Curating a Unicorn

Welcome to Make Good Things Happen, a podcast for makers in business presented to
you by Angela Dalton and Renee Baker.
Welcome to Make Good Things Happen, episode number four of season one.
This is the podcast for makers in business presented to you by Angela D’Alton, myself and Renee Baker, who is of course joining me. Hello. Hello. Hello. Welcome to you and thank you for listening. And we’ve got a new segment again.
Obviously, this is going to happen a few times in the first season. This one is
events breakdown. And as much as it sounds like it might be about one of……..
an uncommon occurrence just by the way. This is actually just we’ll talk about things that we’ve done in the events fee because both of us attend and organise and operate in the events world a little bit as well from exhibitions and markets and so on. My most recent event experience was very recent, the opening night of the Unicorn Collection. So the Unicorn Collection is an initiative that Ballarat Evolve
have to undertake in a little project. That is a not -for -profit that I’m on the
board on. I have been responsible for curating the space and a series of other bits and pieces related to admin and marketing and tech and bits and pieces of and really glamorous stuff too, like mopping floors and, you know, washing up champagne glasses. That’s to be done. However, it does have to be done. This is the world of events and hospitality that people think is so glamorous. Having said all of that, it is a new gallery space, boutique retail adjacent in an historic building in the middle of Ballarat on Sturt Street called the Unicorn, not coincidentally. And so
because with Ballarat Evolve, you just mentioned that you’re working on the board for
that organisation. So what do they actually do? What do you actually do? You come across vacant spaces or how does it work? Generally speaking, our traditional role has been to match make landlords that have empty spaces, usually retail and find or kind of go through a process with serious artists locally that are looking for space to practice or to sell their work or to have workshops or and so on. And we attempt to much make those two parties together and create a relationship that hopefully results in a commercial one in the long term. But the way it starts out is, it’s very similar to the model that some people may be
familiar with, that Marcus Westbury was responsible for initiating called Renew Newcastle, which he then took to a variety of different cities and places around the country, where it’s about reactivating the space, an empty space, in a time often of economic downturn when it comes to real estate or brick -and -mortar business traffic
and so on, time of change. Traditionally that’s what Ballarat Evolve is responsible for. So we would be interviewing artists of all kinds or creative people.
The hope with Evolve overall is to increase the visibility and the economic viability of creative people within the community by working with people who also own and manage the infrastructure during times of economic downturn. So it’s really just it’s one big negotiation and our founder and secretary Tara has been doing that successfully for quite some time. She’s been obviously on the board since it since
it started and is very good at negotiating with real estate agents. It’s kind of
the thing that I’ve asked very nicely of the rest of the board that I don’t get
involved in. I’m happy to talk to the artists and they all understand. I’m happy to talk to the artists and deal with the artists and do all of the anything else.
I’ll do social media, I’ll beat events, I’ll do you know, I’ll pour champagne and wash up but don’t please don’t ask me to talk to the real estate agents because I find it a very difficult experience. And so with this particular space that you had for the unicorn collection, why in this instance did you decide or did the Ballarat evolve, decide to undertake the curation of the space and run it as your own as
opposed to completely outsourcing it? It’s something that we have discussed in the
past as a potential way to provide support to the creative community that are more
established or advanced in their career, in that export -ready sense or perhaps that
they just need a platform to be noticed by other larger galleries, either in
metropolitan areas or, you know, Southeast Asia and beyond. There is an echelon of
maker or artist in that area that doesn’t seem to get a lot of support or nurture
by a lot of the commercial and community opportunity. Just don’t fit. They just
don’t fit. They’re not beginners. There’s so much stuff that supports beginners and I
mean, it’s good, don’t get me wrong. Everyone has to start somewhere. And there is
also support for those super ultra high -end people. So once someone’s been noticed
by Melbourne or Sydney or a large, you know, gallery, Ballarat’s very comfortable
claiming them as their own, you know. Sometimes you need that external stamp of
approval. So I guess what we’re hoping to achieve with the unicorn collection is to
show and highlight this group of creative people who are ready,
but just need a little spotlight on them to get some attention by the right people.
And the building is owned by some gentlemen who have been investing heavily in the
area and they are fierce advocates for how awesome Ballarat could be. They wouldn’t,
we couldn’t do it without their support, absolutely, the landlords and the community.
