well. We've had over 100 marketplaces globally now and, you know, being— it's been an interesting and very challenging but mostly rewarding journey of setting up Marketplace here in the UK. It's something I've really enjoyed, but it was probably more so for me, less about me because I've lived in Europe before, more, but seeing just how my boy's kind of grown as a little human, as a 7-year-old, now 10-year-old. He's even got this very strange accent going on. It's a bit Australian. Sounds like he watches a Scouser goalkeeper. So it's kind of sometimes East London, sometimes it's posh Brit, American, and Scouser all rolled into one.

He's every Guy Ritchie character ever written, I think, which is kind of awesome. It gives him options. A couple of things just to pick up on from a definition point of view, because solution engineering sounds incredibly technical. And for people maybe you're not familiar, does solution engineering put you more on the customer side or more on an internal product side?

More customer side, for sure. Yeah. So I think that's it. You know, so the things that we do with prospective customers is, again, we're on calls, um, and it's really just around understanding. A lot of the time it's understanding the existing architecture, the different systems that they have in place as well. And they might have already gone down the path of doing some dropship or doing some range extension, and they're looking to really scale. So it's really understanding as-is And then kind of helping them understand what a 2B architecture looks like that includes Marketplacer and how we would integrate into their systems. But really, I guess, the whole time understanding, you know, the value that we bring as a piece of SaaS as well.

Hendrik, I'm going to come to you for a sec because you've covered marketplaces in Europe for probably a decade now at this stage. You're around the World and Commerce newsletters. Really, really well received and read by a lot of people. How much has the kind of the landscape of marketplaces evolved even in the last 5 years? How important are marketplaces to European commerce?

In a simple, I think to answer your question very simply, it's the driver of eyeballs. If you are a brand and you want to find customers, you go to a marketplace. What I've seen in the last 5 years is a definite shift from horizontal marketplaces. Think Temu— sorry, think Amazon, eBay— to more vertical-specific Mano Mano and etc. And then also obviously the cross-border guys, Shein and Temu. But I think in a market as developed as Europe, marketplace is essentially the growth driver of the entire sector, Vinny.

So I've seen a couple of stats and Luke, one of them is attributed to you. The first one is that 81% of all website traffic in Europe is marketplace-led. And I think the stat that you gave us in one of the Evolve discussions was that I think 60% of all business and e-commerce is done through marketplace in Europe right now. So is it that the customers are finding more places to shop or are more retailers now redesigning themselves to be a marketplace and what does that mean if it is a thing?

Yeah, I mean, great question. It's for me as a company, I mean, my view of the world is a lot of people come to us because they're wanting to either do range extension or turn into a marketplace. So I've got a probably pretty skewed view of the world. Yeah, skewed, twisted, same idea. And then, yeah, I mean, for me it is, I mean, especially from a retailer's point of view, I think this term, and again, I work for Marketplace, so we have a brand that has the word marketplace in the name of the brand, but it's been a really interesting learning for me, at least arriving in the UK in particular. And I remember some of the first pitches I went to and speaking with customers and saying the word market, you know, we're going to turn you into a marketplace. People wanting to chase you out of the room with pitchforks. It was, you know, they don't want to be a marketplace. They were really wanting to, you know, words like dropship and curated range extension and all those different kinds of things. So we definitely resonated. Much more. But, you know, again, I mean, I don't necessarily think marketplaces for art for everyone, for sure. But again, you can see how shopping behavior and how people are buying, whether it was, you know, obviously Google previously, to people— I use Amazon as my Google, and now I use ChatGPT as my Google. So, you know, it's all changing rapidly.

So I want to evolve this a little bit. I saw a conversation last week between Kiri Masters and Scott Wingo, and they were talking about the idea that where retailers are going to make their money, even taking ChatGPT as a new marketplace and an emerging marketplace in a model that's changing dramatically, that are they going to make their money through marketplaces or through ad revenue? And Scott was very much on the, it's going to be marketplaces, and it's going to be marketplaces because that's the base that ads need. To start on, but if they focus on getting that right, is that a good starting point for most people, Luke? Or how do you view that model that is changing right now?

Um, sorry, what was the question, Vinny?

Is the model for someone like ChatGPT or someone that's exploring, how do we do range extension or how do we put together a model that involves us becoming more like a marketplace? What is the What, what's the baseline today for you to even consider being viable at something like this?

I think, you know, there's, there's not— if I go into an opportunity and I can say that they've already, um, you know, for example, that they've already got the traffic, as they've got the eyeballs already, they've got the, the marketing budget to support it, they're a large organization that has the team to take on a project of this size, because they are— doesn't matter what way spinner, if someone wants to turn into a marketplace, their strategic projects, people, marketing budget, strong top-down support are 100% needed as well versus someone that is looking to do range extension, potentially thinking about how do I fill gaps in my assortment with complementary, non-competitive products. So there's different ways that you can approach these particular kinds of things, but not everyone is there in a position where they, where they want to firstly, or in a position to compete with the likes of an Amazon or someone that's gone mass, mass marketplace as well. So I guess for me it's just around, you know, having realistic, having realistic expectations, or having a clear understanding of what you're looking to achieve as a starting point, um, and Yeah, but if you are going to go down, it is a much easier proposition when you've got top-down support and you've got obviously the eyeballs and the budget to market yourself. So whether that's adding range to your existing website or even just opening yourself up to what ChatGPT could be as a method for getting sales, which is just— I see it as another sales channel.

And Hendrik, I'm going to start with you because you followed the influx of Chinese marketplaces into Europe and how they have helped to start to redefine this model. And it feels like it's as much about what happens in the background as in the foreground, because the foreground, if it's range extension or you are moving it to something like Marketplace, to some people listening, it's like talking about different shades of white because the nuance is so small and you have to be an expert in certain areas. But when I look at those models, it's about upstream supply chain and it's about having better integrated systems. And, Luke, I'm sure that you're seeing a lot of this as well, or maybe you're seeing it in a different way. But Hendrik, I just wanted to start with you and see how do you view that change and that impact of Chinese marketplaces into Europe?

So to answer your question, Vinny, I think what's changed is, I'd say 5 years ago, there was no ever thought of anybody coming from the East into a Western market. It was not going to happen because the feeling inside China was going to be this is a ginormous fail in the sense that we are throwing people, budget, and this is not going to work. Um, I've, I've sat in conversations like that, and I, and I realized at the time that we also have to understand that they've done this for— this, this is not, this is not something new. Just think about— I'm going to mention a name that's most probably going to age me, but remember Lightning in the Box? That was the first iteration of cross-border ecommerce. But I think, I think Luke kind of nailed this when he said at the beginning, it's people, it's, it's software. I would add a third vertical, and I think it's time. I think what these Chinese marketplaces have done, Shein and Temu, is that they have morphed before our eyes to move from being cross-border specific, i.e., let's ship goods from China to Europe, to Africa, to the US, to doing the local to local market. We— let's find local partners. Let's get them access to— I view it as a very fundamentally of they've created the demand by spending shitloads of money on advertising. And now how do we move those eyeballs to brands that need traffic? Because at the end of the day, to Luke's point about the multichannel impact for this, for everybody involved, This all boils down to one thing. Where as a brand can I make the most money without having to do a new implementation, spend millions of, millions of pounds, dollars, euros? And the Chinese have changed this because they used significant investment in advertising, but also they've brought a new a new mass of people because this is easy. You don't need a, you don't need a PhD to do this. It's literally search, find via ads, potentially social media ads, and then there you have it. It's, it's just, this has been like a huge shift. And also the fact for me remains is, and, and a mentor of mine makes this point repeatedly when we talk, what is the primary driver of eyeballs on the web? It's cost. Can you sell something at a lower price from anywhere else on the web? If you do that, you are going to get people to come to you because why am I going to spend 5, 10, 15, 20 more pounds, euros, or dollars on it if I can get it directly to me shipped via China?

So, so taking all of that into account, Luke, it sounds like the opportunity for brands or retailers, more so on the retailer side, to adopt a position as a marketplace is becoming easier to get your head around, or is it, is it still a huge challenge for you to convince people to do it or not to do it?

