Episode Transcript
[00:00:10] Speaker A: Hello, Ecommerce fans, and welcome to Ten minute ECOM, an AOV Lab podcast. Every episode, we break down a new and different tactic that can help you improve your ecommerce KPIs key performance indicators. I'm your host, Andrew Fig, and like most of you, I am an e commerce professional. You may know me as the founder of AOV Lab, the former VP of digital product innovation at Scrubs and beyond, the forward director of e commerce technology at Royal King, or just from LinkedIn.
Today I'm excited to be talking to Christopher Moore, an ecommerce colleague that has held a variety of interesting roles in ecommerce. Christopher, what did you come on the show today to share with your ecommerce colleagues?
[00:00:54] Speaker B: Hi, I'm Christopher Moore with BR Williams in Alabama. I spent the past 16 years in fulfillment with companies such as Iron Mountain Integracor, DHL, ecommerce, and now BR Williams. And one of the things that I've learned throughout my career is just how important it is to find the right three PL fulfillment partner so that you can focus on growing your business and get out of the weeds of the day to day operations.
[00:01:16] Speaker C: Thank you, Christopher.
[00:01:17] Speaker A: And after the ad, we'll get right into the chat.
[00:01:23] Speaker C: Today's episode of Ten Minute ECOM is brought to you by Shopbox AI.
[00:01:28] Speaker A: I've evaluated hundreds of ecommerce technologies in.
[00:01:31] Speaker C: The last two years, and Shopbox is in the very top of my list. They're an award winning Irish team full.
[00:01:37] Speaker A: Of innovators that figured out a way.
[00:01:39] Speaker D: To help e comm brands build a.
[00:01:40] Speaker C: Store around every customer, which results in five times longer site sessions. That's not a typo or an ad read mistakeo.
AOV Lab is helping Shopbox break into the North American ecommerce and retail market.
[00:01:56] Speaker A: And we're happy to arrange an intro and demo so you can see exactly.
[00:02:00] Speaker C: How their add on technology works. To deliver outsized results, go to AOV Lablab.com and click on Vendor Network to set up your 30 minutes discovery. Call with Shopbox.
[00:02:12] Speaker A: And now back to the show.
[00:02:14] Speaker D: Awesome, Chris, and welcome to the show today. Very excited to have you here. Tell Me a little bit about this tactic a little more, because I want to understand it. It sounds like for somebody who's starting out in ecommerce selling, maybe for the first time, a lot of folks start in their garage, they start at home, but there's not long until that just becomes unmanageable. I've had this happen before. Like, my wife was not happy with me for the mid 2000 and teens for a couple of years because I was doing another podcast and selling some podcast swags.
[00:02:48] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:02:49] Speaker D: But tell me a little bit about what I could have done in that situation to better manage my own.
[00:02:55] Speaker B: And so I want to start this off by saying, right when you get started with an e commerce brand, let's say you're launching your own website or you're going to start trying to sell things through Amazon, but you want to do the fulfillment yourself so that you can manage it and you can make it personalized or make it a better customer experience. It is natural to want to do everything yourself. Right? The problem that you run into is after you get past 2030, 40 orders per day, it starts taking up more and more of your time to get the orders out versus focusing on your business and growing your business. The easy thing to do is to hire a couple of people and have them start doing it. But what you'll run into is managing that group, which is outside of really what your business's core competency is. And again, taking away that time from you focused on new products or new sales channels or getting out there to different trade organizations to help push your product out. So what makes sense at that point in time is to look for a rEpL fulfillment house that you can trust, that is reputable and that can manage that piece for you. You really want a fulfillment partner to be out of sight, out of mind. If it's the right partner, they're going to be able to connect with whatever storefront you have, be it a Shopify, be it Amazon, Walmart.com, any of the big names, Magento. And the orders can flow seamlessly into their system so that you don't even have to see it. Somebody goes out on your website or through one of the other sales channels places an order, it can route directly into their system and then the right partner will have systems in place so that once that order ships, the shipping confirmation information is automatically sent back. And then that final customer gets their order confirmation emails, their ship notification emails with tracking and to you, it's out of sight, out of the month. And that's really the kind of situation that you want to look at because it's what's going to be best for you to be able to focus on the things that are important to your business.