You know, we’ve got six artists involved at the moment. The community showed up at
opening night last night. I reckon maybe 60 to 80 people, which, you know,
because we’re a non -profit, it’s volunteer. We had a week that we finally knew that
we were going to open on that day. And yeah, it was busy and the vibe was very
positive. People were very excited to see that space activated again, because
obviously it’s been sitting there dormant for starters. That’s always a good thing
about Ballarat Evolve, activating those cherished spaces that a lot of people have
who have lived here for a long time, and the unicorn is definitely in that realm.
And that’s kind of why we’ve taken it on. We’ve taken it on for many reasons.
One of them is to maintain the legacy of that space in a way that honours the
history of the area and the people of the area, but also the generous landlords
aren’t sure what to do with the building yet. And they are in the process of kind
of working on a much bigger picture, which will be very interesting to see come to
be. Mysterious. Yeah. Well, how can anyone who’s local and listening or fancies a
trip to Ballarat find out more? You can go to probably Instagram is probably your
best bet. The account is at the full stop unicorn collection.
So the title of the project overall is the Unicorn Collection. Or you can go to
balleratevolve.org .au. You’ll see there’s a link there to the Unicorn Collection. You
can also learn about the artists that are involved. You can get in touch with us.

Now we come to the next segment, which is “Gruen LITE” my personal favourite.
And for those of you who don’t know what this segment is about, not only is it
Renee and I’s unashamed attempt at getting the attention of the “Gruen” crew,
it is also our commentary on things to do with advertising and business,
big business, that sort of thing. During the week, Renee shared an article with me
that she found through an Instagram post on The Guardian, which was to do with
dynamic pricing and supermarket pricing cycles, Renee.
Tell me how you came across this particular article. Actually, it’s two different
articles. So just in my usual scroll on social media, I saw a reel from The
Guardian, which was a journalistic piece from Matilda Bosley about dynamic pricing in
ticket sales for entertainment, gigs and concerts and that sort of thing.
And it was a really interesting little video, which we’ll share a link to so you
can watch it, that was comparing this concept with surge pricing that we’re probably
already familiar with if we’ve ever booked a flight or ridden in an Uber.
Or bought petrol? It also – Petrol, yeah. It’s also under this sort of similar model
where there’s not really a set price, but the price is usually reflected based off
demand at the time. And so, you know, in the Uber example, when it rains, we see
that, “Oh, your price for this Uber is going to cost you 10 times more because
suddenly everyone needs an Uber. And we’ve all kind of accepted that to some extent.
We probably get a little bit annoyed about it, but I feel like as consumers, we’ve
just kind of thought, yeah, okay, that’s just how it works. But it’s now creeping
into other areas. This particular reel looked a little closer at the entertainment
world where we are essentially experiencing the same thing when we’re trying to buy
a ticket to a gig. So, I mean, again, you’ve probably been familiar with the new
or newish experience of queuing online. We used to have to queue physically when we
were buying tickets to a concert, but now we queue online and we can spend anywhere
up to an hour in an online queue only to reach the point where we can actually
purchase a ticket and at that point is where we find out the price of the concert
ticket. And there was an example used in this reel, I think it was Oasis in the
UK where because of the huge demand for these tickets and the huge queues that
people were in, prices were going from $150 a ticket up to 300 plus for a ticket.
Sorry, it was actually pounds in that example. But just kind of how, I think the
thing that shocked me the most about this was the way that once you get to that
point and again if you picture yourself purchasing a ticket online the stress of
that already trying to sort of get your credit card details and fumble to pick you
know your seats or whatever it is you have to do and you get to that point where
you do finally get in the queue and then you’re finding out the price of it which
is more than you expected and then suddenly you see this timer ticking you’ve only
got three minutes to make this purchase. It’s kind of like a, I want to say
gamifying, but it’s hyper pressure gamifying. It’s almost, it’s almost gambling.
It’s a race. It’s that same eBay rush thing that’s going on.
Like, do I really want, like this is, it’s auction. It’s the same pressure that you
have in those scenarios. You must want this because everybody else does too. And
you’ve only got this much time to make this decision. And then the phono as well.
