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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Fachliteratur
- Sprache: Englisch
'Gabby and Hezi were always the most looked-up-to duo in ecommerce and they truly taught me how to trade!' Nick Molnar, CEO, Afterpay 'The Leibovich brothers are pioneers of Australian ecommerce. You cannot afford to not read this book.' Christine Holgate, Group Chief Executive Officer & Managing Director, Australia Post Real stories and advice from digital entrepreneurs who have learned what it takes to succeed In Catch of the Decade, two of Australia's most successful online superstars reveal how they've built, launched, merged, and sold some of the most disruptive businesses in Australia today: Catch, Scoopon, Menulog and Luxury Escapes. This book contains little-known secrets and strategies that will help you shorten your learning curve, avoid mistakes, and bring your business dream alive. The wisdom revealed in this book is hard won: brothers Gabby and Hezi Leibovich started with no money and no connections, turned their drawbacks into assets, and came out on top. You'll learn how they rode the waves of entrepreneurialism and worked their way up. * Learn proven tips to define, disrupt and dominate a sector or industry, straight from entrepreneurs who achieved their billion-dollar dreams. * Read hard hitting, no bull nuggets of wisdom in the areas of customer service, PR, Buying and trading, engaging investors and more. * Market-tested strategies for building big brands, creating high-performing teams and fostering a world-class entrepreneurial culture. For the first time, the Leibovich brothers are telling their story, in their own words, and you'll learn how they got where they are today. Follow in their footsteps with over 200 bite-sized entries that are both inspirational and useful. Pick up Catch of the Decade and get moving!
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020
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Table of Contents
COVER
INTRODUCTION
The businesses we built
Fast facts
The Catch timeline
Note
Part I: Getting started
CHAPTER 1: How it all began
If you haven't succeeded yet, don't give up
Raised on hummus and chutzpah*
The third door
It all started at the dinner table
Building the family business
Working weekends at the market
Something has to change
‘Free spinal check’: three words I never want to hear again
The ‘can't fail’ idea
A little website called eBay
Notes
CHAPTER 2: Working together
The day eBay shut us down
Nowhere to go and no way to grow
Better to copy and excel than to be original and mediocre
What's in a name?
Landing the first catches
You're only as good as your last deal
To niche or not to niche?
Notes
CHAPTER 3: Gaining momentum
We are better buyers!
Innovate or die
Necessity is the mother of invention
Our big break
Sale of the century
Catching fire
One last thing …
CHAPTER 4: Recession? Shmecession!
How four minutes of fame made us a fortune
Who said PR doesn't work?
How to stay ahead
Say ‘yes’ and work the rest out later
CHAPTER 5: Idea by midnight, execute by midday
How we launched Scoopon
Right time, right place, right idea
The launch of Scoopon Travel
Note
CHAPTER 6: Catch us if you can
The Tiger who came to tea
Part II: Ramping up
CHAPTER 7: Time to scale
Growing pains
CHAPTER 8: Running fast
The launch of Grocery Run
Mumgo. It's where mums go
The launch of Vinomofo
Kissing frogs
It all started with pizza
Doing the right thing
CHAPTER 9: The robots are coming!
CHAPTER 10: The Catch culture
Sliding into greatness
Why not make it fun?
Negotiating in pyjamas
Your culture is your people
Be a mensch
AIRheads need not apply
CHAPTER 11: Meanwhile, back at Menulog …
Part III: Full speed ahead
CHAPTER 12: It takes two
Debates are good for business
We did it once. Can we do it again?
What went wrong?
Unintended consequences
Note
CHAPTER 13: A new era
Transforming the Catch culture
Back on track
CHAPTER 14: Time for some major changes
If you can't join them, beat them
You don't have what I want!
CHAPTER 15: The marketplace beckons
Amazon is coming
The race is on
More questions than answers
How we built the marketplace
The launch of BonVoyage.com.au
What's in a name?
The side benefits of building a big brand
The gamble paid off
Amazon is getting closer
Don't chase a rabbit down a hole
Learning from the masters
It's complicated
Amazon (finally) arrives
Notes
CHAPTER 16: To list, or not to list: that is the question
Around the world in seven days
Just say ‘yes’ and work the rest out later
Mission accomplished
Note
CHAPTER 17: Wesfarmers come calling
The Midas touch
CHAPTER 18: A final note: how to
really
succeed in business
Note
GOODBYE, FAREWELL AND GOOD LUCK
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
INDEX
END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
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First published in 2021 by John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd 42 McDougall St, Milton Qld 4064
Office also in Melbourne
Typeset in ITC Giovanni Std 11pt/15pt
© John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd 2021
The moral rights of the authors have been asserted
ISBN: 978‐0‐730‐38849‐4
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the Australian Copyright Act 1968 (for example, a fair dealing for the purposes of study, research, criticism or review), no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, communicated or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission. All inquiries should be made to the publisher at the address above.
Cover design by Wiley
Cover and ‘Catches’ background image © greoli/Shutterstock
Back Cover Photo: © Erin Jonasson / Fairfax Media
Scooter image on p20 by Niran Kasri from Pixabay
Menulog and EatNow are registered trademarks of Menulog Pty Ltd and this book has not been endorsed, sponsored or approved by Menulog Pty Ltd; Scoopon, Luxury Escapes, Bon Voyage and Cudo are registered trademarks, in Australia only, of Lux Group Ltd (owner of Luxury Escapes / Bon Voyage) and Lux Everyday Pty Ltd (owner of Scoopon / Cudo) and this book has not been endorsed, sponsored or approved by Lux Group Ltd or Lux Everyday Pty Ltd; Catch of the Day, Catch, Grocery Run, Mumgo are registered trademarks of Wesfarmers Limited and this book has not been endorsed, sponsored or approved by Wesfarmers Limited; Seven Network logo is a registered trademark of Seven West Media and this book has not been endorsed, sponsored or approved by Seven West Media; Nine Network logo is a registered trademark of Nine Entertainment Co. and this book has not been endorsed, sponsored or approved by Nine Entertainment Co; Network 10 logo is a registered trademark of Network Ten Pty Limited and this book has not been endorsed, sponsored or approved by Network Ten Pty Limited; Toshiba and Toshiba Satellite is a registered trademark of Toshiba (Australia) Pty Limited and this book has not been endorsed, sponsored or approved by Toshiba (Australia) Pty Limited; Hungry Jack’s name and logo is a registered trademark of Hungry Jack’s Australia and this book has not been endorsed, sponsored or approved by Hungry Jack’s Australia; Pumpkin Patch is a registered trademark of Alceon Group and this book has not been endorsed, sponsored or approved by Alceon Group; Vinomofo is a registered trademark of Vinomofo Pty Ltd and this book has not been endorsed, sponsored or approved by Vinomofo Pty Ltd; Australia Post logo is a registered trademark of Australia Postal Corporation and this book has not been endorsed, sponsored or approved by Australia Postal Corporation.
Disclaimer
The material in this publication is of the nature of general comment only, and does not represent professional advice. It is not intended to provide specific guidance for particular circumstances and it should not be relied on as the basis for any decision to take action or not take action on any matter which it covers. Readers should obtain professional advice where appropriate, before making any such decision. To the maximum extent permitted by law, the authors and publisher disclaim all responsibility and liability to any person, arising directly or indirectly from any person taking or not taking action based on the information in this publication.
This book is dedicated to our supportive and amazing wives, Amanda and Lina; and our children, Liron, Shira, Miri, Daniel, Meital and Liam.
Dream big and believe anything is possible.
* * * * * *
One hundred per cent of our profits from this book go to the following charities:
Good360.org
secondbite.org
Please support them, they do a good job!
Check out our book website for more great photos, videos, lessons and blogs:
catchofthedecade.com
INTRODUCTION
How do two immigrant brothers with no money, limited industry knowledge, amateur technical skills and strong accents (that hasn't changed much …) build some of Australia's most successful digital businesses with a combined exit valued at more than $1 billion?
It's a good question. We get asked it a lot, which is why we wrote this book.
You won't know our names and you probably won't recognise our faces, but you'll almost certainly know some of the brands we built, sold and/or merged for more than $1 billion after just 13 years in business.
Here are just a few of them:
Catchoftheday:
Australia's most popular shopping site
EatNow/Menulog:
an app that revolutionised the food delivery business
Scoopon:
a major disruptor in the services and entertainment sector
Luxury Escapes:
a travel deal site that made luxury travel affordable for all.
How did we build these brands, and, more importantly, how did we sell them for such a huge amount? Not by watching midday TV, working a nine‐to‐five job or borrowing money from a rich uncle to ‘give things a go’. We built these brands with our bare hands, doing everything ourselves (surrounded by great people, of course) and doing it the hard way.
But what does ‘doing it the hard way’ even mean?
It means:
getting up at dawn in the freezing cold to set up a market stall in Wantirna (in suburban Melbourne) to sell imperfect clothes, while all our mates were sleeping off their hangovers from the night before
driving around the industrial sites of Melbourne in a beaten‐up, Mitsubishi one‐tonne van, cold‐calling hard‐nosed suppliers to try to source our ‘catch of the day’, hoping those suppliers wouldn't notice we were selling their stuff online
hauling the stock back to our warehouse, unpacking it, photographing it, writing ads, answering customer emails, building online sites, packing up goods and schlepping them to the post office … every … single … day. (A quick ‘Hi!’ to Kate and Kevin from Caulfield post office. We saw more of them than we did our best friends at the time.)
As the Catch business grew, a typical day for us would look something like this: upon waking, we'd check our emails. We'd drive to the office, be at our desks by 8 am, solve the problems from the night before (we were a 24/7 business), attend a supplier meeting at 9 am, juggle a thousand different balls and decisions throughout the morning, eat a hurried lunch at our desk, have more meetings with suppliers in the afternoon, head home at 8 pm, have a quick dinner, kiss the kids, say hello to our wives, hit the desk for another few hours, answer more emails, get to bed around 1 am and then get up and do it all again the next day. You could say we ‘bootstrapped’ it.
LOOKING BACK, BOOTSTRAPPING WAS THE ONLY WAY WE COULD DO IT.
We had no money, no experience and no contacts, so doing it ourselves was the only option. And besides, no‐one had ever built a business like this before, so we had no roadmap to follow. But we did it, and we're here to share the stories and lessons we learned along the way so you can hopefully take a few shortcuts and get to where you're going faster.
We want to make your journey to success as easy as possible so we're sharing much of what we've learned with you. We've held nothing back.
In this book you'll find:
more than 200 bite‐sized nuggets of wisdom called ‘Catches’, which you'll find at the end of each of the three parts of this book
21 longer‐style ‘lessons’, which are dotted throughout the book
snippets of emails and phone scripts that helped us build this business from the ground up
numbers and more numbers: revenue, profits, products sold and much more
screenshots of the early advertisements and websites that helped us launch our businesses
a raft of ‘live’ examples of materials you can use and be inspired by.
The businesses we built
Before launching into part I of the book, we thought we'd give you a bit of background on the businesses we built, along with a business timeline to put our Catch story into perspective.
Fast facts
Catchoftheday was launched in October 2006. From humble beginnings of selling just one deal a day, by 2010 it had become Australia's most visited online shopping site. In 2017, the site added a marketplace capability in order to compete with eBay and Amazon, and it was rebranded to become Catch.com.au. In August 2019, Catch.com.au was sold for $230 million to Wesfarmers, which owns some of Australia's leading retailers: Bunnings, Kmart, Target and Officeworks. Today, Catch employs more than 500 staff and has yearly revenues exceeding $600 million.
Scoopon was launched in April 2010 and had a similar ‘deal of the day’ concept to Catchoftheday but sold discounted coupons for services and travel. Scoopon revolutionised the way businesses such as restaurants, hairdressers and masseurs marketed their services. In 2012, Scoopon Travel was launched, offering travel discounts on accommodation, tours and flights. We launched five‐star luxury travel website Bon Voyage not long after, and in late 2017 both Scoopon Travel and Bon Voyage were acquired by leading travel deal site Luxury Escapes.
