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Add To Cart: Australia’s eCommerce Show
The 80% Problem: How Incu Captures the Customers Who Don’t Buy | #618
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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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Only 20% of those customers, so 20 people out of a hundred, are actually making a purchase during that visit. And unlike the online environment, it's a dead end. It's a black hole for the retailer.
SPEAKER_00They don't necessarily look at customers like people that they can transact with. They look at them as kind of characters and personalities that they can be friends with and learn more about and they're all curious.
The In-Store Intent Black Hole
SPEAKER_01We've just dropped automated customer engagement tasks with automated lists because we don't want the teams having to think about what they need to do when they come into store each day. Hi, I'm Shane Linton from The Wishlist. Today on the Add to Cart podcast, we're going to talk about how the Wishlist is solving retail's big black hole along with Doug from Inco.
Why Wishlist Exists And Works
SPEAKER_02Hello and welcome back to Add to Cart. My name is Nathan Bush. Joining you from the land of the terrible people here in Brisbane, Australia. Now let me ask you something. In e-commerce, we all spend real money chasing non-buyers online, whether that's through retargeting, abandoned cart flows, browser emails. But when a customer walks into your store, spends 20 minutes with your product, and then leaves without buying, and you've got nothing, no follow-up, no visibility, they're gone, who knows where they go. That is the black hole that Shane Lanton built the wish list to close. It's a real problem. Shane is the co-founder and the CEO of the Wish List. It's a platform that captures and converts high-intent customers, whether they're on your website or walking your shop floor. Pure e-commerce operators like Shopo and Victorian Woods use it online. Multi-channel retailers use the full suite to bridge in-store intent with online conversion. Shane spent over a decade as CIO at Q Clothing proving the concept before spinning it out into a business now running across over 60 retail brands. Joining him today is Doug Lowe, CEO of InCU. He's got 22 years in the business, starting on the shop floor and now running 14 stores across Sydney, Melbourne, Gold Coast, and most recently Bondi. Both Shane and Doug have been guests on Ad ToCart before, so they are friends of the show and two of the smartest omni-channel brands in Australia. The Wishlist, bringing them together for this one, it was too good to pass up. So this episode, which is brought to you by The Wishlist, covers what intent capture actually looks like on the shop floor, why attribution design changes how store teams behave and the data that they capture, and how first-party intent data becomes a genuine competitive moat, both online and offline. If you're leaving non-buyers uncontacted, this one is for you. Here's Shane Lenton, co-founder and CEO of The Wishlist, and Doug Lowe, CEO of InCU. Shane and Doug, welcome back to Ad Descartes. Hey, Nate. Thanks for having us. Pleasure. It's always that awkward thing, isn't it, when we've got two people in the call. So who says hello first? But great to have you both back. What an absolute treat. It's been a long time since we've spoken. So I'm keen to understand what's been happening in both of your worlds. Because if people don't know you, I don't know if we could have got two people who are more across how to bring together a great omnichannel experience than you two. So we're going to have an awesome conversation around what that looks like from both the wishlist perspective, but also from Inku's perspective. Shane, I'm going to start with you. Tell me, for people who don't know the wish list and who rudely didn't listen to your episode a couple of years ago, even though I suppose a lot has changed since then, tell me where you came up with the idea of the wishlist and what problem the wish list is solving.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, thanks, Date. So look, if we look at the foundation, so I was I was at Q Clothing for 10 years full-time and consulted back for around five years in a CIO CDO capacity. So looking after everything, e-com, IT, digital. And that was a great opportunity, particularly when we talk about omni-channel or or unified commerce as as I often refer to it as. Looking at initiatives over that time where we get essentially opportunities that would generate revenue and and grow the business. That was obviously fundamentally what we're trying to do. And one of those key initiatives was that when I look at an online experience and I think about a customer visits a website, they spend some time on a website, they look at a product, whether that's at a category view or they drill through to the PDP, they're looking at a product. That opens up a raft of opportunities if they don't purchase. We've usually got three, four, five different platforms that are tracking that behavior in a different way. And then off the back of that, we have opportunities like at a simple level card abandoned emails or browser abandoned emails. Then we can look at doing things like retargeting through Vanner ads or social media. And a lot of retailers spend tens of thousands of dollars on that sort of paid channel and opportunity. And then I thought within store, customer comes in, they spend time, they may have driven half an hour to get to a store, they've they've found parking. So a lot of high-end. That's all through a Westfield. Yep, 100%. So they've they've made a big effort to get there. Even if they're just browsing on their lunch break, they've shown some strong intent to get to store. But if we think for most retailers, only 20% of those customers, so 20 people out of 100, are actually making a purchase during that visit. And unlike the online environment, it's a dead end. It's it's a black hole for the retailer. Teams spent time with customer, with the customer or visitor, they're not yet even known whether they're a customer, and they leave. So the way I looked at it is how can we create a compelling value exchange between the visitor and the retailer to firstly have an opportunity to identify them, secondly, ideally capture some of that intent data. And then the third piece was be able to convert and act on it. So for me, I thought, yeah, if we can get two out of that 80 that didn't buy to buy with an average transaction value of the retailer's normal transaction value, that's 10% growth in revenue. So it was well worth going after the opportunity.
