Simon Dell (00:01)
Welcome to another CMO, CMO Fractional ⁓ Marketing Podcast. I can't even say my own business name. There you go, it's been one of those weeks. If you don't know who I am, my name is Simon Dell. I'm the CEO of CMO. If you don't know who CMO is, ⁓ c-e-m-o-h.com. We are Australia's largest fractional marketing network. Probably the world's largest fractional marketing network and no one's ever gonna pull me up on that. So I might as well just claim that.

And so if you, yes, if you want to find out anything about us, go and visit the website. You can find me on LinkedIn, Simon Dell, ⁓ or email me, Simon at Simo.com. ⁓ I have a returning guest today. I think he's been on there quite a few times now. I lose track of it, but welcome once again to the podcast. Chris Jowsey, how are you?

Chris Jowsey (00:54)
I'm doing well, Simon. Thanks for having me on.

Simon Dell (00:56)
Is

this your third time or second time or? I kind of feel it was more than that, maybe I'll, ⁓ know, maybe when you do third, maybe you ought to get a little trophy or something, something like that. Okay, so just first of all, let's tell everyone a little bit about you. You're down in Sydney, but tell us, give us a of your background and everything.

Chris Jowsey (01:00)
I to say it's second. I want to say it's

Yeah, I could be wrong.

Yeah, sure. So yeah, I'm a fractional CMO. I have been for probably the last five or six years and my background is working in primarily digital marketing in the e-comm space, working for big tech companies. And then really in my capacity as a fractional CMO, I work across e-commos, brands, tech companies, professional services firms. But really, know, my remit is how to take kind of digital strategies and help businesses grow.

So yeah, that's my summary.

Simon Dell (01:55)
Cool, no, that's perfect.

That's perfect, perfect. Now today we're gonna talk about something called the Auspost 2026 e-commerce report. And we're gonna talk about it, because there is some really interesting statistics in there. But give us a little bit of an overview about what that report is and who's producing it. Obviously it's Australia Post, but for the people that perhaps aren't in Australia.

Give us some context in that.

Chris Jowsey (02:27)
Yeah, guess, mean, Australia Post, our main delivery network here in Australia. AUS Post, I think, have been producing this report for about 10 or 11 years, I think. And so I'd say it's really the leading report in Australia around the e-commerce market as far as kind of sales activity, as well as what are the key trends in market as it pertains to e-commerce. And really, that's kind of ramped up since...

since COVID. yeah, I'd say each year now it's published around the March timeframe and it's a good insight into kind of what's been happening in the last 12 months around e-comm and consumer behaviour I think in this space and ⁓ yeah, I think there's a couple of interesting trends and how things are shifting.

Simon Dell (03:16)
Yeah.

And I have to say there is a lot of data in it. There is a lot of information and largely all of that information is extremely interesting and pertinent to anybody that is operating in any sort of ⁓ online retail space in Australia or if you're not in Australia and you're still selling into Australia, it's important as well. But we're not gonna be able to sort of look at every single stat, otherwise we'll be here until Saturday. But what we're gonna do is we're gonna look at, I just wanted to sort of highlight,

few of them and just get your thoughts on the numbers, the trends that are changing ⁓ and the long-term impact of that. I think, you know, the first one is obviously we're all spending a lot of money online. It's according to the report is $82 billion, which is a huge amount. ⁓ But I think that the interesting...

The most notable part of that is that that growth seems to be slowing down. So what were your what was your thoughts on that? It's 14 % year on year, but that's that's compared to what it has been.

Chris Jowsey (04:26)
Yeah, I would say it's, if you look back in the last five years, if you think about since COVID, there was a huge amount of growth that came off the back of COVID in e-commerce in general, obviously with lots of businesses shut down. So we saw this big kind of upward tick in that kind of 2020, 2021, 22 period. And that was really, you know, that was a goldmine for most businesses at that stage.

And then probably 2023, 24, we started to see a bit more of a slowdown, a bit more of a correction that had to happen. Those kinds of growth rates were never gonna continue. And so I think 25 was, we started to see growth uptick again. And so the 14 % number, I think is still pretty solid growth. But it's worth kind of caveating that this report really is up until the end of 2025.

