Nathan Huppatz

Started in ecommerce in 1995, for Orica (Dulux Paints).

Worked in corporate for 3 years.

Had entrepreneurial itch, wanted to learn new things, started a side business importing performance cars from japan with someone I met on a car website forum.

Always loved cars.

Approached the website www.autospeed.com and asked if we could advertise our cars on the site.

They asked me to join them and start ecommerce for them.

Put my hand up for redundancy in corp role, massive pay cut to work at a online car magazine startup in a garage.

Still work with current business partner from then.
It has been 23 years.

I wrote car test articles, sold advertising, helped build the ecommerce component of the site.
Worked as business development for our car classifieds site (which over the years partnered with businesses like News Ltd, Fairfax , Autobytel etc).

Autospeed was also one of the first subscription sites online.
We gated content and charged for access from 2001 to 2004/5.

in 2006, started an ecommerce business.

Grew a fishing business on ebay Australia.
We wrote screen scraping software at the time to scrape EVERY auction/sale made on eBay for over a year.

Huge database.

We identified fishing as the best opportunity.

Grew a $1mil+ fishing business on ebay within 8 months.

Expanded with some investors to musical instruments, fitness gear and more.

GFC hit, investors wanted cash out, so we sold fishing business and in 2008 started building Magento websites

Were Magento Silver partners.
Did that for 2 years to pay down some debt.

Did that, didnt want to answer to clients anymore, so shifted to ecommerce (costumes.com.au started in 2009).

Also launched our shipping platform in a small way (www.readytoship.com.au) around same time.

Costumes grew over the years, won multiple awards.
ReadytoShip slowly grew until we started focusing a lot more on that 6 years ago.

Before covid we also launched a second SAAS business focusing on shopify, with apps for quoting and shipping for that market.
Started small, but it has grown well too.

With growth in SAAS we decided to sell the costumes business, and exited that to a new owner late 2023.

We are now Australia Posts largest integration partner by number of customers, and process shipping labels for well over $1bill AUD of goods per annum.

Along the way we have done lots in ecom, (online publishing and classifieds in the early days).
Always ran our own PPC, SEO etc (with a little advise from people like yourself along the way).

Still growing in the SAAS space, and doing well.

Have still loved cars, having done a little bit of casual event stuff when younger.

When kids came along, bought a 'family' car.

Since then have done quite a bit of semi competitive sim racing.

Just put a deposit down on a new BYD Seal performance model which I pick up in late Jan (0-60mph in 3.8 secs) - which should scratch an itch!