SPEAKER_02And you had the perfect playground with Q as a leading omni-channel retailer there to prove that, which you did. I'm very keen to understand because since that launch, I think you launched in 2020, and then we've had COVID since then. Feels like there's been a thousand wish list apps that have sprung up in that time. Is your differentiation around bringing that physical experience and that online experience together to have one view of the customer and what they're very close to purchasing?
SPEAKER_01Definitely from an omni-channel perspective or an omni-channel retailer who has an online stores and also physical stores, that's definitely a significant um game changer. We're the only wish list platform with a full clientele ensuite. And conversely, if we think about all the tactics online, you look at the iconic, well publicized now that 25% of their revenue is originating from wish lists online. So it's still a massive opportunity online. So we've set out to build what we see as a best in-class wish list app from online. We also add things like notify me for sold-out items coming soon and a preference center. So it's a bit more than a wish list as options we have. But a benchmark, we still have a lot of pure play retailers using the platform like Showpo, Outcast, and others. And not every retailer that's multi-channel uses us yet in stream online. But when you do open up that, if I think about businesses as still doing between 20 and 30% of their revenue online, some even less, some even more. But if we can have an impact on total business and increase that by 10% of the total pie, you can have a pretty profound impact.
INCU’s Culture Of Curiosity
SPEAKER_02That's a crazy stat. 25% coming from wish lists for the iconic. So, Doug, welcome back to the show. Lovely to have you back here. Last time we caught up was just post-COVID, I think, or was it pre-COVID? You were one of the first episodes. You were in the in the in the 50s, I think. It was during COVID. And obviously there's an omnichannel retailer who I would say has, I'm gonna put it out there, the best in-store experience in Australia in terms of a unique in-store experience. When Shane talks about capturing that intent when a customer walks through the door that might not be identifiable straight away, how important is that to you?
SPEAKER_00It's so important. I think the intent, I kind of look at it like, you know, when you go to a really great restaurant and they ask you your dietary requirements, they ask you who's coming, they ask you what it's for. I always dreamt about being able to deliver that kind of service because it's such a, I don't know, like you feel so welcomed into an environment. And I think if yeah, if we were able to do that and move retail into that space, I think, yeah, the service levels would would increase tenfold.
SPEAKER_02So how do you do it at the moment? Talk us through the in-cube process because I think we'd all love to hear it. You've come up so often in our conversations since our episode. How do you train your team on how to give that restaurant experience in store? Because you do it so well.
SPEAKER_00It's well, I suppose one thing is we don't always get it right. And I think that's always one of those things we always talk about this Japanese principle of Kaizen. I think we spoke about it last time, but just continually looking at how we can incrementally get better and better and better. I think we're lucky because some of our staff, well actually a lot of our staff and the way that we train them, they probably, and this is probably right or wrong, but for us it's right. They don't necessarily look at customers like people that they can transact with. They look at them as kind of characters and personalities that they can be friends with and learn more about and they're all curious. And so I think then it's a little bit easier to remember people and faces and what they've purchased and if they've got kids and where they're going and where they're taking their gear on holiday and vice versa. So I think that that's helped a lot. How do you do that? Well, one of our brand values is curiosity. So I think it's just the more interested that we can show we are in the team, I think they are able to do the same thing with customers. And also I think it's when you go in the store and you're chatting to the staff, and if there's a customer there who isn't being served, then you jump in and you help and you show them and you kind of lead by example.
SPEAKER_02Shane, you've seen more than your fair share of in-store experiences with all the retailers that you're helping, and you're on the boards of boards of a couple as well. When Doug says around understanding the characters and the personalities of his customers, is that common in Australian retail? Or has Doug got something special here?
SPEAKER_01I'd definitely say it's not common. So no way is it common. And as the Doug touched on, it it needs to be like the sort of experience that Inco delivers holistically beyond even our platform is, you know, it's in their vision, it's deeply embedded in their culture and their principles. And that's evident from the minute you walk into their head office and you know, the greeting you get, the experience you have there, the high level of engagement, but people really do remember people, and and you know, it's it's it's quite amazing. And that comes through every part of the business. We when we speak, we catch up with Dope's team on a monthly basis, just a regular sort of account catch up, I suppose, and as we call them, optimization sessions. And we have so many people from across the business, and that's the exciting thing with the platform, and and and these teams are highly engaged, it's not a burden for them to jump on the call, and they all want to provide great feedback and they're all collaborating. And I think even asked for for someone as amazing as Incou, it was sort of helped to nurture that collaboration between teams and remove some of those potential silos across touch points and channels. But yeah, second to none in in the level of engagement and culture, they've definitely got the magic source or secret source in clear.
SPEAKER_02Is it hard to keep that magic source dug as you keep expanding and growing? I mean, up to 14 stores now and being able to have that relationship with customers where it's beyond just demographics and purchase history, does it become harder?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, definitely. I think it relies on just a really great team that's helped. I think it has kind of gone in waves, like coming out of COVID, especially down in our Melbourne stores, which we couldn't visit as much, it was harder to communicate the culture to them. So we had to put a lot of effort. We spent a lot of trips going down to Melbourne, working with the teams, helping them understand our level of service that we wanted. But then I think the special thing is that when you start to overlay wish lists and tools like that over the top of things. So in the past, a lot of the data that we would have was just in people's heads. And so, you know, I might serve Bushy, and so I know exactly what you want.
SPEAKER_02I don't know just pluggers and speeders usually.
SPEAKER_00Exactly. But then you'd go down to our Melbourne store and the service would be so inconsistent because they would see you as another customer, but they don't have that data on you. And so I think having wishlist and being able to use clientelling tools has enabled us to be a little bit more consistent across the service levels.
SPEAKER_02So, how do you use Wishlist? Does it go on top of your existing systems, both online and offline? Because I know you're on Shopify. And then how does Wishlist plug into everything from both an in-store and an online experience?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's interesting. One, like if you speak to us, I think I would say 99% of everyone else that you speak to would be technologically advanced compared to us. I think we're brick and mortar through and through, but I think we're very much in terms of tech stack and things like that, we need it easy. We don't have, you know, Shane was a CTO, CIO. We don't have anything like that in the business. We don't even have an IT department. So we're we're on the very kind of Luddite end of things. So everything is literally plugs into Shopify, but it also connects up to AB21. And so that's helped as well.
SPEAKER_02And obviously, Shane, you are the the IT brains behind all of this. When you came to creating this solution, because I could imagine it'd be a nightmare when you're thinking about that omnichannel or unified experience as you call it. How do you create something that can fit into both the online tech stack, which is probably a lot simpler because if you take the standard tech stack, Shopify Clavio, etc., etc., for the majority, but then you layer in ERPs and POS as well, which is where it gets very complicated, especially for fashion. How did you think about this to make it simple for retailers?
Making Integrations Simple For Retailers
SPEAKER_01Look, I I suppose the first part is I was probably I was blessed in the sense that I came into sort of from you know from finance retail and and other verticals into retail about 16 or 17 years ago in a time where you know most retailers were and and a lot still are to this day sitting on some legacy platforms, particularly around ERP and POS. Probably from the get-go, I was really unpacking these platforms and sort of getting a reasonably deep understanding of the nuances and some of those challenges. It was interesting. So a quick story, a sidetrack story. But when we were setting out with my co-founder Matt, and he's got sort of uh systems integration, e-commerce, more big enterprise platform experience previously, but there was uh and it's funny you say that, you know, I've got on a CTO or CIO and CDO, and I've got that background, but I'm also a realist and and we can't do everything. So we wanted someone best in class in cloud infrastructure at the time to come on board and and do some initial advisory and consulting for us essentially to make sure we got the tech stack right at the start. And this guy said, it's fine, we'll like we'll build this platform that's you know composable and everyone can build the integrations into us. I laughed and I laughed and I laughed. And I said, You don't know retail too here. No. So I knew I knew at the start, and that's been strong in our vision with Matt and I, and we're 100% on board with it, that we need to make things simple. Even with teams, like with different businesses, with big technology departments, there's a roadmap and uh it's difficult to get on it. And you might have IT disconnected from retail, disconnected from you know, digital. So we needed to make it really, really easy. So what we did is we went after the the main platforms that had the lion's share of the market, and we got a lot of those integrations done through partnerships and otherwise. And for us, it's all about the ecosystem. If we don't play well, we wouldn't survive. But the bigger the challenge around some of those POS platforms and things can't get done, I almost look at it and say, Well, it's a moat, it's an opportunity for us to to get a solve and get a solution there. But when I when I had a conversation with Doug and said, you know, hey, I'd love for you guys, they're already using the wish list online and getting some great results in that Shopify Clavio sort of playbook. And then I said, hey, we've extended the platform now to be beyond just wish list install, we've got clientele, and there's no heavy lifting for you to do. You've already got a great partner in your website development company in Doc Collective, they've got it connected with AP21. We can utilize that, and we've got all the other pieces, and we're up in a matter of weeks without his team having to worry about the technical challenges. Thank goodness, because he doesn't have an IT team. Exactly, exactly. And and we need to almost treat obviously, we need to go through a process depending on the different retailers, but we need to make sure we're doing the heavy lifting and making it really straightforward. We don't want to be a headache or a burden, we need to be an enabler. And that's you know, that's when we talk about our sort of vision and ultras of business, we solve problems and create opportunities.
SPEAKER_02And I suppose your background in retail, especially with Q and the positions you had before that, would give you great empathy for other teams who are like when you're having those conversations to go, this is hard, we've got this roadmap, or we don't have the expertise, you would have seen all that before.
SPEAKER_01100%. And we were doing things on platforms that the vendors didn't even know were possible, and we'd go and speak to them after over the years. And it's just about having the right people, the right approach. Everything's possible. You've just got to find the path of least resistance, which is not going to create headaches down the track. But ultimately, we need to be the, you know, the enabler here and and not the headache.
SPEAKER_02So, Doug, I can imagine that you don't lay awake at night thinking, oh, I wish I could have more technical integrations and do more IT projects. What was it about the wish list that you were like, actually, this is actually worth the effort in extending it in-store as well? Because like imagine online you go, yep, that's fine, we can add that. That's that's pretty low lift, especially when you've got great partners. But in-store is another, another thing. So what was it that you were like, this will unlock this for us at IncU?
Clienteling In Practice On The Floor
SPEAKER_00I think part of it was Shane's background. He's worked in all areas. Yeah, we've kind of talked about the tech side of it, but he's worked in all areas of retail. And I think, you know, we'd previously crossed paths before. And I think he knew how to execute things from an e-commerce level, an operational level, a marketing level, and to make it successful. I think the other thing for us is that, you know, e-commerce is 20% of our business. But if you can start to affect that 80% of the business, then, you know, we're really talking, we're really getting going. We'd been talking about clienteling because I think it's it's what you were talking about before. But, you know, it's fine for me to remember who Bushy is. But if nobody else remembers who Bushy is or is able to deliver service or help him in the same way that I am, and then I leave the business, you know, it's all for nothing. Over COVID, I actually think we talked about it last time, but over COVID, we tried a video platform called Hero. Yes, which was like a form of clientele and digital clientele. And it didn't quite pan out for us at the time because it just didn't feel right for us. Whereas I think the clienteling element of wishlist is now for our business, it's just as, if not more important for our business. And so the way that the guys are using it is able to do like kind of client outreach. So in the past, for instance, let's say, you know, you've got three favorite brands. I know Patagonia might be one of them, but when stock comes in, it'd just be a list, an Excel list, and it'd just be on the phone. And if you were in two stores, you might get two calls, which kind of feels a bit salesy in a way if you're being bombarded with things. And so now to circumnavigate that, everyone across all stores can track these conversations with, you know, who's had that with Bushy. And if I've been on holidays, someone else can pick up on that and make sure that they contact you to make sure you haven't missed out on your favorite piece.
SPEAKER_02Because that would be huge for you, wouldn't it? Because a lot of your customers, I suppose, would be very keen on discovery and new drops and being at that forefront of fashion. So you don't want them to miss out. Exactly.
SPEAKER_00And I think one of the things that the really good staff can do is pick what to kind of recommend to you and what not to recommend you. Because I think sometimes with our emo platforms, they're great. But the way that, you know, our marketing team is quite small. So we probably don't have the element to segment right down to very, very minute segments. Whereas this feels very personalized, you know, if I can still add a nice little comment about your last trip or things like that and make it feel quite personal.
SPEAKER_02So talk me through the what that looks like in person. So customer comes into the store, yeah, greeted by one of your team members. Where is the data being input into the wish list?
SPEAKER_00It's being input into the app.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Okay. So on a handheld device by the team member?
SPEAKER_00We've got a couple of handheld devices because we do RFID stock takes and things like that. We're probably more using it at the POS, but we're that's probably something that we're looking at exploring down the track is having them on the floor.
SPEAKER_02And is that common, Shane? How are you finding that you know this enrichment of customer data is coming through the platform?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so I think it's a bit of a mixed bag. So as a starting point, and again for retailers, we we want to be able to work on any device that they have in store. So as a starting point, default position, we've got a web app that works on any browser as long as there's internet connection on any device. So if we're talking to retailers and we really want to demonstrate initially return investment and get the tool in and getting the modules up and running, definitely the starting point can be a point of sale. And that works really, really well. And then as the teams start to get more mobilized and and out on the floor and and and more comfortable, look, in a perfect scenario, everyone would have a device I spent, you know, a few months in the UK and Europe back into last year, and you'd go into a lot of stores. And people have that some of the better stores have done a great job in sort of custom making some straps and holsters and things like that where they've you know they've all got a device on their on their body where they can look at it. They're generally using it for transactions and other things. That's fantastic. But we've got to be real here. And for a lot of retailers, whether it comes down to their budget, we can certainly help with return investment and uh as they build out their offering, but it it can very much work so successfully at a retail like Inca or any of our retailers purely from point of sale. But like I say, the more that the team member is able to do the more out on the shop floor, as they're in a natural interaction with the customer, the better. But yeah, it it it's a bit of a journey and obviously costs come into it and all the rest. But the the return investment is there, and as teams get more and more, I suppose, familiar with the platform, the results are there. And and then, you know, Doug and I caught up last week and we're sort of talking about that next stage and maybe targeting a particular store and but it needs to be done right. It's not about just putting a piece of technology in someone's hand and and hoping that, you know, we can give it to everyone and suddenly we've got a solution. It needs to be supported by a clear playbook that's very much aligned with the, you know, in this case, in coup's vision and compliments. It doesn't distract or or create and that's really important. It's got to be really natural in the environment. And then people are asking these questions. If you think about it, someone comes in, I'm already sort of asking how their day is, I'm asking, you know, have they shot with us before? You know, what are they looking for? And they're going through that clientelling experience. And what we're trying to do, and what we're doing very successfully with our retailers, is we're complementing that experience and we're empowering the team member to have more information because if you come in and you're looking for your pair of your pluggers, bushy and designer pluggers, thank you. Yeah, I want to have a look at you know what your size is potentially. If you're like, oh, I haven't got them on today, but I have purchased four, and they'd probably let me have a look. I can see that, and it's a natural reason to look after and then suddenly I've got now I can see a full picture on other categories you may have purchased, some preferences you have, your average transaction value, are you a VIP customer, like what you've recently viewed online? So it's all about empowering that engagement. And then let's say that you have a great experience and you're not quite ready to buy, or you buy one piece and you're thinking about some others, that's where it's your opportunity now to say, no problem, let me add it to a wish list for you. You'll get an email after the visit, and best of all, you'll be the first to know if they've almost sold out. It's a change, it's a natural because consumer behavior is I'm taking a photo of that product and and the price or swing tag and leaving, and then the retailer doesn't know whether I go back or not. That's a really powerful engagement that's traditionally lost from a it's a black hole as we refer to it. So it's creating those moments. And like I say, if you convert two more people out of that hundred, and there's ten percent growth across the business. Like it it the numbers really, really do stack up. Absolutely.
Attribution That Changes Staff Behavior
SPEAKER_00It's really interesting what Shane was saying because I think overseas it's uh that whole experience is much more evident. I'm not sure why. It hasn't kind of filtered down to Australia yet. I think the luxury guys are doing it. They're doing it in a particular way where because everybody queues up at the door, they kind of do the clientele at the door. I don't know if necessarily if you shop under luxury, if it's a great experience to be able to line up, line up to go inside a store.
SPEAKER_02I've always laughed at that when you go past the luxury stores and everyone's lined up and you've got to go through a security guard. I'm like, I feel really special right now.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. Yep,$10,000, please.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00But yeah, I think for us, and especially the kind of culture that Australia has, it needs to be quite down to earth. So it's how you kind of bridge that gap. But I was speaking to a mate, Lloyd, when he came back from America, and he had two really great examples of it. One he used for Glossier, and he said that when he was at Glossier, he did get greeted at the door. He was looking for a gift for his wife. And they used to live in New York, but they'd moved back to Australia and they looked it up and they said, Oh, you know, your wife hasn't shopped with us for five years, but here's a couple of products that I'd recommend. And he said that was an amazing experience. And then he was at another store that we run in Australia, but in America, called APC. And they were a lot slower at the store, so they didn't need to have anyone at the door. But the person behind the counter said, Oh, you know, do you want to just give me your name so I can get a couple of suggestions for you? And I thought the way that they did it was really clever. So they looked up his profile and they realized he'd only purchased products on sale. And so they actually said, you know, this rail here is actually going on sale tomorrow. But if you want, you can purchase it today. And I thought that was really great because often we think about, you know, it is the upsells and things like that. But I thought Lloyd at that moment when he was explaining, he was like, you know, they just understood me so well. They didn't make me feel bad about only buying things on sale, but it felt like such a service offering. Do you know what I mean? Like, and he actually, yeah, it was such a good experience for him. So I thought that was a really clever use of the data.
SPEAKER_02So we want to create great experiences for tight asses as well. Great experiences for everyone. We don't discriminate. Do you think part of that, Doug, is the way that we incentivize our teams as well in store? Because, you know, around Shane's point, around we've got a lot of customers who are browsing in store and they get great service and they have a great experience, they take the photo, but then they buy in store and someone in store may never see the result of their hard work or that interaction that they had. Is part of this around incentivizing team members to put in that data and to almost claim the customer so that wherever they transact, that can be tied back to them.
SPEAKER_00We're pretty lucky. Maybe it's down to the way that we're running incentives at the moment. So often, this is kind of off topic, but often a lot of stores will retailers will have issues when stock moves from one store to another and you do internal transfers because people want to hoard all the best stock. Our guys, well, not that I know of, but I don't think our guys have really had a problem with that. I think what usually happens, what we find is that people who are using wishlist the most usually have the highest portion of VIPs. And it's it's less about the sale, but they understand that it's a connection with that customer. And often if you build up a really strong connection with that customer, majority of the time, that customer will want to come back to you or your store. And I think the way that our incentives are done at the moment, it's done per team versus done per individual. It's just the way that we run things. But what we found is that there's one store, our galleries women's store, that's been, you know, elite in the way that they're using Wishlist. Since they've been using it, the ratio of VIPs that have been coming in, because they've been delivering really great service off the back of Wishlist and some operational changes, it's got to, I think, 30 to 40 percent, which is really, really high for our business. And since that point, they've been smashing their targets as well.