Simon Dell (04:57)
Yeah.

Chris Jowsey (05:21)
I think as most people know, 2026 has been a bit of a basket case so far across many areas.

Simon Dell (05:32)
Chris, that's understatement of the year, that is.

Chris Jowsey (05:36)
So I think we kind of have to caveat onto this report with what's kind of happening here and now. If you look at the latest consumer confidence numbers, they're kind of the lowest in 50 years or something. already things are really slowing down at a fast rate. Obviously, RBA has taken interest rates up. So it's going to change a lot or already is happening. So we should expect that these numbers are going to soften a lot.

Simon Dell (05:40)
Yeah.

Chris Jowsey (06:03)
⁓ I, and I doing.

Simon Dell (06:04)
Yeah.

A couple of other interesting things that I saw is that online retail is 24 % of total retail. So we'll talk about traditional retail in a minute as well. ⁓ But one of the other interesting numbers here, two interesting numbers, number one is that 41 % of people are shopping online fortnightly. ⁓ And the one that really stood out to me was

16 retailers per household. So what that means is that the average household, and this is average household, is buying from 16 different online stores. And I guess my question to you is, can you think of 16 stores that you buy from online?

Chris Jowsey (06:53)
Well, I think there's probably the four or five go-tos for most things. And then I reckon if you go through my credit card statement, there's probably a whole, there's probably another 15 or 20 random ones. And so yeah, I think that, I mean, in the stats they've given the report, I think it's doubled in the last 10 years. But I think it's, you know, that's, I think that's an indication of obviously people's buying behaviours where, you know, if you're not buying through major say,

Simon Dell (06:57)
Yeah.

Hahaha.

Probably.

Chris Jowsey (07:21)
grocery outlets or major marketplaces like Amazon and eBay and Timo, et cetera. You've probably got then, you know, five to 10 retailers that you may, know, ⁓ buy from probably on a little bit more irregular basis. But it's definitely changed a lot. think, you know, we're seeing this kind of broader spectrum of

of retailers that people are comfortable purchasing from. think as well in the last kind of five years, know, the experience for most people buying online is fairly consistent now. I mean, five years ago, you would stay away from a lot of e-commerce sites just because they weren't, you know, there was no trust there. You weren't probably comfortable buying from half of them. And so you probably stayed to ones that you're probably more comfortable in.

particularly for the older demographics. And we'll come to that later, I think, as far as kind of this huge amount of growth in that area. But yeah, think that's probably, you know, it's one of the bigger trends, I think, in the last couple of years is just, you know, there's a broad spectrum now of retailers. There's also this habit as well of people buying from multiple brands. You know, I think this came up maybe last year's report or the year before where

Simon Dell (08:25)
Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Jowsey (08:46)
There's just not a lot of brand loyalty when it comes to buying online. So, you know, whether it's jumping because the latest sales are on and particularly the younger demographic, they're quite happy with jumping between shops and brands, whoever's got the best deal. And so I think that's also a good driver.

Simon Dell (09:07)
It's interesting because when I saw that stat and I read that, I was sitting there going, do I buy from 16, whether I'm the demographic or not, do I buy from 16 different retailers? And guess straight away you've got your major supermarkets, Amazon, you said, Timo and things like that. And what I thought was quite interesting, certainly from me, is the variety of weird shit I buy online.

And reading this report, maybe sit down and go, what was the last five things I bought online? And I'm just sitting there going, it was bizarre because I went, I bought a box of pesticide.

I'd say these are my five last five things Chris. A box of pesticide, because one of my chili plants was being attacked by some sort of fungus, right? Or fungicide, whatever, right? ⁓ And I was like, can I be bothered to drive to Bunnings for a $10 pack of fungicide? I was like, no, fuck it, I get it delivered, right? The second one was a party game. I buy a lot of games, ball games, you can kind of see them on the back here. I buy a lot of those, you know, that's fairly standard for me. I buy way too many of them.

Chris Jowsey (10:00)
Yeah, all right, last five.

Simon Dell (10:28)
I bought a watch off TeeMu because I just genuinely was interested in seeing what a $5 watch from TeeMu looks like or it was a $10 watch. And I have to say it lived up to all of the expectations of a $5 watch. And then I bought some mouth guards for my kids who had just started to play rugby. And then bizarrely this morning, Chris, I bought a trombone online.

Chris Jowsey (10:56)
That's hilarious. Where do you get a trombone from by the way?

Simon Dell (10:57)
My stomach.

There was a store in Sydney. My son is learning the trombone at school. He's still at primary school, but they were like, don't buy an expensive trombone until he goes to high school. So go and get the cheap one that he can use for the next two years.

Chris Jowsey (11:17)
Just as a side thing, what baffles me, I find this with Timo, is that you could buy something for a dollar, get it shipped here, and how the economics of that work, I have no idea. In the sense that you can make it, you can pack it, you can ship it, comes all the way to Australia for a dollar. It's baffling.

Simon Dell (11:19)
I'm on audio.

Look the whole team who and what's the other one that everyone buys from team who and Shane yeah, yeah, I bought some stuff from there and largely I would probably say 25 % of it has been what I would consider, know good value for money You know, the rest of it has been you know questionable and now we're off on a tangent here But did do you think those I? Find those platforms problematic because I still don't know what I'm buying

Chris Jowsey (11:44)
Shane's yellow.

Simon Dell (12:06)
Whereas when I'm on Amazon, I'm like, I know what this is and I know that it's easy to return. Do you think the Sheens and this T-Mos of this world, are they gonna survive or where do you think that's gonna go?

Chris Jowsey (12:23)
I think it's actually, going the other way. If you look at the, I mean, the stats in the report, it's something like, know, Timo grew like 60 odd percent year on year. So it's very early days, huge amount of growth if you think about how big it is. And marketplaces in Australia, I think are like 23 % of the total number. Whereas you go to Asia and other parts of the world, you're talking 50%, 60 % of all online sales are through marketplaces.

Simon Dell (12:39)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Chris Jowsey (12:53)
The whole marketplace thing I think is still pretty nascent here. mean, when Amazon came a couple of years ago, obviously everyone was still used to buying through eBay and Amazon internationally. And then eBay came and set up, came and set up shop here. And then, you know, more recently, Tmoo. yeah, I can only say growing.

Simon Dell (13:16)
Yeah, look, I just find it when you like, if you go to buy something, if you go, you know, I wanna trombone, you end up being bombarded with 50 different retailers selling trombones who are all rated in the same way, have all got 4.6 stars. You just go, well, which one am I buying? And why should I be buying it? And you end up buying it on price and not quality. I think, and that's an interesting thing is do you think there is perhaps a trend?

online that people are going to look for places that are going to deliver the quality to them now. Perhaps we've gone maybe through the bottom, you know, basement of the internet and e-commerce and now we're coming out the other side where people are going, all right, yeah, I still want to buy online, but I want it to be decent. I want to buy what I'm buying to be decent.

Chris Jowsey (14:05)
Yeah.

I just think what you're seeing now is that there's bigger differences or there's kind of bigger differences in kind of certain segments of the market that are becoming quite obvious and whether that's kind of demographics between differences between the young and the old or as you say more price conscious versus ⁓ people that see value. I just think there's a broader market now that can offer

all of those things. I just think being really clear about what your proposition is and whether that's, as you say, it's, know, if you want to go chase price, you can chase price, but being clear about what your proposition is in market. And particularly when you go to, you know, if you decide as a smaller e-commerce business that you're going to sell via marketplaces or sell direct, you've got to be super clear about how you're going to proposition yourself across both of those. Because you can get into trouble, particularly the smaller.

players, you go and start selling products on Amazon, et cetera. Your margins get squeezed. It might be great as an acquisition channel. But then you've got to really think about, how are you going to differentiate between what you're offering on your own DTC site versus what you're seeing on marketplaces? Because it's very easy to fall into the price trap then, because most people on Amazon, et cetera, are to looking for the cheapest.

Simon Dell (15:23)
Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Jowsey (15:33)
the cheapest price or the highest rating.

Simon Dell (15:35)
Yeah, well, let's

flag that because I think that's quite interesting is that one other quick comment there is that the average basket size is around $96, which is kind of where I always imagined, which is where I always thought it was. So that doesn't necessarily surprise me. And again, another number that doesn't surprise me, but is quite big is that 73 % of people wait for a sale.

before making a purchase. Yeah, that seems like we're all just sitting here in this circle waiting for the online retailers to discount before we make the purchase.