I think it's, again, I mean, we go into many projects, and even me personally, is we're not telling people that they should become a marketplace. It's around how can they be smarter with their range as a starting point. And, and think of using a platform like Marketplace as a— even some stages, like even a bit of an incubator for as well. So you start off looking at your own range as a starting point. What are your profitable lines? What aren't? You know, you might have some that you want to, um, uh, no longer hold first-party inventory of, buying stock, stick it in your warehouse, stick it in your stores. You might look at going, okay, well, there could be a bulk big and bulky assortment that you want to then move to a dropship relationship as well. You might find a new product that's hot, but they don't necessarily have the inventory to warrant getting your products across your whole store network. So you might start them with a marketplace model, see that there's traction with your customer base. If there is, move them to a dropship model where you control margin a bit more, you know, and then only then start putting them in a subset of your stores or all your stores. So again, it's not necessarily what I've seen is when people start using our product, that's a natural place where they get to. But flipping it around, it's an interesting way to actually position it to them as well. So I think Hendrik and I talked about this a bit recently as well, is I think today, and we have been as guilty as probably our competitors as well, these were big bang projects. You had to be the biggest of the biggest of the big and everyone wants to get to scale. Go, go, go, go, go. It was all about scale without limits and all these different kinds. And I don't necessarily agree with that as much these days as well because, um, you know, there is a mid-market that is underserviced in this space. Do mid-market— is it better for them to have a more intelligent range, a more profitable range, set of products? And, you know, if they are going to go down the path of I mean, you think about the capital outlay of buying all that inventory and sticking it in your warehouse and the cost to a mid-market retailer or a brand. You know, how can you be a bit more intelligent with the information that you have? Classic things I've seen so many times is, oh, we looked in our search terms and we sell ellipticals, but people are searching for, you know, gym sets, you know, or, you know, other health-related products that your customer is telling you what they're looking for, you don't stock it, we'll find a third-party partner, range them, and sell them. You know, so there's different ways you can do these projects that don't have to be as big bang, big buck kind of rollouts. Um, you know, and, and again, with the way, the way that we've structured our platform as well is if you use a connector that connects into your existing commerce platform, we can have our platform pre-provisioned with a data model preset, best practice configurations. I mean, we comfortably get projects out in market in less than 10 weeks, and that's unheard of, you know. And you're talking about with a model that truly scales with you over time rather than, you know, a 3-5 year license with, you know, many hundreds of thousands of dollars in outlay, you know, where it's difficult to get a return on investment. So, you know, again, that's what I see in these projects as well, is of course vertical marketplaces. I agree 100% You know, I think of some of our biggest customers, Canvas Warehouse and Qantas and all these things. They already had the eyeballs, they're already underpinned by an incredible loyalty platform. They've already got people going there constantly. You go to Qantas constantly because you're a Qantas loyalty member and you're going to redeem your points for products. It was a very easy extension. But yeah, I think this idea of using us as an incubator is a, it opens it up for a much newer segment. Could be brands, could be smaller retailers.

Who are the people bringing the visions to you and how complete are they at the moment that you first start talking to them? Because it certainly feels like the marketplace community has been relatively small for 15 or 20 years and we see the same faces showing up just doing the same thing elsewhere. But are you seeing an emergence of a new breed of talent or people who are spotting opportunities and joining you on that journey?

I think it's, I mean, the buyers are getting much younger for sure. You know, and as I said, I'm 49.

So, you know, I can sit down in a chair all day long and not need to stand up every 20 minutes. Such a sight to behold. Yeah.

Who knew getting down on the ground was, that hurt now sitting down. I don't know what's next for me.

I'm just going to have to be in a, you know, people think we're typing here, but it's actually the creaking of our knees as we talk during this conversation. That's how immobile we are.

Vinny, you know what's the one thing that, that Luke mentioned, which I think is a big, big change in the market, is marketplace for me has, without thinking about it, created a risk mitigation strategy for retailers to go into the marketplace space. As you mentioned, we've been around for, for many years. What is the biggest challenge that happens in the marketplace space? Have— I've seen this on multiple sites. I, I was actually even part of one when I was still in the corporate sector. You see these projects take for years. There is significant capital that, that's required.

Yeah.

