Now’s a Good Time for… a new segment!

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, season two, episode two. My name is Angela
D’Alton. I am your host and joining me is your co -host of course,

The lovely Renee Baker, how are you Renee? – Good, how are you? – Yeah, I’m all
right, I’m all right. Everyone can say they’re only all right at this point. The
world’s a little bit like an ongoing bin fire in terms of global events right now.
We’re hoping to have provided a moment of focus on your business for the community
of Australian makers and we hope to keep you company for about the next half an
hour. We’ve got a few things we wanna talk about. We’re gonna start this week with
the biggest news, I think that’s probably been in the maker community for quite some
time in our from scroll to cart segment since it primarily affects e -commerce is of
course, the fact that Australia Post has temporarily suspended most parcel shipments
to the United States from the 26th of August, which was very recent, due to the
end of the de minimis exemption, which means now all packages, regardless of value,
now incur tariffs or flat fees when they are being sent from Australia to the
United States, which means that only letters, documents and genuinely non -commercial
gifts under US $100 can still get through, which is roughly at this point in time,
$153 Australian dollars, there are there abouts. Australia is not the only country
that is now halted postage to the US. I’ve noticed it’s happening in dozens of
countries around the world. And I guess this is the ongoing impact of the US
electing President Donald Trump into position because he’s got some notion that
tariffs are going to repair the economy of the United States of America. We’re yet
to see the actual– – Yeah, no further comment. We aren’t economists, let’s face it,
we’re not even accountants. – No. – So we’re not really gonna talk about it from
that perspective, but I think, Renee, the thing that we wanted to do was, I guess,
think of it in two tiers. Firstly, if you’re listening and you’re not a maker,
firstly, thank you for listening. But also, now is such an important time for you
to buy from local creative businesses in particular within the handmade and maker
community. I think the majority of the community, if they’ve been in business for a
reasonable amount of time, and by that I’m thinking sort of the five -year to 10
-year mark, I would suggest a dominant segment of many of the businesses in that
tier we’ll have customers in the United States. – There’s actually more than I
thought just because I follow a lot of makers obviously on social media and I’m
seeing their live commentary of the fallout of what’s happening. And hearing big
numbers like 30 % of my market is the US. And I just think, oh wow, like I guess
as someone who’s spent a large portion of their lives coveting things from overseas
that hadn’t been available in this country. It’s nice to know that it’s kind of
flipped now. There’s a lot of people from overseas that want what we have because
yeah, obviously, we do have some pretty cool shit. Yeah. And honestly, I would
suggest and I’ve got absolutely nothing to base this opinion on except my own
experience. But I would suggest it’s possibly a post Etsy situation.
I know that when you and I both worked at Etsy back in the day, Australia was
always in the top five of countries that bought and sold on the Etsy platform.
And obviously, Etsy being a US -based business meant that the US customer had an
opportunity to discover makers from all around the world. And at the beginning of
the Etsy days, it was the first time the world had encountered the scale of the
maker community in that global sense. And so perhaps after these sellers have either
had some success on Etsy and stayed there, or perhaps they’ve moved onto their own
platform as a result of having success on the Etsy platform, which is what we often
see, that they brought their US customers with them. At least that would make sense,
I guess, to me. That’s also probably depending on where the exchange rates sitting
quite affordable for Americans or US citizens to shop from Australia. But yeah,
it’s pretty crippling, I think. And I, you know, these sorts of moments of
uncertainty do kind of remind us a little bit of when we had the pandemic do
things like, you know, shut off all of our markets and the large source of income
there. And so it’s probably a little bit rattling are very rattling, I imagine, for
a lot of the community. And so our thoughts are with you, if that is you, if you
are a maker that’s affected by this. I think that it’s one of those things that
we’re going to have to just wait and see how it plays out to really understand the
true impact. But I think in the meantime, one thing that I know you and I both
know about makers is that they’re very agile. Creative business is a small and agile
and so it is an opportunity to I guess find another source of income for your
business and whether that is looking into a market that you haven’t perhaps explored
yet. Identifying firstly what percentage of your sales are going to the US.
Like I said, some numbers already. People have already got that idea.