Chris Jowsey (16:22)
Look,

mean, some of that, that's trained behavior, right? Because most people now are, most retailers are in the cycle of Black Friday, South Monday, before it was boxing day, maybe end of financial year. There was a couple of times through the year, but most people are trained now. You've got these big sales events and then through the year, you've got heavy discount. And I think we just came out of a period of...

of kind of heavy discounting the last couple of years where e-tailers are kind of using that as a primary acquisition tool. The problem is everyone then starts to expect it. And particularly the younger demographics, they'll essentially just jump around waiting for the best deal.

Simon Dell (17:03)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. It's it's I don't think it's I mean, that's the difference if you're making a decision to purchase something, maybe that's an age thing as well. Because I'm sort of going, you know, I'm not going to sit and wait for a week, two weeks or till, you know, November for a sale. ⁓ You know, if I need a trombone, I need a trombone now. You know, I can't sit there and wait for that retailer to put trombones on discount. ⁓

So I think personally there's this, there's probably, there's purchases that are necessities and then purchases that are perhaps luxuries.

Chris Jowsey (17:52)
Yeah, that's right.

Simon Dell (17:54)
And I just, yeah, and I just wonder, that's, 73 then just seems really high. I don't know why that's.

Maybe that's just, maybe that's they're not always waiting for the sales, but that's just maybe that's just a, ⁓ you know, just a flag that they're looking for. anyway, ⁓ there's a lot of other stuff here. ⁓ Another thing I thought was quite interesting was the buy now pay later splitting. seems to be, that seems to be a key thing. Is that something you still see growing?

Chris Jowsey (18:29)
Yeah, I think this probably ties back to the shrinking basket sizes is that, and you've got now, there's a lot more people buying, like your example where you're buying groceries, you're buying fertilizer, all the kind of stuff you'd normally go to Carl's Woollies Bunnings for. People are getting quite comfortable just buying those online, getting it delivered the next day. So that's shrinking basket sizes. And then, from a payment standpoint,

People are used to then just having accounts from a buy now pay later standpoint, splitting it over four payments. It just becomes the norm for a lot of people. They may have a PayPal account, then they have a buy now pay later, or both, and they'll just kind of oscillate between the two as opposed to just lumping everything on a credit card. So that's definitely shrinking, it's definitely shrinking basket sizes, but that's an opportunity in itself because if

If brands are doing a good job around retention, they should be able to leverage that frequency.

Simon Dell (19:34)
Yeah,

I find the buy now pay later really, really easy to use, like probably too easy to use. The trombone was on buy now pay later. was like, you could you just sit there and go why bother doing it?

Chris Jowsey (19:41)
Yeah, that's a problem.

Simon Dell (19:48)
now why give the money when you don't have to give the money especially if there's no you know there's no interest being charged and you know and all those kind of things so but you know just to sort of keep pushing through this ⁓ ai was a big part of this ⁓ report so tell me a little bit about some of the sort of key outtakes from the ai section of this

Chris Jowsey (20:11)
Yeah, I think that Australia Post were leaning in heavily to really just kind of talking about in the next three or four years where it's going around agent e-commerce. so that's really the ability for people to buy end to end ⁓ using AI. Obviously, we're not quite there yet. I think the stats they had in the report was something like they're expecting 30 % of all e-commerce sales to go through an agent in the next three years.

Simon Dell (20:28)
Yeah.

Chris Jowsey (20:41)
But I think the biggest thing right now is really at that discovery layer. Most people now are quite comfortable using Chad or Claude or whatever their favorite AI tool is to at least discover brands. And I think there was a stat in there around 65 % of people globally are using AI for product research. And so I think the biggest opportunity for brands at the moment is really to sort out what they're doing around, most people are used to.

Simon Dell (21:00)
Yeah.

Chris Jowsey (21:10)
investing heavily in SEO, it's shifting that budget to GEO, AEO, ⁓ focus programs, making sure that they appear across, ⁓ you know, answer engines and as well as appearing ⁓ on Google as well from an AI mode standpoint.