And then there is not an alignment with management. There's not an alignment of inventory. And then after 2 or 3 years, what happens? The marketplace gets shut down because this doesn't make sense. Whereas Marketplace, um, and I think this is because they were from out of Europe and out of the US, yeah, and being from a, a, a, a nascent market such as Australia— I'm not taking a shot at Australia, so don't go in my DMs, please. The point is, is what I'm trying to say is, is that by going from a range extension and being and understanding that Marketplace will provide you almost like an incubation situation, you can learn on the fly whether this is going to work or no. So this is not like going— I, I— the explanation I use always with, with consulting clients is first we walk, first we crawl, then we walk, and then we go to the Olympic Games. That's essentially what Marketplace has done, and I think it's an important thing to mention because there's multiple players in this space that offer software for marketplaces. But the challenge is that not many of them can do this in 10 weeks like Marketplace. So as a retailer, you have no idea whether this is a good idea or a bad idea. Luke, am I clutching at straws here?

No, it's exactly what it is. I mean, we know what's going to happen a lot of the times. And, you know, I've seen this with, you know, before my career at Marketplace, Many, many— like, I think, think of the evolution of e-commerce over the last 15 years. And what, 15 years ago, Demandware, ATG, IBM WebSphere Commerce, like, they had the, the large enterprise market sewn up, like large, very large multi-million dollar license deals. And then who comes along? Someone called Magento, you know, and overnight it's, you know, $400,000 annual license deals. And, you know, the market had to change dramatically on how they charged for these particular projects. Uh, went from being, you know, closed to open source, and you could kind of customize everything to the nth degree, which has its complexities. And then you, you know, what's the last 3, 4 years? Shopify, BigCommerce, and, you know, it's suddenly— and many other, um, on Rails e-commerce platforms as well. And it's so simple now to set up a commerce experience that that's again, the expectations of the people buying is, well, shit, why can't it be point and click and go to an app store and connect? Why isn't there an app to connect me and my commerce engine into my ERP system or that? And then you've got the advent of younger buyers, iPhones, app stores, Netflix, like all those different kinds of things where just everything is available on demand. It's point click. It just makes it easy for me. As well. So, that's where the market's definitely heading.

But has that made experiences better or worse, Luke? Because this idea of convenience culture around technology is really creeping in and making us lazy in the design phase. Is that a fair statement or?

I think, yeah. I mean, I think it's inevitable to me. It's just, it's already happened. So, it's not us old people can sit there and whinge about it, but it's that's already kind of flown past us. But it's interesting with commerce in the sense of how easy it is and quickly it is to like Shopify is the dominant player by far, you know, and how quick it is to set up an e-commerce experience is it's never easier.

But has it done a disservice?

Differentiate yourself is the challenge, of course.

But has it done a disservice to our industry or am I just a curmudgeon? Am I like an old middle-aged man there that thinks it's done a disservice, it's made it too cheap and too easy and the barrier to entry is now too low for people.

Well, look, again, a lot of the times with, you know, I had my own SI for 12 years before Marketplace and like if you're wanting to differentiate yourself, there's differentiation in lots of different ways. You can still be on Shopify and that's your commerce backend. You can still make your frontend headless and a very unique experience. It doesn't have to be the same most popular template that you pump out and you look like everyone else. Your range as well is— that's the interesting thing. I was speaking with Andrew Steele, great guy, over at charlesbentley.com and their furniture. And I see him at plenty of conferences. We're always catching up on the marketplace space. I asked him the other day, how many marketplaces are you actually selling on? He's selling on 20. Oh my God, he's got 20 sales channels to his products. So, um, again, you know, and that's an interesting really thing, like, and you, you look at it in the sense of, I know when I was e-commerce manager of a, of the consumer electronics business at an Australian retailer called Woolworths, and, you know, it was all about the website and driving sales on the website, you know. And then I had the evolution from there was like, oh, you might sell on a few, sell on another few channels, and those channels were eBay, you know, or Gumtree, you know, and then along came Amazon as well. But it's really interesting to see how people like, you know, that I guess they're professional marketplace sellers, that they're just selling, they've got their own e-commerce channel. I'd hazard a guess that it's probably not the, the one where they get the most revenue from. Um, they probably get the most margin from it, but at the same time, you've got their same products available in all different places. They're using different tools like their channel manager to make that even possible with a slim, you know, very efficient workforce. But then it comes down to, well, you know, what do I sell my product at on high-end luxe Marketplace A versus, you know, something that's a bit more focused on the, you know, um, uh, like an end-of-life sale product as well. So it's, it's fascinating how it's changed. But, you know, we've seen this Have you talked to Andrew about customer ownership?

