Add To Cart: Australia’s eCommerce Show

Kill the School Shoes: How Jess Hatzis Rebuilt a 134-Year-Old Brand in Six Months | #628

Most people know Jess Hatzis from frank body. The coffee scrub brand built on a $10,000 investment, a genderless persona called Frank, and an Instagram strategy so early they were setting alarms through the night to post manually. Eleven years later, a $100 million valuation and one of the most recognised Australian beauty brands in the world. What fewer people talk about is what it actually took to build that. The data before the creative. The hard calls on what to kill. The discipline of knowing when to move and when to wait. Jess is now fractional CMO at Betts, co-founder of Willow & Blake, and building a new consumer brand from scratch. She joined Nathan and Rosa to talk about the unglamorous side of brand building. This one is for anyone who has ever confused a good-looking brand with a well-built one. Connect with Jessica Hatzis [https://au.linkedin.com/in/jessica-hatzis-strategicadvisor]  Explore frank body [https://www.frankbody.com/] Explore Willow & Blake [https://willowandblake.com.au/] Subscribe to the Add To Cart newsletter [https://newsletter.addtocart.com.au/subscribe]  SMS us to Suggest a Guest [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2521371/fan_mail/new] Connect with Nathan Bush [https://au.linkedin.com/in/nathbush] Join the Add To Cart Community  [https://community.addtocart.com.au/]

How to Calculate Your Breakeven Number | #627

Revenue is still the number most ecommerce founders lead with. It's the easiest to celebrate, the easiest to screenshot, and the one that gets the most airtime in strategy conversations. But it's also the number that tells you the least about whether the business is actually working. Most operators are chasing a revenue target that has no maths behind it. Nobody has calculated the one number that gives a revenue target its job. Gross profit might be off. Contribution margin might be close to zero. Overheads might be quietly eating through whatever's left. And the founder usually finds out too late, when cashflow tightens or a BAS payment lands. The brands getting this right do three things differently. In this playbook, based on a conversation with Matt Byrne, founder of Day One Advisory, we cover three things ecommerce operators need to know about calculating a breakeven number that actually works: * Start with the sequence, not the target. Gross profit and contribution margin come before breakeven, and if either is off the breakeven will be too * The formula takes ten minutes, but it only works if you run it twice. Once with the numbers as they are, then again with subscriptions and full people costs included * Use breakeven before you make a decision, not after. Discount campaigns, ad spend targets and stock orders should all be stress tested against it first Connect with Matt Byrne [https://au.linkedin.com/in/matthewbyrneaccountant] Explore Day One Advisory [https://dayoneadvisory.com.au/] Subscribe to the Add To Cart newsletter [https://newsletter.addtocart.com.au/subscribe]  SMS us to Suggest a Guest [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2521371/fan_mail/new] Connect with Nathan Bush [https://au.linkedin.com/in/nathbush] Join the Add To Cart Community  [https://community.addtocart.com.au/]

Business Prison: Grant Arnott on the PE Deal That Cost Him More Than Click Frenzy | #626

Grant Arnott built Click Frenzy from his bedroom into Australia's most iconic online sale event. Then one private equity decision cost him nearly everything, including, for a while, his reason to stay. He chose this conversation over every other request. When Click Frenzy and Power Retail went into receivership in March 2026, interview requests came in from multiple outlets. Grant turned them all down. Add To Cart was the only interview he agreed to do. Grant founded Power Retail in 2010 as a one-person media business built to champion Australian ecommerce. Two years later he launched Click Frenzy, Australia's original online mega-sale event, modelled on the US Black Friday format before that term had any real currency here. For over a decade he ran both businesses debt-free, funnelling hundreds of millions of dollars through Australian retailers and building the events and publications the industry grew up inside. Then he took a private equity deal. The business was profitable. It was cashflow positive. He didn't need to. He's since described it as the greatest regret of his life. In this episode, Grant tells that story for the first time. Today, we're discussing: * Why Grant took private equity money when Click Frenzy was already flying, what he hoped the partnership would deliver, and the moment in mid-2022 when it became clear the deal had fundamentally changed who he was in the business [12:40] * The phone call where a board member told him he could return as CEO but only for no salary and only if he repaid his dividends, with Kylie in tears beside him. Why that one conversation became the turning point into the darkest period of his life [29:57] * Standing at the kerb of a main road after board meetings and calculating his $10 million insurance policy against his debts. Grant describes weighing up, in specific detail, whether his family would be financially better off without him [37:29] * The morning he burst into tears getting his coffee and knew something had to change, the psychologist he found shortly after, and why getting help was "the best money I ever spent" [40:29] * Being named industry person of the year at the ORIA’s while privately calculating life insurance payouts. Grant on why public recognition made the shame harder, not easier, and how he learned to deliberately separate his identity from the business. https://addtocart.com.au/add-to-cart/real-ecommerce-talk-success-failure-and-not-giving-a-fck-with-anaita-sarkar-441/[46:18] * "I'm out of business prison now": what Grant is building next, why he is a builder not a shopper, and why the AI tools available today make starting fresh more exciting than when he launched Power Retail in 2010 [55:09] Connect with Grant Arnott  [https://au.linkedin.com/in/grantarnott] If you or someone you know is struggling you may contact: Lifeline: 13 11 14 — https://www.lifeline.org.au [https://www.lifeline.org.au] Beyond Blue: 1300 22 4636 — https://www.beyondblue.org.au [https://www.beyondblue.org.au] Subscribe to the Add To Cart newsletter [https://newsletter.addtocart.com.au/subscribe]  SMS us to Suggest a Guest [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2521371/fan_mail/new] Connect with Nathan Bush [https://au.linkedin.com/in/nathbush] Join the Add To Cart Community  [https://community.addtocart.com.au/]

