S2 Ep23: The Retail Shift: Exploring the changing landscape of Australian retail with Dean Salakas

0:08Simon Dell:So welcome to another of the SEMO marketing podcasts. I am in the back of a shop here and that is really, really kind of suitable for the man that we have on the show today. Very quickly before we get started, my name is Simon Dell. I run a business called SEMO, where Australia's largest fractional marketing network. If you want to find out more about us, www.simo.com. We essentially match people who have marketing issues and we match them with the right people or solutions. So we're not an agency. We're a fractional marketing network, which is kind of my wanky term for not saying an agency. But with all that out of the way, if you do like this, you do enjoy today's show, please rate us and review us wherever you watch this.

0:51Simon Dell:That would be super helpful. But enough of that. We're talking to a gentleman today, uh dean salakis uh so welcome first of all welcome to the show how are you very well indeed um i dean is a retail guru that's probably the best two words that we could use to describe him but dean give us a bit of a give us the the sort of uh you know the three minute overview of your career because it's it's been very interesting and i think there's obviously a lot that we can learn from you today? Yeah, Retail Guru is very generous. I'm not sure about that, but three minutes, geez. I always say to people, Dean, they got to do it like a film trailer, right?

1:36Simon Dell:So you take all the best bits, all the explosions and the sex scenes and shove it in three minutes. All right, we'll see what we can do. I guess, yeah, I'll try for three minutes. I'll look at the bottom corner and see if I can keep it there. But yeah, so I guess I started my career out at I had a family business. My mom started The Party People, which was a party supplies retailer selling balloons, decorations, costumes. She actually started as a clown and then she developed it into a retail business. That's a whole story in itself. Mate, I was going to say there is so much to digest on that.

2:07There's a lot to unpack there actually. There's a lot to unpack. You gave me three minutes, so I'm going to keep moving. As a kid, four years old, I'd work in the family business, you know, packing stuff and doing things and just helping around the shop. But as I grew up, got a license, I'd do deliveries and all sorts of stuff. So kind of had my career in retail from the very beginning and went to university while I was working in the family business, did a university project where I was looking at the marketing and launched the business online with, sorry, backtrack a little bit. while in high school, I launched the business online in 1999, became Australia's first retailer to offer click and collect.

2:49In 2003, I was doing a uni project, discovered this thing called Google Ads, which was coming to Australia, Google AdWords, and launched on there. And I became Google AdWords first advertiser. And I was paying one cent a click. There's a lot to unpack here, but we'll just keep moving. Oh God, yeah.

3:06Simon Dell:So many questions I need to follow up on here, but go on yeah keep going yeah there's a few things there um and yeah and i built that business i actually went on to work at woolies and i was still working the family business part-time so i went to head office and i was a business analyst and there's a lot to unpack there as well won an innovation award there and did some fun stuff and sat on new line committees and got to report to the board stupid things they do and um and then i had an opportunity my mom wanted to exit the business so my brother and i essentially acquired it because they had a buyer and she didn't want to give it to us.

3:37That was just her way of making sure we didn't take things for granted. And so, yeah, we bought the business in 2007. I was still working at Woolies all the way to 2009 and we were going through triple digit growth. So I decided to take the leap and jump into the business full time by 2009. And the business was just on a rocket ship from the beginning and we kept that rolling. And we had ups and downs like every business owner has. So, So, you know, the first few years were just, we were flying. And then as things got bigger, it got, you know, we made a lot of mistakes. So we had the roller coaster that you have when you grow a business and from good times to really bad ones.

4:20And, but yeah, towards COVID and there's a whole nother thing to unpack there. We came out of COVID very strong and made an acquisition. That acquisition, someone came and acquired off us 18 months later for a lot more than we paid for it. And then they wanted to buy the rest of the business, which they did in December 2024. So I took an exit from the party people in 2024.

4:43And then I decided I wanted to go fishing every day and that would be my life. And that didn't agree with me. So people started calling me, asking me for help with stuff and little projects. And I kept picking up sort of, if you want to call it consulting gigs. I said two things when I sold the business. I was like, I'm not going to become a consultant. I'm not going to do a startup. started consulting and that, that, that, that was fun for a bit. And then, um, went to one of the conferences, started a WhatsApp chat with Jethro Marks, uh, to figure out where we were going to go drinking one night.

5:14That chat group was a hundred people by the end of the first day. It was 300 by the end of the conference. And now it's 4 ,000 plus, uh, 18 months later. And that's become my primary focus now is continuing to build the community. So I'm I'm pretty selective with the work I'm taking and, um, and I, I focus on, on the community cause I just need to give it base and air. And, you know, I've been through business a long time or I've had four exits now. And I know that we're, we're on that rocket ship again. You know, we've, we've grown really fast in 18 months and this was a really critical phase for me to continue to continue the momentum.

5:52Um, it's the hardest part to keep that momentum and, um, and also not get lost in what you're doing. So, yeah, I'm working it all out again and I'm in a startup and two things I said I wouldn't do, I'm doing both of them. So that's where I am today.

6:07Simon Dell:Four minutes, I was one minute over. No, that's cool. We all say that we'll never do it again and everyone does that again because it's maybe some sort of masochist in us all that says, you know, it'll be different this time. And it never is. It never is. Look, I'm not going to, there's a thousand things to unpack there, but I want to talk about retail and today. and get your thoughts on that because we've got 30 minutes and whatever, and that's what I want to focus on. And look, there is a lot of questions. My first one was to get your thoughts on online, the state of online at the moment, because we're seeing that takeover of Amazon, of Sheen, of Timu, and all those kind of things.

6:53Simon Dell:We're just seeing these beasts in the marketplace in a, what is a relatively small marketplace? You know, Australia's, you know, 27, 28 million people. How do small retailers stand out in that kind of environment? Yeah, I would say that's a really good question. It's not easy. And I think, well, where do I go with this? I would say one mistake I see people make a lot. Let's talk about what doesn't work so well, and that's buying customers is difficult. Businesses that are totally reliant on buying customers, they do work. So I'm not saying it doesn't work. Definitely you can buy customers and that's through digital advertising and stuff like that.

7:38And it should always be part of your mix, 100%. But where you want to get to with growing a business is to stand, like you want to, you know, you want to have an amazing product and by an amazing product, I mean, you want to solve a customer problem better than anyone else. Yeah. Um, and there's a very big distinction there. Um, and that's probably number one thing. I mean, you could, you could argue retail is really simple. You've got to have a great product that solves a problem and you've got to make sure everyone knows about it. And you can't have one without the other. You can't, like I see so many businesses that are amazing at what they do, but nobody knows about them and it's not enough to be amazing.

8:14You've got to make sure people know about you. So to stand out, you know, the answer to that question, it's funny because I would say every business I've built, I've had four exits now. And each time the strategy has been slightly different, um, or not slightly, it's been quite different. Um, but I've always made a lot of noise. And I think you've got to make noise about what you do. The big thing I see people is like, you know, people introduce themselves. You say, what are you doing? Oh, I'm just, uh, whatever. And you're like, there's a mistake right there. Like I'm just, uh, like when people ask me, Dean, what do you do?

8:43I'm like, Hey guys, I'm the chief party dude. We have Australia's largest party store. We're the biggest and the best. Um, you know, we help people make, have the parties they dream about. Just come straight out. Right. And, uh, you know, and I think it's important that you need to, you know, scream from the rooftops, what you do, be proud of it. And that's, I think you just got to make a lot of noise about what you're doing with it's media PR, you know, I think that's the key thing is just making noise.

9:09Simon Dell:It's, it's, I, I hear that, that problem so many times and not just in retail right i get people that coming to me you know b2b software developers right and you know they've got a good team they've got a smart team they've got smart people they've got a good product and they all sit there and just we don't know how to tell people about what it is that we do um and you know and i think retail is probably a little bit easier in some sense about making a noise i think there's lots of things you can do if if you're if you're a b2b software developer it's it's so hard to sort of you know i i always say to them it's like you need to find someone to stand on top of the building and shout across the roofs about how how good you are yeah you do and and you know i think that's in b2b and those sort of more drier spaces that's symptomatic of the people that are running the business are good at what they they do right they're good at software development that's why they started a software development business but i think if you're in retail, um, I think I shared the wrong link.

