madebys.am

I’ve been working in online retail now (in one capacity or another) for almost 8 years, so I like to think that gives me the ability to talk fairly openly about what I’ve learned, but also allow me to make predictions for the future of retail. Some time ago now I moved away from using the term e-commerce, for the very simple reason that the ‘e’ stopped being relevant almost completely all together.

I moved to Australia back in June last year, where I took all the experience I had built up and began using it to help Australian retailers move their business in to what was essentially a new age of commerce. Whilst the boom of online retail has taken quite the upward turn over the past few years all over the world, Australia has always been years behind their international competitors, and quite surprisingly Australian retailers have even been lagging behind their international counterparts! There are multiple aspects as to why this might be…

Local retail history

There’s a large history of local stores here in Australia, whether that be the local electronics store or even the more industrialised retail chains, consumers seem to be perfectly happy buying locally. Perhaps they’re still used to buying things face to face, maybe it’s just a case of “if it aint broke”, but nonetheless, consumers don’t seem all that comfortable buying online. Don’t get me wrong, it’s certainly changing, albeit very slowly.

Poor distribution networks

One large reason here that consumers will sooner drive to a local store purchase an item than they will grab their laptop/tablet to order an item, is the way distribution is handled over here. In the UK we’ve had a large infrastructure of couriers for a long time, I’m pretty sure that stems from the backbone of a network built largely by Royal Mail, since then however, privatised companies have taken the distribution force by storm, offering cheaper and more effective services than ever before. Here however, it’s a different story all together. Since (I believe) 85% of Australia’s population live on the coast, the network that could be used to drive products from one end of the country to the other, was never built. If items do have to be transported from the East to the West, it’s quite common for that service to either be at a high cost, or over a longer period of time. As a result of this, shipping charges for retailers have always been high..

This now brings me back to my original point… The reason couriers are hindering the use of comparison shopping engines is because retailers aren’t offering free (or even subsidised) shipping. Free shipping can’t happen until a larger infrastructure of distribution has been created. Once all of that happens, shipping prices will all be the same and it’s at that point that retailers will begin competing on price points.

Obviously this doesn’t apply to all retailers, there are still those using shopping engines who do compete on price, but there’s only so far that can go. As soon as the larger retailers begin offering free shipping across their entire product range, as opposed to simply items over $x, or promotional items, I believe we’ll begin to see an uplift in the use of these engines, generated by an increase in online shopping.

Sat here, half way through finishing off a post I shall publish in the coming days, I realised I hadn’t posted on here for quite some time! As such, there is a hell of a lot to write about.. That said, I will compress this astounding story in to a small number of paragraphs, just the right size for my attention span to cope with.

Since last writing, we have acquired our apartment and I am proud to say, it is the perfect place. The apartment we were hoping for, is all ours. Just to lay the ground rules, I won’t be posting any pictures of the place.. Nor will I be describing it, in any detail at all, until Charleigh and Ellie are here with me. We’re currently waiting on their VISAs to be approved but we’re oh so very close now!

Moving away from setting ourselves up together, I’ve pretty much been working non-stop since I got here! I decided not to take off any time, so that I could save that for my families arrival. I have however, been fortunate enough to make my way up to Sydney for Online Retailer conference… I got myself up there the weekend prior to the conference, which gave me plenty of spare time. I’m sorry to say, I fell in to the category of “The Tourist”. Not, I might add, with the flare of Johnny Depp in Italy, more so with the aspiration to not stop moving. I’ve found that to be a fantastic way to keep going while our family is not yet together and more recently I’d been struggling quite severely. So it was nice to spend a weekend and then the following couple of days of the conference on the tip of my toes.

I walked, I believe, on nearly every street in Central Sydney, of course, made my way to the Apple Store, Westfield and just about any other shop I could find! I managed to get some shopping out the way and even treated myself to a few things! I also walked my way through town to the Sydney Opera House & Harbour Bridge which are spectacular. I was surprised by them… They’re such well known structures that I think it’s safe to say most people have seen them. On that basis, I assumed they’d be somewhat a let down… I’ll let you make up your own mind if you’re ever so fortunate.

I now find myself, back at my desk in Melbourne… Waiting.

Last week, Charleigh and I had a long conversation about the different methods of time management, ranging from personal time to work time. Essentially what we were working on was an ideal way in which we could impart good life skills and practices on to Ellie without it seeming like that was our aim. We eventually came to a conclusion which we’ve started putting in to practise this week and seems to be working fairly well so far!

The long time we spent talking about different ways to approach this, led to me think about how I manage my time, whether or not it’s the most effective method I could put in to practise and how I’d got to that conclusion in the first place!

To basically explain how I go about managing my work time, I thought I’d draw a little chart… Otherwise it could take me a lifetime to explain! haha.

I’m a terrible procrastinator. While ostensibly it may not look that way, I somehow constantly find time to be surfing through various blogs, laughing at the typical meme, even now there’s probably something else I should be doing rather than typing this up. Spending so much time online has caused me to become inconsiderate, it’s caused me to pay less attention to people, and that’s something I just don’t want.

I just finished reading a fantastic post by Paul Miller, entitled I’m still here: back online after a year without the internet. For those that aren’t familiar with Paul, just over a year ago he quit the internet. His effort wasn’t simply deactivating his Facebook account and deleting Twitter, he completely unplugged himself in every way.

While working my way through his post one very specific line struck a chord with me:

What I do know is that I can’t blame the internet, or any circumstance, for my problems. I have many of the same priorities I had before I left the internet: family, friends, work, learning. And I have no guarantee I’ll stick with them when I get back on the internet — I probably won’t, to be honest. But at least I’ll know that it’s not the internet’s fault. I’ll know who’s responsible, and who can fix it.

I feel I’ve always managed myself and my time fairly well… I know there are times at which I procrastinate more than I should, but despite that I’ve always gone above and beyond what is expected of me at work. In my personal life however, I know that the internet has always consumed me. Now that’s not to say I’m constantly online in one respect or another, but I do come fairly close. I’d always seen it as a part of my generation - Moving to a different country was something I definitely used to lie to myself about the amount of time I spent online, updating friends & family with what was happening, posting pictures of where we were going to Instagram, and checking in wherever possible on Foursquare, FOMO (Fear of missing out) is something that I can definitely identify with.

A couple of months ago now, I made the decision to delete my Instagram account. This move wasn’t really directed at my use of the internet, I’d started becoming more interested in photography and felt that by snapping a quick picture of whatever I was doing at the time, made for a sufficient documentation of my life. I was wrong. I backed up the photos I’d taken, deleted my account and spent more time learning about the DSLR I’d purchased nearly a year earlier. As a result, I started to take what I felt were much better images; I don’t carry my camera everywhere, that’s just impractical, but when I do I think much more about how I’ll see these photos in the years to come and worry far less about how other people see what I’m doing and the pictures I’m uploading.

Right, back off my tangent there - I’m not planning to leave the internet. It’s what my career is based on and without a drastic change in lifestyle, that’s just not possible. However, what I can do is make a vow to spend less time procrastinating around the internet, both at my desk and on my phone, and spend more time focussing on my life and the lives of my family. To kick it off, instead of spending my 12 hour layover at LAX tomorrow sitting online and playing with the photos and videos from my trip, I’ll be packing my laptop away and sitting with what is actually the first book I’ve bought in a very long time.

If you were awake at the ungodly hour of 10:30am (Australian time) today, you may have noticed me frantically tweeting that the wait is finally over.. Charleigh and Ellie’s VISAs have been approved!

This is the moment we’ve been waiting for, for 7 weeks today. Nothing else I’ve experienced in life has been quite so difficult or stressful, though the rewards will be truly incredible. We’re now hunting for the best/cheapest flights we can find, though inevitably I would imagine this will rely mostly on Charleigh finalising things at home, work etc. and my booking of flights.

We’re almost there and I couldn’t be more pleased.

I’ve always been a massive fan of watching/listening to interviews, I love to learn more about people, especially the people I deem to be idols (In one form or another). Through the years I’ve been watching interviews online, one host has stood head and shoulder above the rest when it comes to preparation, knowledge of his guests, depth of his questions and his ability to retort to answers he would have not heard before hand.

That host is Jian Ghomeshi of QTV on CBC Radio (Canada). Every time I’ve watched or listened to him, I’ve been utterly amazed with how he’s able to hold an incredibly deep, yet viewer-grasping conversation with his guests. Even to the point that I’ll happily sit and listen to him quiz a guest I perhaps have no interest in.

Recently I watched him command the show whilst interviewing who is undoubtedly one of the most revered hosts and interviewers, Larry King. I watched in utter amazement how easily he seemed to extract answers from someone who is notorious for hard-set interviews.

My favourite to date however (And this could be slightly biased on the premise I love him anyway) was his 2011 interview with none other than Stephen Fry. Fry is well known as an eloquent, highly intelligent person as it is, but the grace with which Jian was able to question him, made Fry almost seem mortal.

If you get chance, I highly recommend giving a listen to any of his interviews (Though, perhaps not with the Arctic Monkeys, despite Jian’s best efforts, the band were clearly elsewhere during the interview). I’ll leave you with my favourite, what I have found to be the perfect interview with Stephen Fry.

I should probably add here, I do have one more hero when it comes to interview methods. That is, James Lipton of Inside the Actors Studio. That said, his interview technique is really rather specific to actors, he’s not as much of an all rounder and Jian Ghomeshi.

So as I sit here on the monotonous journey back to Greenwich (which, for the purpose of this we’ll call home. You see I’ve been living with my girlfriend for a couple of months now), I’m contemplating what our next steps will be. Earlier this week, I asked Charleigh if she would move in with me!

The first question that comes up, is where do we go? I’ve been looking sporadically over the past few weeks at houses in Surrey, also towards Kent, and even towards Cambridge. There are plenty of aspects which come in to play when choosing somewhere; How do I get to work? How does Charleigh get Ellie (her daughter) to nursery? All sorts.

Following on from that, we then have to looks at what’s affordable… I’m ideally aiming for a 3 bed house, garden, drive and garage would be ideal. But then, there’s plenty of time to look at all this. We’ve set ourselves a target date of April 2012, so there’s no rush.

No doubt I definitely have to question some of the more important aspects here too; Which TV do I buy? How shall we furnish the place? Which sound system do I want?

Really. I can’t wait for the next step.

Today certainly marks the end of an era for me… After almost 3 years of back and forth between the office and home, these are my last few hours in the ChannelAdvisor London office! I’ve really enjoyed working here and this is by no means the last time I shall ever visit, but for the next couple of weeks I’ll be working from home until I fly out to Australia!

It’s not exactly the move we were hoping for… Charleigh and Ellie aren’t able to come out to Aus for a little while longer, but we’re hoping that time flies by!

I’ll miss working in this office… It’s in a lovely place and I’ve been fortunate enough to work with some of the best people on both a personal and a professional level. I’ve also been able to learn a lot whilst I’ve been here and I really hope I’ve been able to give back as much in return.

Just now I was given a card signed by the entire office, usually these kind of things (whilst sad), don’t tend to bother me that much, but this time seems to be different.

I’ve not really always wanted to travel… Sure, I’ve always enjoyed going new places and as a family when my brother and I were younger, we went plenty of places! Surprisingly the majority of places we went for a long period of time were within the UK! Genuinely, there is so much, so close to home, that no one pays attention to. That said, when I was younger I had a horrible fear of flying, so didn’t have any mad aspirations to travel the world.

When I was 18, that all changed. The job I had at the time afforded me the opportunity to travel for India for some time, for a training course and at that point in time, my eyes were opened. Myself and a colleague spent 2 months in the northern part of India (Shimla, to be precise) and that really changed my opinion of travelling. Since then, I’ve taken every chance I can to go somewhere new and in the last few years I’ve been more places than some people I know have been in their lifetime.

As I’m sure you know by now, the most recent escapade I was afforded was for myself and my family to move to Melbourne, and I am so glad we did. Once we’re finally settled here (We only officially moved in together a few weeks ago, so we have plenty of stuff to get out of the way… Furniture shopping, nurseries, jobs etc), once all that is out of the way I really can’t want to see more of this side of the world. We’re only a few hours away from some of the most beautiful places on earth. Extremely high up the list for me is New Zealand, but as a family, we really want to go to Japan! The list is endless!

Does anyone have an recommendations for specific places to go? Things to see? Is there anything local we should check out?

This week saw the first in a line of exciting events for us as a family, as we went to an appointment at Future Medial Imaging Group, for our initial ultrasound. We found out just a couple of weeks ago that Charleigh and I were expecting a baby together and we’ve been really taken back by just how impressive the Australian Healthcare system can be. Within a day of having confirmation from our doctor that we were indeed expecting, Charleigh had already completed her first round of blood tests and we were booking ourselves back with our GP to hear the results.

The scan itself was incredibly impressive - I’ve personally had an ultrasound before, so the technology was not particularly new to me, but the amount of detail we could see was mind-blowing. More so than the detail of the images, was how much (or indeed how little) of the baby has formed. To our surprise the little monster measured in at 0.88cm in length, still attached to it’s yolk sack it doesn’t even have a discernible shape, but we could already make out it’s heartbeat, measuring at 130_bpm._ We’re told that in two weeks time, the baby will already have begun growing limb-buds and just a few days after that will be a fully formed foetus.

Whilst we do have a wonderful family already, this part of the process is entirely new to me and I’m really looking forward to what is going to happen over the coming weeks. We’re scheduled back in at the doctors tomorrow for a walk through of the ultrasound scans Charleigh had, so I guess we’ll learn a little more about the next steps then.

We already have a hospital “assigned” where the baby will be born (Assuming the pregnancy goes to the plan of both us and our doctor), so I can only imagine that we’ll be taking it easy for the next few weeks before our next scan is booked in so that we can find out the gender!

Since we’re so early in finding a lot of this out, I think we’re both slightly confused as to what we’re supposed to be doing next… It’ll be months before we need to start looking at cots, moses baskets and clothing etc. but I already find myself trawling around furniture and baby sites, filled with anticipation for what will be happening around the beginning of May next year.

Before all of that however comes one of the most anticipated parts of pregnancy… Picking a name! We’ve been hypothetically talking about baby names for quite a while now, so we do have some sort of a shortlist in mind. We’re continuing to work on that, but no doubt whatever name we ultimately pick (Whether that’s before or after we know the gender), is likely to be completely abandoned the moment our baby is born.