How to Create a Hero Product as an Entry Point | #625

Most ecommerce brands can tell you their best-converting product. Fewer can tell you whether that product is bringing in the right customer. There's a difference. A product can have excellent front-end economics and still be filling your database with people who buy once and never come back. The ROAS looks good. The CAC looks manageable. But six months later, the repeat purchase rate is telling a different story. The brands getting this right do three things differently. In this playbook, based on a conversation with Sam Moore, founder of PYRA, we cover three things ecommerce operators need to know about building a hero product as an entry point to the brand: * Choose the hero product on purpose. Most brands stumble into it by accident * The gap between purchase one and purchase two is where most brands lose the customer * If the hero product only gets bought once, build the ecosystem around it Connect with Sam Moore [https://au.linkedin.com/in/sam-moore-2a93b632]  Explore PYRA [https://www.pyraelements.com/] Subscribe to the Add To Cart newsletter [https://newsletter.addtocart.com.au/subscribe]  SMS us to Suggest a Guest [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2521371/fan_mail/new] Connect with Nathan Bush [https://au.linkedin.com/in/nathbush] Join the Add To Cart Community  [https://community.addtocart.com.au/]

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

The whole ecommerce industry is racing to ship faster. Paula Mitchell thinks that's the wrong race. Paula came to that view the hard way. After building ecommerce at Rebel Sport, Dan Murphy's and General Pants across 25 years, she joined Freedom as Digital GM and spent the first few months driving home wondering what she'd walked into. Furniture is not fashion. Made-to-order lead times run 12 to 16 weeks. Customers plan their lives around delivery windows. A $10,000 sofa carries emotional weight that a $70 t-shirt just doesn't. Five years in, Paula is running one of the most-awarded omnichannel operations in Australia: 50 stores, six distribution centres, 160 third-party vendors, 70,000 SKUs, and a digital team of 12. Nathan Bush and Rosa-Clare Willis sit down with Paula to dig into why the industry's fixation on speed misses what furniture customers actually need, and how Freedom built the stack and team culture to move fast without losing brand trust. Today, we're discussing: * Why certainty beats speed in high-consideration ecommerce, and what last-mile delivery in big-ticket categories actually demands [10:15] * How Freedom chose dropship over marketplace to protect brand trust, and why that meant owning returns in-store for third-party products too [14:47] * Running 30-plus ad variations per campaign with the same team size, and what AI actually changed about how Freedom's performance marketers spend their time [29:44] * Attribution across omnichannel: why last-click would have defunded every social channel, and what mixed media modelling revealed about TV [35:55] * A digital team of 12 managing 70,000 SKUs, how they're structured, and why Paula thinks the job title itself might be a legacy item [47:46] * What's next: a kiosk trial across 7 stores, an AI-driven inspiration mode for the website, and the feature Freedom just decommissioned [55:22] Connect with Paula [https://www.linkedin.com/in/paula-mitchell-au/] | Explore Freedom [https://www.freedom.com.au/] | Connect with Rosa-Clare [https://www.linkedin.com/in/rosa-clare-willis-23761066/] | Connect with Nathan [https://au.linkedin.com/in/nathbush] This episode is supported by Shopify [https://www.shopify.com/au] and Klaviyo [https://www.klaviyo.com/au]. Subscribe to the Add To Cart newsletter [https://newsletter.addtocart.com.au/subscribe]  SMS us to Suggest a Guest [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2521371/fan_mail/new] Connect with Nathan Bush [https://au.linkedin.com/in/nathbush] Join the Add To Cart Community  [https://community.addtocart.com.au/]