Will North has led marketing and commercial functions at brands including Meshki, PE Nation, AJE and Superdry UK.

For the last two and a half years he's been at Kulani Kinis, the Australian swimwear brand doing 75-80% of its revenue in the US.

He joined Ryan Martin from Remarkable Digital to talk conversion rate optimisation, attribution, TikTok Shop and the marketing shifts defining 2026.

The Kulani Kinis story. Founded 11.5 years ago by Sydney couple Danny and Alex as a side hustle, the brand found its footing in the US when Alex transferred to EY in LA. Today the US makes up 75-80% of revenue; Australia is just 7%.

CRO is a business metric, not a digital one. Will's Retail Fest keynote ("I Lost the Company $15 Million and Got a Promotion") explored why every untested change to your site is a potential loss. His starting point: survey customers who've purchased and subscribers who haven't, distil 3-4 themes, then run ideas through an effort-versus-upside matrix before testing.

Context kills best practice. Adding "some items in your cart may sell out" drove nearly $2M in annualised revenue at a streetwear brand. The same test lost revenue at a women's fashion brand, because scarcity signalling made shoppers worry about wearing the same thing as everyone else. Customer psychology differs by brand.

The thank you page question nobody asks. Immediately post-purchase, ask: "Was there anything that almost stopped you from buying?" Customers who've just converted will tell you exactly what's broken.

Attribution in 2026. No one does it perfectly. Will's approach is to define the role of each channel across the seasonal cycle and measure a marketing efficiency ratio (spend divided by sales) as a flow, not a fixed weekly target.

TikTok Shop. 72% of fashion revenue on the platform flows through affiliate and creator. The new customer rate is 95%. Will visited the US team last month and TikTok Shop is a major focus for Kulani Kinis in FY27.

What you say now matters as much as how you look. LLMs are changing discovery. If a brand has no content narrative, it won't show up when someone asks an AI for a recommendation. Will's take: GEO, AIO and SEO are all just SEO.

Not all impressions are equal. Kulani Kinis ran direct mail via Post Pilot at a $600 CPM and it outperformed. A postcard on a fridge is a very different impression to a feed scroll-past.

In-person events. A $40,000 Maldives brand trip generated the equivalent of $140,000 in media value from creator and customer content.

Collaborations. A LinkedIn conversation between brand experience leads led to a Lounge Underwear collab that spiked Kulani Kinis' German sales in July 2024. Go in with clear objectives or don't bother.

"Conversion is a business metric. It's not an e-com metric."

"There is no such thing as best practice with CRO. Every brand's customer psychology is different."

"You've got to sell it twice: on site and when they get it, otherwise it's coming back."

• Kulani Kinis: kulanikinis.com
• Post Pilot: postpilot.com
• Lounge Underwear: loungeunderwear.com
• Pura Vida Bracelets: puravidabracelets.com
• Retail Fest

About Will North:

Head of Commercial & Performance at Kulani Kinis. Previously held senior roles at Meshki, PE Nation, AJE and Superdry UK. Retail Fest speaker and Oria Award nominee (International Conqueror).

Building an Art-Led eCommerce Fashion Brand:

Kyall & Maku Fenaroli on Maku The Label

In this episode, Ryan sits down with Kyall and Maku Fenaroli, the husband-and-wife team behind Maku The Label, an art-centric fashion brand that's gone from Maku painting designs on blank t-shirts to landing David Jones as a stockist, all in under 18 months.

Maku spent over a decade in finance before turning her lifelong passion for art into a business. Kyall left a career as a plumber and general manager in construction to run the operations side full-time. Together they've built a brand defined by original artwork, rapid organic growth, and a willingness to make big, fast calls, including ripping up their entire fulfilment model mid-flight.

This one's a masterclass in scrappy growth, knowing when to change your model, and what it actually takes to go from side hustle to major retail partner.

From side hustle to Style Runner in four monthsMaku started printing her art on blank tees with zero branding, just a decision to stop buying t-shirts she didn't love. Four months later they landed Style Runner, their first major stockist, before either of them had heard of an SSCC barcode.

Why they walked away from print-on-demandPrint-on-demand gave Maku total creative flexibility (paint today, sell tomorrow), but it was killing customer experience with two-week delivery windows and mispicked orders. After a rough Black Friday period exposed the gap, they moved to a 3PL and in-stock model in a matter of months.

The real cost of switching to held stockKyall breaks down what changes when you go from print-on-demand to holding inventory: deposits on stock six months out, a five-to-nine month cash conversion cycle, and having to plan collections over a year in advance. Maku is already painting for August 2027.