Grocery Run was launched in September 2011 and became part of the combined Catch Group*. It pioneered the concept of selling grocery items online and paved the way for the giants of supermarket retailing to launch their e‐commerce sites.
Mumgo was launched in July 2012 with the slogan, ‘Where mums go’, with the aim of entering the burgeoning kids’ and baby markets. Mumgo was later integrated back into the Catch.com.au website.
EatNow was launched in October 2012 as a food ordering app. EatNow was one of the original disruptors that introduced the food home delivery concept to Australia, paving the way for Uber Eats and Deliveroo to enter Australia. In early 2015 EatNow merged with market leader Menulog, which in May 2015 was acquired by the UK conglomerate Just Eat for $855 million.
Luxury Escapes is a travel business founded by Adam Schwab and Jeremy Same. While we didn't build this amazing business, in 2017 we became part owners after we merged our two travel businesses, Bon Voyage and Scoopon Travel with Luxury Escapes.
The Catch timeline
2004
Ran independent eBay businesses from our respective garages
2006
June
Collaborated to launch
DailyDeals.com.au
October
Launched
Catchoftheday.com.au
with five employees
2008
September
Moved Catchoftheday operations to Springvale warehouse
2010
April
Launched Scoopon
September
Moved Catchoftheday into combined office and warehouse in Moorabbin
2011
May
Tiger Global acquired a 40 per cent stake in the Catchoftheday business for $80 million
August
Moved into combined office and warehouse in Braeside
September
Launched Grocery Run
2012
July
Launched Mumgo
July
Acquired Vinomofo
November
Leased a warehouse at Truganina
2014
October
Completed the $20 million automation of the Truganina warehouse and fulfilment process
2015
January
Announced merger of Menulog and EatNow
May
Announced sale of Menulog/EatNow
June
Launched Club Catch
2016
July
Catchoftheday bought back the 40 per cent stake from Tiger Global to become a 100 per cent privately owned company again
2017
June
Rebranded Catchoftheday as
Catch.com.au
and launched the Catch Marketplace
July
Launched Bon Voyage
August
Acquired Pumpkin Patch
December
Sold Scoopon to Lux Group
Acquired Brands Exclusive and The Home
Merged Bon Voyage and Scoopon Travel with Luxury Escapes
2018
February
Launched Catch Connect
2019
August
Sold
Catch.com.au
to Wesfarmers for $230 million
The early days! We had no idea the business would grow to be so big. We were just having fun, playing with computers.
Source: © Michael Clayton‐Jones / Fairfax Media
Note
*
The Catch Group (and sometimes simply ‘Catch’) is a loose term we used to describe the growing clutch of businesses that we were launching. It is not a legal entity but a quick way of referring to our collective businesses.
CHAPTER 1How it all began
Success came to us late. We were in our thirties when we hit on the idea for Catchoftheday, but before that we worked hard at building shitty little businesses that never seemed to take hold. We had no idea that all those shitty little businesses were small steps towards building much bigger, more successful businesses—some of which would disrupt several industries in the Australian market and shake the retail sector to its core.
If you haven't succeeded yet, don't give up
We started our retail ‘careers’ selling at the markets, the best training ground for commerce you can get. That experience helped us develop a pretty thick skin, which served us well and inured us to all manner of insults and injuries. Starting high school in Australia as teenagers with weird accents, limited English and an aversion to AFL toughened us up even more. But in hindsight, being outsiders made us who we are today.
Raised on hummus and chutzpah*
Our father, Shlomo (Aaron) immigrated to Israel from Romania as a child, and our mum Editha (Edith) was an immigrant from the Ukraine. They met, got married, had three kids—Gabby, the eldest; Einat, our sister; and Hezi—and raised us in Nahariya, a beautiful seaside town in Israel. Our birthplace holds a very special place in our hearts. It was a city where everyone knew and cared for one another. Israel is the home of Jewish immigrants from all parts of the world and, as such, we got to share the best and worst moments of growing up in this war‐affected region with friends and neighbours from many cultures and countries: Spain, Morocco, Romania, Poland, Iraq, Russia, Iran and more. Our community was colourful, vibrant and full of love, laughter and noise. Every family in our apartment block had an average of four kids, and dozens of families shared a play area the size of an Aussie backyard. After walking to school in the mornings (six days a week, not five as is the norm in Australia), the afternoons would be filled with soccer, surfing and wandering the streets hanging out with our friends until it was time to go to bed. We didn't have any devices or internet and we were the better for it. We often tell our kids that we had the best childhood ever, surrounded by friends, love and great weather.
All the parents were out working hard to support the families, so we kids had no option but to grow up fast, fend for ourselves and face life head on. Growing up in this tightknit neighbourhood taught us how to accept people from all cultures, share what we had and be tolerant of other points of view: all valuable life skills that have served us well ever since.
Our childhood sounds idyllic, and it truly was, but it certainly wasn't an average childhood. The closest most Australian kids get to experiencing war is playing video games such as World of Warcraft or Call of Duty. For us, however, war was real. During the conflict with Lebanon in 1982, our city, being the northernmost city on the Mediterranean, was the main target for rocket missiles into Israel. We'll never forget huddling in our houses or shelters during war times, and hearing the non‐stop whistles of rockets falling all around us. Wheeeeeee Boom! Wheeeeeee Boom!
When the rockets stopped, all the kids in the neighbourhood would continue life as if nothing had happened, except for one popular local challenge. We'd all run around to see who could find the largest piece of missile shrapnel and show it off to our family and friends. (You could say we did ‘show and tell’ a little differently in Israel.) Every kid in the neighbourhood had a prized collection of shrapnel in their bedroom. We kept ours on the top of a bookshelf, next to Gabby's poster of Samantha Fox and our 34‐centimetre black‐and‐white Metz TV.
Growing up during a war‐torn period like this made us impervious to most forms of fear and forced us to make a decision. Do we let these situations scare us and stop us from living life? Or do we find a way to overcome them and turn them to our advantage? We chose the latter.
As a result, things that scared others never really scared us. After all, when you've had bombs exploding outside your front door, what is there left to be fearful of? A customer saying, ‘I won't buy your product’; a journalist saying, ‘I can't cover your story’; a supplier saying, ‘We won't let you sell our products’? Meh.
The third door
Our dad, who showed us what persistence really means, said to us, ‘There's the front door, the back door, and then there's the third door’. That was the door you took when all the others were shut. Being poor immigrants (we moved to Australia because our parents were looking for a better life) this third door was often the only one open to us. His strong example of how to push through the doors that were closed has stayed with us ever since.
‘THERE'S THE FRONT DOOR, THE BACK DOOR, AND THEN THERE'S THE THIRD DOOR’.
This ‘no fear’ attitude paid dividends, especially in the early Catch days when we and our small team were working hard to get things done and make a noise. It also helped us get noticed by everyone who mattered: the customers, the suppliers and the media. The support of all three created the magic that enabled Catch (and all our other businesses) to become the ferocious disruptors that went on to fight the giants (some of them dinosaurs!) of Australian retail.
It all started at the dinner table
Our parents were unusual in that they exposed us to entrepreneurial thinking from a very early age. In other words, we talked about ‘how to make money’ a lot. In fact, at dinner it was our favourite topic. Their attitude? Don't focus on saving money. Find ways to make money. Their advice gave us a high appetite for risk, and cultivated within us a mentality of innovation and creativity—all crucial skills for being an entrepreneur.
Our father was an electronics engineer who worked multiple jobs to support the family. In Israel he worked for the Department of Defence, and when we moved to Australia he ran a series of electronic stores and had a market stall at Croydon in the outer south‐eastern suburbs of Melbourne. He was an old‐fashioned kind of entrepreneur, the kind who could spot an opportunity wherever he went. For example, growing up in Israel, he discovered that changing his car over was a quick and easy way to earn a buck. His modus operandi was to buy a second‐hand car at a good price (his favourite was the Peugeot Model 404, mainly because it was the taxi driver's car of choice) and on‐sell it for a higher price.
Dad's business model was pretty basic: he didn't buy a new car or add new features, he just searched high and low for a good deal (in the pre‐internet days, this was really hard work) by driving around the country to locate the best cars at the lowest prices. He'd then add value by giving the car a quick repair, a spit and polish, and then resell it for a profit.
We've followed this same ‘business model’ ever since and we can attribute much of our success to it. We learned a valuable lesson early on: you make your money when you buy the goods, not when you sell them. If you buy low, selling the product is easy.
Building the family business
Being brothers, and sharing a room for 16 years growing up, we knew each other well, and could rely on each other to do the right thing. This trust enabled us to build the Catch business together but work on separate things, thereby doubling our output. We often worked in separate locations on different parts of the business, so we sometimes didn't even know exact details about what the other was doing. But we always knew we were there for each other and had each other's back, no matter what.
We mostly speak as one throughout this book, but occasionally we'll break out and tell you an individual story. To get started, here's an honest, in‐your‐face appraisal of what we think of each other because, we know each other best.
Gabby
Hezi and I are quite different. He's the quieter (younger) one. Anyone who knows him knows he loves building things and solving problems: if he had become a watchmaker he would have really enjoyed tinkering with the mechanism rather than the hands and alarm. He loves to challenge the norm and often says, ‘surely there is a better way of doing things!’ For example, a pizza shop owner getting Hezi's order wrong three times in a row over the phone ultimately led to the creation of EatNow, which was one of our most successful ventures. Even growing up, he was so annoyed by having to get up from the computer to shut the bedroom door, he built a remote door opener so he could open or close it just by pressing a button. He's a very innovative kind of guy.
Hezi
Gabby's the talkative one, the cheeky one, the provocateur. Like all great entrepreneurs, Gabby is highly curious about everything, asks great questions and puts people at ease very quickly. He takes a genuine interest in those around him and those who work with him. People love working with him, and want to go the extra mile for him. You can't make people care about the company they work for, but Gabby does, and as a result he’s built a long‐serving and loyal team. He humbly calls himself ‘just a buyer’ but he's much more than that. He has an eye for detail, is blindingly quick with figures (he gave me a quick $50 to write all this …) and is very humorous—all of which enables him to deal with a multitude of personalities up and down the business hierarchy.
Gabby
Hezi is talented at inventing new and innovative business concepts and has a strong intuition about which ideas to pursue and which ones to leave alone. He thrives on taking on new challenges, building a business model and then hitting the pavement to see if it works. He hates wasting money, so he'll pursue the idea on his own to check if the business model stands up to scrutiny before recruiting and building new teams. For example, when testing the Scoopon concept, he visited more than 100 businesses across Melbourne—car washes, masseuses and the like—and took with him an A3 sheet of paper of a draft Scoopon website homepage, which he used to show the business owners how the concept worked in order to discover what kind of commission they would accept. He even called himself ‘Harry’ because the Catch brand was well known and he didn't want to get preferential treatment. In every business, he always surveyed the land before he sent in soldiers. That's something I've always respected in a great entrepreneur.
Hezi
Gabby does the public speaking, and the bragging. He's been the face of the company since we began, and has represented us in all the TV and newspaper interviews. At the beginning he hated public speaking, but when you see him on stage, you can see he's a natural performer, and as time went on, he grew to love it and became brilliant at it, which is just as well because every start‐up needs a front person who can spruik the business.
Some people have the ‘star’ factor and some don't. Gabby has it in spades (another $50 for this one!). His sense of style, showmanship and storytelling are second to none, and while these attributes come to him with ease, he supplements that natural skill with hard work. Who else could come up with lines like these:
We sell people shit they don’t need at prices they can’t resist.
We never spent a cent on marketing and advertising.
We’re Australia Post’s No. 1 client.
WE SELL PEOPLE SHIT THEY DON’T NEED AT PRICES THEY CAN’T RESIST.
That last one worked a treat. We asked Australia Post if it was true and they never denied it, so Gabby figured he may as well keep saying it. He's always had the gift of the Gab. Could our parents have chosen a better name for him? I think not. That kind of ‘there‐are‐no‐rules’ and ‘if‐there‐are‐they're‐made‐to‐be‐broken’ school of business enabled us to become the number‐one most popular shopping site in Australia. (That claim, by the way, is true. Hitwise told us so.)
Gabby
Hezi loves fast take‐offs, speed and the adrenaline and disruption of launching a start‐up. Usually, after a few years, when the plane reaches altitude and the crew is well positioned to see the journey through, he ventures off looking for a new endeavour and just loves to do it all over again, adding layers of value to each business he builds.
What many may not know is that Hezi is a trained chiropractor. Unwilling and, quite frankly, unable to work for anyone else—we'd never worked for anyone but our dad—he set up a chiro clinic and used a ‘free spinal check’ to recruit new patients in shopping centres, working 10‐hour days on the floor. He also owes a lot to good old Bert Newton, who unknowingly gave him a hand in launching his business … but more on that later.
Hezi
Gabby is a mad soccer fan, has huge reserves of chutzpah and uses that quality daily to get what he wants. His passion, madness and love for soccer intersected in 2002, when he secretly asked the Leeds soccer team to host his wedding on the soccer pitch at Melbourne's (now) Marvel Stadium—and they agreed! He got married in front of 25 000 screaming soccer fans (and one surprised bride) and it didn't cost him a cent. That's Gabby all over. (You can check the wedding out on YouTube: ‘Gabby Leeds Wedding’.)
It seems redundant to say that his chutzpah, which at times was expressed by kicking doors, became a real asset in the early days of Catch, when most brands would tell us, ‘We don't sell to online stores’. As strange as it may seem now, finding good deals back then was hard. It was Gabby's potent mixture of zeal and charm that convinced them to sell their excess stock to him, which was a crucial and defining characteristic for building a successful, powerful Catch.
Having shared a room with him growing up, I can say with certainty that Gabby is one of the craziest guys I've ever met, but he's my crazy brother and I love him.
Gabby: The epitome of chutzpah! Asking the Leeds soccer team if I can get married on the pitch at half time during their game at Marvel Stadium. My poor wife! She deserves a medal.
Gabby
Hezi's work ethic is prodigious. We don't take days off, are always ‘on’ and there is never a ‘wrong’ time to talk about the business. It is not uncommon for Hezi to send and answer emails at 3 am, even now. We have had a successful working relationship for all these years because we each have our own ‘unofficial’ roles in the business. For example, after it was proposed we should build a brand‐new, $20 million, 23 000 m2 warehouse (which is about the size of the MCG!), Hezi approved the proposal within minutes with a WhatsApp message that said, ‘Sounds good!’. He trusted me sufficiently without needing to second guess. Similarly, after four years at Catch, when Hezi went off to start Scoopon and EatNow, I approved it with a message saying, ‘Cool!’
This trust extended to the day‐to‐day operations too. For example, Hezi is great at understanding the digital complexities of UX, UI, SEO and SEM*. To me it's just a big WTF**! He, on the other hand has an allergy to some of the things I love, like writing the copy for billboards and newspaper ads. He lets me do my thing, and I let him do his.
This trust has been fundamental to our success. It doesn't matter if we are making a $2000 decision, or a $20 million decision, we trust each other to do the right thing by the business.
He's my younger brother, he knows me better than anyone and I love him.
Working weekends at the market
Not long after arriving in Australia in 1986, our parents set up a stall selling stuff at Croydon market. While our neighbours went to the beach on a Sunday, the Leibovich family went to work. It wasn't optional. We all had to go.
As soon as Gabby turned 18 (Hezi was 12 at the time) and got his licence and his Holden Gemini, we struck out on our own and set up another stall at Wantirna market. We'd arrive at the Wantirna market car park at 4 am on a Sunday to secure our place in the car park queue. Sometimes we'd even sleep in the car overnight to ensure we were in a good position when the doors opened. Then, as now, location is everything. At 8 am they'd let us in and as soon as the gates opened, we'd race to get the best spot.
GABBY WOULD SHAMELESSLY JUMP ON THE TABLE AND SPRUIK AT THE TOP OF HIS VOICE TO GET US NOTICED. HE TURNED THE STALL INTO A SHOW.
We sold clearance apparel that we managed to source from a factory in Clayton (thank you Mr Roitman for giving us our first break!). On our first day, we made $700 in five hours. Not bad for a couple of kids. We packed up and went home early as we'd sold out of everything.
But there was a reason for that success. Other than our great merchandise, we found a way to increase our chances of success. We put our individual talents to work. Gabby would shamelessly jump on the table and spruik at the top of his voice to get us noticed. He turned the stall into a show. As the crowd gathered to see what the hell was going on, Hezi would pitch the benefits of owning a beautiful $2 Australiana T‐shirt with a picture of an echidna or emu on it, and why everyone in the family should own one as well. We also set up a very efficient bagging and payment process, so it ran like clockwork. We were a great double act.
The challenge of working in any market—online or offline—is that sometimes all the stallholders sell the same thing: row after row of it. It's crucial to have a point of difference. The great thing is that you don't always have to reinvent the wheel. It's okay to be inspired elsewhere and apply it to your own circumstances. One of the more memorable vendors we recall from our time selling at the market was a guy called Jonno, an older guy who'd been working the markets for years. He'd stand up on the back of his truck, speak into a crackly hand‐held microphone, hold up one product at a time, and work the crowd into a fever on the premise he only had a few in stock and once the product was gone, it was gone. The crowd would fight to give him their money and his wife would move around, pocketing the cash as quickly as she could. They sold so much they hired someone to hold open the bags so his wife could stuff the product in and move on to the next person.
This concept of focusing on one item at a time, within a limited time span, and spruiking it loudly to the world, must have seeped into our subconscious because those three principles formed the basis of what Catchoftheday would become.
The cut and thrust of the markets was our introduction to running our own retail business, and after a while we became quite good at the basics of the retail trade. What's more, we could see a direct correlation between our efforts and our earnings, and we loved every moment of it! We've taken many lessons from those market days and applied them to our business. Buying, pricing, selling, haggling—it's all part of the act. We've been ‘playing’ at it since we were kids. It's in our DNA. It's who we are.
Something has to change
Gabby
In the mid‐1990s, a few years after the markets, our family started a business called Panasales, a factory outlet of heavily discounted electronic appliances. Hezi and our sister Einat worked there on weekends and I worked there full time. It was always busy, noisy and filled with young men smelling of Lynx. This was a great learning period in my life, and I will be forever thankful for my years working in ‘retail land’. It was a school for entrepreneurs unlike any other. Working on the floor, I was able to see up close what made the customer tick, and it helped me become a better salesman. I was also able to get close to the suppliers, and that exposure taught me the secrets of buying well, which is the essence of being a successful retailer.
Working on the floor is also where I developed my love of marketing. One of my jobs was to create the ads for the store. I wrote the copy, developed the offer, devised the tag lines and negotiated the rates with the media. We'd advertise every Thursday in The Age's ‘Green Guide’, and knew how good the ad was by the number of phone calls we received the next day. I did my homework to ensure our pricing was the best in the market. I'd visit all our competitors, including JB Hi‐Fi, Good Guys, Harvey Norman and Myer, take notes, compare prices and create comparison ads that really made the phone ring. This is what they looked like:
Sharp TV, Model XYZ
Myer $1099 JB Hi‐Fi $999 Panasales $749
This pricing data is all now available online of course, but back then I had to research it manually and, in the process, learned a lot about how to keep an eye on competitors.
At this point, I was 33 years old, working in a family business, and living in a tiny unit in Caulfield. Other than my supportive wife and baby daughter, I have to be honest and say that there wasn't much excitement in my life. I basically sold electronics all day, came home, and that was it. I knew the business could expand and go to greater heights. There's no question Panasales was one of the busiest, most popular electronic stores in Melbourne, maybe Australia. It was an institution. Problem was, there was only one store, and it was in suburban Melbourne. Scaling it the traditional way meant opening new premises in different locations, and that wasn't cheap, or easy. Online shopping was not on the cards … yet.