SPEAKER_02What makes someone a VIP?
SPEAKER_00Pretty simple. If you spend over$2,000 in a calendar year, you become a VIP. Yeah. Well, I mean, our stuff isn't cheap anymore. So it is significant, but it's also not significant.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, Lloyd's not welcome in your store.
Measuring Engagement Not Just Sales
SPEAKER_01Lloyd's always welcome. Just on that as well. I mean, fundamentally like across the board. So if we think about INCU experience and then we think about consistent experience across the board with the raft of retailers, where we're really seeing a gravitation towards stronger clienteling or that desire for retailers, sort of, you know, high street and above. And we find most retailers are doing this in some way, and Doug touched on it before, in a sense that everyone's trying to capture intent or build a pipeline in the spreadsheet. The communication's disjointed, it's often not compliant based on customer may or may not be opted in for comms, and having that unified across all the platforms is critically important. So and then ultimately, like outside of you know the INCO example, the vast majority of retailers are still managing on individual productivity and store level productivity and all the rest. And that has been a is quite a you know, it's it's almost a bit of a sledgehammer that's constantly sort of hit to meet those things. And what we're trying to do is so there's a couple of key things. So the first thing is, and I touched on before, so it's got to be easy to use, powerful but easy to use, and intuitive is probably the best word to use. That attribution, that what's in it for me is something I learned very early on. And that was a business that drove productivity pretty hard. But that's what's in it for me for a retail team, and we're hearing it consistently across the board, and it's that visibility and that channel conflict, and if we can dilute that, so if I add an item to a customer's wish list and they go on to purchase that at another store within the retailer's network or online, it's having that visibility going all the way back to the individual that did that heavy lifting. And attributions are always a really interesting one. The other one is if I send an MMS or an email or an SMS to a customer with a product link in it, and that customer goes on to buy that within an attribution window that's configured by the retailer. So it might be seven or 14 days, gain its track back. We're starting to do payment links in, you know, buy a Shopify Oz and share them. And again, if the customer purchases, the transaction can be attributed back. Now, with a lot of retailers, that's sort of shadow reporting and it's all KPI-based. It's critically important. And probably the other thing I'll add there is to get the attribution right. I think it's a real game changer and can be the difference between success and not success. And then the second part is the retailers have so many dashboards and reports and things like that. But for measuring all the customers that didn't purchase today and how many of them the team interacted with, it's just been so difficult to monitor and benchmark. Whereas recently we've we've brought out the customer engagement score and we're really focused and with an integration with the likes of Kepler, Analytics, from other people Canatech, that we're integrating two-way with our data so it can be reported both sides. But what we're able to say is today, 100 people came in, 20 purchased, 80 didn't, but of that 80, the team engaged with 30 or 40%. And they're the sort of numbers we're seeing now, which now at a store level, an individual at a company level, at a state level, the retail team, the management can now report on that and set proper KPIs and targets. And again, like culture and behavior is the foundations of everything. But more broadly, particularly with bigger store networks, and even small store networks for that matter, if it's embedded into the culture and then there's also really clear, measurable results, it dilutes that conflict. It solves that what's in it for me. And the team can get oversight and coach and train off the back of that and develop that behavior.
SPEAKER_02I think that's interesting what you said there around getting those metrics around what happens in store, because traditionally we've always had the door counters, right? Numbers, how many people walk through your store, that's fine. And then you always get the transactions in store, but you don't get much in between. So being able to see almost that funnel approach around who was actually engaged, you know, where did they drop off all the way through the transaction, and then being able to see actually if they just dropped off here in that one visit, did they actually come back on another visit on their next lunch break, or did they then go online and purchase? That's interesting to see the real impact in the ROI of a store footprint, not just from the sales that go through that register, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's a game changer. Like I speak to some of the uh retailers using the platform and both on the shop floor and to be honest, the feedback we're getting from the retail teams themselves, which means we must be doing something pretty right because we're getting a lot of strong feedback in a positive way from the teams, but they're also heard, which is probably an that hasn't been in place. Like when we have these optimization media and touch number four, we're getting shop floor direct feedback that we can act on and evolve. And this platform is about a retailer building a platform for retailers with that constant collaboration and iteration. And that's you know, I wouldn't say it's necessarily always been 100% by design, but that's certainly the way it's worked out, and now we're erasing it and it's core to what we do.
SPEAKER_02Doug, has it changed the way that you measure the effectiveness of your store footprint? Like I know that you opened a new store last week in Bondi. Has that come from new insights or new ways of measuring how effective a store is?
SPEAKER_00I think the fundamentals of retail are the same for us. It has in that I think you can like we will really look at the portion of VIPs, the portion that have been using tools like Wishlist to do clientelling. Because I think generally speaking, the more that the guys are using Wishlist, the better they're servicing their VIP clients and their key customers, which generally leads to better revenue. So yeah, it kind of that's the way that we would be looking at it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, okay. And Shane, how are most people, I know you mentioned there before, actually, if we go from 20% conversion in store to 22%, then it pays for itself. How are most of your retailers justifying the additional costs and effort of adding the wish list into the mix?
