Catch of the Decade

How to Launch, Build and Sell a Digital Business

Gabby Leibovich, Hezi Leibovich

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780730388494
• eBook ISBN: 9780730388470
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business Biographies
• Index: Business

'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 fromdigital entrepreneurswho 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, Menulogand Luxury Escapes.This book containslittle-known secrets and strategies that will help youshortenyour learning curve, avoid mistakes, andbring your business dream alive.

The wisdom revealed in this book is hard won: brothersGabby andHeziLeibovich startedwith no moneyandno connections, turned theirdrawbacks into assets, and came out on top.You'll learn how they rodethe waves of entrepreneurialismand worked their way up.

• Learn proven tips to define, disrupt and dominate a sector or industry, straight fromentrepreneurs who achieved their billion-dollar dreams.

• Read hard hitting, no bullnuggets ofwisdomin 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, theLeibovichbrothers are telling their story, in their ownwords, and you'll learn how they got where they are today. Follow in their footsteps with over 200bite-sizedentriesthat are both inspirational and useful.Pick up Catch of the Decade and get moving!

CHAPTER 1
How 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 chan...

Table of contents

• COVER
• TABLE OF CONTENTS
• INTRODUCTION
• Part I: Getting started
• Part II: Ramping up
• Part III: Full speed ahead
• GOODBYE, FAREWELL AND GOOD LUCK
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• INDEX
• END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT