Hey, everybody. Welcome to Hammer Down on the Market Scale Network. I'm your host, Mike Bush. This episode is coming to you live from Shop Talk Chicago. It's a Shop Talk Fall event, and I'm super delighted to be here. Today, we're gonna talk to a ton of retail leaders. We're gonna hear what about their supply chain has them up at night, what has them worried, what has them feeling groovy, and what Christmas is gonna look like. Hope you enjoy the show. Jibab is a, three p l that does ecommerce fulfillment for all brands, big or small, across the board. We are branching out into a full supply chain and logistics provider as well for our brands. What we really excel at is direct to consumer fulfillment as well as b two b and retail fulfillment, omnichannel. We can help you with Amazon, TikTok, Shopify, all of your sales channels. I mean, we really love to bring that together for our merchants and make fulfillment incredibly simple for them. Okay. So if I've got it right, we all, as consumers, got used to Amazon delivering stuff basically in real time or pretty close to real time. You're saying you don't have to sell through Amazon. You're making that that type of ex of customer experience available for for anybody else. Exactly. And not only do you not have to sell through Amazon, if you wanna develop your brand identity, we always encourage that you don't sell through Amazon and really work on creating that identity for your brand. Oh, we gotcha. How did you get this? So I've always loved startups and only ever worked for startups. And so I got into Chicago about six years ago when it was a much smaller company. We only had about five to six fulfillment centers at the time. We were about a hundred fifty person team based here in Chicago, and I just love the energy of the office the first day I walked in, and I saw there was so much work to do. And so six years later, we now have about fifty five global fulfillment centers with, an employee count, around a thousand people. Gotcha. What was what was the idea you had to answer about it? Who who, like, woke up and said, where do you go, Softmax? It is such a good story. So our cofounders grew up together in India, moved to the States together for college. We're both software engineers by trade. At night, they were always trying to figure out how to not be software engineers. So they were entrepreneurs. They were starting companies. They ended up starting an ecommerce, company and spent all of their days waiting in line at the post office and figured, how are we ever supposed to scale this business if we're spending two to three hours a day standing here? They met other entrepreneurs who are also doing the same thing, selling through small channels like eBay or Etsy. And, they asked them, would you guys pay a premium for us to come pick up your packages and ship them off for you? Everyone said yes, and that's how Shabab was born. So it's a very organic story. Very cool. So, Maria, one of my one of my other questions to ask is if talking to a new or recent college grad and that kid says, I wanna go in supply chain. What's the advice you give on? I love supply chain. I'll be honest with you. It's not maybe the sexiest industry out there. A lot of people are told that if you pursue your passions, you're gonna never work a day in your life. And the reality is as most people have very similar passions. It's art. It's music. It's fashion. It's sports. You know? And so it's incredibly competitive. I don't think anyone as a child dreams of getting into supply chain, but here's what I'll tell you. It is almost recession proof. It proved to be pandemic proof. It is incredibly sustainable. It's not going anywhere. And so I think that work should be something where you enjoy and you feel like you're succeeding. You're feeling fulfilled, pun intended, and you're feeling like you always have a path forward. And I think this is such an incredible industry for that because it's so fluid. It's always evolving, and it can really satisfy if you love tech. It's such a tech forward industry. If you love solving problems, this is the industry for you. Got it. Rita, if somebody wants to reach out, get in touch with you. Have a good Yeah. I would love that. You can find me on LinkedIn or, m golemis at shipbob dot com. Alright. You're welcome. Appreciate you. So Ship Excel is a digital shipping platform that manages the end to end journey for ecommerce shippers. We do the backhanding to make it more efficient for people to ship things as well as make sure we're mitigating risk. Less clicks, less risk. Right? Okay. Now how you say less clicks, less risk. What what risk do you mitigate? So for instance, you ever have someone with bad fingers pressing too many buttons and the item gets shipped to the wrong person? Okay. Got it. We could help with automation roles. Right? So that way we could do it. We can also make sure that we're managing how much you pay for your shipping when it goes out. So many people pick the wrong service. We're gonna help you so we can automate it to make it more affordable if that's important to you, or we can make it quicker if that's important to you. I see. So if I've got this right, we're it's a tech platform that on the backside says, hey. We're gonna pick the right course of action for the goods you're shipping. And by that, by right course, we're talking either least expensive or we're talking the on time exactly when you need it. Is that Right. We can do that. We'll have automation rules that are in place for that. And the cool part about it is that you come with, obviously, consultants like myself, which will help you figure out what that goal is to help you build those automation rules so that we can actually get you what you need. And who are you working with? Who's who's kinda your your typical customer? We're typically working with right now, we have a very firm market for the small to medium, and we're continuing to build our brand for the medium to large, which is an amazing space. So we're coming out with all types of APIs and things that can really benefit that medium to large sector. Okay. And then when you're talking API, you're plugging into I'm guessing on the back end. What are you plugging into? Warehouse management system? Exactly. ERP system so you know exactly where stuff is. You got it. Your smart router, you're identifying okay. This could needs to be that warehouse. Exactly. That's storefront that's So we can plug into I mean, obviously, some of our biggest players right now, Magento, BigCommerce, but we can plug into anyone's ERP system. The the cool part about where we are right now is we're in this really cool space that we can customize anything and connect to just about anything because we have the team homegrown doing it. Very cool. Ronald, what got you into this? I just have a passion for handling people's shipping problems. Okay. That's it. Now how did you discover that passion? It it's weird. So, I I stumbled upon, you know, just working for FedEx. Sure. Yeah. It was hilarious. And then I started solving people's problems there, and then I felt like Olivia Pope. Yeah. And, you know, I just started telling people I'm the Olivia Pope of logistics. Love that. I love that as a person. That's very cool, very cool. So one of the questions I ask every guest is if you're talking to a new or recent college grader, I'm thinking about logistics. Yeah. Never met that person. I'm telling you, it's ninety percent of the industry fell into direct book or their, you know, their mom, their at, their apple. Somebody with their, like, is so almost nobody gets into that person. Right. But you're talking to that kid, and and he or she says, I'm thinking about legit. Right. What's the advice you give them? I would tell them to always network. Right? And the reason why I say that is because sometimes you cannot solve their problem with the with the solution you have in hand, but you can always have a friend that can. And having those friends actually helps you to bring more business in later on because they're gonna remember that favor you did for them. And I can't tell you how many times I've had to leverage my friendships and my network to solve a problem for someone that I've had in house, sometimes not even in house that can help solve problems for someone else. Make the joke. We work in the biggest small industry in the world. Yeah. I tell you. To. Hey. Robin, if someone wants to get in touch with you, how do they do so? You can email me, right, at robin dot pwanton at e b dot com, or you can reach out to me on LinkedIn, robin t pwanton. I appreciate it. Thank Awesome. Thank you so much. Hey. That's right. Totally easy. I'm on it. Alright. See you soon. We're a active QC that we do inspections on the ground and the factories in Asia. I'm a do freight forwarding. So we move the cargo once inspections are done. We move the product to the US. Okay. So it's basically if I wanna source these from Asia, now you guys you you sent an inspector inspector to make sure that the password is actually what I'm getting exactly. I'm not bringing any laws. Presumably, there's a there's a compliance. Absolutely. We make sure that there's social compliance as well, whether it's the environmental compliance or is it labor compliance. We do check for all of that. Again, these are things that customers get to customize and tell us what is it that they really want to. We have obviously much stuff we can pick from, and then we go inspect that much and less. Okay. And then once the merchandise is good to go, you had all this. We get it arranged to be picked up, move it to a warehouse, consolidate with a whole bunch of other cargo, or is it just their own cargo? We're in a container, bring it to the US, spear customs. There's about a gazillion documents. We gotta fill out. We do all that. It's all digital. We have a nice little platform over there. The customers get to visualize where things are on a map and manage their production and supply chain. Then we get it downloaded to your warehouse, so ready for you to sell on your website or retail. How'd you come up in the city? Oh, I've been in the business about twenty years now. Been working trade forwarding part. The big I wasn't paid forwarding because data, not so much technology. And getting data digitized is a big challenge. Trade is very fragmented. People tend to work on emails, phone calls, WeChat, WhatsApp. Trying to digitize that is the first step before you can meaning apply any technology to work. Doesn't have to be AI, even basic technology. You need data and this is. And so that's how we came over the thought that let's go on inspections, serve as a forcing function to get data into the system, and then you can kind of apply technology to it to bring efficiencies. Got it. Okay. Yeah. It's just simple. And so, like Thank you. Like, I'm very I'm I'm impressed with your growth. Right? Like Yeah. And I think you you hit on a lot of key trends. Right? Like, so when we get them into America, I think we we I did the the math. They go through, like, fourteen sets a hand Easily. Whom is disincentivized to share it for me. Absolutely. And you're you're kind of streamlining that whole thing. Yeah. So you start at the beginning. Right? You wanna get this information on when and also a typical customer of ours would give purchase orders for the rest next three months because we place purchase orders three months out because that's how long it takes to make goods. So we're starting to sag at stage. If you don't get that starting point right, trying to disintermediate this and that fourteen dollars is a nightmare. So you start from there. Now you know exactly that these t shirts and these trousers are in the shipment. Are you able to manage it from that point? Makes a lot of difference. And from that point on, it becomes just that much more easier to track milestones. And more importantly, right, a one week delay at the factory is not a one week delay in delivery. A one week delay at the factory could be a month delay in delivery. So being able to capture that is the most important volatile part of the supply chain. Seventy percent of the supply products joining the supply chain happens in South Africa. So that's where all the volatility is. Let's solve that, and then the thirty percent is one percent. Sure. Now you you talk about consolidating for containers. Are you are you doing, like, like, consolidating across your customer base? That's right. Saving some some money? Yeah. So the typical stats are none of every container that comes into America comes in. Because none of your listeners can tell I mean, not not none just the none of the bronze out there are gonna tell you that I'm placing POs based on what fits in a container. Nobody says I buy twenty thousand T shirts because that's what I can put in a container. That's what the sales forecast says, and that's what you buy. So then when you start thinking about shipping, you're putting a square peg in a round hole. So as a result of that, a third of every container comes in empty. Just that amount of wasted space out there, if you can better utilize that, you're saving money, you're saving carbon, you're making the world a better place. I love everything you just said. Very cool. No. So, Ram, one of the questions I try to ask every guest is if you're talking to a new or recent college grad and the kid says, I wanna be in logistics Yeah. What's the reason why you give them? Well, you gotta be excited about this. This is not meant for, like, other people. You need to be strong willed about this, but this is a very, very tangible business. Every mass flick, there's somebody lifting cargo somewhere in the world or somebody's doing something. So you get a lot of power out of this. You're gonna be able to travel, see the world, and believe it or not, you get a bird's eye view of the economy. Because if goods don't come in today, two months from now, retail is gonna get impacted. So I know where the retail world is going before a lot of the general population does, and that's an entirely powerful thing. You get to know a lot of information ahead of time, and I find that very empowering. Awesome. If somebody wants to get in touch with you, how do they do it? My email is, my email is ram at one silk dot com, o n e s I l t dot com. Drop me an email. I'll see. Alright. And I gotta ask you about the cake, man. Alright now. I'm sure it's gone. That's exactly what it is. But, thank you. Thank you for that. Appreciate it. So what we do is we help make returns delightful for consumers, more profitable for brands, and help save the environment at the same time. Okay. All of these are good things. Let's let's break them down. So making returns delightful. What does that mean? So Amazon has changed the way most consumers expect returns to go now, and they want that same experience regardless of where they buy. And what we know to be true is returns are a hundred and one billion dollar problem in the US alone. And when you look at what brands are doing to grow their business, they're growing internationally usually at two x rate of what they're growing their domestic business. So where we really come in is we help bring that to life by giving them that Amazon experience, box free, label free, printerless, QR code based returns Okay. Where our staff can walk into a you you can walk into a Steve Holtz, into a, Calcutta View Mall, into a penguin pickup, and get your return verified immediately. So there's no more for brands, the box of rocks, proverbial, or otherwise, the empty box, because we take those items, we skew match it, and we say, look. This doesn't have any obvious signs of wear, tear, damage. You get your money back before you go back out the door. That's all the consumer really wants is they want their money back. Yeah. Or they wanna be able to exchange for the right size or the right a different color. So we enable that for them. And our NPS at our drop off points is really thorough. Okay. And, honestly, what we found what I found to be very surprising is sixty to seventy percent of the time, if you give the consumer the option to drop it off box free label freight or mail it in, sixty to seventy percent of the time, they will take it box free label freight. This is befuddling to me as a generic store that owns two printers. Sure. Kids don't own printers anymore. That's a fair point. Okay. That's a very fair point. Yes. Okay. You you talked about sustainability as well. Yes. So what's beautiful about this, and this is where it becomes more profitable for the brands, is that when that happens, you're using the consumer as the first mile carrier, and they're delighted to do it. So you've immediately just shaved off ton of logistics costs. And then when it gets dropped off, it comes to our hubs. The same if folks wanna do just mail in, it will come to one of our hubs, that same verification process. Is it the right product? Does it follow the brand's return policies, their SOPs? If yes, you're still triggering the refund in about forty eight hours. So figure in two days transit time Right. Two days. You're still getting your money back in four days instead of the standard fifteen to thirty. So but because we're using the consumers as a first mile carrier and then doing what is essentially a double consolidation per logistics, we'll grab all your goods together, and then we'll push it either across the border or back to your domestic warehouse altogether. So the second you take out that one to one shipping, particularly for cross border, if you're spending twenty five dollars on a DHL return label to return a seventy five dollar item Right. You've just lost. Your margins just tanked. Right. So we'll take all those returns together, and we'll either FTL, LTL, get those all back to you at the same time, which reduces the transportation by about forty percent, which means all that emissions. Got it. All that car gone. Okay. Love it. Now I'm with it. Okay. Working in returns, you you talked about the proverbial box of rocks. Yes. What's your favorite return story? There's gotta be one that you're like, I can't believe so and so or somebody tried to get away with this. My favorite return story is actually about myself. I can't believe I ended up working in reverse logistics mostly because I am with any AI. If they're looking at, like, bad actors, I my data would probably look like a bad actor. Okay. I buy a lot. I also return a lot. Amazon Prime, my best friend was getting married. I bought a ton of dresses on Amazon because I was officiating the wedding. Okay. So I took it very seriously. Amazon Prime sent me an email and threatened to kick me out of time if I kept returning so many things, which I took great umbrage to. But at the same time, something I say to brands all the time, because there's a lot of to free or not to free with returns anymore. And I feel like a lot of that dialogue has been around it basically, they feel validated to be like, yeah, everybody's stopping doing it. Right? Right? Right? And it's just because they haven't found a better way. I know if I did not have free returns with Amazon, I would buy nearly as much as I do, and my lifetime value with Amazon is true to it. So that's really my own purchase Okay. Story. We've definitely heard and seen some weird things. Sure. So one of my favorite questions to ask people that come on the show is you're talking to a new or recent college grad, and the kid says, I'm thinking about logistics. What gives you some advice when you're good? Oh, spend a lot of time in a warehouse. It all starts there. If you're not on the floor, if you're not seeing how people pick and pack, how they pack out, like, none of it will make sense to you. And especially there's so many folks that touch logistics in a software only play that when you start talking about, you know, sorting at Gaylords, they're WAPS. So it doesn't matter which area you wanna go into, but spend time on the floor. Bernadette, if somebody wants to learn more about Return Bear or get in touch, what's the best way to do? They can reach us at return bear dot com. You're also welcome to email me personally at Bernadette at return bear dot com. Bonus points if they can spell Bernadette.
