Can tech make agriculture brands more authentic? with Jim Gall, RB Sellars

0:08Hello, and welcome to Ag Tech So What, brought to you by Tenacious Ventures. I'm Sarah Nolette. I don't think we've ever talked about ag work shirts on the podcast before, but I'm excited to do it today with Jim Gall, the CEO of RB Sellars. And I promise there's a good reason and lots to learn about ag tech go-to-market, storytelling, and just good business, especially in regional communities. Many Australians will know the brand Arby Sellers. As a company, it's well-established in the eastern states, selling workwear, but also casual and smart-casual daywear. Jim, who took over as CEO in early 2024, is quick to point out that Arby Sellers doesn't see itself in the business of fashion, but rather the business of agriculture.

0:47And this is a key part of the brand's story. Different consumers buy for different reasons. But stories without foundation, stories without a purpose, Stories without a reason to motivate that consumer to buy your product is manningless. Jim Gall has a background in farming, trained as a journalist, and built a successful marketing agency focused specifically on rural and regional audiences. And as you'll hear, he thinks deeply about the link between business and storytelling in agriculture. This has an impact on the tech side, too, from how RB Sellers is investing in tech internally to them as an example of a channel to farmers.

1:24You'll also hear plenty of lessons on leadership, brand positioning, and using tech in a way that enhances human connection rather than detracts from it. So here's Jim Gall. I grew up on a farm in a sandpit driving little tractors and bulldozers around imagining what a life in agriculture would look like. And it seemed perhaps only natural then that I would return to the farm at some point or take over the farm from my father. But Dad really encouraged us to go out and see the world and study. And I'm one of three brothers. And the farm was probably not big enough at that point for one of us to buy the others and take it over.

2:02So Dad said that he ended up coming back sort of 47 or 48. And with a vast business background behind me and now I'm fully invested in our own farming enterprise, Merino Sheep and also Prime Lambs as well. and also have a part-time job, which really takes most of my time, running RBSL as an Australian. Yeah, well, you've had kind of a somewhat unusual career. I'm a rural journalist. You founded an agency, CEO, and then you've always had the connection to land in the background. I guess from your perspective, what connects all of those different chapters in your life or in your career? Well, I think there's two things.

2:38There's following things that you're passionate about, but also things that you're good at. and for me, you know, I always wanted to be a journalist actually and I started as a cadet journalist in a country town called Shepparton and then over to Sale in Gippsland in Victoria and, you know, at that point in time journalism was hard to get into. It's not like these things now where everyone's a journalist. You actually, you know, there was one cadetship at The Age and one cadetship at The Herald Sun and they were fiercely contested. So I went to the country and did a cadetship and studied journalism and really that was a fantastic grounding for me in understanding rural and regional communities and their differences.

3:19And really it was sort of the embryonic stages of building my own agency that specialised in rural and regional audiences because there is no doubt rural people, you know, they have different attitudes, values and behaviours and I'm not sure the mainstream communicated with them in such a way that really won their loyalty or trust. So to then be able to use that background and develop a communications business that actually focused on that audience was tremendously exciting. So that was when I started Red Handed. And then that evolved obviously into a bigger business that was then acquired by Cleminger BBDO, Australia's largest marketing, advertising, communications business.

3:59I worked there for a number of years in the transition after they acquired my company, had some pretty exciting roles and ended up staying there for a decade, which was absolutely fantastic. I was at an event recently and it was a bunch of regional leaders and then farmers and someone was sharing how the corporates that are trying to engage in regional Australia, whether that's like a retail distributor or an energy company, they're really focused on, oh, we need all this stakeholder engagement. And then they don't have anyone in the room from that stakeholder group. Like it's all sort of talk that these are different and we have to think differently.

4:32Was that your experience that doing the work to understand regional Australia and farmers was pretty tricky and not always done at all or done well? Yeah, it's an interesting one. I mean, I've always been of the view, and country people are straight shooters, right? If you have a business in a country town or in a rural community, you've got to walk back down that street. You've got to look people in the eye, and your integrity matters. Credibility matters. And it may have been lost a little, I think, in the mainstream. So showing up authentically, showing up honestly with integrity is a really important part of what I believe running a successful business was all about.

