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The trade show was in full swing. Throughout the exhibition center’s cavernous halls, attendees flitted between oversized branded booths, taking in the meticulous displays of the next season’s fashion. Ubiquitous flatscreen monitors played glitzy footage of models parading the new ranges, while lightly throbbing music and animated conversations between sales reps and retailers filled the air.
Among the bustling crowds were two fresh-faced Australians. Having arrived in the US a couple of years earlier, Olivia Skuza and Heath Wells had founded a digital agency with a branding arm, their clients including some of the trade show’s exhibitors as well as its organizers. But as they strolled the halls absorbing the energy, they felt a growing sense of bewilderment.
“It was really strange,” recalls Olivia. “The way business was being done was almost totally analogue. The ranges were displayed in very expensive print catalogues, with retailers tearing out pages or circling items they wanted. Placing an order involved carbon copy sheets, often then transmitted via fax. And if the receiving fax machine was out of paper, the order could get lost entirely. So, brands were spending most of their time with buyers on manual form-filling.”
Why was it that the fashion trade and retailers in the world’s largest advanced economy were still transacting the old-fashioned way? After all, e-commerce was already well established for selling to individual consumers. Superior alternatives to fax machines and catalogues were readily available too, with the age of smartphones and tablets having recently dawned.
“We’d been working with the business-to-consumer market for a while,” Heath explains. “We couldn’t understand why e-commerce hadn’t penetrated the business-to-business market. It was obvious to us that reliance on pen, paper and chunky catalogues was hindering sales. Time that could have been spent on presenting the collection and building relationships was devoted instead to clunky admin. So, we started doing some market research.”
Like most entrepreneurial journeys, ours wasn’t smooth from the get-go.
Within their agency, Olivia and Heath next began developing and testing a digital solution. They also approached key executives at some of the big fashion brands they already had relationships with. The reception was warm. They too could see that their prevailing methods of doing business were inefficient and volunteered to become the first adopters of the couple’s platform, NuORDER.
NuORDER digitizes the entire sales process between brands and their retailer customers. Entire product galleries and inventory levels are visible in real time. Retailers can receive quotes and delivery dates on the spot, easily amending orders if necessary. The platform integrates with users’ in-house systems, enabling tracking of live sales trends. At trade shows or smaller sales pitches, business is done via tablets.
Despite the promise of their new platform, early uptake was slower than Olivia and Heath had expected. A further challenge lay in how to finance the expansion that they envisaged.
“Like most entrepreneurial journeys, ours wasn’t smooth from the get-go,” Olivia recalls. “We knew we needed to raise capital, but neither of us had any experience in doing so. We had many unsuccessful meetings with venture capitalists initially. We honestly didn’t know what we were doing, but we didn’t give up. We kept moving forward, learning from every knockback. We improved our pitch every time and continued networking with every potential investor.”
After some fifty rejections, though, the couple were starting to feel as if they might simply have to try to fund their brainchild themselves. But then came a chance introduction to David Tisch, a renowned investor in early-stage tech companies in New York. Rather than a formal follow-up in some Manhattan skyscraper, David suggested grabbing a coffee at a local donut shop.
“It was a different experience to the venture capitalist meetings we’d had so far,” says Heath.
“David immediately loved our idea. He had an intuitive understanding of our industry. Afterwards, he made a few calls to some of the venture capitalists who’d already turned us down. They agreed to give us another hearing. Suddenly, we went from receiving no interest to having offers from multiple parties. We’d honed our pitch, our product and our vision. And we’d found an investor who would stick with us through thick and thin.”
Among the earliest adopters were market-leading fashion brands from the US, the UK and Italy. Olivia and Heath’s intention was that many other brands would then follow suit, creating a sense of momentum. As a marketplace, though, NuORDER required not only brands but retailer clients. The company thus pivoted to enticing retailers onto the platform. Soon, a virtuous circle took shape: the more brands that signed up, the more retailers would seek to join them.
“We always knew that we had to reach both sides of the marketplace,” says Olivia. “So, we wanted to have users being drawn to us. That would mean landing a prominent retailer that was the biggest customer of various brands or that brands aspired to have as their biggest customer.”
To make the right decisions, you need robust information; once NuORDER came along, our data gave brands a very different picture from what they previously had.
For several years, NuORDER had been in behind-the-scenes talks with Nordstrom, an operator of US luxury department stores. In the face of ever-intensifying competition from online retail, the iconic chain could see the potential of Olivia and Heath’s creation for improving customer experience across the industry. As well as joining the platform, the company’s leadership extolled NuORDER’s benefits to other leading traditional retailers.
“That was really the most transformative win for us,” Olivia reflects. “It honestly moved the market and changed the landscape in so many ways. We’d always believed that once a retailer like that was seen to make the switch, other retailers and brands would do the same. When a massive retailer says it will only purchase in one way from now on, there’s no choice but for brands to adopt.”
The digitalization of the wholesale buying process has created a wealth of new insights into fashion trends and customer behavior. Previously, sales reps from the brands lacked real-time insights into which lines were most popular other than their own individual experiences. In absence of hard data, hunches were about all there were.
I still see a lot in retail that’s broken and that frustrates me. I feel like it’s my duty to go in and fix these things.
“To make the right decisions, you need robust information,” says Heath. “Once NuORDER came along, our data gave brands a very different picture from what they previously had. We knew from our e-commerce background the beauty of tracking customer data live and in depth and what you can do with that.”
Having brought much-needed disruption to the US fashion market, NuORDER turned its attention to Europe. Now the market leader, the company had just raised another $45 million from venture capital investors. More than three thousand brands were now using the platform, with over 100,000 retailers placing $11.5 billion–worth of orders annually. It was then that Olivia and Heath received an unexpected advance.
“We’d not even contemplated selling up at that point,” Heath admits. “Revenues were growing more than 50% per year and we had big plans for further expansion. But we knew the buyer well and it turned out they had an almost identical five-to-ten-year vision of retail’s future.
Because of that, it didn’t really feel like we were selling at all. The deal was done in about sixty days, from start to finish.”
For two serial entrepreneurs coming out of a decade of relentless activity, having time on their hands is a strange sensation. But this seems unlikely to prove to be anything more than an interlude.
“We’re not going to be able to sit still for long,” says Olivia. “For us, this is a period for figuring out our next move. We want to make sure it’s something we’re passionate about. We love retail, building businesses and, of course, technology. Product and customers are everything to us.”
In the coming years, the global retail landscape seems set for yet more disruption, this time driven by the advance of artificial intelligence (AI).
“I still see a lot in retail that’s broken and that frustrates me,” Heath observes. “I still can’t see what’s in a store unless I go there. Why can’t a London store simply dispatch the item to my nearby home? I feel like it’s my duty to go in and fix these things. I want online and retail stores to integrate seamlessly. I see AI having a big impact on retail. But I don’t see all B2B buying switching instantly to machine learning. Major change is coming though.”
“We’d also like to invest some time into philanthropy,” says Olivia. “Helping to give children opportunities is something I’m passionate about given my own upbringing. And having built a network through business, we think we can deliver much greater impact now. Whatever comes next, we won’t just be half in. For Heath and me, it’s got to be all-consuming.”
Olivia Skuza and Heath Wells: Our lives
“My parents were immigrants from Poland,” says Olivia Skuza. “They settled in Adelaide, Australia in their early twenties, where my sister and I were born. They came over with nothing. We lived in government-funded housing, and we struggled financially. My father took any work he could get to support us, including in fast food outlets. I did lots of little jobs even while I was still at high school so that I could help pay for my school textbooks, as well as the things I wanted as a teenager. So, I was raised to understand that hard work was the only way to get what I wanted in life.”
“I was born in Adelaide and grew up an only child,” says Heath Wells. “My mum was a school teacher and my dad was an electrical and electronic engineer. I’d call it a very middle-class upbringing. I wasn’t given any of the nice stuff that a lot of the other kids seemed to get. I guess I developed a bit of a chip on the shoulder and wanted to prove to the world that I could build something from very little. My first attempt at entrepreneurship was at the age of fifteen, when I offered to build basic websites for businesses and universities. The internet was still in its infancy with dial-up connections.”
“Heath and I met when we were seventeen,” recalls Olivia. “It was a club for teens, where he was working. He came across as a bit of a hipster with his spiky hair with blond tips. We had a shared passion for music. A year later, we left Adelaide to study in Melbourne. At university, we became local radio DJs together, doing the graveyard slot before the breakfast show and then going off to lectures. Heath was studying commerce and I was studying business management. Before I graduated, I took a job at an ad agency for a year. That experience made me realize I wasn’t cut out to be a corporate person, that I wanted to work for myself.”
“In Melbourne, I operated a publishing company and Olivia founded a creative, PR and branding agency,” says Heath. “We soon merged everything into one, focusing on music and fashion magazines. Having grown that business, we fortuitously sold up in 2008, just before the worst of the financial crisis. We packed all our belongings into a shipping container bound for the US. We’d never been to Los Angeles, but we knew the US was where we wanted to be. After all, it’s the biggest market of all. We didn’t want to sit around planning our move; we just went. And we threw ourselves straight into a new business venture there. The best time to start something you’re passionate about was yesterday.”
I’ve always been curious about the world, that there’s way more out there beyond the next border.
“Being a founder is tough,” Olivia observes. “Every day, you wake up wondering what might happen next. We would go on vacation perhaps for one week every year and a half. And inevitably, that would be the time that disaster would strike. But that’s just how it is, and you learn to expect it. Heath compares running a start-up to getting repeatedly punched in the face. Just as you feel like celebrating a new customer win, you lose a key member of staff, or something goes haywire. It’s non-stop.”
“Creating businesses together is our passion,” she continues. “Our skillsets are different. Heath is a genius when it comes to the vision and business development. I’m more about product, customers and relationships. But we’re very similar in our work ethic and desire to take risks to succeed. When we finish work each day, we’re still buzzing and wanting to talk business. We don’t have the sort of disagreements that can hinder married company founders. Because we want a happy life outside of the business, we feel compelled to resolve any professional differences before we go home.”
“I’ve always been curious about the world, that there’s way more out there beyond the next border,” says Heath. “Growing up, my parents couldn’t afford expensive foreign trips, so I regarded the internet as my portal into the world. Olivia and I have always kept moving, first within Australia, then to the US and most recently to Europe. During the pandemic period, we relocated somewhere new in Europe every two or three months with our kids, our dog and a lot of suitcases. We love all the places we’ve been and see the world as our home rather than one place.”
“We’ve recently been living in Monaco, where almost nobody seems to be a native,” says Olivia. “When people ask us, ‘where’s home?’, we typically answer, ‘how much time have you got?’ My parents are Polish, but Heath and I were obviously born and raised in Australia. We then spent a dozen years in the US, where we built businesses, got married and had kids. Since then, we’ve been all over Europe, absorbing other cultures, immersing ourselves in the way of life. Truly, I don’t know where home is. So many countries and cultures resonate with us. As barriers come down, people learn from each other, and the world becomes a better place."