Contribution margin over vanity revenueKyall's biggest lesson from the last 18 months: understanding gross margin, delivered margin, and contribution profit, not just top-line revenue. He talks candidly about how much of the "guru" advice in eCommerce ignores what it actually costs to get a sale to break-even.

Wholesale lessons from Style Runner and David JonesMaku credits Style Runner for patiently teaching them the basics of wholesale (barcodes, dispatch windows, systems) before they stepped up to David Jones, where the same requirements come with far less flexibility.

Personalised influencer gifting that actually gets sharedMaku's approach to influencer seeding isn't a mail-merge, it's DM'ing people directly, matching values and aesthetic, and adding a genuinely personal touch (a hand-painted portrait for Alana Hadid, a custom tee tied to Celeste Barber's own brand). The result: organic shares from influencers with audiences in the hundreds of thousands to over a million.

Pulling back from paid ads toward organic and IRLAfter ramping up Meta and Google ads over the past year, the pair are consciously shifting back toward the organic-first strategy that built the brand, including real-world events they say outperform equivalent ad spend.

New York Fashion Week, twiceMaku The Label is heading back to New York in September for NYFW, running a gifting suite with PR agency Kate & Co. and exploring a possible pop-up retail space alongside other Australian brands.

What's next: the Australian designer categoryMaku's goal is to move the brand firmly into ready-to-wear and the Australian designer space, with the US identified as the next major growth market for both DTC and wholesale.

Links & Mentions

• Maku The Label
• Style Runner
• David Jones
• Kate & Co. PR
• New York Fashion Week (September)
• Yotpo: Amazing Women in eCommerce retreat
• Humble Brag's retreat

What does it actually take to launch a product-based eCommerce business from scratch, scale it to over 400,000 customers, land in 170 Officeworks stores, crack Amazon US, and run a live Kickstarter campaign, all while raising a family from the other side of the world?

In this episode of eCommerce Australia, Ryan Martin from Remarkable Digital, sits down with Lou Rice, Co-Founder of Strapsicle, the silicone Kindle and e-reader strap brand that went from a 2am maternity leave idea to a globally recognised eCommerce brand in under four years.

Lou gets refreshingly honest about the messy middle of building a product business: the overstock nightmares, the borrowed money, the Amazon learning curve, and why she thinks most Australian eCommerce founders move too slowly on international expansion.

If you sell physical products online, whether on Shopify, Amazon, or both, this episode is packed with hard-won tactical and strategic insights.

• The Strapsicle origin story: how a dropped Kindle at 2am became a 400,000-customer brand
• Launching a Kickstarter campaign: why Lou chose crowdfunding and what it takes to run one successfully
• Amazon US in 4 months: Lou's approach to international expansion that most Aussie founders avoid
• Scaling into Officeworks: from 13 stores to 170, and what actually drove sell-through
• TikTok Shop lives vs. Instagram Live: which channel is converting and how Lou runs flash sales in real time
• Building a brand community: how a Facebook group with engaged customers becomes a product feedback engine
• Overcoming eCommerce growing pains: overstock, cash flow, production costs, and how to navigate them
• Financial clarity for product founders: why knowing your numbers (especially unit economics on a low-AOV product) matters more than you think
• Accessibility as a product category: how Strapsicle is opening up reading for people with physical limitations
• The one thing most eCommerce founders don't do early enough:

Lou Rice is the Co-Founder of Strapsicle, a silicone strap accessory for Kindles and e-readers that makes hands-free reading possible.

What started as a 2am maternity leave invention is now a global eCommerce brand with over 400,000 customers, stocked in 170 Officeworks stores across Australia, and sold across the US, UK, and beyond via Shopify and Amazon.

Lou is known in the Australian eCommerce community for her direct approach, her willingness to talk about the hard parts of building a product business, and her speed-first philosophy on international expansion.

• Strapsicle website: strapsicle.com
• Strapsicle Kickstarter campaign: Search "Strapsicle" on Kickstarter
• Officeworks: officeworks.com.au
• Amazon US: amazon.com: search "Strapsicle"
• eCommerce Australia Podcast: Subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube

Shopify eCommerce Australia, product-based business, eCommerce growth strategy, Amazon FBA Australia, Officeworks retail distribution, TikTok Shop Australia, live shopping eCommerce, Kickstarter product launch, Kindle accessories, scaling a physical product business, eCommerce founder story, international expansion strategy, eCommerce community building, Shopify store growth, low AOV product strategy, Australian eCommerce podcast