5:09And that came from that sort of rural understanding. But an overlay to all of that is that, you know, you've got to have data, right? You've got to have information in order to make decisions. But there's a difference between facts, data and the truth. And often, you know, that can get a bit grey. but certainly see facts as being fixed and the truth being felt. And, you know, my mum always said to me, I won't always remember what you said, but I'll always remember how you made them feel. And to me, that's at the core of a brand. When people walk away from your interaction or an interaction with your brand, they need to feel something.

5:49You can't just bury them in facts and say, well, that's the truth and that's how it works. It's not how it works. The truth is individually felt. So it's an interesting overlay, I think, in terms of running a business, connecting with a customer with integrity, and then persuading a customer to buy your product, not telling them and not lining facts up to underwriting. We see it in modern politics now. People aren't voting necessarily on the policy or the attributes. They're voting on a discomfort with the status quo. So I do believe there's a difference between the facts and the truth. Let's jump into our resellers.

6:26I think our Australian audience will know exactly what that is, but maybe our international audience won't. So what is RV Sellers? And what drew you to taking this role? Yeah, I suppose when I left Cominger, I resigned after a bit over a decade there. And I've been traveling all over the country and internationally as well around the New Zealand business from Australia as well and spent time in New Zealand. And I was pretty exhausted after COVID. And I really just wanted to get home to the farm and start looking at our genetics in our Merino program. and actually get a bit of dirt under my fingernails and get back to what I was really passionate about.

7:00Not that I wasn't passionate about creativity and advertising and leading businesses, but I just needed that change. Going back to the farm for a year and a half or so was really exciting because I was doing everything I wanted to do. My days were full. It didn't feel like I was working. And then one of the shareholders of RB Sellers called me, which is the holding company Propel Group. And he said, look, we'd love you to come onto the board. I think you'd add a lot in terms of building our brand and we'd be really keen to seek your insights. And that was incredible. I thought, well, this is interesting.

7:32I'm loving what I'm doing on the farm, but I really need to get a bit more stimulation. I do miss business and I miss that interaction. So that would be really interesting. And RB Sellers is a family-owned Australian brand, family values, community at its core. It focuses on agriculture and farmers. So for me, that alignment was absolutely perfect. So four board meetings a year, a little bit of work in between sounded perfect. And then about six months into my tenure on the board, the CEO left the business and the shareholders asked if I'd step in at an executive capacity and become interim CEO.

8:08So at that point, I wasn't quite sure whether this is what I wanted to do, but it was interesting. And after six months on the board, I certainly saw that there was great upside in the business. And there was a lot of opportunity that aligned with my values. So it was a great place to jump back in. I was thinking three or four days a week. That quickly turned into seven days a week and a major turnaround job. So here I am two years and four months later, absolutely loving what I'm doing, but also heading down the highway on a Thursday night to get to the farm and get through my livestock responsibilities over the weekend.

8:42Yeah. How does being a farmer and making decisions in that enterprise influence how you lead and make decisions at RB Sellers? Yeah, leadership's a really big one for me. And I haven't shifted in terms of my leadership style. So coming from the country, and you know, as I mentioned, walking down the street before in a country town, people don't stab you in the back of the country, they look you in the eye, and they paint you in the face. And it's not as brutal as that in the business world, I get it. And it's not, you know, not physically like that in the country either. But let's talk metaphorically here that honesty and providing, you know, radical feedback in the moment, not saved up for the annual review, but, you know, whilst you're in the flow of work is a critical and foundational aspect of my leadership styles.

9:35There's a concept called radical candour. There's plenty to read about it. Some people like it. Some people don't like it. But I figure, as you spoke about before, if you can build trust and people know that you're caring personally about them, then you can really challenge directly. And that's where you see real profound change in the business culturally, but also in terms of people's actions and growing a business. if you can provide that radical candour as an executive leadership team to your board to the most junior member of your team and they can feel the same in challenging you and everyone's open to that feedback then the growth is not only profound but it's really motivational like if you can be open and going into any meeting or even in the hallway here at rbsl as people will stop you and go hey i've been thinking about that thing i'm not quite sure we're doing it the right way.

10:30And an old school management technique could probably be, let's get a meeting and let's have a chat about that at a later stage. But to be able to go, yeah, I'm really interested in that. What are you saying? How could we change it? How could it be better for our customer? And radical candor, it overcomes ignorance, mistrust, and defensiveness. What's an example of something that you were challenged on? Yeah, I think AI is a good example. We could easily say everything's going well. We've got our channels to market and we're comfortable with where our customer is, it won't change because most of our customers are rural and regional sort of customers.

11:05They like bricks and mortar. Some of them like going online. That's important for them and we don't want to change things up. But to then say, okay, well, that's fascinating. How's that going to change? When can we trial something? So our customer service team is a good example. They're answering the same queries so they'll challenge me because same queries over and over and over again have the same conversations and you can walk out the corridor here and hear them talking about the same things about fit how it fits or is this a roomia version or relax fit or is it and there's a return how can i get it returned you know huge amounts of people and hours taken up with that process using ai and we use a system called gorgeous a third of our calls now are resolved without anyone actually speaking to anyone.

11:55They're resolved because it's generative AI, we've fed it into the machine and improves every day based on a customer inquiry. And we would have never gone that way. We would have been very comfortable because our customers told us, hey, we like talking to people on the end of the phone and that's important to us as a regional community. If that person from customer service didn't say, hey, I reckon you could use my hours better, I could be more productive. If some of those simple queries or inquiries could be solved with an AR bot. And, you know, here we are, we're 33 % of calls resolved. And it could have been really easy for me in that moment just to say, oh, yeah, we'll take a look at it.

12:33Or we'll have a chat to our chief customer officer or our IT department. Right then and there, we could make a decision that's actually changing the experience for our customers and making our team more productive. You talk about being in the business of agriculture, not fashion, despite the products that you sell are things that people wear, not necessarily eat. What does that actually mean? Like, how does that change how you run the company as opposed to others that might not be in the business of agriculture? Yeah, I think so many fashion businesses are shaped around when their product drops.

13:05So if you think about winter's about to land and you think about your winter wardrobe and you'll go and buy a coat, you'll buy a knit and you'll buy a base layer and you'll buy a couple of new pairs of jeans for winter. and we were training our customer to buy around two big fashion moments which would coincide with our catalogue so our catalogue launches in autumn and winter and then in spring and summer so what that meant from a in a traditional sense as a fashion business is all our product landing at one time running a traditional marketing campaign sending out a catalogue and then waiting for the calls to come.

13:40And that is not necessarily how country people buy, and particularly farmers, because farmers run a calendar. There's a sowing season, there's a harvest season, there's a shearing season. And depending on where you are geographically, those things are different and slightly different timings. So for us, it was about understanding that we're going to run our trade calendar, and we're going to run our traditional marketing calendar, but we're also going to overlay an agriculture calendar because we know when people have harvest, they have a wardrobe requirement for workwear. And, you know, there are rugger shorts and our poppin shirts or our work shirts.

14:20There may be a base layer. There are stretched jean rather than a rigid jean because they're in and out of tractors and headers and everything else. So understanding that agriculture is a year-round business and our farmers have different needs at different times means that we can't run this business like a fashion business. The other bit of it is, I suppose, bringing through some of my own personal ambitions in terms of what we've discussed just previously here, that agriculture has had a brand problem over a long period of time and it's had some unintended consequences. For instance, not enough people coming into agriculture, not enough people studying ag science.

15:00So therefore, you know, the industry has an inability to be productive because it doesn't have all the roles filled. There's not enough agronomists, there's not enough rural bankers, there's not enough farmers. And so this issue around the brand problem being an exciting and an innovative industry to join has created this productivity issue. So for us, we see our broader role as not just an apparel business, but a culture business dedicated to creating a really positive, bright future for regional Australia. And when we do that, we create an industry that people are proud of. So when they wear a uniform, they feel like they're part of something, which we call the unofficial Australian rural uniform, which doesn't rubbish if that works yet.

15:45But they also feel like we're backing them, you know. And that's really important that Australian agriculture feels like there's brands out there that are building trust, that are understanding them, and they're investing in their regional communities, not just their farm businesses. You know, our stores aren't in the cities, they're in the country. And they're not only in big regional centres, they're often in gateway rural towns. Like we recently opened in Narragorn in South Australia. Six and a half thousand people in Narragorn. We took over the old ANZ Bank. The building was empty. And we went in there and completely fitted out the place.

16:21And it's now one of the best performing stores for us in the country. There's a high street that's important to the culture of that community. And often when banks close, the supermarket might close and the doctor's clinic might close. And then the sporting team shuts down, the footy team, the netball team, they then merge with another town. And these rural communities lose their heart. And it's a really important part of what our brand stands for as a culture brand, that we stand for something much bigger than a work shirt product, our Burton work shirt, for instance. You know, really for us it's confidence in regional Australia, pride in the people who shape it, in the modern expression of country culture.

17:00And it's not what you imagine. And it's a super exciting industry to be involved in. And really that takes the conversation, you know, for us away from we're just a work shirt and it's about the best price. Well, it's not. It's about backing Australian farmers. So therefore, making those workshirts out of Australian cotton and making sure that's traceable. And then showing consumers the discernible difference of an Australian cotton fibre, which is more lustrous, more breathable, more durable, and in fact, a better product. And when you do that and learn that with what we're trying to achieve in promoting Australian agriculture, hopefully we're differentiated in market and our customers value it more.

17:45You opened a bunch of threads that I want to go pull on there, Jim. So one, just the NeroCord example, like I was going to ask you about, and to your point about data, sort of predictive merchandising and weather data and predicting customer behavior, like maybe NeroCord is an example, but you guys would have seen a commercial opportunity there too. It wasn't like a philanthropic effort to save the town or save the community. How do you think about sort of understanding your customers and the operating environment through data to make those decisions, both to impact the mission and obviously to achieve the commercial outcome?

18:17Yeah. And so our business is an omnichannel business. Our largest selling channel is our bricks and mortar stores, about 60%. Then e-commerce, which is sort of 36%. And then we have a wholesale channel and we have a uniforms B2B business as well. And that's really direct to consumer or B2B. So when you're serving that sort of model, you do receive a lot of data. And because the majority is sold through our channels, econ or bricks and mortar, we do receive a huge amount of data about who's buying what when. And a huge amount of our product is also core products. So product that we know customers will continue to buy over and over again.

18:57But we look at the agricultural performance of that region by postcode. We look at our own data in terms of what is being sold in e-commerce. We look at also the type of leaders in that community. So landlords are incredibly important in a country town. And so for us, we lease these buildings when landlords are easy to deal with. They have the same vision of us to grow their community. Then it's a match made in heaven. Like they'll co-invest, we'll build something great. We saw this in Denny when we opened in Denny. It was a number of shops closed in Cressy Street after we opened, which was a building that was empty for four years.

19:34It was an old St George bank. The shops on the other side of the street opened up. We suddenly saw this viability in that country community. And then there's the data which provides that real reinforcement that that investment will pay off. So a little bit of intuition, certainly a lot of foundational agricultural performance. Data is important. But having said that, you know, Like before we opened in Narragorn, they had one of the worst droughts on record. They were in drought for a year and a half. And I've got to say, we really scratched our head on that one because that's really unusual for that Narragorn area to have a poor season.

20:09But we did feel it in return and we knew there were a lot of good farmers there and a lot of good farming families and they were still buying clothes from us in their commerce. So to be able to do that, then the rain to fall, you know, and things to line up was the perfect, perfect storm for us in many respects. So we tend to see a tenfold increase in our Acom sales off the back of having a physical store. One of the other threads that I wanted to pull, Jim, was around, he's about cotton and Australian cotton and probably applies to wool as well. You've invested in traceability and provenance.

20:40How do you think about that? Is that like a marketing story? I think we've seen a lot of people talking about provenance, but it's really in that marketing realm and or like a competitive advantage, like preferred suppliers. Like how do you think about that? Absolutely critical that we have homegrown partnerships, homegrown fibres. 70 % of the value of the product that we sell is in the fibre. So from our perspective, it doesn't really matter which country it's made in. It really matters that we're supporting Australian farmers, that the fibres that we're using are traceable to the country of origin, which in this case is easy in cotton because most of it's centered around Narrabri or that area of New South Wales.

21:22When I came into the role, within a week, I had a call from Adam Kay, who's the CEO of Cotton Australia. And he just asked me a few questions about my background and about our product. And he said to me, do you know where your cotton comes from? It's in your workshops. And I said, look, I haven't asked that question yet. I haven't really got my feet under the desk. And he said, you know, you might be interested to know, I don't think it's all from Australia. And yet you're selling it to Australian farmers. So just, you know, it might be a good question to ask you, Tam, which is a great prompt.

21:51I'd have loved it. It's exactly the sort of stuff you want to hear from the CEO. He's doing his job. Yep. Absolutely doing his job. And that was a really important part of really our homegrown strategy as a business, which is now a platform in our business that, okay, well, let's work out what is the process. And being a farmer, I want to look under the hood, like how does all this work? And going to see our factories and look at the supply chain and understand what is that process. And the process was the factories decide what fibers that you use and you ask them to make it for a price. You want it to be quality and everything else, but that decision, you know, we deferred.

22:30Now that decision is a critical decision because if they're doing that with every brand that runs through there, then it's most likely whoever's dealing with those factories is winning market share. And in this case was US cotton. they did a lot of work with the factories to make sure that that was the product of choice the foundational fiber that went into products so going over and seeing this and seeing all the other cotton products and wolf it was very similar I was able to then work back with cotton Australia hey how do we change this and we went through a process of looking at all the different supplies in our supply chain whether they were trading the cotton whether that was the gin or whether that was the processor, the spinner, and then understanding how do we track that.

23:12And it's called what Cotton Australia call a chain of custody, where you follow the receipts, you follow the invoices of each person through the supply chain. When that meets certification, when it is Australian, and they can trace it back to the bail number, which is what we do, we can confidently say to our consumer, this is proudly grown in Australia by the best cotton growers in the world. And then we can launch a campaign like we did with Homegrown Australian Cotton. and with Cotton Australia to say, hey, you know, we're returning our work shirts to the paddock on the backs of those who know our hard day's work, which is you, the grower.

23:47And to us, that's a really great circular story that works from a sustainability perspective, but moreover, says that we're invested. Our actions are that we're invested in the success of that industry, not just about, hey, we've got a brand story to tell. Any brand story has to come from a truth. as I spoke before about facts and the truth. So we did that with cotton. We haven't deliberately traced it to one particular cotton farm because we see our role in terms of advocacy for the industry about being for all cotton growers. Yeah, well, then you only have one customer. That won't work very well.

24:24It doesn't work very well. And us individually as apparel brand that provides workshirts to farm customers is not going to change the future of the cotton industry. but certainly in terms of how we've gone about this process and how we've worked with industry partners and how we've told that story has built a great deal of pride and you know cotton is growing in Australia you know we're seeing huge areas in the north now going into cotton we're seeing you know old rice irrigation areas now going into cotton we're seeing a lot of producers of other commodities moving to cotton because they're doing a great job in terms of telling the cotton story.

25:02It's interesting to me, I've been reflecting on, you end up in a lot of these conversations, as I'm sure you do too, Jim, where people are like, oh, Ag's not good at telling her story. Oh, Ag's has to be better at telling her story. And I think there's a lot of like nodding and then you move on and then you go, wait, well, like, why do we need to tell that story? Like, what is the benefit to be gained? And some of it is just like, you know, humans, hey, we're out here, hey, we do these things. Hey, you know, like we're part of your economy and society. From a business perspective, the competitive angle often is that marketing, like we can tell this story.

25:33Maybe how do you see it from a competitive advantage perspective? Is it that like our customers really resonate with us? So it is marketing, but it's a bit more than that. Like it's really about that kind of trust. I think it's a, it's an easy thing to say that we're a storyteller or better at telling stories than others. Different consumers buy for different reasons. And there's brand loyalty, particularly the more expensive a product becomes, it becomes a real high investment purchase both in time and money. But stories without foundation, stories without a purpose, stories without a reason to motivate that consumer to buy your product is meaningless.

26:10And you see it with greenwashing. You see it all the time where brands pick up something that's in the popular zeitgeist out there and they go, that's our brand. And it's actually not. It's about finding a truth. it's then delivering on the promise and then consistently telling it over and over and over again. Our position in terms of our product is that it needs to be a quality product, but it also needs to be affordable. Now, if we spent all our money on building a brand and talking about craft and it's made by a thousand leather makers carefully sewing each boot or leather jacket or whatever it is, that's not a believable proposition from our perspective because people know us as a workwear company that supports Australian farmers.

27:02That story for us is 70 % of the value of the product is in the fibre. Australian fibre producers are the best in the world. Natural fibres are the most sustainable solution to solve landfill. We're going to make it really easy for you to shop with us. We're going to be invested in your rural community. we're going to provide innovative products that meet the future needs of farming because we know there's automation we know there's more robotics the type of garments that we create are for the future needs of you the customer and that's beyond storytelling right it's about the product that's about our supply chain that's about our deep commitment to our customer and on top we also provide a really beautiful storytelling mechanism that is underpinned by the truth I was just thinking about how when you, when I talk to some people who work in, in corporates, like they're using marketing phrases or censoring themselves and you like just use them like, because you're fluent in it.

27:59Like you can just tell that this has been your background. And a couple of the phrases, it was just striking me that it comes off as authentic, like that, you know, homegrown partnerships and homegrown fibers, like that would take a long time to come up with as a marketing slogan. And yet it comes off as authentic. So, and usually it doesn't, I keep being like, do I need to push them harder? Because Maybe this is all just marketing fluff, but you've clearly done the work, right? This is the thing. If you remember 10 years ago, everyone sacked their marketing directors or chief marketing officers, if you remember.

28:27And then they changed those roles to chief customer officers. I think everyone was just like, oh, you're just changing the name. You're not changing the name. You're actually pivoting the company to the customer. And so no longer are you a marketer. And, you know, homegrown fibers, homegrown partnerships is a business strategy. It's not a marketing strategy. Right, right. And the less of these separate siloed concepts that happen in departments in a business, the better. Purpose has got to be narrow and it's got to be for everyone. It's got to be focused for every department. And yeah, I think that's really sad that I often see not enough, you know, maybe 20 years ago, 30 years ago, there used to be a lot of marketing managers would become CEOs.

29:08Now you do not see a chief marketing officer or a marketing person anywhere near running these companies. and it's a shame because I believe marketing is customer-led. It's so funny. And we've done well. Yeah. It's so funny you said that. I was talking to my dad the other day and I've been sort of documenting some of his business lessons because he's in a business forever and I've wanted to kind of go back through them now. And he was telling a story about a company he became part of and how he was head of sales and there was a head of marketing and then the head of marketing went to start a new company and hired him.

29:39And the first thought was like, oh, heads of marketing don't start companies. And then I was like, whoa, what a bias that is for me. Like, why not? Right? Like, and it really hit me. So second time in a week. It's a very strange oxide classic example. The ultimate marketer. Yeah, that's right. That's right. I want to ask about wool as well. Obviously, wool's had a tough couple of, I don't know, decades, but there's sort of stronger prices, kind of renewed demand. Do you think that's a temporary thing? Or is there something fundamental about like natural fibers and not asking for like a, you know, commodity prediction, but more of like, you know, anything kind of underlying.

30:12about how consumers are thinking about natural fibers? I'll declare my interest as a wool grower. Yeah, that's right. But I went down to Tasmania a year and a half ago to speak at the Campbelltown show. So 4 ,000 people down there, all of them were in-o producers. I was in heaven. And I walked into the committee room. They had lunch for me earlier on. And they said, so what do you do, Jim? And I said, I'm a wool grower. And they said, oh, another slow learner. Oh, and they've been doing it since about 1830. you know, down there and they're stuck with the commodity through thick and thin. And you do scratch your head.

30:47And I did this when I went home to our family property as well. I love sheep and I love the genetics and I love the animal, but I certainly wasn't loving the return. And like it's only the most resilient and the toughest and those that believe in the fibre more than anyone else that is still in it. You know, over the last 24 months, we've seen close to a 30 % reduction in wool production in Australia. And so that means that yields mightn't be there, but also that a lot of wool growers have just left to grow other commodities, whether it's moving into perhaps meat sheep rather than wool sheep, cattle, or getting in the header and tractor and driving things around rather than crutching a year.

31:31So big changes have happened in the wool industry, and I think it reached a point last year where there's some pretty tough conditions the price was flat, really flat. A lot of people got out. The supply and demand thing changed a little bit on that basis. I think a lot of wool in storage and with processes also moved through the supply chain. And we're also seeing, I think from a consumer perspective, the hard work that Walmart have done internationally around positioning wool as a sustainable natural fibre versus oil-based synthetics. I see that work actually flowing through to brands and to makers globally.

32:12So when that happens, you know, you've got this demand creation. You've also got, you know, a diminishing supply, a relatively lean supply chain because there's not enough money in it. So there's not enough people in it. And I think it represents a fundamental shift in terms of the price of wool and we've seen almost 100 % increase in 12 months of the EMI, Mr Mark Indicator and wool. And as a wool producer, I'm thrilled. But moreover, I can see a sustainable future for the fibre and I can see brands saying, hold on a second, you know, it's the most biodegradable product out there. It can solve a lot of our sustainability issues that we've got.

32:56all it requires is grass and rain and a beautiful animal and we have a perfect storm in terms of the consumer and the commodity the producer all winning without a fat supply chain I think is tremendously exciting so I'll have a chat in 12 months and you'll say well that is the worst forecast you ever gave to you but when I look at all of the mitigating circumstances and the dynamics within the market I think the wool industry is looking really good. You touched on genetics too. I mean, we're only getting better at understanding genetics and being able to use that as another tool in the toolkit, even for commercial producers and how that will change sustainability and resilience characteristics of its climate change, but also kind of outcomes for the supply chain.

33:37So I guess another layer there. On one of the other parts of your business that I think is fascinating for this audience of AgTech, so what, like you guys have regional customers and you have a presence in regional Australia. So distribution is something you think a lot about and the cost of that. It's obviously expensive and tricky freight and logistics to get to those customers. What are opportunities to make rural supply chains smarter and more efficient? I think for our business, bricks and mortar is a fundamental part of achieving distribution of product at the right time for a customer in a massive country like Australia.

34:19We've constantly got that tyranny of distance issue to solve. Those costs, as you say, through the Iran war, Iran-US war, have driven up obviously diesel costs and therefore freight costs. You've got a fuel levy from Australia Post at 22 % on our deliveries, which are on a threshold of 200 bucks. So anything over 200 bucks is free delivery. And suddenly you've got a huge additional cost, but you don't want to let the customer down at the same time. But what we're seeing is then customers shift their behaviour. If we add a cost or whatever, they then go, well, I'll just go to my local store. And they can do that with our business, you know, because we've got these stores in high streets.

34:57But once we start talking about Western Australia and Darwin, far north Queensland, and down to Tasmania, we've got huge distances all of a sudden. So certainly from our perspective, we're moving to a hub and spoke type model where we can ship directly from our factories to those geographies. The product is packed for store. So it's packed for them to unpack it and sell it. And it is then distributed whether via e-com or for a wholesale customer from that hub. And so our spoke becomes wholesale partnerships, it becomes smaller stores, it becomes e-commerce, but the hub means that we now need bigger storage centres in strategic locations across Australia.

35:49Now, this is not new news to anyone who's selling a bulk commodity like fertiliser or fuel or grain or whatever else it is. But for us as an apparel business that has a strong and growing e-com business and rising costs, it's a very different way of doing business. I think also just in terms of working with partners globally that can accommodate that kind of change is really important as well. So not only do we want them to be using fibres that are traceable to Australian growers, but we need them to be using technology that traces that product through their supply chain into our warehousing. Distribution is such a challenge in agriculture.

36:34And as you were talking, I was imagining like, could non-traditional channels like about five years, 10 years, what do you think the innovations or changes that you're most worried about and most excited about are, especially around that kind of changing what Australian farmers buy and the people who buy your products. So what, yeah, most exciting, most challenging? Yeah, I mean, the exciting thing for me is that, you know, the rural and regional audience is probably has the potential to be the most authentic storytellers in Australia and globally. We just don't know it yet. We underestimate ourselves.

37:15We don't realize how great our story is. And, you know, I see agriculture and, you know, I think it's more than luxury. I think people are looking at middle America. It's being celebrated there, you know, in terms of Yellowstone and Landman and people with a purpose, growing something that's important for their community, growing their economy, you know, their national economy, employing people and also looking bloody cool doing it. It's sort of exciting. You can just see Beyonce launches a country album and goes to number one because of what it stands for, right? And we're seeing, I think, society in America are understanding that, perhaps less so in Australia.

37:56But if we can build a brand that reflects a really aspirational way of life, then I think it's sort of exciting that not only the brand of agriculture, but our brand can move into other markets. And we've seen that in reality. So I'll often stop someone in Collins Street in Melbourne or in Sydney in the CBD who's wearing a Burton work shirt and it's got RV sellers in the pocket. and I just stop and have a conversation. And it's a great conversation of reciprocity because they're willing to have a chat too because they're from the same tribe. We're from an industry that we're all really proud of and they mightn't always come from a farm, but in some way they've got a connection and it's making them proud enough to wear that product because of what the values it reflects.

38:44So for us, I certainly see our brand moving into a broader audience, It's not losing our core. Yeah, it's a double-edged sword, right? It's a small market if you're limited to selling into those regional communities, which obviously you're not. Absolutely. And we're not an R &W. We don't want to be a luxury product, right? We're not a leather-first business. You know, our promise is still our promise, whether it's the city or the country, but we're always going to celebrate farmers, and we are for farmers as a brand. So that's important. And what's really shocked us is some of our international expansion.

39:15So we've got wholesale partners in the US and the UK, and they're just online and they're sort of in heartland areas. But, you know, our Burton workshop that sells here for$65 or$64.95 is selling in the UK for£80 and in the US for$135 US. Interesting. And those partners of ours are selling brand Australia, Australian cotton. I mean, look at the picture in your background. It's like... There we go. Yeah, that's right. I mean, they've drunk the Kool-Aid and they're taking it to their customers and their customers are loving it and paying a premium for it. It makes me a bit sick in how much margin we're giving up, you know, to do it.

39:58But for us, it's also got, you know, it just demonstrates to us that, you know, that does resonate with the consumer. Yeah, I mean, that doesn't surprise me at all just because being an American originally and like the view of Australia, like just the rugged outback and, you know, like they miss a lot of nuance about what Australia is actually like. but that sort of like rugged Aussie picture is like super appealing still to an American audience, I think. It's fascinating to us. So we're really in this process now, you know, when you asked me about the future of this business, you know, there's also a genetic commerce and just what's happening in terms of how we're adapting to that.

40:31But then there's a consumer, which is really leading us into places that we never thought was possible with our brand. So I won't have a fixed view on this is what our future will entail. We'll continue to learn and grow. We've got shareholders and shareholders require a return, but they're family businesses, they're farming people. They understand that you don't compromise the future of your brand and the business for a short-term kick. And work shirts in Australia, there's a lot of work shirts selling for$27 to $29 at the moment. There's a lot of competition. I can tell you they're not made from Australian cotton.

41:08They're not supporting the Australian cotton industry. They're not opening stores in country towns and supporting them with local jobs and supporting their community organizations. And they're not telling the story, wonderful story of Australian agriculture, which I think we can take to the world. Thank you to Jim Gall, CEO of RB Sellers, for sharing his insights. Not surprisingly, given his background, Jim had lots of great anecdotes and examples, like how RB Sellers introduced AI to automate routine customer inquiries, allowing staff to spend more time on interactions that genuinely require empathy and expertise.

41:42As AI becomes embedded across ag, it seems obvious, but it's worth emphasizing that the technologies that succeed are likely to be those that remove repetitive tasks while preserving the trusted relationships that farmers especially value most. On the supply chain side, I was interested to hear how Jim is thinking about the ROI of traceability. For RB sellers, it seems like a combination of operational transparency, actually improving logistics and supply certainty, and data to underpin their brand claims, ultimately to have a stronger value proposition for farmers as both suppliers and customers.

42:16It's worth noting, though, that Arby Sellers' clothes are not actually made in Australia, but mainly in Asia, to keep retail prices affordable. This is by no means hidden by Arby Sellers. However, the brand story certainly focuses on the ag supply chain more than the clothing production one. And my final takeaway is just how different it is to build a brand with a regional focus and physical stores versus an urban one, especially in Australia. Jim makes the case that successful regional businesses balance sophisticated data with a practical understanding of the communities they serve, what people value, seasonal changes, and what makes regional communities viable long term.

42:51For ag tech, I think it's such an interesting example of another type of channel, like how you reach farmers as customers. I found listening to Jim through this lens to be super helpful. Hopefully you do too. So that's it for another episode of Ag Tech So What. Thank you for listening. And please, please hit follow so you never miss an episode and so others can find the show. For more of our writing on the role of ag tech in fiber and much more, visit our website, tenacious.ventures. We've also put some resources from this episode in the show notes. I'm Sarah Nolette. I'll catch you next time.