Because it's a really contentious area for a lot of people. Like, are they going in on some as merchant of record and others not? And does it really matter to him?

Yeah, I'm not sure. But most of the places we're speaking to, it's always the retailer, for example, is the merchant of record.

Vinny, really? We are having this conversation again. Really? Can I just state the obvious here? For the Ostrich Report, the obvious thing is these companies, brands, do not care. They do not care about the fact that they're on 20 platforms. They do not care about customer ownership. They will tell you that at a conference, but at the end of the day, this boils down to what? Revenue and profits. Can we not bury the lead here, please? So, and, and for me, that's a big deal because Well, let me stop you there because right now then everything's all about loyalty and retention.

You're just saying it doesn't matter. No one gives a shit. Is that what you're saying here right now in the ostrich?

I was saying to you that I've yet to see good retention strategies from brands that actually make sense. So yes.

Luke, have you seen this firecast or firehistorical beast of retention or loyalty? Mythical creature.

I'll be back in a couple of minutes. One benefit of standing, I can walk away.

Loyalty is a myth, right? Let's just think about that for a second. I'm not loyal. Are you guys?

No, but I mean, I just think so. Amazon has not— I mean, it hasn't been in Australia for as long as it has been in Europe. Actually, I don't know if that's factually correct, but whatever.

It's correct.

You know, finger on the pulse of commerce. Um, but I think of me personally, like, I think of just how I'm— my buying behaviors have changed. Yes, I will— if I think of the thing that I need to buy, I'm invariably on Amazon and I search for it and I find it. Since I started shopping on Amazon, I used to be the brand guy. I only ever bought brands that I recognize. I think of the last 5, 6 purchases I've done on Amazon, that doesn't bother me. As long as it's, it, it's a good price, it's going to get delivered on time, and it gets good reviews, that's enough for me and I buy. So I think of things where I am very loyal, it's probably groceries because that's very, very— it's a big convenience thing. Yeah, you know, I get my groceries from Tesco and I get the message beforehand. I know exactly where the truck is, I know when it's gonna come, and because I'm a lazy bastard, I just want to make sure I'm getting my groceries and I can be on time and my wife's not going to yell at me. So it's those different kinds of things. Would I, um, outside of that, from apparel, for the things that I buy, I wait until I have holes in everything and then I'll go back and I buy exactly the same shirts that I know are size medium that are going to fit me every time. So You know, I'm very much an online shopper through and through and someone that's on— so I guess I am loyal in some ways from a branding point of view. But, you know, Amazon's opened me up for definitely buying things from brands I don't know who they are, where they come from.

But Amazon is the benchmark for loyalty because we've got Prime. Very hard to replicate Prime. I know Walmart do a really good job in the US. But trying to replicate them outside of it has created this false narrative around loyalty.

I will just add here that I think what we have inadvertently stumbled upon is a point that Luke made a couple of weeks ago in a conversation with me, which I think is a really important one to mention. And that is that there is this general belief that marketplaces are a race to to the bottom. The reality is it's not. It's, it's, it's about convenience, and the convenience does not necessarily apply to I'm going to buy the cheapest thing. I, I, I bring that point up is because Vinny, you and I have spoken about this, and we are very, um, how can I say this politely, we are very positive of the marketplaces, and that is that most people that don't want to do marketplaces will give you, but this is going to kill our margins, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The fact remains for me is that while that perception is there, it's the opposite for the consumer side. Luke wants to know that he wants to be in his PJs when he gets the groceries delivered from Tesco. But the driver is the fact that he doesn't want his wife to scream at him. I'm being sincere when I say this, guys. At the end of the day, that last part, the convenience, the, the fact that I know it's going to be delivered to me in 2 or 3 days' time, that's what brands cannot do. And that's why retailers either want you in the shop or they want you to buy from them online, because they will have the inventory close to you. I know I'm speaking like I'm like the market, the marketplace disciple. It's just I think we need to be very mindful of that. There's certain negative connotations about marketplaces. And, and Luke mentioned right at the beginning, and I will re-echo this for a very long time, is that not everybody should be a marketplace. I know there is a competitor of Marketplace that wants to turn the entire internet into marketplaces. It's not, it's not a fit.