And then thinking how you can make that up across other areas of business, like
whether it’s experimenting with something new, trying visiting a new market that you
may not have ever been coming back to markets full circle. It is. And I think this
is the benefit. Like you say, the maker community, they’re agile, but they’re also
quite resilient because this is such a passionate dream business idea that they often
have. They will find other ways or shift the model or do whatever they need to do
in order to be able to sustain the business in the longer term. And I think that’s
the benefit of having a robust business that has a level of risk management where
you’re not putting all your eggs in one basket at any particular time. And there’s
a few things that you can do as a maker in your own business now. And some of
the things that we suggest you try doing, and when they said trying different
markets, maybe applying for different makers markets or design markets or even local
markets that perhaps you hadn’t necessarily considered before or spending a bit of
time looking at different event opportunities that are available to you. Maybe it’s
about finally approaching that wholesaler or that retail business that you’ve been
considering for quite some time. maybe it’s about putting that wholesale kit together
again and revisiting your wholesale clients and just getting in touch with them. I
mean, it’s probably a good time of you to be doing that anyway, to be making sure
they’ve got everything they need ahead of the holiday season. But as makers, we find
this every time the maker community has potential downturn, is that we all start
buying from one another again. And it’s kind of like the same thing that we did,
as you said, during COVID where we all started buying from one another again. This
is going to require a little bit more than just the maker community to back each
other up, I think, this time. This is a substantial percentage of a lot of people’s
income. And it’s not just about the fact that they may lose some business.
It may put a lot of people out of business. And like you said, Renee, the details
that I’ve seen on social media is it’s often 30 percent that they’re saying, and
I’ve heard that from more than one, that it’s about 30 % of their offering that
goes to the US. The important thing for you to do right now is double down on
your Australian -ness in a way and double down on the authenticity of your products,
the quality of your products and reinforce the messaging about why people should
support small business and have some of that messaging available to you in your
marketing campaigns. I think that’s going to be one of the things that helps us
through and also of course making sure you’re listed on the Australian Makers
Directory. That would help. Those sorts of hubs are going to become more and more
important because if we are telling people that we want them to buy Australian
because all of these Australian businesses are suffering, where do they go to find
Australian Makers? They’re going to go to the Australian Makers Directory because the
internet is no longer serving the information that we’re looking for. These anchor
reliable hubs are going to become more important. That’s our trend forecast anyway.

I like it. – Next up from Scroll to Cart, we’re actually gonna, this is a little
bit of a two part at this time, was an article that I read that came out today
on Media Week by Tora Buchard, who’s the performance director at Equality Media and
Marketing. She has written a post for Media Week, which is focused on,
or the title is, “Clicks Don’t Pay the Bills”. Why post click data is the only
metric that matters. She goes on to basically say that clicks are great,
clicks are a dopamine hit. However, it’s really important to make sure that you’re
getting sales. More than clicks. clicks are a good start,
but let’s focus on the sales and the actual customers that we’re getting.
Overall, it means that just because someone’s clicking on an Instagram post or
popping into your Etsy store or even your own Shopify store, it doesn’t mean they’re
actually buying. And having 100 curious browsers is worth a lot less than one paying
customer. I guess it is a little bit about the funnel and it is a slight what I
would suggest oversimplification of the funnel. And I think the overall message that
I’m getting from this is don’t always focus on the top of the funnel. You’ve got
to also focus on the bottom of the funnel, which is the actual closing of the
sale. The translation I would give in a maker context is it’s kind of like focusing
on all of the people that are hiring your work at your market stall as opposed to
the people who are buying the things at your market stall. Yeah, and this is where
knowing what your conversion rate can really come in handy, which is where you
compare the number of clicks versus the number of sales to see what that percentage
is, like what the rate is in which they’re purchasing. Because once you get an idea
of what that number is, that can help you understand whether or not, for example,
your product page on your website is actually set up to support those sales and
support those conversions. The overall, as we said, it’s a clicks versus customers
discussion. One of the points raised in the article is that,
and I’ll read the sentence, “The brands ahead of the curve treat the sales journey
as one connected process. They track every lead from the first click to the final
transaction. They score leads based on their likelihood to convert and they adjust
their media spending response to that real revenue data, not just the lead volume.