And I just think it’s not to just regurgitate everything that Matilda has shared in
the particular reel. But I just found it so interesting from that psychological
pricing perspective. And I just immediately started to wonder about the ethics and
why this is, I guess, okay? And is that just how it is? I mean,
to some extent, you mentioned an auction, Angela, and we buy houses that way. Again,
I’m not sure how I feel about that either. But like, that’s a high ticket item as
well. I mean, I’m not suggesting that an Oasis ticket isn’t an expensive thing to
do or important. But the fact that they push people into this scenario,
when it’s a high ticket item that is something that is such an important part,
an integral part of your life, you know, if you’re going to live there,
particularly, is it unethical to do it at all? I mean, maybe it is,
but auctions are as, I don’t even know how far back the method of auction goes.
Yeah, and there is that element too, isn’t it? It seems pretty obvious. I mean,
it’s, yeah, that’s how we used to trade. And, but But yeah, I just sort of ticked
off a little bit of a thought train in my mind and then a couple of days later,
I was this morning actually, I saw an article from the ABC that’s actually regarding
grocery prices at Coles and Woolworth’s and in the article I’m just having a look
now there was 44 ,000 items they monitored the pricing of,
I think it was, across the two vendors. – Yeah, well, I was actually not actually
sure his background. It says a data professional, Adam Williams, and started
collecting the daily prices of products that calls for worse in his spare time,
which I’m not mocking that because I would find that interesting myself and created
a browser plugin extension so that when you’re looking at a particular product on
either of those websites, you can get a history from the past 12 weeks of the
prices of that particular product. And what he found before you continue,
was that extension publicly available or was that just his? Like was it only on his
browser? No, I think it’s now he created a browser extension. Yeah. So people could
download it and use it for their own benefit. I believe so. Yeah. In the process,
he manages to gather all the data. – That’s very smart. – Yeah, I actually haven’t
gone further beyond the article to look into it, but I may do because I just
pointed out I absolutely love data and we’ll happily find out more about this sort
of thing. And but the thing is what I guess was interesting is I actually do this
myself. And I think even you and I have had this conversation. We don’t buy a box
of Earl Grey tea bags unless they’re half price because we know that they’ll be
half price one day. And what this article points out that his research found was
that there’s this sort of cyclical pricing that goes between a high and a low from,
yeah, you said there’s about 22 ,000 products that move in this up and down motion
at least four times within a 12 week period. And they go from a high price to a
low price, high price to a low price. Yeah. I think what’s interesting about the
visual representation of the data is the way he’s actually compared coals to
Woolworths, very clearly, and how on the bulk of items,
it is literally one goes up, the other one goes down. And it is kind of this
symmetry of almost like a helix between the two, where it just goes up and down
and up and down. So it’s almost like every week, either coals or every month,
say, either Coles or Woolworths had that item at half price. And conversely,
the competitor had it at full price and and so on and so on and so on. It is
almost an even pulse for each of those vendors in most circumstances. There’s
examples where they’re very different. They’re kind of a little less predictable, Not
many though. I can’t help but wonder if they’re in cahoots, you know?
The article does go on to question whether there is some breach of, you know, anti
-competition or competition laws, and apparently that’s forming part of the current
ACCC investigations into them. And so there’s not really any further comment on that
until that’s all resolved, I tuned.