Simon Dell (21:24)
Yeah.

I think to me the AI thing, the danger in the AI thing is a lack of, a lack of discoverability, right? And I think if you're coming onto a website that let's say has thousands of products, ⁓ my question is if the AI there is gonna guide you through a sale or whatever it ever is you want.

Where is there a danger do you think that customers will become reliant on AI and that the AI will make the sale so easy that you don't get this opportunity for the customer to look at other products? Do you think it moves that browsing aspect of being online?

Chris Jowsey (22:12)
Absolutely.

Yeah, it does. I think that there's a high level of trust that people have in it, just the way that, you know, most generative AI tools work in the face that most people are, it gives confident answers, right? So if you want to say, okay, compare this bike brand with, and, you know, tell me two others that I should consider, it's going to confidently come back with, you know, two or three other options. You probably, you're not going to go,

past those two or three options, you're gonna just consider those brands and then move on. And you'll end up just doing that, getting comfortable with that approach for everything. So unless you're in that two or three brand consideration window, most people aren't gonna step outside that. I mean, you can see the results already where most people are using, when they're using AI, they don't click outside to even read, you know, they're

Simon Dell (22:46)
Mm.

Yeah.

Chris Jowsey (23:10)
soon they're going, okay, I better go review those three brands that Chats give them in just to make sure the data is correct. People are just taking it on first pass, particularly for, you know, 10, 20, 30, $50 items. They're not going to going to read the detail about it.

Simon Dell (23:24)
Yeah.

Well,

yeah, but then but then when that item arrives and it's a piece of shit you you go I think that that that damages the whole You know ⁓ proposition of AI because I mean there was an article this week about someone who'd made up a made up a story and posted it on reddit and then you know two days later found out that ⁓ You know one a chat GPT or whoever it was was was

was saying it was the truth verbatim. It hadn't gone back to check any sources. So I wonder whether retailers who rely too heavily on AI are gonna find that that browsability is going to disappear and somehow that's gonna affect their income or affect their revenue.

Chris Jowsey (24:20)
I mean, it's definitely going to shopfronts for sure. And look, there's going to be data sources like that. know, some of them are shifting between, you know, having a heavy ⁓ focus on Reddit, where others don't invest as heavily on forums as far as data sources, and that's going to shift and change. And then you've got people like Shopify who are building agent capabilities straight in. so...

Simon Dell (24:23)
Mmm.

Yeah.

Chris Jowsey (24:48)
You know, where shops are used to having product data feed into Google shopping, for example, you know, they'll have those capabilities that will build directly into chat GPT, et cetera. And hopefully that cleans up a lot of the issues that, you know, we may be seeing at the moment just around kind of accuracy of data.

Simon Dell (25:00)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, okay. ⁓ There was something else here. talking about ⁓ the difference. You mentioned it earlier on the difference in generational spend. The older that you get, the more you prefer certainty over speed, which is applicable in a lot of my life as well. Not just e-commerce. ⁓

Chris Jowsey (25:20)
Yeah.

Simon Dell (25:38)
But boomers are not boomers and I'm certainly not a boomer and I'll fight anyone who says otherwise. ⁓ But us Gen Xers, where's the growth coming from? it the boomers? Is it the Gen Xers? Is there still room for the Gen Zs to be buying more?

Chris Jowsey (25:52)
Yeah.

Yeah, think the last couple of years in the report, they've really highlighted the growth thing really from Gen X upwards. Builders in particular, which is 80 odd plus, small part of the market, but even boomers and builders combined, I think it's 35%. So it's a big part of the market. They've got the biggest basket size. They've got the most amount of money to spend. And so that segment in particular.

Simon Dell (26:07)
Mm.

Chris Jowsey (26:25)
Yeah, there's a really good chart in there, I think, that shows the upward slope of importance of, as you say, certainty over speed. And by the time you get to builders, it's something like 95 % say certainty over speed, which probably makes sense to kind of time on their hands. So speed's not that much of an issue. Whereas it's probably 50-50 when you look at Gen Z. And so if you're, you know, if you're a... ⁓

Simon Dell (26:35)
Mmm.

Chris Jowsey (26:54)
high street fashion retailer that's really targeting that Gen Z audience, then you've got to offer speed and certainty. There was some stats in there from Iconic around the impact of conversion for delivery next day versus delivery in two days. So for people in that kind of segment and audience, speed's really important. But as you say, the later you get on,

Simon Dell (27:18)
Hmm.

Chris Jowsey (27:21)
It's more important to say, I'm going to deliver it on Friday and guarantee that you'll deliver on Friday versus you'll get it tomorrow. ⁓

Simon Dell (27:28)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

It's yeah. It's ⁓ I mean, again, I look back on all the things, those five things I bought this week and I go, what, what to me was important. And now you've just said it. And there was a, there was a comment here that, ⁓ if you give them an arrival date or an arrival day versus some ambiguous fast delivery, that's what, that's what that older generation wants.

So for example, keep going back to the trombone, but the trombone was, hey, it will arrive in five days time. So I'm like, okay, well I will buy that because there is certainty that in five days time it will be here. If they give me an ambiguous, hey, it's gonna get there as quickly as we can. You're like, well, what does that mean? So I think that's, think you make this some fantastic points there. And I think the other thing that was in this section was parcel lockers.

Chris Jowsey (27:57)
That's right.

That's right.

Simon Dell (28:26)
Have you ever used a parcel locker?

Chris Jowsey (28:28)
I haven't used them. I've seen them from time to time and I think I was supposed to try to do a good job in the report and just squeezing it in, just letting people know that they exist. they were quite, they're quite open about the stats I think. Most people don't even know they exist, but they would consider it. So, I think it's one of those things, if you've got into the habit of using it and you found it beneficial, particularly if you, you know.

Simon Dell (28:44)
Yeah.

Chris Jowsey (28:56)
live next to one or near one in a ⁓ high density area or something, ⁓ then it's going to be handy.

Simon Dell (29:01)
Mmm. I don't

yeah, I mean expensive items may be but You know, I live in a street where they just throw things on the front of my door and I come and pick it up later on it If someone wants to You know if someone wants to steal a pack of pesticide from the front my front door then you know knock them they can knock themselves out so ⁓ Last last thing we're talking about today is discovery ⁓

Chris Jowsey (29:10)
That's right.

Simon Dell (29:29)
And this statement seems to be the most obvious statement to make here, but just talk about the impact of it. And the statement is, Australians use social media now for product discovery. That seems blatantly obvious, but talk to me about how that's changing everything.

Chris Jowsey (29:48)
Yeah, so I think the key change, think most people really since COVID anyway have really kind of shifted to social for discovery. And it's things like live shopping. It's been a trend that's been big in China. We've probably all seen the memes of the Chinese female presenters who hold up a piece of clothing every two seconds and they're selling like $100 million worth.

Simon Dell (30:11)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Jowsey (30:17)
So that type of thing, think, you know, in mid 2000s, in the early 2000s, we used to have live TV shopping, you know, the old Demzel and TVSN networks, you'd go on Kerryann, Kennelly, and you'd have a five minute slot and you'd sell your wares. And so it's basically the online version of that. And so TikTok Shop isn't currently available ⁓ in Australia yet. That's probably the biggest, the biggest one that's coming.

Simon Dell (30:38)
Mmm.

Chris Jowsey (30:47)
And so, you know, that's, I think eBay Live just launched last year. So that's probably the next big thing, particularly for the younger demographic. So yeah, that's a trend I think that'll only continue.

Simon Dell (30:53)
Yeah.

It's it's after you often talk about, know, how people complaining about the how the boomers have got all the money and all those kind of things. But one of the interesting things whenever I get into this argument and I frequently get into this argument is that if you're a Gen Zed now and you have the capacity and a passion for something right, whatever it is, you can sit and make yourself a business and a extremely successful business.

shopping online, selling things online, presenting online in a way that no boomer and to be fair, no Gen X ever could. You could literally be starting up tomorrow and as long as you've got your shit together, you could be making a lot of money. The options out there now, I think for people to become e-commerce sellers without actually being an e-commerce seller, does that make sense? I think that they're huge.

Chris Jowsey (32:01)
Yeah.

Simon Dell (32:03)
Huge options out there.