10:09Simon Dell:So people, people are accidentally joining the wrong, um, the, the wrong chat. But I think if you're in retail, you have to be a, a marketer too. Um, I think you, I think that to a degree is part and parcel. We're all in sales. Everyone. Yeah. When you're running a business, you're in sales. Yeah. You've got, you've got to be at a date. Where was I watching the other day? Something that somebody was talking about how, uh, when you're in this kind of business, it's, there's a lot to do with charisma and it's interesting, you know, talking to you and seeing you talk, charisma is such an important part of retail.

10:48Simon Dell:And I think, I think it's, and it's interesting. I'm not sure I call it charisma too. I mean, I was going to say, yeah, that's, I mean, you see it as charisma. I just, I just like being real with people and trying to help. It's that simple. Like, I just love helping people. I just want to try my best to help people. And like, I get up on stage and I speak a lot. And for those people that are listening that have heard me speak, they'll tell you that I'm not the most polished speaker. I don't get up there. I don't walk up and down the stage. For all intensive purposes, I would probably say I'm, in terms of the craft of speaking, probably average.

11:26But I get up there and I guess I think about my audience and I just want to make sure they get heaps of value. so people come away from my talks they don't say you're an amazing speaker they go oh that helped or that was great or i really learned something yeah that's what i get that's the feedback i get like people do say to me like i said what do you think of those and they'll be like yeah you're okay as a speaker but the content was awesome although you know or i took this this one takeaway that i just you know people come to me five years after i've you know they've heard me speak it's like oh you'd still use that concept today or whatever so you know i guess you see it as charisma but i guess i just see it as trying to help and trying to yeah do good in the

12:05Simon Dell:world you know yeah i it was i watched a video the other day and the guy was mentioning that word charisma and i think you know i there's no we're not getting a long argument about it now but i felt that was an appropriate word because it combined knowledge passion um enthusiasm all those kind of things if someone's charismatic they tend to be a lot of the they have a lot of those traits yeah um and i think whether it's you personally or whether it's your brand has charisma you know i think that to me feels like a you know something that i think is important for um for retailers how important taking taking the next step from that we still often we talk in you know retail about that that retail experience about how once you step into a store step through the doors, how important is that?

12:56Simon Dell:You know, talk to me about what that was like with the party people, you know, people walking in the doors. What were they hit with? Yeah. I mean, people that walked into the party people, the first thing people were like, and I mean, I had this almost every time people would walk in and be like, wow, this place is massive, you know? And, you know, you'd walk into my store, there'd be balloons everywhere. It's decorations. It's packed to the roof with product. It's, yeah. displays everywhere like i mean we're talking uh walking to my store and it was eight meters for the roof or whatever yeah um but you had just stuff in there everywhere and it just was like i mean we're a party store so we could be a little messier but make it really sort of visually appealing when you walked in so people just came in and had that wow factor from the get-go and um that that was great because people just come in straight away they you know you know people judge you on your first five seconds like a person the store's the same they judge you as soon as they walk in and they walk in and they're like holy moly this is amazing yeah um where's the where's the back of the store they can't even see it you know that experience is just a great way to start who else do you think is doing that well out there then from an experience perspective i mean all these large format stores some are doing great like you feel that when you walk into like a mecca they do a great um you know there's definitely a few guys that do it that create that wow factor that you've got, like, you know, Culture Kings, you know, do it well.

14:23So, yeah, some of these brands are doing it great. JD Sports, I did a store walk with them. That's great. You walk in there, you just feel the vibe straight away. You get that from the staff. You get that from the way the merchandising is done. You get that from the visuals. They've got all this, you know, fun video going on in the store. So, yeah, I think there's a few people doing it really, really well and just thank you when you walk in.

