Add To Cart: Australia’s eCommerce Show

Ecommerce is still a young industry, and it's moving faster than anyone in ecommerce can keep up with. Nobody has all the answers, and the pressure to act as if you do can leave you in a precarious position.
The ecommerce leaders who go furthest aren't the ones who faked it. They're the ones who asked for help early, while they were still learning, and kept doing it the whole way along. The asking was never the weak part of the story, it's what makes them the leaders they are today.
The best operators do three things differently when it comes to asking for help.
In this playbook, based on the most honest conversation we've had on the show with Grant Arnott, who built Power Retail and Click Frenzy, we cover three things ecommerce operators need to know about asking for help before they need it:
Ask while you're still learning, not just when something has already broken
Build the network in the calm, because the worst time to find your people is the moment the problem is on fire
Treat asking for help as a leadership move, because ego is what is holding you back, not the question
This episode touches on depression and some dark moments. If anything here is close to home, Lifeline is on 13 11 14 and Beyond Blue is on 1300 22 4636.

This episode is supported by Shippit. 38% of shoppers buy more with an accurate delivery estimate, yet most retailers fail to deliver on that promise at checkout. Shippit's State of Shipping Report shows you how to fix it. Click here to find the Shippit report.
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The Lad Collective has shipped roughly 15,000 ads in four years. Around 10 of those have been unicorns. Mark Broadhead, Head of Creative and Growth, runs the Meta engine behind one of Australia's fastest-growing bedding brands, now 200,000 customers deep and expanding into North America.
Mark joined as the founders' first employee, moving from his own vintage clothing business into the warehouse in Logan that The Lad Collective was running out of at the time. Four years later, he sits across creative, paid media and the brand's creative testing system. He's also one of the few people in ecommerce posting honest thinking on Meta account structures and AI in production on LinkedIn, which is what made him a must-have guest on the show.
This episode picks up from The Lad Collective Story with founders Bill and Ed Ovenden in episode 160. 
Today, we're discussing:
Why Mark doesn't study other bedding brands for inspiration [11:50]
The Unicorn Rule: 15,000 ads, 10 hits [27:3]How The Lad Collective uses content pillars to scale one idea across many formats [36:20]
205 live ads, 260 campaigns, and the move toward 1,000 live creatives [18:08]
The customer-driven UGC pipeline that feeds itself [40:39]
The role of AI in ad production with Higgsfield and Kive [46:46]
The Robert Irwin partnership and what it means for the US push [44:48]
Working with Shelley Craft and how big partnerships balance the lo-fi brand [42:30]
Why Mark will put almost any piece of content into the ad account [41:18]
Read the full Showpo case study from our partners at Convert Digital → convertdigital.com.au/showpocasestudy
Use the code from our partners → 🛍️ Shopify | 📧 Klaviyo
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Most ecommerce teams are still arguing about channel split the same way they were five years ago. Meta versus Google, who gets the budget, who gets the credit. The argument usually gets won by whoever's most confident, not whoever's most right.
The deeper issue is the data underneath it. Every ad platform is built to over-claim, because the more credit it takes, the more budget you hand it. Add up what Google, Meta and your email tool each say they drove and you'll sail past two hundred percent of your actual revenue. They're all counting the same customer, so the debate gets run on numbers that don't add up.
The brands getting this right do three things differently.
In this playbook, based on a conversation with Paula Mitchell, Digital GM of Freedom, we cover three things ecommerce operators need to know about choosing the right marketing channels using data:
Match the channel to the job the campaign needs done, not a fixed Meta and Google ratio
Stop trusting the platforms' own numbers and judge the whole engine on one honest top-line metric like MER
Buy independent measurement, but size it to your business instead of reaching for a full modelling platform too early
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Craig Mildenhall did not start in ecommerce.
He started in loyalty. Years at Loyalty New Zealand. A stint at adidas in Europe, running global loyalty and consumer engagement. And somewhere in all of that, he figured out something most digital leaders are still catching up to: the data tells you what happened. The customer tells you why.
As GM of Digital at Kathmandu, Craig has spent two years rebuilding one of Australia and New Zealand's most loved outdoor brands from the platform up. New site. New loyalty program. New way of working. And a four-month Shopify migration launched right in the middle of a flash sale.
This one is full of practical stuff.
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Most businesses struggling with profitability aren't spending too much on ads. They're holding too much stock. The wrong stock. Stock bought on gut feel six months ago, sitting in a warehouse, tying up cash that could be doing something useful.
Talea Bader is the co-founder of SKUTOPIA, an Australian fulfilment operation that's been building its own AI and robotics platform for eight years. He runs fulfilment for hundreds of businesses, from early-stage brands all the way through to enterprise, which gives him a view of what's actually happening inside these businesses rather than the version operators tell themselves.
He's seen a business turning over $700 million move from significant losses to tens of millions in profit. Not by changing their marketing. Not by redesigning their website. By changing the way they managed inventory.
Today, we're discussing:
Why inventory is your biggest P&L lever, and most businesses go looking for profit in the wrong place
The difference between gross margin and delivered margin, and why most buying decisions are made off the wrong number
Why inventory reordering is still super manual, spreadsheet based, and driven by ego instead of science
How to know your weeks on hand before it becomes a crisis
The $700 million business that moved from significant losses to tens of millions in profit through better inventory management alone
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