So obviously this is all very formulaic and mathematical and probably beyond my
comprehension in a lot of ways. I’m going to try and translate this into ways that
we can understand it. One of the things that comes out of that particular paragraph
there is that not all leads are equal to customers can look the same online,
particularly because we don’t have a clue what they’re thinking, what they’re doing
and so on. But you might have one customer, for example, who buys one $20 item
once, whereas another might keep coming back and spend 50, 100, 150 each time they
come back. And yet online, we will often treat those two people the same.
They are essentially faceless to us. So they get the same journey, they get the
same process, they get the same treatment. So I think it’s important to differentiate
them when we’re doing our marketing at the point of influence that is available to
us, particularly with e -commerce, which is clearly what we’re talking about right
here. That’s where that email marketing just, I know we talk about it a lot, but
it’s just so beneficial because you can really re -target those existing customers
that you’ve already had and nurture them, and all of our suggestions aren’t coming
from a place of being overt or almost like one thing that we hear a lot. I don’t
want to be too salesy, but what you can do is actually be really personalized in
your follow -up with those particular customers, like the ones that you’re talking
about that come back time and time again. And that can be you sending an email one
on one that doesn’t have to be anything fancy or gimmicky, just whatever you can
manage is better than nothing. Again, if you think back to like old school customer
service where, you know, we used to look up businesses on the yellow pages, it was
really just about who was the nicest person and who returned your phone call. Like
then that was ultimately how you decided who you’re going to work with. Whereas now
it’s almost like reverse marketing because we’re just consuming what’s being fed to
us through our feet. We’re not proactively seeking brands by flicking through a
massive yellow book. So if you have got someone coming to you and approaching you,
I guess what I’m trying to say is that’s that opportunity. That’s a bit of a
tangent there. But what this does highlight to me as well is the importance of
knowing your conversion rate. So where you talked about the clicks versus sales, that
is essentially an equation that looks at the number of orders that you’ve had or
number of sales that you’ve had divided by the visitors to your website. So the
clicks and that’s how you calculate your conversion rate. I’ve actually just pulled
up something from Shopify, which is always a great place to go for any kind of
industry insight and data because they’re one of the largest or if not the largest
e -commerce platform that facilitate sales every half a second. The Shopify blog
article that I’m looking at talks about an average e -commerce conversion rate sitting
around 2 .5 to 3%, I actually thought it was about two, but they’re talking about
actually striving for higher than that and how Shopify can help you do that because
of how awesome they are. So it’s actually using it as a sales page. I think it is
reassuring to know that it is only that number because yeah, like you say, you
might start to think, oh, but I’m getting hundreds of clicks and only five or six
sales per hundred. Whereas that’s not too bad. – That’s actually good. – That’s
actually good. – That’s 5 % here. – Exactly. So having that extra layer of data can
be really empowering and it’s not always something that just comes up in your
standard report. So if you’re using Shopify or even if you’re using Google Analytics,
it doesn’t always default to showing you your conversion rate. Sometimes you do have
to manually calculate that yourself. Of course, we will supply a link to that
article. So there’s additional information there for you if you want to learn more.
But the key thing, I think, to take away is to make sure you’re measuring the
right things. make sure you’re following the entire process of your customers,
like where did they come from, what do they do when they’re here and what do they
buy, how often do they buy it and just working out that return on investment
particularly when you’ve got a marketing campaign and just making sure you know where
the sales are coming from. There’s actually a sales attributed column in Shopify so
you can work out where they’re actually originating, which platform, how they found
out about you online. And even just anecdotally at markets or anywhere that you
encounter a customer, just ask people how they heard about you and just start to
identify the patterns and the commonalities between the origin of your customers and
how they come across you. If it’s word of mouth, then you know to make sure you’re
treasuring your current customers a little bit more and use the information to
customize your strategy moving forwards. Great idea.
In this season, we’re going to be introducing a few new bits and pieces. This is
the first one. It’s a new segment we might bring in from time to time. It’s called
Now’s a Good Time For. The members of Make Good Things Happen, our honey eaters,
will be very familiar with this phrase already. It’s thing we talk about in our
making pathways content, which is our weekly newsletters sent out to our members to
kind of give them a little bit of an idea about what we think they should probably
be doing in their business right about now. It’s optional. It’s not like they get
tested on it or anything. It’s really about us making sure that you’re kind of
thinking of all the little things that you need to think about as a maker in
business without you having to think of all of them, we’re trying to think of them
for you. There’s a few things we suggest right now. I’ll start with the first one.
