Let’s Be Mates Podcast – EP10 – Smartify, Shop Smarter

Let's Be Mates Podcast | MATE | 8 January 2020

In this episode we are talking to an Aussie business built to be your personal shopping assistant.

At MATE we focus everyday on simplicity and easier ways for consumers to get access to the services they want and need.

Smartify offers this opportunity in a new unique way that we just love and it really resonates with us at MATE. We all know the move to online shopping has amplified over the last couple of years. Australians have always been behind the trend but with a service like Smartify I think this will get Aussies shopping more online with a purpose. That purpose is for consumers getting access to the value they deserve for the things they love, delivered to them and available at their finger tips to see.

To learn more about Smartify, head to www.smartify.ai or search for Smartify in Google Chrome extensions

You can learn more about Mate internet and mobile plans at www.LetsBeMates.com.au.

Subscribe to hear the latest episode each week on Youtube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts or your favourite podcast player

Transcript:

Faz: Welcome Australia. It’s that time again for another podcast, from the Mate team where we try and get into your head with stuff that makes us sound smart. Sit back and relax. It’s time for us to be mates.

Hi Australia. Welcome to another. Let’s be made podcast episode on one of your hosts, FAz, and as usual we have Dom and Bosco in the room. Boys. How are we going today? Good faz, as you say. Very good. Yeah. Good, good, good to be back in the studio. today’s episode, I think is going to be unique. One, we’re learning about a brand new business.

it’s an Aussie business built to be your personal shopping assistant. Now we talk about a lot about online shopping and things like that, but I think smartify, the business that we’re talking today is going to be the true shopping assistance. as you go online, At mate, we, we do focus everyday on simplicity and easier ways to, for consumers to get access to the services they want and need.

Smartify offers the opportunity in a new, in a new unique way that we just love. And it really resonates with us at mate. We all know the move to online shopping has amplified over the last couple of years. Australians have always been behind the trend, but with a service like smartify, I think this will get Aussies shopping online, with, with a purpose.

And I, I stress the purpose. That purpose is for consumers getting access to the value they deserve for the things they love. Delivered to them and available at their fingertips to see joing us today is Dallas. Dallas is co-founder, of smartify Dallas. Welcome to the, let’s be mates podcast.

Bosco: Hello guys.

Thank you very much. Look

Faz: forward to it.

And Dallas, I think, you know, obviously listeners haven’t, you know, probably don’t know too much about you, but I’d love to get a personal view of you. Like what’s your been your career to date and how have you found yourself, at smartify.

Dallas: Yeah. so I started out, I think like every young guy pretty lost, trying to figure out what I wanted to do, and then went traveling backpacked around the world for a couple of years and that wasn’t really working out for me.

So I eventually got into uni, did a, did a degree in business, majored in finance and absolutely hated, every second of it. but somehow God. Into an internship program at, at Microsoft. And that’s how I had the good pleasure of meeting you. FAZ which out a few good years there working very hard.

Faz: yeah.

Dallas: That was great. Yeah. But, ended up in the, in the retail division of Mark self, and then was fortunate enough to get a graduate role. Once I eventually passed all my subjects, after repeating a few, in the, in the Xbox team, which was great, made pretty much a dream job and gamesd a lot as a kids.

and then the kind of category manager for the Xbox accessories business, which basically meant I got to play around with all the toys and then try and sell them and market them. so I did that for a few years and, just kind of felt like something was missing. always had a bit of a, a bit of an itch to go and do something on my own.

Like, you know, it’s obviously that entrepreneurial itch, some people have. and a lot of the family members have their own businesses as well in my family. So I always always had that kind of pressure and that drive , I suppose. So it was hard to leave such a dreamy place like Microsoft and Faz i’m sure

you kind of remember how good it was and how and how kind of thing. Ha how that made it touch you leave every time I thought about it, they’re like, yeah. How about this? So how about that? Or so it took a few years to get that confidence out to leave. and I had, had an idea for startup and took the plunge threw pretty much everything I had at the startup and it failed it flops.

and that was, that was a workplace happiness index. measure us things. So basically it was to help with self-management. So how, you know, how your staff are performing? Are they happy? Are they satisfied in the jobs? It didn’t work. We couldn’t kind of get the traction we wanted. but it was kind of almost rewarding failing and going out and doing something by myself.