Yeah, and it's, it's interesting you say that as well. And circling back to something we said about earlier, it was around, you know, I guess, what are some of those signals that you see where there's a higher likelihood of success? Well, of course, if someone's got a great e-commerce experience, they've got a great logistics and fulfillment proposition, they've got some modern systems, they've got things like click and collect, like, these are pretty good signals. So whether you're the vertical marketplace that's wanting to add third-party range, or whether you're the seller wanting to sell on marketplaces. And again, you can flip it around. If I was a retailer, there's things I would want to look for. They're selling on other marketplaces, they're probably getting good reviews, they've got them, you know, they've got their own direct-to-consumer channel, they've got probably some click-and-collect capability. And these are good signals that, okay, you're adding someone. Because again, it doesn't matter what way you spin it, if the retailer is not great at e-commerce and don't have great, you know, returns and delivery proposition, you adding third-party range is not going to make it any better. It's going to— like, it's only going to make it worse. So it's, you know, any of those breakpoints as well. So it's about— I think for me is, you know, again, if you, if you're still trying to fix core e-commerce basics, this is not going to help. And again, at the same time The things I love about marketplaces is it's complex as well. And again, like a retail omnichannel geek as far back as my age betrays, the thing with these projects is they touch the e-commerce platform, they touch the service platform, they touch the OMS, they touch the PIM. Like there's so many different touchpoints. I like that because it's a big complex sell, it's a big complex project to kind of get your head around. But again, if you don't have executive top-level buy-in, it's not a— because there's lots of things that you need to consider. And if you don't have that, your chances of it being successful are much, much less. That's for sure.

So we're getting close to the end of the conversation. I think we've covered quite a lot of ground, but For someone in your role, Luke, and with your range of experience and length of time in the industry, where do you find newness now when it comes to technology or strategy? And how does that appear to you? Like, is it through, you know, listening to other people talking? Is it at conferences? How do you stay or feel that you're learning something in an industry that has kind of evolved but stayed relatively similar for 20 years?

I mean, you know, we're a piece of technology that gets plugged into a composable ecosystem. That ecosystem is always changing. So, you know, there's nothing worse for me. I mean, I guess there's probably that thing which is a lot of people suffer from, which is, you know, failure or, and standing in front of people and they're like, oh, have you ever integrated with, you know, the Hendrick LMS? And I was like, what?

Oh, geez. Yeah.

Oh geez, that sounds, yeah, it sounds very, very educational. But like, you know, so you're always having to keep on your toes anyway and there's nothing, you know, fear of failure. And I think there's, yeah, you just always, the market always changes. That's one thing. Of course you need to be always, you find out this information, we go through discovery, what are your other systems? And they mention something, oh, this is one we haven't heard of before., you know, and then you're in there and you've got to do your research. You understand that there could be a new, you know, method for integration that you haven't heard of. Like when I first joined Marketplace, I was more REST API focused. Now, you know, big trend is moving towards GraphQL, which is a completely different way of integrating, or event-driven integrations. So you're naturally kept on your toes, but at the same time, the way I keep on top of that is probably you know, I do like going to conferences. And sometimes it's not just about going to the same marketplace conference over and over again, or the same kind of e-commerce conference over and over again. Some of the stuff that's to the side a little bit as well could be about identity and, you know, kind of KYC, AML, or whatever it might be, let alone this other crazy new world, something called AI that I've heard a bit about recently. That seems—

the acronyms are from the banking world, for those not familiar. KYC is know your customer, and AML is anti-money laundering. But Thankfully, we lost everyone at GraphQL, so no one's there to hear that one, which is kind of amazing. No, it's interesting. And the reason I asked you, Luke, was you do pro bono fractional work as well with startups. And I was wondering, was that part of your motivation? Was that learning experience?

I think it was just when I had my own company, it was an SI, and I spent a lot of time speaking with lots of different kinds of customers. And I just kind of reflected on it was what did I enjoy? And it was getting in there. And I particularly enjoyed working with startups that were finding that they probably had founder-led sales. They weren't, you know, they were doing founder-led probably everything in the sense of solution engineering. They didn't necessarily have a good, you know, a scalable go-to-market function as well. So again, they're the kind of businesses I like getting in front of as well, which is people that are potentially they're a SaaS platform that are, you know, starting to get some traction. They might be moving into a new region, or they're trying to get away from founder-led sales, and just helping them put some scalable plans in place as well, you know, to just, uh, um, you know, take what I've learned, uh, as a— in a leadership position within solution engineering and helping kind of pass that, pass that knowledge on as well. And, you know, nothing better, I, I think, in the sense of starting off pro bono, starting to work out whether you're enjoying working with each other. And that could potentially go into many different ways.

