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 SKUTOPIA
• Why most e-commerce brands outgrow their fulfillment before they realise it
• What actually breaks behind the scenes when brands start to scale
• The hidden cost of bad logistics on growth and customer experience
• Why visibility and real-time data are critical in modern fulfillment
• What to look for (and avoid) when choosing a 3PL partner

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Explore SKUTOPIA

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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 you
• Secondary 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 Seamlist

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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 acquisition
• Radical transparency in a crisis is the most powerful retention strategy you have
• Trust built in one life stage becomes your greatest asset for long-term expansion

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Explore Naternal Vitamins

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Want to level up your ecommerce game? Come hang out in the Add To Cart Community. We’re talking deep dives, smart events, and real-world inspo for operators who are in it for the long haul.

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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 you
• The best experience investments solve a functional and emotional problem at the same time
• The data you collect through the experience is worth more than any third-party signal you're buying
  
  Connect with Chloe De Winter 
  Explore Nala

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Want to level up your ecommerce game? Come hang out in the Add To Cart Community. We’re talking deep dives, smart events, and real-world inspo for operators who are in it for the long haul.

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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 revenue
• How capturing in-store intent can unlock an extra 10%+ growth without more traffic
• The difference between data-driven personalisation and real human relationships
• Why most retailers struggle to deliver consistent service across locations
• Turning staff intuition into scalable, trackable customer data
• Why first-party data is becoming retail’s biggest competitive moat
• How AI will enhance retail teams, not replace them

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Want to level up your ecommerce game? Come hang out in the Add To Cart Community. We’re talking deep dives, smart events, and real-world inspo for operators who are in it for the long haul.

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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 opportunity
• Why supply and demand drives everything in collectibles
• The rise of live shopping and “breaks” as entertainment commerce
• Building trust in an emerging category
• Why physical retail is back (and stronger than expected)
• How to create a community that actually converts
• The future of live commerce and content-led selling

Cherry is offering 10% off with code ‘ADDTOCART10’ for the first 100 users.

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Explore Cherry

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There’s a lot of noise right now around AI in ecommerce. Agentic commerce. AI checkouts. Bots buying on behalf of customers. It all sounds big. It all sounds important. And it all sounds like something you’ll deal with… later.

But here’s the problem with that thinking: The biggest shift in Agentic Shopping isn’t happening at checkout. It’s happening the moment your customer opens ChatGPT and asks, “What should I buy?”

And that moment is already here.

In today's Playbook: 

• Why AI is becoming a new discovery channel 
• How product data determines whether you get recommended 
• Why AI is already influencing your revenue (without attribution) 
• What leading operators are doing differently

Connect with James
Explore Shopify
Shopify’s main episode
HealthPost’s main episode
Nutrition Warehouse’s main episode
StudioHawk’s main episode

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Want to level up your ecommerce game? Come hang out in the Add To Cart Community. We’re talking deep dives, smart events, and real-world inspo for operators who are in it for the long haul.

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Justin Babet, co-founder of Chief Nutrition, didn’t set out to build a $1M/month ecommerce brand. What started as a side hustle selling beef bars in a gym has evolved into one of Australia’s fastest-growing health food brands, now stocked in Woolworths, Coles, and scaling globally.

With a background in tech startups (including selling JobAdvisor), Justin brought a “build, measure, learn” mindset into a category known for over-processing and shortcuts. The result? A brand built on trust, premium positioning, and a relentless focus on clean ingredients.

Today, we’re discussing:

• How Chief Nutrition scaled from a side hustle to $1M/month ecommerce
• Why creative volume beats “perfect ads”
• Performance vs brand: when to focus on each
• Building a premium product in a price-sensitive market
• The power of subscriptions and loyalty programs
• How UGC and influencer collabs drive new customer growth
• Why “real food” is winning in modern ecommerce

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Explore Chief 

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Want to level up your ecommerce game? Come hang out in the Add To Cart Community. We’re talking deep dives, smart events, and real-world inspo for operators who are in it for the long haul.

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Most ecommerce teams are incredibly good at the rational stuff. Product pages. Checkout flows. Abandoned cart sequences. Free shipping thresholds. Everything is designed to squeeze a little more conversion out of customers who are already close to buying.

But here’s the uncomfortable truth: that’s not where the decision is made. Buying decisions are emotional first, and rational second. The features, specs and pricing comparisons don’t create the decision. They justify it after the fact.

In today's Playbook:

• Why most ecommerce brands over-invest in features instead of emotion
• The difference between cognitive vs emotional brands, and why it matters
• How to identify your brand’s emotional default
• Why you can’t create emotion, only amplify what already exists
• How emotional storytelling at the top of funnel drives higher conversion without discounts

Connect with Nick
Explore IGU Global
IGU’s main episode
Scratch Pet Food’s main episode
i=change’s main episode

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Stephanie Rogers, Retail Director at TransPerfect, has built her career helping global brands navigate one of ecommerce’s hardest challenges: expanding internationally without wasting time, money, or momentum.

In today’s episode, we’re breaking down the difference between translation and true localisation, why “land and expand” beats going all-in too early, and how Australian brands can punch above their weight globally.

Today, we're discussing:

• Why localisation beats translation every time
• The smartest way to choose your next international market
• Why Japan, Korea, Germany, and France are underrated opportunities
• The biggest mistakes brands make expanding into the US
• How to test markets without burning cash
• The role of AI vs human expertise in localisation
• Why internal training is the most overlooked growth lever
• How brands can scale globally without building full local teams

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Explore TransPerfect

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Support the show

Want to level up your ecommerce game? Come hang out in the Add To Cart Community. We’re talking deep dives, smart events, and real-world inspo for operators who are in it for the long haul.

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