Again, it’s just, yeah, I just think it’s again, like just to draw it back to the
concert ticket pricing, it’s just very interesting to see how what price is and what
price means. And as two people, Angela and myself, who work with makers a lot of
the time on pricing, it’s a very interesting topic, because if we haven’t said it
before, we’ll say it again, makers generally undercharge and don’t feel comfortable
charging what they’re worth. But if you start to kind of look at some of these
really large, highly, highly profitable organisations, it’s almost the reverse. They
just create their own concept of pricing that, like, what is price at the end of
the day, I guess is what I’m asking. Well, I guess also if they can both afford
to consistently halve the retail price of a variety of products consistently in a in
a swapping context, surely it goes back to the manufacturer of the products and the
agreements that they’re setting across both platforms. You know, it’s like a this
week, you sell it at this and then they sell it at that way and then everybody’s
happy and you get all of the clients who are price sensitive waiting until it is
half price or just going to Coles or Woolies. Maybe they’re not loyal to any
particular brand. And it also makes you wonder, what the hell is the real retail
price if they’re consistently both able to sell it at half price? I guess that’s
what I’m saying. That’s what I’m asking. As you Yeah, it is dynamic pricing,
but it’s got no rhyme or reason that is known to us. Perhaps it’s known to the
supermarkets. And I mean, let’s assume something though. It’s making a money. Well,
and I think that’s what I’m trying to get at is this pricing piece is so important
in what actually ultimately leads to a conversion of a sale, whether it is that
it’s discounted or not. And I think as a maker in business, if price is something
that you’re not sure of, just remember that it’s not just necessarily about making
the money back of what it costs you to make that product. There’s so much going on
in your pricing strategy. There’s so many layers. And part of those layers actually
are part of your marketing strategy and part of your sales strategy. I’m certainly
not encouraging you to be unethical about it. I’m not necessarily saying that you
should do this, either of these models. I’m really only drawing your attention to
them because it’s interesting to understand what’s going on and the psychology behind
these different approaches. And perhaps it can allow you to think a little bit more
critically about what it is that you’re doing in your pricing. – Well, Thank you for
bringing that to our attention. I think you’re right. It is interesting to look at.
In the news, our latest updates and what’s happening in the community for makers,
we recently talked about a campaign brought about by Doodad and dango,
which came to its fruition this last week and what we found is incredible home
wares. Tissue boxes, which was such an unexpected turn and other items for the
household in gorgeous glossy acrylics, vibrant high colours as you would expect from
Doodad and Fandango. In the recap, we were passing the teaser campaign from the
relaunch of the Doodad and Fandango brand that was,
I guess, it hinted that there was a new direction of the product from Nikita who
has been known to make huge statement acrylic earrings. Angela and I were speculating
as to what it might be. Neither of us came close, but we were both very happily
Yeah. I think if you are interested in checking out a really strong brand
representation through the website and the web design, I think it was Green Peas for
Breakfast, the website designer that we saw had produced the website for Nikita,
her new identity, I guess, by the looks of things. Really good website. Enjoy that.
Yeah, fanning over that here, absolutely. In other news from the community,
we saw that Erstwilder has collaborated with Katherine Sabbath on an awesome
collection of brooches and – I think there’s at least one necklace from what I could
see in my scan. I think there was some cupcakes or similar. In all of their cake
glory, Katherine Sabbath is known for making Epic cake creations and Erstwilder,
of course, is synonymous with beautiful, like, high attention to detail, well -crafted,
beautifully packaged accessories. And yeah, it’s the collaboration we didn’t realize we
all needed. Not only that, I think I saw local pottery TikTok personality.
Shelby Sherritt was invited to the opening evening for Katherine and Erstwilder.
It was so wonderful. I think I particularly am proud of Kat Sabbath for having this
enormous moment right now. Someone who self -funded a gigantic pop -up book to kind
of back herself by saying, “This is important to me. I think this is who I am
now. I’m the punk rock dessert queen. And to see that she’s enjoying the result of
the amount of hard work and dedication and passion that she’s put into her own
career is just wonderful. So she’s obviously got this epic collaboration,
but she’s also currently on Dessert Masters, the MasterChef spin -off series,
making her signature takes with a series of other pastry professionals.
It’s amazing. We also saw hilariously that our friends at Canva backed right out of
that price increase that was so controversial that we discussed, I think it was in
episode one, due to the backlash is probably the right word to say that they
received from the user base high pressure tactics from social media, I mean,
they haven’t probably heard the podcast. Shame. They might have found the one vote
of support for the price increase. Did I put on the record that this was going to
happen? Because if I didn’t, I should have at least put money on it. I’d have to
re -listen to see if it was in not only the podcast, but the pre -edit of the
cast. What I found funny again is of course, every interaction as I always do,
because the internet never fails to let me down. People are like, Oh, great. Now
it’s just after I’ve moved everything over to Adobe. Thanks.
Oh, great. Yeah, great. Oh, now that I’ve changed everything. Now that I’ve found
ways to circumnavigate, making a dodgy pro account and avoiding having to have team
members or giving everyone the same login, that’s pretty funny. We did nothing. We
did nothing. Well because you were so proud for the first time in all of our
business history you were like yep I’m cool with that. And look it paid off. It
paid off. Because now we don’t even have
This week I, I’m going to say mine first and then you can say yours because mine’s
not going to be very long, but mine is yours and yours is also mine.
