Podcasts about SKU

Some of the most influential companies in today's economy rarely make headlines. Known as the titanium economy, these small and mid-sized industrial businesses supply the parts, systems, and expertise that keep global supply chains operating.In this episode of Supply Chain Now, Scott Luton is joined by Karin Bursa, Steffen Fuchs, Senior Partner at McKinsey & Company, and Ryan Fletcher, Partner at McKinsey & Company, to examine what makes these industrial companies so effective. The group discusses the characteristics that set them apart, from disciplined operations and close customer relationships to long-term thinking that helps them remain competitive across changing market conditions.Steffen and Ryan also share perspectives from their work with companies in sectors such as automotive, aerospace, and energy. The discussion looks at how these organizations respond to supply chain disruptions, approach growth opportunities, and invest in their people and operations. Along the way, the group explores leadership decisions, workforce development, and how companies are applying new technologies to support continued growth.Jump into the conversation:(00:00) Intro(02:28) Meet the guests and introductions(05:05) