eCommerce Australia

Shawn Singh was managing 40–50 people at a fintech by day and building a copper drinkware brand between 5pm and 7pm every night. Then Valentine's Day 2025 hit,250 orders landed over a single weekend, and he and his wife packed every one of them on the living room floor, with 10 pallets of stock stacked in the garagebehind them.In this episode, Shawn joins Ryan Martin (Host and Founder of Remarkable Digital) to unpack how Copper Culture went froman off-the-shelf Shopify theme to a multi-market brand selling into Australia,the US and 17 duty-free markets, and why he'd rather be the best copper drinkware brand outside India than the biggest.It's an honest one: the money lost learning Meta, the 51% jump in the copper price over 12 months, and a live teardown of a supplier sample that scored "7.5 out of 10" and still got rejected.WHAT WE COVER• Why a lunch-and-learn from the Arms of Eve founders was the final push to quit the day job• Building to a few million in lifetime sales on a default Shopify theme• Google first, Meta second: why it took 18–24 months to tame the beast, and what it cost along the way• The Valentine's gift set that changed everything, no discount, just better packaging and a message flip from "you need a copper bottle" to "give your loved ones a copper bottle"• The UGC engine: triggering review requests 48 hours after delivery (not 14 or 21 days) and offering a coupon to upgrade a text review to video• The real science of copper: antimicrobial to 99%+ within three hours, plus the copper toxicity warning Shawn puts on every box• Copper up 51% in 12 months, 300g in a bottle and up to a kilo in a dispenser, how Copper Culture protected margin without passing on the full increase• Manufacturing in India's copper cottage industry: why a supplier that tripled output still can't keep up with a business that grew 6x• Testing new markets and SKUs: 200-300 unit runs, six-week sell-through rules, and why Moscow mule mugs fly in Australia but not the US• Why a real-time profit dashboard is the first thing Shawn checks every morning (and the mate who did $25k in revenue for $800 profit)CHAPTERS00:00 – Cold open01:27 – Welcome: Shawn Singh, Copper Culture01:57 – Rebuilding the site with Clever Conversions02:11 – The first website his wife designed, and the millions it carried04:42 – Fintech by day, ecommerce by night05:36 – The Arms of Eve lunch-and-learn that changed everything06:00 – Google traction first, then 18–24 months learning Meta07:20 – Valentine's Day 2025: 250 orders packed in the living room10:22 – The copper pitch — and the toxicity warning11:47 – How to actually use a copper bottle day to day12:50 – Hammered vs polished, and why hammering matters13:37 – Indian grandparents, an Ayurvedic practitioner, and terrible Amazon bottles15:32 – The Valentine's gift set and the AOV unlock16:49 – Demand capture on Google vs demand generation on Meta18:01 – In-house, offshore, then Swann Studio19:46 – The UGC machine: the 48-hour post-delivery review trigger23:19 – Copper up 51%: margins, pricing and a lower CAC26:11 – Live sample teardown: what a 7.5/10 looks like30:28 – How a copper jug is actually made, from Chilean copper up31:46 – Supplier at 3x, business at 6x: pre-orders and air freight33:46 – Australia, the US, and 17 duty-free markets (Dubai and Saudi next)34:56 – Expanding the range: 200–300 unit tests and fast-moving SKUs36:13 – Real-time profit, channel decisions and a creative backlogLINKSCopper Culture: https://copperculture.com.auClever Conversions (Ilan Hurwitz): [https://cleverconversions.com.au/]Swann Studio: https://swan.studio/BeProfit: https://beprofit.coEnjoyed this one? Follow the eCommerce Aus Podcast and leave a review it helps more Aussie founders find the show.

A text message at an airport turned into Australia's biggest retail and eCommerce community in about twelve months: 4,000 members, up to 90 chat groups, and meetups from Ballarat to Dubai. Dean Salakas (The Party People) and Jethro Marks (The Nile) join Ryan Martin (Remarkable Digital) to explain how Retail Community Group actually works, what it deliberately isn't, and how its members had workarounds in place days before Australia Post announced it was suspending shipping to the US.Dean built a two-person family business into Australia's largest party supplies retailer, offering click-and-collect in 1999 and becoming Google's first advertiser in Australia in 2003 at one cent a click, before exiting eighteen months ago. Jethro co-founded The Nile in 2003 and is now building the world's most trusted bookstore, with US and UK launches on the way. Neither of them set out to build a community. They started a WhatsApp group so they could find each other for a drink at Retail Fest, and it had fifty people in it before Dean's plane landed.Join the Whatsapp hereIn this episode they unpack the mechanics behind the growth: why the group split into interest-based channels for AI, cross-border trade, HR and open-to-work; how the "pitch slap" keeps unsolicited selling out; and why a moderated, free, no-pay-to-play space has become the place Australian retailers go first when something breaks. They also share what's coming next, including a public events directory, a vendor portal and peer advisory groups for retailers, plus their honest take on the hardest problem ahead: keeping the magic while scaling to a market Jethro estimates at 100,000 people.If you run an online store, work in retail tech, or you're new to eCommerce and feel like you're doing it alone, this one is a practical guide to plugging into the most collaborative industry in the country.Join The Retail Community HereTopics covered: retail community building, Australian eCommerce, cross-border trade and tariffs, Australia Post US shipping suspension, 3PL and fulfilment, retail conferences and events, AI tools for retail, B2B community moderation, thought leadership for service providers.

Running an Australian eCommerce or Shopify store? Your customers have started shopping inside ChatGPT, and shoppers arriving from AI answer engines convert around 1.5x better than any other source.Melbourne eCommerce Aus Event - Tickets Here. Online shopping has become… boring? A recent Criteo study found 77% of Australians describe online shopping as unexciting, and that's just the starting point for one of our most forward-looking conversations yet.Ryan sits down with Matt Hurle from Criteo to unpack the findings of their latest report and what they mean for anyone running an eCommerce business in Australia. Matt brings 20 years in advertising, 15 in digital and 10 in martech, from cold-calling rural businesses out of the Yellow Pages to sitting at the front edge of AI-powered retail media.The big theme: the path to purchase is no longer linear. Consumers are bouncing between publishers, retailer sites, social platforms and AI answer engines like ChatGPT, and increasingly starting their entire shopping journey inside those answer engines, at the very first spark of an idea. Criteo was the first technology company integrated with OpenAI via API and has already run 2,000+ campaigns in that environment. Early signal? Shoppers arriving from ChatGPT convert about 1.5x more efficiently than any other source.We also get into the eternal marketer's tension Ryan sums up perfectly: "The thing I love about digital marketing is you can track every dollar. The thing I hate about digital marketing is you can track every dollar." Attribution, brand vs. performance, the resurgence of SEO (or GEO/AIO, whatever we're calling it this week), influencer strategy, and why customer support and honest reviews now beat polished influencer content for building real trust.Key TakeawaysThe funnel is dead — long live discovery. Consumers now begin shopping journeys inside AI answer engines, far earlier than the traditional mid-to-lower funnel signals marketers relied on. Brands need to show up higher up the discovery journey.Commerce data is the new gold standard. Moving away from demographics and guesswork toward real commerce signals — what people add to cart, actually buy, and browse before and after. Criteo observes 1T+ in annual eCommerce transactions across 730M+ daily active shoppers.Show up across surfaces, not just your own. Criteo's independence means it serves ads on whichever "surface" (open web, ChatGPT, Meta, TikTok, Pinterest, X) is most likely to convert — not a walled-garden's owned inventory.ChatGPT shoppers convert ~1.5x better. They've researched and validated inside the answer engine, so trust is high by the time they land.SEO/GEO/AIO matters more than ever. As search shifts from keywords to full-sentence, conversational queries, rich product data and verifiable messaging determine whether you appear in AI answers — or get left out of the consideration set entirely.Trust beats polish. Verified reviews and genuine customer support now outweigh paid influencer content. 200 five-star reviews can be less trusted than a 4.7 average. Reply to bad reviews honestly. (Ryan's Nero merino example and Matt's Artisan chopping-board recall story both make the point.)Match the influencer to the job to be done. Celebrities drive reach and exposure; micro-influencers drive engaged, community-level trust and conversion. Different jobs, different tiers.AI answer engines stay out of sensitive categories. OpenAI keeps advertising away from health-related matters, directing people back to their GPs.

If you're building a Shopify store, a DTC label, or an omnichannel ecommerce brand in Australia, this episode is your blueprint.From selling jewellery at Bondi markets to 13 stores and a booming ecommerce business, Arms of Eve co-founders Kerryn and Aaron Langer show how an Australian DTC brand scales retail without losing its ecommerce edge. Kerryn and Aaron Langer turned a market stall and a pile of leftover merino wool offcuts into Arms of Eve, now a nine-store (soon to be 13) Australian jewellery and lifestyle brand that's scaled past $20 million in revenue on the back of a genuinely direct-to-consumer ecommerce model. In this episode of eCommerce Australia, Ryan Martin sits down with the husband-and-wife founders to unpack how they walked away from the traditional wholesale/indent model, why The Iconic marketplace became their unlikely proving ground, and how COVID-era demand for jewellery (turns out that's the only accessory that shows up on a Zoom call) turned a side category into 80% of the business.For Shopify merchants and ecommerce operators thinking about opening a physical store, this conversation is a masterclass in getting the sequencing right. Aaron was convinced retail was dead, until their "little experiment" Bondi Beach store proved the opposite, creating a measurable halo effect that lifts online sales in a 10km radius around every new location. They talk candidly about the tech stack behind a fast-scaling DTC ecommerce brand (Starshipit for fulfilment, Okendo for reviews, Profit Peak for profitability data, and an in-house team now "vibe coding" their own dashboards), how they balance agency support with in-house performance marketing, and why their content strategy has swung from polished campaign shoots to raw, iPhone-shot, Tolstoy-powered video that converts better than the highly produced stuff ever did.There's also a genuinely useful nugget for anyone running ecommerce SEO or content strategy: Kerryn and Aaron explain how customer questions from their retail staff (about materials, tarnish, sizing, warranty) are becoming the seed for on-site content designed to capture organic search traffic, a simple but underused move for any Shopify or ecommerce brand trying to turn support questions into search-optimised product and FAQ pages that rank. Add in an unfiltered take on celebrity gifting (Margot Robbie, Hailey Bieber and Dua Lipa have all been photographed in Arms of Eve pieces, without a single paid placement), a calculated US relaunch planned for June 2027, and hard-won lessons on hiring, culture and staying "even" as leaders, and this is one of the most tactical founder conversations on ecommerce, retail expansion and DTC brand-building we've featured on the showAbout Arms of Eve:Arms of Eve is an Australian jewellery, accessories and resortwear brand founded by Kerryn and Aaron Langer. Starting out selling at local markets, the brand has grown into a multi-channel ecommerce and retail business with nine stores nationwide (growing to 13 by the end of 2026), a wholesale presence in boutiques across Australia, and a fast-growing direct-to-consumer online store.Website: https://armsofeve.com/Instagram: @armsofeveResources & tools mentioned:Starshipit: ecommerce shipping and fulfilment platformOkendo: customer reviews platformProfit Peak: ecommerce profitability analyticsTolstoy: shoppable, native video for ecommerce sitesThe Iconic: Australian fashion marketplaceFollow eCommerce Australia for more conversations with Australia's leading ecommerce and Shopify founders on growth, retail strategy, and building direct-to-consumer brands. Subscribe on Spotify and leave a review to help more ecommerce and Shopify store owners find the show.

Will North has led marketing and commercial functions at brands including Meshki, PE Nation, AJE and Superdry UK. For the last two and a half years he's been at Kulani Kinis, the Australian swimwear brand doing 75-80% of its revenue in the US. He joined Ryan Martin from Remarkable Digital to talk conversion rate optimisation, attribution, TikTok Shop and the marketing shifts defining 2026.The Kulani Kinis story. Founded 11.5 years ago by Sydney couple Danny and Alex as a side hustle, the brand found its footing in the US when Alex transferred to EY in LA. Today the US makes up 75-80% of revenue; Australia is just 7%.CRO is a business metric, not a digital one. Will's Retail Fest keynote ("I Lost the Company $15 Million and Got a Promotion") explored why every untested change to your site is a potential loss. His starting point: survey customers who've purchased and subscribers who haven't, distil 3-4 themes, then run ideas through an effort-versus-upside matrix before testing.Context kills best practice. Adding "some items in your cart may sell out" drove nearly $2M in annualised revenue at a streetwear brand. The same test lost revenue at a women's fashion brand, because scarcity signalling made shoppers worry about wearing the same thing as everyone else. Customer psychology differs by brand.The thank you page question nobody asks. Immediately post-purchase, ask: "Was there anything that almost stopped you from buying?" Customers who've just converted will tell you exactly what's broken.Attribution in 2026. No one does it perfectly. Will's approach is to define the role of each channel across the seasonal cycle and measure a marketing efficiency ratio (spend divided by sales) as a flow, not a fixed weekly target.TikTok Shop. 72% of fashion revenue on the platform flows through affiliate and creator. The new customer rate is 95%. Will visited the US team last month and TikTok Shop is a major focus for Kulani Kinis in FY27.What you say now matters as much as how you look. LLMs are changing discovery. If a brand has no content narrative, it won't show up when someone asks an AI for a recommendation. Will's take: GEO, AIO and SEO are all just SEO.Not all impressions are equal. Kulani Kinis ran direct mail via Post Pilot at a $600 CPM and it outperformed. A postcard on a fridge is a very different impression to a feed scroll-past.In-person events. A $40,000 Maldives brand trip generated the equivalent of $140,000 in media value from creator and customer content.Collaborations. A LinkedIn conversation between brand experience leads led to a Lounge Underwear collab that spiked Kulani Kinis' German sales in July 2024. Go in with clear objectives or don't bother."Conversion is a business metric. It's not an e-com metric.""There is no such thing as best practice with CRO. Every brand's customer psychology is different.""You've got to sell it twice: on site and when they get it, otherwise it's coming back."Kulani Kinis: kulanikinis.comPost Pilot: postpilot.comLounge Underwear: loungeunderwear.comPura Vida Bracelets: puravidabracelets.comRetail FestAbout Will North:Head of Commercial & Performance at Kulani Kinis. Previously held senior roles at Meshki, PE Nation, AJE and Superdry UK. Retail Fest speaker and Oria Award nominee (International Conqueror).