So I’m going to talk about this because this series three is now was so lovely to
see everybody back on the screen, some new faces. It felt like a new pace.
Director, I didn’t go that deep. Don’t know. But I didn’t dislike it.
It wasn’t something that I found difficult or jarring in any way.
I kind of liked it. And maybe it was just the opening episode. Maybe it was just,
you know, I don’t know if that’s a whole series thing. But yeah, the rhythm was
different. You know, we saw some great favourites returning, but also a few new
people. It was great and I really enjoyed it. I’m not gonna spoil anything for
anyone ’cause I don’t like doing that, but I have my own coffee machine at home
and every time I use the knock -ball now, I am channeling Helen.
Anything I say is a spoiler, so I won’t say it. I enjoyed that one.
The other thing that happened this week, Renee, while you were away, so I think you
finished something on your kingdom. Yeah, I haven’t read a novel, a fiction novel
for, well, over a year, I think I finished the last book I read previously was
Tripping and I remember finishing that off in the early days of Postpartum when I
had the ability to actually read read a book. I guess that’s probably why I haven’t
read one because I have a one year old and so just didn’t really have a lot of
time but we had a family holiday recently and so I had less downtime than usual.
No, I had a little bit of downtime. I actually had no Wi -Fi and so at night I
had nothing to do but read and so I just finished reading. I read From Start to
Finish in a few days, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin.
And that’s an achievement ’cause it usually takes me about a month at least to
finish a book, just an average size book, I’m a very slow reader. I think though,
and this is an adjacent note on this, I think that I was able to read this
particular book so fast is because I found on my Kindle a dyslexic font setting and
yeah, it was game changing. Let me tell you, many dyslexics out there who has a
Kindle just dive deep into your settings and you will find a little delight there.
Because anytime you have to go into your Kindle settings I know. You realise you
need a degree. Remember where everything is and how You know, I actually finally
found how to turn off highlights from other readers because I remember you told me
you did that and I could never find it. And you know, I wasn’t that desperate to
do it, so I never actually Googled it. But I found that. I turned that off.
This is just to show you that. I couldn’t do that fast enough. The lack of Wi -Fi
and just, you know, the slight, I guess, what can I do? I did just go through
every setting in the Kindle and found all of these readability settings. So yeah,
you can change the spacing, font size and font. So, and even if you’re not
dyslexic, you can change, you don’t have to use the default font that comes with
your Kindle. There’s all different fonts. So that’s a little side note there. Yeah,
I finished the book. Angela had already read it. Generally the case on any book
that I read is Angela’s already read it ’cause I’ll only take recommendations. ‘Cause
I don’t have time to read the bad stuff and this was just the best book if you
haven’t read it. Highly recommend. It’s based around, I guess in the 80s moves
through the 90s and into the 90s and it’s about video game designers and yeah,
I don’t know what else you can say about books without giving things away. So
that’s probably all I’m going to say. Well, I guess you could talk about there’s a
relationship between three main characters, two really,
but a third person is kind of an integral part of the story. Everyone kind of
feels like a main character though, don’t they? They do. One of my favourite methods
of storytelling is when there’s multiple perspectives and time travel. Yeah. The book
blew my mind. And I won’t give anything away because there are some serious major
moments in the book that would spoil the enjoyment if you haven’t read it.
But it is very moving. There’s a lot to identify with in terms of the female
character from probably both our perspectives in different ways.
Mine may be more obviously historically, but I think from the female experience,
there was a lot of identifiable, validating, particularly in the workplace,
but also in that entrepreneur space as well, which I guess a lot of us are in.
Yeah. I have been looking at buying a version of Hokusai’s Wave ever since.
Not a spoiler because it’s the front cover. You know, it’s a lot of a lot of
people consider it their new favourite if you like It’s a modern classic Already.
Thanks for listening to make good things happen. If you enjoyed this episode Why not
write a review or share it with a friend for show notes and more head to mgth .com.au This has been a D’Alton Baker Production

Fantastic.

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