It is time to start your preparation for market season if you haven’t already.
Spring is the beginning of the shopping season and in particularly the lead up to
the Christmas market time. A few things that you might wanna do if you’re only
gonna do one little thing. Maybe it’s checking your market toolkit, maybe make sure
you’ve got all of those things that you’ve stocked up on all the things you need.
Maybe you need to check your signage. Maybe prices have changed and you still need
some new signage and make sure you’ve got plenty of bags and plenty of business
cards available. Just start thinking about the preparation that is required for
markets. Start doing it now. Alongside of that, or as well as that, you and start
thinking about Christmas. So actually, Angela today already sent me a link to the
2026 calendars ready to buy. And I think that even just seeing that you go,
oh yeah, that’s right. There’s only three months of the year left, which means
Christmas, which means New Year’s. So if you have things that are Christmas
appropriate, which let’s face it, you all do if you’re a maker because majority of
your sales are happening as Christmas gifts, now’s a good time to start getting some
Christmas products live online. So even if it’s just one, even if it’s just a
little gift idea that you’ve got, getting those keywords into your product listing
and just start getting it up, that means you’re more likely to show up for shoppers
when they’re not only searching for you down the track, but also mentally. So you
know that this marketing game takes a long time for people and they think about
things for a while. So if you plan to seed now and then are consistent with that
over the next three months, you’ve got a much better chance of converting that sale.
Have a look at your online store and just make sure that with all of this new
postage situation that’s happening, make sure your shipping information is up to date.
Make sure you have clear delivery timelines noted for the upcoming holiday shopping
season so that people can be sure to know when they have to buy from you in order
to receive the item in time for the big day. Make sure you specify cutoff dates
based on region, for example, or location, and make sure that your customers have
clear understanding of whether or not you have express available. Maybe even mention
whether or not you do gift wrapping, that sort of thing. So start thinking about
how you’re going to be delivering this season. And finally, good time to have a bit
of a spring clean of your social media. It’s always a good excuse to just give
things a bit of a jhuzh. And so if you need some more clear direction on what that
could be, update your Instagram bio, make sure your link tree or if you’re not
using link tree, just your general links in your profile are all accurate and
working on Instagram and other social networks that you might be using. Check if
you’ve got your next market listed in your bio and if you are also on Instagram, I
have seen recently there has been an update to the way that highlights work. I
think they’re no longer showing them in chronological order or they are sorry but
they’re showing your newest story first as opposed to the oldest one.
So if you use highlights and you’re familiar. You normally, when you click on a
highlight, it plays all of the highlights in the order that they were posted, but
now it’s reverse ordering that. So you might have to just have a look at that in
case you’ve got anything in there that needs to make sense. Maybe refresh your bio
profile, that kind of thing. – So that’s our very quick, now’s a good time for
segment where you can choose a little timely action that you can take to keep your
business humming along nicely.
Our making news segment for this episode, there’s a couple of things I wanted to
talk about because they’re good news stories. The first thing that came to my
attention that I wanted to share was that the New South Wales government has
unveiled its first ever state fashion strategy. They are injecting $750 ,000 to back
emerging designers. They’ve set up a fashion hub, something called a smart factory at
UTS, which is the University of Technology in Sydney, and a Paris showcase program.
This is a great example of ways that government can provide support and hope to
makers and creative people. Makers have the opportunity here to tap into a range of
things like funding, design hubs, export showcases, especially if you’re working in
the category of textiles or fashion, fashion technology, that sort of thing. It’s
just a nice good news story that I wanted to make sure people heard of and also
in other fashion news. One of the Australian labels, Ajé, I think I’m going to
say, it’s a brand by Adrian Norris and Edwina Forrest. They are debuting at Paris
Fashion Week this October with their Spring /Summer 26 collection.
They are backed by the Fédération de la haute couture et de la mode and they’ve
got expansion of their range through Bergdorf, Goodman, Sachs and Prenton and it’s a
huge thing happening for this particular Australian business. It just shows you that
Australian creativity can still go global, that we can still have an advantage in
some areas if our creativity and our craftsmanship and our artisanship is actually of
a quality that we can use to sell our story. They’re not competing on price.
This is in a world where, you know, mass production and pools of massive amounts of
clothing and so on are derigger. They are still managing to find a way forward and
navigate success. It’s a really encouraging story for other small business owners to
hear and it also just shows that we don’t have to just sell bits and pieces.
We’re not just selling products that we are selling a story and that we are selling
a story about our craftsmanship, the level of craftsmanship that we have and the
care that goes into what we produce, the creativity that goes into what we make. So
I wanted to make sure that we shared a couple of good news stories in this
episode. So thanks. – I honestly am surprised to hear that they haven’t been to
Paris, that particular label that I’ve always just called A .J .E.
in my head, I’ve never actually tried to pronounce it. – And honestly,
I probably should have looked up how to pronounce it before the episode, but I I’m
going to say RJ, but it could be AJE. It could be age. It could be ARJ. I don’t
know if anyone knows, let us know. But congratulations.
And also thanks for the opportunity for me to say.
You just put that in because you wanted to show off your friend in a good way.
This week I binge watched a show on Netflix that no one had recommended to me.
It was one of those ones I thought, you know what, I’m going in and I’m gonna
find a show for myself, even though the list of shows that have been recommended to
me grows longer every day. – That’s ’cause you don’t like taking recommendations
’cause you like being the one that finds the show to recommend. – Is it? – Yeah,
don’t deny. – This particular show that I did watch called Untamed.
Starring Eric Bana, Sam Neill, you know other people have mentioned that actually.
It’s kind of a mystery crime story set in California, in the mountains,
I mean the National Park. There’s some just breathtaking scenery in it. And I think
that’s part of it. It’s got kind of a bit of a Scandi Noir feel because of these
landscapes and the brooding atmosphere that goes on in those sorts of programs in
that genre particularly. Obviously it’s American, it was set in America. It was very
interesting seeing Eric Banner in a lead role where he’s American and he’s talking
to Sam Neal who’s also speaking with an American accent. That’s a unique challenge
that we have obviously seeing local actors doing American work. But I really enjoyed
it. I thought it was a great show. I thought it had a lovely tempo to it. I
actually hadn’t, I had only partially guessed the ending, so I’m not going to spoil
that for you. It’s a good show. I recommend it. Cool. Well, I actually need a
show, so that’s good. And see, I think, I think you wanted to talk about was
atmosphere. I believe we talked about that in our last episode and so much so that
you influence me to start reading it immediately. So I’m now reading “Atmosphere”,
which is the Taylor Jenkins Reid, have I said that right, latest book? It was funny
because your recommendation was that it’s just an easy read, like all of her books.
And I have a hard must be easy reading rule at the moment because I’m so tired
and just need something easy as opposed to challenging. Not a spoiler.
I don’t think the first chapter is so heavily laden in technical terminology from
NASA that I almost abandoned the book because I just couldn’t.
And then I thought to myself, why would Ange call this easy reading? And then I
remembered how much of a massive space nerd you are. So that made it says.
Yes, but I also struggled with that first, that first chapter. It’s dense and it’s
rich and it’s full of technical information. I actually just trusted Taylor Jenkins,
right? I thought she’s… Yeah, well, I trusted you. Yeah, there you go. So I just
thought she’s not going to do this to me for a whole book and she doesn’t. I
don’t know how far you’re into it now, but I’m guessing it’s at a point where you
feel more comfortable with the pros and the format because it does go backwards and
forwards as well. Yeah, I think I’ve had one shift maybe. I mean, the whole thing’s
about time and space. Yes, if you’re like me and wondering what on earth has Anne
got me into, I am still only in the early days, but push on through because yes,
it does get get easier. And the buzz around the book is that there’s already a
film adaptation in development. But yeah, I can’t wait for you to finish because I
need to. So that is this week’s podcast from Make Good Things Happen.
Thank you for joining us and we look forward to bringing you another episode very
soon. Thanks for listening. Bye.
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.

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