Amazing. I love that idea of getting away from founder-led sales. I don't know about you, Hendrik, but before we let Luke go, Hendrik, have you anything else you'd like to get off your chest or ask Luke about before we let him get back to the day job?

I was going to just ask him about a story I saw a couple of weeks ago in my newsletter. Rackhams, the luxury— how does a luxury project differ from somebody that sells consumer packaged goods? Is it a huge challenge? Is it a similar challenge?

Look, I think that, I mean, Rackhams is great. So one of our UK customers, they have been up and live for less than a year. Um, the, the scale that the guys are moving at over there is pretty outstanding. Um, so there's— so CEO Mark Jordan, um, uh, he's amazing guy. Will Spencer. So you've got some people that have come out of e-commerce, retail. They just know it intimately as well. And the thing for them is, um, last I checked, they've got about 250,000 products. 600 sellers. They got a team of less than 10 people.

Wow.

And they've managed to scale this in a year as well. And I know I've kind of like, you know, said scale, scale, scale without limit. They're doing it in such a smart way. What's seasonal? What's hot at the moment? You know, what products are we pushing? So their ability to market, uh, uh, do the marketing and promotional side of, um, of this site, rackhams.com, is outstanding as well. So, and again, not talking too much out of school, but just very super modern systems. They've only— we started working with them 18 months ago. They were live within 6 months and they're at that numbers within a year as well. So they do a lot of work in apparel, of course, because that's what they know best. But, you know, they're going much wider than that. I mean, I saw toothbrushes and outdoor furniture and lots of different kinds of things and They're, yeah, I mean, their success not only from a scale point of view, but just also from a, for the customer experience is getting, is great already. It's just getting better and better and better. And they're just a bunch of really smart people as well. So I think, and the thing for me is that a lot of the, there's different ways you can integrate sellers. If you go down to a marketplace or range extension play, Of course, you're as good as the sellers that you have. And we've got The Dom in Australia, which is a, you know, again, another apparel site. You've got Rack Homes that are going a bit broader than just apparel. But there's different ways that you can onboard a seller. There's— we've got an out-of-the-box capability, which is point-and-click, no-code integrations. One of those is Shopify, another one is BigCommerce, Adobe Commerce. Commerce platforms that you commonly see. And, you know, the, the team is really focused on, you know, the ease of integration, point and click. And that's good for them because, again, they get their catalogs ingested and inducted at pace. But it's great for the seller as well. It's just a really frictionless experience. So, you know, if you'll have some sellers that, um, you know, that, uh, have older systems and they need to use a custom API to get integrated, they're a bit harder to do. They take longer to plan. You know, of course there's a time and a place for those as well, but if you can make it easy for the seller as well, that's another reason why they'll, you know, opt to sell on your marketplace and continue selling on your marketplace because it's frictionless, it's easy as well. So I think that's probably the strategy that I've liked it best at Rackham's as well. Just make it easy for the sellers as much as you can. But yeah, the growth has been, um, it has been epic so far.

It's amazing. It's probably the episode no one wants to hear. Less than 10 employees only. That's the only stat anyone is going to hear coming out.

That's all the finance guys.

Less than 10. How do we do it?

Crazy.

Incredible. Yeah, it is. Look, Luke, thank you so much for sharing so generously your time and knowledge and insight as well. I think it's been a brilliant conversation, one Hendrik and I have been way too excited about for quite some time. Hendrik, anything you'd like to say before we close out?

This might be the first time, like, ever, which an Australian and Irishman and an Aussie get along for 45 minutes and there's no mention of an oval-shaped ball or anything like that. Luke, just thanks again for coming on the show, number one. Number two, I think the fact that you shared so much of your background and, you know, your passion for what you do, it's very visible. So thanks a lot for coming on. Um, don't go to silent, pretty please.

Pleasure. Thanks for the opportunity. Thanks, guys.

Thanks so much. Look, see you, Hendrik.

Come down to your level.