ROI Benchmarks And Rollout Strategy
SPEAKER_01Yeah, certainly. So from an online perspective, if we just put that micellation for a moment, we're seeing ROIs of like 300 times. And I think the last data we looked at well above average of over 150 times as a sort of minimum baseline, is is what the data's telling us. So and that comes down to implementing with the right, you know, the right approach to implementing, making sure the journey's, you know, optimized from an online perspective. It's getting your marketing automation set up, but that's again a differentiator. We we help whilst retailer plays uh sort of signs up to a platform fee and based on the average monthly sessions from an online perspective, but we're actually helping them get set up for success. So we're having those ongoing conversations. We are helping them initially get their marketing automation set up and firing because we know that's what success will look like. And then the next part is from an in-store perspective, we're seeing seeing similar numbers. And the exciting thing is that it's in comparison, like we've got retailers with one store, we've got retailers like Freedom and and Lorna Jane and some big retailers and and a lot in the middle as well. It's a true SaaS platform, we're not a services business. Services, if ever, are are really, really minimal, but it it's we're not. It might be a new integration that is a retailer wants to fast track that in front of others. It might be small costs associated, but generally speaking, it it is a SaaS platform first and foremost. And if IncU put a request in for something that we believe is viable for the platform, everyone gets it. It's not like it has a different build to everyone else. So where I'm getting that is we don't have a lot of overhead. We're relatively speaking, from the you know, over 60 brands on board and growing rapidly, we we don't have a lot of the overheads that traditional legacy tech raw with got that benefit of coming in over the last few years and obviously being cloud first and AI is playing a significant role in dev cycles and things like that. So yeah, really affordable and like I say, uh approachable for someone with one store through the people with hundreds of stores, and we license it per store. But again, it's obviously depends on the size and scale and pricing's match to that. But traditional six-month implementations, we're talking weeks, not even a month or months. The change management, we've put a lot of effort by design to make this an easy process and put a lot of the hard work in getting things right previously that sort of set us up now to not have that big cost base, which in turn for the retailers mean that they're not paying crazy big numbers that traditionally were charged for clientelling platforms.
SPEAKER_02I think it's really interesting the approach that Doug, you and the NQ team took around putting it online first, which I could assume is a simpler lift, and then proving it there and then expanding it out into stores where there might be a little bit more change management involved and a little bit more tech integration, but you've proven it before you actually make that effort to go that step.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, definitely. I think one of the most interesting things, I was just thinking about it then when Shane was speaking, but with Wishlist, is that it's used by our marketing team, it's used by our clientele manager, it's used by the retail ops team, and uh, yeah, of course, it's used by the e-commerce team. And I think everyone's getting a benefit out of it. I don't know if like we use some other tools, but they're always used by one division or sometimes two divisions. So it's kind of cool to see how this is spanned over a lot of different divisions and there's different ways that people are using it, but then it all crosses over because it's all kind of customer at heart.
What’s Next With AI Automation
SPEAKER_02I suppose too, it then becomes a business asset, the more first-party customer data that you get that becomes your competitive mode.
SPEAKER_00Exactly.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, great. Doug, you are coming up to 10 years as the CEO of INCU. Congratulations. That's a crazy stint.
SPEAKER_00Do you know what the craziest that is? What? Is that I've turned 44 this year, and in October I would have worked at INCU for 22 years.
SPEAKER_02Holy moly.
SPEAKER_00I think just keep getting better. There's always new challenges. I feel like you can never get it right. And I think that's the most exciting thing. It's like the first wave was, you know, just growing INCU and growing it to have stores in multiple states. And then what we'd find is that a lot of the international brands that we stocked, they started to come out to Australia. So there was competition there, then digital through COVID, then now, you know, the downturn that we're just about to have and we're having at the moment, all of those things that make it interesting for me. But yeah, the thing I'm onto at the moment is which we probably should have thought about a long time ago, but just knowing what you're good at. And for us, really, we're great at curation and store experience, and then just focusing on that and not to worry too much about what competitors do and leaving them to do what they do really well, but knowing, you know, there's certain things that we can do really well also, and you knowing how to leverage those.
SPEAKER_02Well, you do a phenomenal job of it. And I think you are one of the most humble retail operators in Australia. And if you haven't been into an INCU store, do yourself a favor, go in and have the NQ experience because it is absolutely phenomenal. You've created something totally unique. Everyone feels special when they walk in there. So you should be very proud of that.
SPEAKER_00Appreciate it. Thanks, Bushy.
SPEAKER_02And Shane, tell me what's next for the wish list. Obviously, coming out of 2020, you rode the wave of COVID and everything else that came out of that, the ups and the downs. Now we're 60 retailers on the platform. What does the next stage of the wish list look like for you?