14:42Simon Dell:There's obviously, and we won't mention names because, you know, because you want to obviously carry on working in this industry but there's obviously a few people that are not doing it well and you know we've seen that we've seen that slew of businesses failing in australia over the last almost almost with regularity i think every year there's some there's some big names go do you think that that's that's largely down to the fact that that that experience they've left that experience behind and just become a bit formulaic or they've got staff that don't care or the product hasn't been refreshed.

15:17Simon Dell:Do you see a trend there in those businesses failing? Look, definitely I would say on the face of it, you see the experience has deteriorated and often people say, oh, the problem was the experience was crap. You look at Barbecues Galore, Lincraft, these guys, people go, well, they lost their way when it came to experience. I think the easy thing to do is just profess to know the answer. Businesses are complex and hard. Like, I mean, as a business owner, every day people are coming to you going, oh, you could do this so much better. Or did you, you know, have you had this idea or whatever? Like, it's easy from the outside to have an opinion.

15:51I would say being internally is a bit harder. And the reason I say these, I think some of these big failures, there's much more to the story than just the experience being terrible. There was something that started it. Like, Barbecue's Galore is a great example where, you know, as I understand it, they were pretty constrained cash-wise and capital-wise. And the first thing to go was these loyalty programs and experience stuff and the in-store, the sexy stuff that made them great. And that was a spiral downwards for them. But it wasn't the first thing that was the problem. There were other problems before the experience fell away.

16:22But 100%, I mean, like we say experience. I think the bigger problem, and I have this conversation with a lot of entrepreneurs and business owners and even large enterprises. I just ask them, you know, what problem do we solve for the customer? I think it's got to start there. Like what problem do you solve? Like my party store, the thing differentiated me from everyone. Everyone thought they were in the business of selling party products. I looked at it that I was in the business of helping people have parties. And it seems like a tiny distinction. It seems like semantics, but it's not. It makes the biggest difference when you start thinking about strategy and things you do.

16:58Do you offer services that don't make any money? Yeah, you do because that's about helping people have parties. Do you do this? Do you do that for the customer? Anything that's about helping them have a party, you do it because that's on mission and it's on brand. A business that just tries to sell products and I'm not going to wear my businesses right now, but that's their focus right now and it's not how I see the right strategy.

17:17Simon Dell:If you were starting the party people today in 2026, what would you do differently? What would I do differently? Oh, look, I think I'd open more stores, but I was always on that mission, to be honest. I probably would have raised capital. I think one thing I was always shy of was letting someone in and having a business partner to accelerate the growth. I think that's probably the main thing if I was to look back, just letting someone in, especially when you're on the rocket ship. I think the thing is people ask for money when things are bad. You need to ask for money when things are really, really good because you're selling them that dream and you're on the rocket ship and they want to come on the rocket ship.

17:56They don't want to come on board when things are plateaued and you're just a good business. Like it was really hard to try to raise when you're just a good business.

18:03Simon Dell:Look, obviously, you know, we can't have these conversations without mentioning, you know, AI and artificial intelligence and how that's impacting. What do you see the trends out there? I mean, like, are there a lot of retailers using it? Is there still low levels of adoption? What do you see happening in that space? There's a full spectrum going on at the moment, but definitely things are moving faster than, ever in my time as a retailer things are moving so fast and there's such a big gap between the guys that are using ai there's there's guys in the retail community that are using ai that half the stuff they talk about i don't understand anymore and um there's other people that are just using chat gpt you know i mean i had coffee with someone yesterday but not even using that but like you've got such a broad spectrum of, of, of people adoption.

18:57Um, yeah, it's all over the place to answer your question. It's all over the place. I think, I think the one thing, if I was to put people's mind at ease, cause everyone's probably anxious about, they know AI can do so much, but they, they probably not using it to its potential. That's, that's the majority of people. And, uh, that's probably almost everyone, but, um, you know, no one's an expert, I think is the best way to put it. So, you know, when people think, oh, I don't know enough, well, nobody, nobody is the expert at the moment. Everyone's learning because it's just, it's a changing day by day situation.

19:30Simon Dell:Yeah. I mean, look, obviously, you know, as we said at the start, I'm sitting here in the back of a retail shop. And, you know, a lot of the things that you've said so far, I'm sort of nodding and going, okay you know this is this is important for me to understand um but um ai to me has been has been an extra member of staff um you know it allowing claude to have access to the back end of my shopify site to get it to upload orders write descriptions um you know put things into categories is the sort of thing that i can set it going and then walk away and have dinner with the kids and come back and it's done is to me is is revolutionary it is it's crazy you know um and does it make mistakes absolutely um you know it's it's written descriptions for games that we sell here that it just inferred the inferred how the game works based on the title of the game um but it's it's about training it it's about teaching it it's about telling giving it boundaries and rules in which to operate um so you know it's it's it's an amazing tool and i i think the main thing i worry about bigger picture stuff is that you know i have two children who are you know seven and ten years old and what hell what the hell the job market looks like in 10 years time if they decide that they want to go into retail yeah you know what do you what do you think what do you see that do you see a fundamental shift in everything by then or this is this is a can of worms we could go down here i would say like you know and i did a linkedin post yesterday on how robots are counting inventory in stores in kmart bunnings at the moment they've got these little robots that look like a they look like your robo vac if anyone's got a robo vac and it's got a little pole on and it's looking at the inventory levels on every shelf and it's doing an inventory count every night.

21:34Wow. You know, so you've already replaced stock takers in some of these stores. You know, I've seen overseas, I've seen robots stacking shelves, you know, so we are entering an age where, you know, AI can do almost anything a human can do. And it's going to be a really interesting future. I would say, look, and I'm, it's going to be so controversial and everyone's got an opinion on this, but I would say, I don't think AI is going to take all our jobs. I think it will take jobs, but we will do something else. Like I think of when online came around and when, when the, when the computers came around, when computers came around, everyone went, oh, they're going to take all our jobs.

22:17They don't need computers anymore. Like they used to, we used to calculate everything manually. Now computer does it. We all going to lose our job. Well, people found different things to do. So I think we're going through that phase now where people will do different things and society will evolve. The challenge is that it's moving faster than it did with computers. So people probably won't adapt as fast as then. So a lot of people are going to be put out pretty substantially and it's going to be a real tough time emotionally for a lot of people that their job's no longer required because an AI can do it.

22:48but I think so I think people need to be thinking about how do I where do I need to be in the next five or ten years with what I do where do I fit in I think that's the question you need to be asking rather than worrying too much about you're taking a job because jobs will be there we'll find a way I think but yeah you've got to figure out where you fit you know I my opinion again which

23:07Simon Dell:may seem controversial is that you know we we we moved sort of in the 50s and 60s maybe the 70s to you know both parents working um in society you know that that became the normal and i and i and i have this feeling that as ai starts swallowing up some of these jobs that you know we need maybe that will start and allow us to free us to sort of go well you know if economically we're sound enough um maybe we don't both we don't need both parents working anymore maybe we can have the father or the mother staying at home and raising families and and then families get bigger and become more important.

23:46I think quality of life will improve for sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The computer has made our lives better, I would say. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I think our lives better, of course.

23:58Simon Dell:What was my last question today was, well, let's just continue on that one for a second because cost of living impact is causing some challenges for everybody. do you think this this is a big call i hope i know the i know how you answer this do you think the physical store is more important today than it has ever been or do is it just is is that are we losing that significance or you know if someone's sitting there going do i do i focus on e-commerce or do i um you know do i open more physical stores it's interesting when i said to you what you would do differently from the party people. And the answer was open more physical stores.

24:42Simon Dell:So I'm guessing you still feel that that physical ability to walk in and interact with somebody is still important. Yeah. But let me, let me unpack a few sort of reasons why I'd say the first stuff, but the reasons why one, when, when e-commerce was growing, like even today, if you ask the average punter who's not in retail, what percentage of business is done online versus in stores. I would say almost all of it. It's like 80 % online and it's not, it's only 20%. Only 20 % of all retail sales are online. And that's after 30 years of growth, right? It's growing slowly. In our lifetime, if you look at the curve of, if you, and I've done it, I've got a graph in the background, but if you look at the adoption of AI, sorry, store sales versus physical store sales versus online sales, it's creeping, right?