But I I’ve run out of money, obviously that point I didn’t want to go back. So I thought about, what’s the quickest way I can earn the most money doing the least amount of work. So I went into consulting, which, which

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So I went, I went and did some consulting work. I wont name where I did that, but, it was all in racing, and joined a very good, platform, actually also an Australian business called expert three 60.

They’re doing some great things. and, and did some consulting work. And then through that, cause it was all retail focused, consumer focused based. So it sort of took hold and, And so we’re a bit of an opportunity. And then, and then we kind of found my cofounder and then we started working on it. and, and kind of one thing led to another and eventually, ended the consulting roles, various companies, and then committed to this full time.

Yeah.

Faz: So touch on a couple of things there. Right? I think everybody in our, in our world, so we consider ourselves entrepreneurs and, some people hate that word. Some people love that word, but I just think that we’re, we’re a bunch of people that see an opportunity to fit. Right. And, and, and that’s, that’s how Mike started as well.

So there’s always a story around that. Right? And you make a, you make a very valid point, Dallas around the time at Microsoft, Microsoft allow you to. Do a lot of different things and allow you to be a part of so many great experiences and it is hard to leave. And, you know, you meet so many lifelong friends, you know, we’re still talking today, Dallas and, and he, he meets so many people along the way.

but what it does, what, what Microsoft does in a corporation like that. And if they’re doing it right. They, they give you the passion and the drive to go and do something like we’re doing it Mate, or like Dallas is doing it Smarterfy to me, that’s, that’s a sign of a successful business, which is Microsoft.

And, you know, I think you were there at the time when the reign shifted to Satcha Nadella and I think that whole, you know, as you can see the whole dynamic of the business change, and I think that’s been a lasting legacy for myself anyway, since I’ve left. And I think the culture that he built is what’s got me motivated to do what I’m doing today.

And I think that’s it. That’s a big thing. Right. And, would you say that’s the same for you and

Dallas: yeah, I think you hit it perfect on their head and being at such a large company, it’s a pivotable, pivotal change in that organization, where it’s shifted from, you know, almost becoming redundant in people’s mind and then some internal issues to shifting with new leadership, new direction, new drive, and new energy.

I learned and took so much from that experience and I apply that, in my consulting roles. And then I try and bring that in to Smartify as well. I mean, that seems quite small and roll over the place, but there’s so much good learning there from, from my time there for sure.

Faz: The drinks at the pub are just as important.

I know we say that, but they’re just as important because they build culture and they built connection. Right. And they built connection. And that’s where I probably have built the connections with people at my old role at Microsoft that, that, that have the, that, delivered the relationships I have today, you know?

And so it’s just as important in the inside the office as well as outside the office. Yeah.

Dallas: People and culture, it’s just a hundred percent.

Faz: Yeah.

Dom: Our listeners, have heard a lot about

how the mate business started from,

you know, in

our aunties backyard.

And if you haven’t go back and listen to a

mate, the customer, happiness

business, one of our first episodes, but you started to gloss over it a bit.

I’m not gonna let you gloss over it about how, how the idea of Smartify came, came to life and, and what’s that journey been.

Dallas: Yeah. So, it kind of came into few ways. One was a lot of the work that I did in consulting was looking at pricing specifically competitors’ pricing and the price movements. And essentially what we’re doing is, is seeing how our products stack up against.

How the Porducts competitive products and where we want it to sit. And I was looking at that going, like, that’s great for a business to understand that, but where is that insight for users, because you know, I’m buying something that’s overpriced sucks. Like you feel like you’ve ripped off. So that was kind of like, I was sort of seing that, but not really.

It was just like, it’s sort of dancing around my head and I couldn’t really figure out what to do with it. And then what happened is, actually it was just going home and got sick of my girlfriend, constantly complaining about finding products you wants and then trying to find the best price for it. And then having to waste time, searching for promotional codes and then also having to like sit through.

promotional e-DM, so emails trying to find good deals. So she’s like, I’ll just, this just sucks. This whole thing is a mess. And, you know, if you buy the wrong price, then you end up frustrated that you actually purchased it. you know, you could’ve got a cheaper, so all that kind of frustration, I feel like everyone can kind of relate to that.

Just probably set off a bit of a light bulb in my mind. And I was like, okay, there’s something definitely there. And then I talked to, you know, everyone around, around my network and it’s like, what’s frustrating about shopping online within two seconds, you kind of hear the same sort of messaging. So that was, I suppose, the ID generation of, of what formed , Smartify.

And then we kind of went in and went, okay, what are the core problems? If we could kind of knock them out and then what, and how could we solve them? And then that’s kind of what was set off to do. Which has not been easy.

Faz: Yeah, I can imagine, but I mean, I can give an example of how you use modify Smartify recently is that, you know, I wanted to buy a new PC and, you know, I use smartify to watch that PC that product.

And now all last week, the tax time sales came up with JB and on one person that. Doesn’t get to all these emails and you know, I’m S and what’s happened over the last couple of years, that EDmsfrom businesses have been influx, right? There’s been a crap load of them and I’ve been unsubscribing.

Cause it just clogs up my email. Now what happens smartify is taken away the clutter from getting the, being subscribed to those emails. And I got delivered a message about the product that I like. telling me that it’s now cheaper than ever. Right. And lo and behold, I went and purchased. Right. And so that to me just took all the crap out of it and deliver it direct to me, which was important.

And now, you know, that that’s a big deal in my opinion, and which probably will get people to shop more. And especially people out there, businesses that, that are aren’t involved with, smartify probably getting involved because it’s going to get people to shop more. I, in my opinion, online, yeah. Yeah, it’s,

Dallas: it’s, it’s personalizing your shopping experience and like, why, why do people get spam?

It’s so annoying. It’s like we just allow people to go and save their favorite stores and brands. So if you really liked Nike or you really liked the iconic with JB, hi, fi you follow that. We’ll let you know when there’s a sale on full that brand or that store. So you don’t need to waste time kind of subscribing to tons of different retailers.

And then if you do like a product that’s expensive, you can follow it. And then we just let you know when the price drops simple as that. Yeah.

Faz: It probably leads on to,

Bosco: so you’ve kind of started talking about a bit specific there, but give us a bit more specifics, exactly what it is and how it works. So from a consumer’s perspective, what they have to do to get, you know, to start using the service.

Dallas: Yeah. Cool. So at the moment, it’s just a Chrome extension. So you do need Google Chrome in order to use it. And if you do have that it’ll work on your Mac or your PC. the reason why we have done that first is that it allows us to be where you shop. So most people still will. They browse on their mobile phones, whether within, say an app or within the mobile phone browser.

But still was in the 75% of people purchase on their PC or their Mac. There’s still this sort of friction with, purchasing on mobile people. Don’t like putting their credit cards in a little screen as a trust issue, all these sort of things. So we thought, well, let’s just be where the person actually shops.

And then that’s where we can actually save them the most money. So that also allows us to say automatically test and apply promotional codes at the checkout. Or if you land on a product page, you can say that, that product there. And then, so at the moment, that’s kind of the only place where we are, We know that that’s limited.

So I would building a full, like a fully fledged website. That’ll allow you to come in and say deals on top trending products. So that will make it again, a bit more easier for people that may are not on Chrome or want to visit from mobile. And then of course, we’ll go down a mobile app. once we kind of figured that story out because shopping on mobile is very different to shopping, on a patient and desktop.

Faz: Yeah, agreed. And I think in, in our business, we probably see, a lot of people probably more shop purchase, view us on a mobile, but purchase on a desktop. And the reason, I mean, when it comes to more, more complex purchases, I think, a mobile phone is probably a bit challenging and you want to him to have a bigger picture and, and understand a bit better.

And I think people then switch back to a desktop. So I think both are important, but when it comes to more complex purchases, I think people still tend to go towards the desktop. Yeah. Yeah. Which makes

Dallas: sense. Yeah. I think it’ll shift, but yeah, for now, you know, you can more easily compare, say the prices of products or services.

you know, there’s a whole promotional code piece, which is not as big here as it is in say America, rest of world where like, you know, promo codes drive a lot of purchase. this is sort of still infancy here, it’s growing. so that. Works better. It’s still on the desktop. Yeah.

Faz: And, you know, if we do, like we talk about promo codes versus what you do.

And, you know, like I know back in the days, I don’t know if people use things like Groupon and, and things anymore. I don’t know why, but I mean like a lot of those things are, you know, the, the, the Groupon takes 50% of the recommended retail, right? I mean, It was probably good for a moment, but, it’s probably people are smarter.

People get access to more things more, more easily now, you know, you know, smartphones are more, you know, more prevalent and all these different things. And, I just think that, maybe, maybe take a step back to, to the brand that’s selling the stuff. Right. How, how does that work in your world and how, how can they get involved with Smartify or, you know, what’s, what’s their connection to the smarterfy brain and what’s the benefit to them.

Bosco: Yeah. So, for me, a few things that touch on that, like obviously bigger brands. So like, not like, or even, you know, sort of fashion apparel, you know, Microsoft X-Box what have you, they obviously have well-established major retailers that they sell through. So in that sense, we just help drive more traffic into say the iconic or JB Hifi.

Then get our customers the best deal. And if they purchased that brand’s products will again, help them get the best price on that. And we’ve worked with a few brands directly. but a lot of the time we ended up just working with say major retailer, for smaller brands, especially like local brands.

What we really want to do when we say this, like a. A good thing to do for striking businesses, but also it’s a strategically competitive advantage for us. We do have the ability to do it is to work with like say small local brands and try and get them exposure. so the way that that would work is let’s say someone that’s interested in a particular category like sports outdoors, or gaming or whatever, they can let us know this come in and new update.

What they’re interested in, in the we can say surface like brands. So if you like Nike Adidas, Puma, we obviously have an idea that you like sports. So there’s an up and coming Australian sports brand, a shoe manufacturer. For example, we can push that in and let you know how these guys are. you know, local what’s trending business.

Do you want to follow them? We’ll let you know, we can get them, in terms of their products where you can shop directly from their website. So, I mean that we see that as like, yeah, like a way of bringing new value into to customers, but also helping brands get more exposure.

Faz: Yeah. Agreed. You know, I, especially with doing COVID, you’ve seen a lot of businesses have a hard time.

Right. You know, losing, having to let go staff, losing revenue, all these different things. And. The one thing during COVID time, was that businesses, businesses needed to adapt to be a bit different. Right. And probably online was, I guess, in the last three months, probably the acceleration of online for Australia.

Businesses. It’s probably, it’s probably gone to that next level because they have to, right, because the, the shopfronts, aren’t what they used to be. Social distancing, the number of people in your store, all these difference changed the way that traditional businesses maybe transact from a shop shop front perspective.

And, you know, we’ve, we’ve had a lot of conversations. There’s a lot of local businesses or a lot of businesses that their core and their expertise is what they sell. Not telling people about their business. Right? So marketing and all those types of things are the, you know, the sec, second nature to a lot of people running a business, the service they offer is second nature to him, but not, not amplifying their business.

And I think a tool like smartify. does the work for them, right? It gets their message to, to people who are interested about the product that they’re selling in a very seamless way, direct to their, you know, to their Chrome browser. Right. And it takes the clutter out of it. It’s probably much more cost effective.

and you don’t have to be an expert, in, in sales and marketing and your business to deliver a message. Would you see that as, as an advantage to people like that?

Dallas: Yeah, yeah. A hundred percent. I feel like, yeah, thanks to our friend COVID. We’ll have to rapidly look at how we do business. and you know, feel sorry for any bricks and mortar, they got kind of essentially wiped out from it.

And for the Australian shopper, it was a forced adoption and rapid growth of online. You mentioned it in your, in your intro that, you know, w we lag in online purchasing first rest of world. that’s changed dramatically and I feel like people are seeing the benefits of shopping online. So I can’t see that.

Really just switching back the other, way once come with through all this, of course there’ll be a right size of balance and people in Australia like to to go out and so on and shop and I do as well. But the convenience of online shopping is, is, really, really, in tossing. So as a bricks and mortar business, you think, well, okay, how do I now?

Make that play for the longterm. How do I make sure that I’m different enough? How do I get exposure? So we want to come in and help in that, in that, in that process from exposure through to helping the customer purchase the products. And that would be the brand’s product in that case. in terms of exposure, it would be like I mentioned earlier, but also, you know, essentially allowing to use it just to quickly see.

Where, where they can pick up your brands. Let’s say you, you rent your range and a few different retailers. We can let them know straight away.

Faz: Yeah. I see something as simple as, during the COVID period. I mean, how important was click and collect during COVID, right? Not spending there, you know, with the supermarket, for example, in my area, they stopped home deliveries.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, the supermarkets let minimal people in the store and you’re scared to go out anyway at the height of it. Right. And click and click was the best option. And. I just think that that is going to be even bigger, a bigger process or, or even more of the norm moving forward just with what we experienced and who knows when the real effects of COVID it’s going to finish.

Right. I think,

Dom: you know, online traditionally, you you’re comparing price for price, you know, a

light product,

but something like COVID where there’s now you throw in a

situation where maybe,

Bosco: Courier services delayed

Dom: or

Amazon for instance, were prioritizing, you know, medical supplies over

normal deliveries.

Now

you go, and I did it myself in the last couple of months way a guy, well, actually I’m going to pay $7

extra to get these product

from this retailer because I can get it in five days or three days on tomorrow, instead of well, on my own, I don’t get it in the next two weeks because that’s

$3 cheapest.

So, you know,

it’s not just about price

now, but. You also want to be

getting the best price as well.

Dallas: Yeah. W w we will bring that in as well. again, a kind of missions to be your personal shopping assistant. So it’s the stuff you care about. So shipping is massive and also total delivered costs. So nothing sneaky with price.

If it’s $10 for the product and $30 for shipping, it’s not really $10 for that product. By the time you get to it. To pay for it. So we want to be able to kind of say, Hey, here’s the product, here’s your shipping options. And here’s the total delivered cost. So if you wanted to express you pay a premium for that, obviously, but you’re going to get it within 24 hours.

And

Bosco: is there any, it’s a particular cause I’ve noticed you’ve mentioned Nike. So is there a particular type of product that you think is more suited to this sort of, shopping experience than others? I mean, you know, you’ve got things like clothing, you’ve got, you know, sports, accessories, but what about like appliances?

things like electronics and stuff. Is there, is there a particular swing that you’ve seen towards more certain types of products? Like maybe, maybe higher cost products?

Dallas: Yeah, I think, buying behavior is, is it’s pretty crazy at the moment. It definitely shifted from rapid panic buying to, you know, more considered now with people tightening their purse strings.

So people would buy or pay anything for the essentials that thank God has kind of come and gone. and people are now thinking, okay, now, rather than my jobs, at risk or. You know, I want to just basically get better at saving. So there’s a, there’s a pretty rapid shift in, in what people are purchasing and how they’re purchasing.

So what we have seen is, fashion essentially stopped dead when it was at the heart of it’s just, just nothing. So we shifted and expanded into. Yeah, home office essentials lot of people obviously forced to work from home. they’re going to pick up this stuff and then, you know, home appliances and then outdoor gardening.

Funnily enough, a lot of people thought, well, I should get outside and actually get some sun and fix the garden out. So yeah, there’s been this kind of like, Rapid shifts in, in, in consumer behavior, sorry, consumer purchasing behavior. and it’s, it’s near impossible to predict. what we’ve been doing is literally going okay, what’s on trend.

And then let’s just introduce that as a, as sort of like a new range that will, that will offer. So, you know, w we’ll kind of work across all the different. Categories. Now what we’re seeing lately is, is fashion starting to come back in. and then in terms of like how they go about purchasing people that buy electronics generally, it’s more considered, I will research the product more.

They will compare pricing. and then. Eventually buy it if I find the right one and then with fashion, they are more loyal to a brand or a particular retailer. So say the iconic as such a good job of customer retention. So we essentially will kind of aid in that. So if you have a good experience with our comic style with their comic, so we’ll kind of give you promotions for the Iconic.

So, yeah, it’s, it’s a, it’s a funny world we’re in now, but you know, just trying to figure out what people are doing and how best to serve them.

Dom: What’s something that surprised you or that you didn’t think about when, now that people starting to use your platform,

you know, what’s

something that you guys, well, geez.

We didn’t think about that. We need to include that or, Oh, wow. This is working really well, or

Dallas: yeah. a few things is econ out-think well, I think you spend a lot of timing. You guys probably the same as like, how can we best serve the customer? What are what’s their pain points? And then how do we kind of.

Fix them for them. You never going to get that rod. You never gonna think of everything. And normally it’s something simple that you’ve rather overlooked or you’ve kind of gone on into something that actually you could get deal. So we’ve had a lot of those little things what’s surprising is, the importance of brand.

So people really are loyal to particular brands and that will search for those brands. And I feel like that’s. Not only with products, it’s also with services and you guys are probably seeing that by investing in your brand, it does come back and reward you. so that was I suppose, surprising. and then also on the flip side is the non-important of promotional codes.

So they say in America, people will search online promotional codes. He, you know, if, if. They don’t have an active one that wasn’t necessarily made that they want, purchased the product or they’ll spend maybe one or two minutes looking and then that’s it. So that, that was surprising. Cause I was like, well, if we can deliver promotional codes and automate that process, that’ll definitely help with the sale, but not necessarily.

Dom: Do we think that that’s,

you know, the retailers in Australia aren’t

using promo codes as much, or I haven’t

built that behavior into

consumers or.

Otherwise everything’s on sale all the time.

Dallas: I mean, you’re right. Yeah. We were addicted to sale promotions, like every other day of the week. There’s a promotion on, and this sort of high, low pricing, which again is frustrating. Cause you miss out on the style you bought, you bought it full price pretty much the next day it might be 20, 30% off. So again, we’re trying to help.

Let, you know, when there’s a good sale on, retail. Here, I don’t believe that they see that promotional codes drive incremental sales. So as a retailer, if you kind of put you in retail, I had on you thinking, well, put a code out there and I put 20 minutes on, off letting go of 20% of my margin. Am I going to get X amount more sales with this code?

in America, I feel like that that is well-proven, but he is a struggle in the industry to see that incremental benefit. And I mean, I, I’m kind of impartial. I see both sides, definitely. Some, some categories that seems to work shoes, definitely, and some electronics for sure. Cause you’re like, Oh great.

I’ll just go to savings on something. My perceived value. That’s really high. other things totally agree. This is not, there’s not a real incremental value of

Faz: it. Yeah. T two things based on what you said, like, just getting back to the point about brand and you, you mentioned about brand loyalty and, you know, people buy based on brand.

Some of the trends that you’re seeing. I mean, if we look at our business, we know that. Everybody does the same thing, right? The NBN is the NBN mobile phone is a mobile phone. Right. And, and, and the pricing is not much of a muchness, right? Yeah. Yeah. It might be $5 up, $5 down, but it’s what other value that you need to amplify and tell the consumer.

That it gets them to choose your brand over their competitors. And, you know, that’s what we focus on brand because our thing is that we want to get our brand out there with our values, you know, make sure people that know that we’re not a faceless telco and that builds credibility and that builds trust.

Right. And you know, one of the differentiators for us is trust people. Trust Mate . If you look at our reviews, you look at what people say about us. It’s trust, that’s driving a lot of our conversion, right? Versus price now we’re not the most expensive, we’re not the cheapest. And we don’t. We want to make sure that we’re always competing on value, right.

And value has to be about service and about those other things, as well as just price. Right. That’s another thing as well. Yeah. The biggest thing I see with smartify, I don’t know if you’ve thought about this, but I mean, in my opinion, you guys are, we, we spent, everybody spends a lot of money on research, you know, you know, GFK K and P KPMG and all these different things to understand how are consumers buying, what’s their trends.

But what I see from smartify is that you are guys are going to be the Oracle of what, what consumers do, right? Cause they’re on your platform. You’re seeing, you’re seeing them across all different industries across all different. Platforms you’re going to see seasonality is that you spoke about, okay.

COVID so they stopped buying fashion because people stopped, stopped going out. And now they started buying things at home like gardening and stuff like that. My view is that in the future, you’ll you guys and yourself are going to be the people I go to, to get information about how consumers are buying to help me drive my business.

And do you see the power in that as well? And what you do?

Dallas: a hundred percent. Yes. but with that comes. A lot of responsibility to quote old Spiderman, because if you abuse that trust, which we want to build with values as well, establishing that with yours, you really shoot yourself in the head. And I wouldn’t want to ever breach that trust.

So. If you, if you come on board, yes. There’s a lot of data that we collect, but it’s, it’s, it’s always will be used in a way to benefit you. How do I get you a better deal, how do I give you this service that you said that you’re interested in? So, yeah, we kind of had a lot of, early discussions around, Oh shit.

Okay. We’re clicking a lot at the ATA here. How do we do it the right way? And we’ve been approached already by it by some, some providers is going, Oh look, can we tap into data feeds? Absolutely not until like, we are like, we’ll, we’ll kind of build things out of it that we’ll say is beneficial to our users.

And then if there’s a partner that can, again, benefit that process. Yes. Okay. But we’re not just going to. Essentially give that data away to anyone yet. Cause it’s, it’s, it’s pretty sensitive stuff. I

Faz: agree. I’ll just think that you guys have, you know, you, you guys will understand consumers better, which is, which is great.

But then the benefit of that you keeping it in your world is that you’re, you’re delivering better, better, better benefits to consumers that are part of your, the key, right? That’s the key us on the other end. Are getting better information and getting a better, opportunities for your platform. Right.

And that’s key, you know, I get frustrated and they probably will slam you on this. But click frenzy drives me nuts, right? The whole, the whole click frenzy scenario drives me nuts. And you know, it’s seen as a big day, but I mean, I think your product allows me to be always on, on I click frenzy point of view, right?

I mean, don’t, don’t tell people when or where to buy. Let people make their own decision just to leave them that information that they need and let them make their decision. Right. I think a lot of, a lot of retailers, a lot of, you know, scenarios in Australia at the moment they try and drive people when to buy.

And at the moment we have. Toy style and text time and always different things. And they drive a certain, you know, element, right. But that could hurt brands as well because then people wait for a certain scenario to go and buy something. Cause I know that time period is going to be X, Y, and Z. I think your smartify allows also always on opportunities for retailers and changing, changing that pattern a little bit.

Right. Changing that seasonality that. People buy big in , you know, to turn it into an always on, because I know I went and bought a PC just recently and it’s probably on the back of a tax time perspective, but that offer was back in March. I just missed it. I missed it. I didn’t know it was there. Right. And so that’s, I think another value is add to what you’re doing

as well.

Dallas: Yup. Yup. Totally. Yeah. It’s, it’s funny here in particular versus other countries, yet we are just addicted to promotional cycles and the click frenzy and all that was to really de risk the Christmas trading period in terms of retailers. And last year it was bigger than Christmas and, in retail spend online massive.

So it’s like, okay, good. There’s the best deals around there. That’s a good time to show up, but not everyone shops like that. and you know, we’ll, we’ll participate in that obviously as well, but, you know, say for you or consumers like you, it’s like, well, why can’t you just shop up on your terms? And then we still try and get you that best deal, you know, I mean the way it was sort of built it is if you have a lot of products that you’re following.

and this is again, the way’s we can use data in, in, in kind of intelligent wise. If you let’s say you followed a few things from JB HiFi, you had the laptop, you had a few accessories, the I’m going to wait for the price to drop. We essentially can just go to JB HiFi and say, Hey, you’ve got a customer that’s following these products.

That’s ready to buy. Do you want to just give them a personalized little message or a onetime use promotional code. They can come and right now and purchase that again. You as a, as a shopper, you’re like, Oh, that’s a great experience. JB HiFi just gave me a deal. So my loyalty, JB HiFi has goneout.

It’s how you actually go to pet a price. And then, you know, we benefit by giving, otherwise, well, an experience you wouldn’t get anywhere else, JB Hifi. Iet’s make a style.

Yeah. Awesome. It’s such a, it’s so refreshing to hear right now. You think? I think it’s just so refreshing.

Bosco: so you mentioned just to, to close it out, you mentioned, you’re on a crime at the moment as an extension. So how do people to our listeners, how do, how do people get access to this modify and where do they go? Do they just add it as a Chrome extension and go from there? Is that basically. Yes. Yes.

Dallas: So if you go to, just into Google and type extensions, you go straight into the Chrome extensions store. It’s essentially an app store. it’s still very much in its infancy. It’s kind of rapidly growing, users that have Grammarly or the examples, sort of the Chrome extensions. You you’ll, you’ll be familiar with it and you just search Smartifyand it’ll pop up.

also if you just topping a www.smartify.ai, then it’ll take it. Take you to on the dedicated website. and then again, hopefully a week, two weeks, knowing how tech works, we’ll have a dedicated website up and running, which I bring some of this content live through to the website so that people that may not have chrome or something like

Faz: that.

That’s great. Awesome. Thanks Dallas. And I think what a great story, another Aussie business doing great things. making a difference, providing benefit to, to businesses and consumers, which is what we love and is what we try and do every day as well. And, Dallas, I think what we’ll do is we’ll probably get you on in a couple months and see the update to the story.

I’d love to see how it’s all going and, and how you evolve. I think that’s key, right. And, and mate good luck. And, remember we’re always made, so if you need anything from us, let us know, but look really appreciate you joining us and telling us about your story.

Dallas: Yeah, thanks again for the time it’s been really good chatting with you guys.

Look forward to being invited back on as well. The great, thanks. Thanks. Cheers. Thank you.

Thanks for listening to the let’s be mates podcast by the team at Mate, search for the let’s be mates podcast on iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, and at

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Faz: See you soon, mate.