Dean Salakas Email & Phone Number

Canterbury, Nsw, Au

I have been advising businesses for many years as a side gig while running The Party People. As my time is limited I only ever worked with 1 business at a time. I now have more capacity as I have exited The Party People.I have started and exited 3 business. I sold my first business BlissDj's (which supplied DJ's to exclusive venues such as the Botanic Gardens and State Library), as well as recently selling Sydney Zombie Walk (a charity event in which 10,000+ people dressed as zombies to raise money once a year) and The Party People (Australia's largest party store). Getting started with me is easy. I start off as free as I just love helping businesses but if that develops we can discuss a more permanent advisory capcity for a fee. I am brutally honest and its very common for me to advise you towards a more suitable advisor as I only do jobs that I enjoy and where I feel my superpowers compliment the owners. Get in touch if you would like to chat about your needs.

I have won innovation awards at one of Australia's largest retailes and at my own small retailer. With my experience, I am able coach individuals to become Intrapreneurs within an organisation, help teams innovate or step into innovation projects within organisations. After university I landed a job at Woolworths. To cut a long story short, I proposed a project which I was told not to work on so I went home and worked on it in my own time and I saved the Woolworths 3 million dollar a year into perpetuity and won an innovation award. I then went on to execute many projects in which I circumvented the slow moving, extreme governance and highly political corporate environment generally aiming to execute a project on average every in 3 months. The strategy was different each time but I was able to come up with creative ways to innovate. At The Party People I launched the business online in 1999 and was the first retailer in Australia to launch click and collect, I was googles first Australian advertiser, Bings first Australian advertiser, the first multi store scan and go trial in Australia, developed an Augmented reality mirror with a checkout and more. I did all The Party People’s innovations (except launching my first website) with zero budget.If you need help executing an innovation in a large organisation, fostering a culture and structure for innovation, or simple need someone to execute, give me a call. I have done some consulting to organisations like the Commonwealth Bank & The Book Council Of Australia as well as many small tech startups.

Drummoyne, Nsw, Au

I have the best job in the world, I am the CEO of a great team that helps people create the parties that they dreamed about!

Drummoyne, Nsw, Au

I assisted with the development of Australia's first online party store launching it with Click and Collect and became the first retailer in Australia to offer Click and Collect. I managed the online stores content and got products online as well as working with developers to continuously improve the site.In my final year at university in 2003, I did my final year project on the business and suggested many improvements and initiatives. Many of them returned a profit from implementation before the project but by far the most successful was implementing a more cost effective shipping matrix for customers to get lower shipping prices and adding jumping onto a new thing google was about to launch called "Google Adwords". Subsequently The Party People became one of googles first customers which has been widely publicized.

Drummoyne, Nsw, Au

At the age of 4 years old I started putting sand in bags and covering them with coloured foil for my parents to use as balloon weights. I worked every Saturday for as long as I remember and also worked school holidays because I was obsessed with earning pocket money. I gradually progressed to be a retail assistant, stock manager and delivery driver.

Sydney, Nsw, Au

Paris, La Defense, Fr

Having attended the event for many years and providing feedback that was often adopted, I formally joined the advisor board for the event. Its the best networking event for retailers in Australian hope to help build on an already amazing event.

I have spoken at various conferences, hosted round tables and chaired sessions on various topics including The Party People's growth story, business hacks, initiatives at The Party People and more.Speaker engagements I have had are including but not limited to; - NRX National Retail Expo - https://www.nra.net.au/events/nrxpo/- Etail Australia - www.etailaustralia.wbresearch.com/- The Customer Show - www.iqpcaustralia.com/events-customershow- Inside Retail Live - www.retailweek.com.au/event/inside-retail-live- Online Retailer Conference - www.onlineretailer.com- Retail Fullfillment Summit - www.akolade.com.au- Retail Global Conference www.retailglobal.com.au- New Retail Conference - www.akolade.com.au- B2B Expo - www.b2bexpo.com.au- Rocketeers of Retail - www.rocketeersofretail.com.au- Retail Week - www.retailweek.com.au- Retail Leader Forum - www.retailleaders.com.au- Seamless Conference - www.seamless-expo.com.au- Online Retail Logistics Conference - www.questevents.com.au- Future Stores Summit - www.claridenglobal.com- Growth Hacking and Social Media Conference - www.claridenglobal.comand other various small and private events/boards - e.g. Servcorp, Entrepreneurs Raising Capital, Children’s Book Council Of Australia etc"Our audience loved Dean! He gave practical insights many of our attendees were able to bring back to their teams. His presentation and speaking style was authentic, natural and honest. We hope to work with Dean again." Mary Anne Ghobrial, Director, The Customer Show“Dean is a highly experienced ecommerce professional who always strives to deliver presentations that are very relevant and tailored to the audience ranging from start up to corporate. We were very impressed with his content and delivery style”. Alice Kuepper, Director, Online Retailer Conference & Expo

Party Stylists Of The Year awards celebrates various categories of party styling and suppliers. Having won at the awards initially I have been asked to be a judge as as an industry veteran pioneering many innovations in retail and party. See website for details.

My role is to advise this new conference to Australia on its entry and continues since entry on improving its offering.

Sydney, New South Wales, Au

Advisory Board Member for Online Retailer Expo and Conference, Australia's largest Retail Conference. My focus is on advising the Start Up stream of the conference as well as being a speaker and chair for some of the sessions.In 2018 when joining the board, my first request was to have 50% female speakers which received unanimous support. The conference was historically a few days of speakers and panels but the year I joined, the advisory board took a different direction with a variety of sessions including a pitch competition, round tables, site audit sessions and ask the expert huddles. I am proud to be part of a team who have guided such significant changes to support this great industry. The that year went on to win the National Online Retail Association award for best industry event.

I owned and run Sydney Zombie Walk for 4 years and in that time I grew it from a small 1000 person gathering into a 10,000+ major event. I raised thousands of dollars for The Brain Foundation in the process. I sold the business to new owners to focus on my core business as the event grew too large for me to do as a side gig. I sold it and its now run with new owners.

I pitched "The Party People" to the sharks on season 1 episode 7 of Shark Tank. The Sharks were Naomi Simpson, John McGrath, Steve Baxter, Andrew Banks and Janine Allis. I received an offer of $400k from Janine Alis which I turned down. To quote Naomi's blog after the show "This pitch was great fun and high energy".

Bella Vista, Nsw, Au

In my previous role at Woolworths, I found myself in a meeting with the Supermarket DC operations manager debating over how costs should be measured in his division. He was surprised that a uni grad with no operational experience (me), had the nerve to challenge his cost management approach. Turned out I said some things that were right and 6 months later he was promoted to form a new team "Planning & Optimization" in which he hunted me to join him.The mandate in my role was to find projects that delivery efficiency across all Woolworths owned businesses from end to end including suppliers, supply chain and stores. We had approval to run projects without the need for a high level of governance or steering committees. We had an accepted project failure rate of 20% but the team (of which we had 4 people) needed to deliver projects quickly (typically within 4 weeks – 3 months) and deliver in excess of $20m in savings per annum. I was the senior business analyst of the team mentoring the other business analysts. I attempted to resign multiple times but was tempted to stay on a part time somewhat consultative capacity before completely leaving the company in 2010 to focus on The Party People.

Bella Vista, Nsw, Au

As soon as I finished university I emailed Woolworths (Australias largest and most successful retailer of the time) and told them that I wanted to work for them. To my surprise they called me in for an interview and after a few meetings I was offered a business analyst role which was rare for a graduate. My first project was to create an activity based costing tool for buyer to use when making buying decisions such as pack size, pallet configuration, direct store deliver or warehouse etc. I became the subject matter expert, lead business analyst and IT analyst on the project. At the time I didn't realise it but this was an extremely valuable project for my career. I became the only person at Woolworths to understand in detail the costing structures for the end to end supply chain which led me to my next role in finding end to end supply chain efficiencies.

Grew the business from doing free parties for friends to a business with about 5 dj's. Securing lucrative high end venue contracts with government venues including the State Library and Botanic Gardens resulted in my focus being weddings while still doing the odd nightclub appearance at oxford street venues. All my work came from word of mouth and my service was a premium service costing generally $1000 a night which was double to triple my competition (and everyone wants to be a dj so there was certainly an oversupply issue that made me ridiculously expensive). Most DJ's were specialists in a particular area but my service was all about adaptability. My ability structure the night to the audience such that they were on the dancefloor all night (or at least it was full by the end of it) was my secret. If you were having a wedding, would you want a DJ that could play the music you wanted but also read the crowd and was able to change tact before people sat down. Before an event I made sure I could cater for all possibilities in terms of music that would get people on the dance floor. There were parties I played predominately Spanish music and dance music and others where I played rap and RnB, some I played 60's and 80's and others where I played Greek and belly dance music etc etc. As the business grew I found myself wanting my weekends back so I outsourced the work and eventually sold the business onto one of my DJ's.

Masters Of Business

Bachelor Of Business And Commerce, Marketing And Operations Management

Hsc

Education record