[00:04:54] Speaker D: And Chris, you mentioned finding a reputable company and I've actually struggled with that in the past as well. There's a lot of three PLs that exist out there.
[00:05:03] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:05:04] Speaker D: What's a way that somebody who is looking for a new partner. Where should they look? How should they look to find that reputable partner?
[00:05:12] Speaker B: 100%. The selfish part of me wants to say, you just found them with us, but I'm not going to go into that. I want this to be more industry specific than me trying to plug myself. Lots of ways that companies look for these Google searches. Everybody's going out to do Google searches today. But what you want to make sure is you find solid reviews from other companies that are doing ecommerce. You can also look at trade shows. There are several ecommerce specific trade organizations out there that can help steer you in the right direction or go out and talk to other people that are in the ecommerce world. If you're an influencer or you've got your own ECOM company that you're starting out, there are literally hundreds, if not thousands of other companies that are just like yours, not necessarily the same product, but are going through the same things or have gone through the same. So talk to your peers in the industry, and they can help lead you to reputable companies.
[00:06:02] Speaker D: Thanks, Chris. And I was actually wondering, I'm a nerd at heart, so I always have to ask about technology. Just how have you seen technology maybe change or improve in the last couple years in a way that surprised you? Related to fulfillment? And you mentioned before, just the connectivity that can take place between everything, between taking the order in your ecom platform to getting it out of the door of the warehouse can essentially be automated.
[00:06:30] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:06:30] Speaker D: Tell me a little bit about the shift that you've seen, maybe, or just how things have moved quickly in the last couple of years.
[00:06:37] Speaker B: So when I first started off in fulfillment, a typical integration would take four to six weeks, and there'd be programming involved, and we'd have to get our IT team on board with the customer's IT team, and they would have to talk through all the connections and make sure that everything was flowing right. All of that's pretty much pre done these days. What took four to six weeks on that connection previously now can be done in two or three days. It's a matter of just getting some credentials, getting connected in, running a couple of test orders, and then you're ready to go. It went from the longest piece of an integration being that actual physical connection piece, to now. The longest period of time on the integration is waiting for the inventory to arrive and getting it received into the warehouse. So starting there, it is a world of difference, which is good for everybody, because that means that you can have your product up and running and being fulfilled much faster. The technologies that I've seen in the warehouse, though, have significantly increased over the past 15 years. We've gone from people pushing carts around to pick back for simple orders to fully automated warehouses. Now that can be run by robots, or I've even seen several years back, Google had a product called Google Glass, which is a pair of glasses that you would put on that would point out proper pick locations, and you would go and pull an item, and then the glasses would actually scan the barcode to confirm that you had the right item, and it would show up in the screen as being green. And then you would look over at the cart and it would point out the exact location or the bin location on that cart for you to put it into. What that allowed was for people to stay in a specific location and not have to walk all the way around the warehouse. And that cart that you're putting on, by the way, is a robot, and it's going to take it to the next location for the next. So technology continues to improve every single day. And I've got several friends that are in that aspect of the business that can speak more intelligently about it. But it's been amazing.
[00:08:33] Speaker D: Excellent. And Chris, you spoke to the back end operations and the fulfillment operations, but I wanted to ask you a little bit about the customer experience as well, because that's also changed a ton, obviously, in the last 510, 15 years. What can you say about that?
[00:08:48] Speaker B: 100%. And all of that's been driven by Amazon for the most part, over the past 15 years. Getting the customers to expect what used to be three to five, eight days, ten days delivery time, which was normal in the industry to customers now want their stuff as soon as possible. And kind of the standard is two days. So when they place an order, they would like to have their product two business days later. It's not always the case, but a good three PL is going to help you get there. They're going to have the right contracts in place. They're going to have facilities in the right locations so that they can get that two day ground shipment so you're not having to pay exponential charges or having multiple facilities so the products can be fulfilled out at different areas of the country and get you that two day experience. The ultimate goal here is to help increase your reputation within the industry by having a positive end customer experience.
It's easy for people to go and write negative reviews or complain about things, but when you do things right and you get those positive reviews from your customer, it is so beneficial to your overall ecommerce business. And thAt's what a true three PL that knows what they're doing, that does a good job and cares about your customers as much as you do. That's what they're going to help you to obtain.
[00:10:04] Speaker D: Very cool. I wanted to ask, I was just thinking about this earlier this week, and some companies are still, and these can be large companies. They're still not quite there in terms of selling on marketplaces.
[00:10:17] Speaker B: Right.
[00:10:17] Speaker D: I don't know if you still hear that. I know for the last two companies I worked for, it was almost a non starter. Like, despite the opportunity being so huge, just logistically, there was this assumption, and I think I made that assumption too, that it was just too difficult. The connectivity would not be there and we just hadn't met at that point.
I wish we had, but what can you say about that mentality? And how have you worked to change some minds and some hearts in that way?
[00:10:47] Speaker B: So you're absolutely right. Especially your larger companies out there that have been traditionally selling their products through big box like the Walmarts of the world or grocery store chains.
It was a very difficult concept and still is a very difficult concept for them to consider shipping their product directly to a consumer. And there's several reasons for that. One, typically their product is not at a price point that's going to be conducive to shipping it out because they would end up losing money. Because, oh, on top of that, two day shipping that your customers want, they also want that shipping to be free. Right? So it's hard to do that with a $3 item or a $5 item. So you have to get creative. And what a lot of the larger companies have done is start creating a new product offering or a new brand that's more specialized or speaks to a specific audience. Let's say for tooth White, for instance, those types of devices that you can go out and sell for 50 or 75 or $100 and then have a subscription model around it, those are completely doable from a direct to consumer world. And subscription boxes themselves have gotten really large. People like to have something monthly that's coming in or once a quarter that they know that they can count on to be there. So lots of those larger companies are getting into subscription type models as well because they know it's guaranteed revenue that they know is going to be coming in month after month, and it's a much easier process to fill on those. The problem that they're running into, though, is they were so far behind the eight ball based on what some of these mom and pop companies that are a lot more nimble can do that. It's taken the time to start trying to catch up. Gotcha.
[00:12:21] Speaker D: Chris, thanks so much for your time today. Is there anything else you'd like to add or mention to your e commerce colleagues and peers that are listening today?
[00:12:28] Speaker B: Yeah, just stay the course, guys. Go out and learn as much as you possibly can about this world. E commerce fulfillment. E commerce in general is such an amazing industry that is basically brand new in society that we have today. So if you're patient and you have tenacity, you'll make it succeed. And when you're ready for a fulfillment partner, reach out to somebody that truly knows and understands what it is that you're trying to accomplish.
[00:12:56] Speaker D: Awesome. Thanks again.
[00:12:57] Speaker B: The only thing that I'm seeing on here that we didn't do was virtual high fives. Is that, oh, is it too late?
[00:13:02] Speaker D: It's not too late. It's never too late for virtual high fives.
Thanks.
[00:13:07] Speaker B: Appreciate it, buddy.
[00:13:08] Speaker D: Q man.
[00:13:08] Speaker A: Well, we have hit that ten minute mark, so that's a wrap for today's episode. I want to again thank our guest, Christopher Moore. If you have a moment, be sure to subscribe, like, or follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, audible, Google Podcasts, or wherever it is that you listen. If you're enjoying the show, and I hope you are, there's a couple things.
[00:13:31] Speaker D: You can do to support us.
[00:13:33] Speaker A: Number one, please leave a review of the podcast in your podcast app. Or number two, if you're an e commerce professional that would like to join for an upcoming episode, reach out to Humans at AOV Lab or connect with me, Andrew Figgins, on LinkedIn and let me know.
Until next time, this is Andrew Figgins signing off and saying, have a good one.