SPEAKER_01It's just constant iterations. So I'll say that that that never stops and it should never stop. We're all, as I mentioned, we're always listening. I'm always looking for opportunities. Matt's, you know, my co-founders put in so much work in their reporting suite and unlocking some capabilities there. There'll never be a shortage of platforms in the ecosystem to integrate with. So some do more and more with planning tools and and things like that, because this intent data can be used everywhere. And even as Doug said, lots of areas of the business, like literally even into buying teams and merch planners and things like that. What we want to continue to do is we've got a playbook that we work with for each retail, and we want to constantly evolve that because that's different for NCU. There's foundations, but it's different for NCU than it is for the Beck and Woods. It is different for Camilla and Mark. So we want to constantly evolve that because we know that is also a key recipe for success. Obviously, AI We did well, didn't we? Like it was right at the end that you dropped the AI bomb. It wouldn't be a podcast if we didn't talk about it and a tech platform. So for us, we have again, I mean, we've been had the product, the online wish list for three years in market. We've had the clientele just over two years now. So we have the luxury of having new technology. And so for us, embedding AI in in in the sort of fabric of of our platform and in all facets is been great. We're now moving across into some of the front-end capabilities that will just further unlock our team members using the platform. But most importantly is we want to give retailers, you know, retailers always say the top 1% is driving so much experience, so much revenue. How do we get the rest of the team up to speed? So we've just dropped automated customer engagement tasks with automated lists because we don't want the teams having to think about what they need to do when they come into store each day. We want these actionable items with predefined templates, ready to go, reach out on someone's birthday, you've just received some new stock, you've already got a pipeline there of customers that shop with you and your store. So we just want it more and more enablement and things like the customer engagement score, which is a first in-market initiative around having oversight in, you know, how do we KPI these things and how do we work with our retailers to just continue to evolve? I love it.
SPEAKER_02I think that's really important. And I know we joked about AI, but everyone will be able to personalize with AI in terms of the, you know, using transactional data, behavioral data. But what I loved, Doug, when you said around understanding the characters and the personality of our customers. And I think for those with retail stores, by being able to capture characters and personality that just go beyond clicks and transactions is a huge competitive advantage and something that will actually deliver true personalization, not just data personalization. And I think the wish list can help people capture that and have those one on one relationships. You're a great example of how you can bring that to life to have relationships that last years and years, which is fantastic. Doug and Shane, thank you so much for joining us on Ad To Cart. That was an awesome conversation. I really loved hearing more around how you're both working together, how you're both raising. The bar for retail and e-commerce in Australia and what we can expect moving forward around our relationship with our customers.
SPEAKER_00Thanks, Bushy. Thanks for having us.
Key Takeaways And Where To Learn More
SPEAKER_02Thanks, Nathan. Cheers, man. What I loved about this conversation is how practical it was. Shane and Doug weren't just talking theory, which is very easy to do when you start talking Omnichannel. They were talking about what actually changes when you give store teams the right tools and most importantly the right incentives. And for any retailer running physical stores alongside an online business, there were some really, really useful things to take away. And I don't think you can get anyone better to learn from from those two. Here are the three things that I took. Number one, the 80% rule. Only about 20% of customers who walk into your store actually buy on that visit. Online, you've probably got five or six platforms chasing that other 80% through retargeting Abandonflow's browser emails. But in store, most retailers have built nothing. And Shane's point was pretty simple. If you can just convert two more people out of that non-buying 80, you've grown your revenue by 10%. The opportunity has always been there. Most retailers just haven't had a way to act on it yet. Secondly, attribution changes behavior. One of the most deliberate design decisions in the wish list is that when a staff member captures a customer intent in store, they get credit if that customer buys later, even if it's online, even if it's weeks down the track. Shane was really clear about why. Without it, store teams have no reason to put in that work. But with it, the way they show up on the floor completely changes. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if they don't get the sale straight away. They're interested in the long-term impact on that customer. It sets the tone for how you do customer service. And lastly, know your customers as characters, not just profiles. I love this. This was Doug's line and it stuck with me. Incue trains their team to see customers as people that they're genuinely curious about. Their personality, where they're going on holiday, what they care about, not just their transaction history or their demographic bucket. The magic of that approach is that it's always memorable. And when you layer a tool like the wish list over the top, that knowledge stops living in individual people's heads and starts traveling with the customer across every store and every interaction in the network. Now, if you want to know more about the wishlist, including seeing some great case studies and seeing how the platform works, head on over to thewishlist.io. That's the wishlist.io and check it out from there. Alternatively, you can shoot Shane a message on LinkedIn and I'm sure he will respond to you in no time. All right, that's it for this week. If you want to discuss anything about omnichannel customer profiling, collecting customer data, personalized interactions, come on over to the Add to Cart community and discuss it there. We would love to have you there. It is free to join, and there are conversations like this happening every day. Head on over to adtocart.com.au and join up for free. I'll see you next week.