Chris Jowsey (32:05)
Yeah, absolutely. You see that with the whole influencer space. mean, people are just using their leverage or leveraging ⁓ their audiences really to ⁓ sell product. So it's really just an extension of that. But as you say, you won't need a physical shop front. You don't need an e-commerce shop front. You're really just adding a buy button to ⁓ whichever your network of choice is.

Simon Dell (32:20)
Yeah. Yeah.

And I think the other key thing is, again, in the past, you were like, oh, well, now I've got to go and source some products in China, and I've got to, you organize some drop shipping and all that shit. But now it's not even that. Now it's just, I'm just going to simply pass this sale on to someone else who's going to fulfill it for me. And I'm just going to take a cut or a commission or some revenue on the way through. So, yeah.

Chris Jowsey (32:40)
Yeah.

Simon Dell (32:57)
There seems to me to be all these fantastic options for people out there as well that I think are growing and growing. And if people out there wanna make some money, especially if you find a niche, if you can find a niche that no one is tapping into, you kind of mentioned the, ⁓ I tell you what this is screaming out for. If you're over 80 years old, you talk about the builders, right? ⁓ That sort of, the builders and the boomers,

people teaching them and showing them ⁓ places to go on holiday. Places to go on holiday that are good for them, if that makes sense. But they need that influencer in their age range to teach them because that would be a trust thing. ⁓ We've got a client who does tours to Japan and these are expensive tours and they're expensive.

and they are really only targeted at anybody over a certain age, 65, 70. I can just imagine an influencer in that space who is that age talking to that age demographic, absolutely making a fortune.

Chris Jowsey (34:12)
Absolutely.

Simon Dell (34:13)
So maybe I've got another 10, 15 years and that's what I'm gonna be doing then. But okay, look, we're finished up there. Just tell us like maybe your sort of key outtakes or if there's any other key outtakes that you think ⁓ would be important for people to remember.

Chris Jowsey (34:36)
Yeah, look, I think at the top, we started saying that, things are obviously going to slow down. That's definitely going to happen. think, particularly now that people are looking to shop more frequently, more regularly, ⁓ of acquisition is going to go up. And so I think you've really got to be careful about maintaining margins. You've really got to focus on retention, keeping the customers you've got.

So that's, you know, whether it's loyalty programs, having a really good EDM and automation program. These are the types of things you need to focus on now to make sure that you're, you know, you're basically leveraging and getting the most out of your existing customers or all the databases over this next period.

Simon Dell (35:23)
Okay, look, there's a lot of information. Anyone who wants to download the report, it's nice and easy to find online. ⁓ know, quick search will send you in that right direction. ⁓ Give it to an AI bot and tell them to get the key things out of it that are important for you. ⁓ The last thing I wanted to say is if you watch this ⁓ and you are interested in having a chat with Chris,

⁓ Chris can obviously have a longer conversation about e-commerce and strategy and all those kind of bits and pieces. ⁓ I think Chris's smiley face is on our front page of our website at the moment ⁓ as, let me just check, there he is. So if you scroll down the front page of the website, you'll see right there, Chris Jowsey, view his profile. You can actually connect and talk to him directly now through.

that profile on the CMO website so ⁓ Do that ask him and he'll have a chat and I'm sure he would give normally will give some of your time free of charge for that initial consolation consultation, so ⁓ So do that he's on the front page of the website Thank You Chris ⁓ Appreciate that any any sort of final words to everybody out there?

Chris Jowsey (36:23)
Absolutely.

No, think, yeah, it's been an interesting start to the year and I reckon everyone's just got to hold on for what's next.

Simon Dell (36:43)
Okay.

Yeah, it's certain people in certain places making financial decisions for us, I feel, but, you know, it's not a lot, not a lot we can do other than just keep our fingers crossed and hope it resolves itself. So anyway, thank you again. We will plan out the third one. When you do a third one, I will get a little trophy or something like that. ⁓ And then you can display it on your shelves behind you versus me versus me and the various assorted pieces at Childish Junk on my shelves.

by me. but mate, thank you very much. It's been, it's been super helpful and I really appreciate your insights.

Chris Jowsey (37:24)
Cheers, thanks, Albert.

Simon Dell (37:25)
All right.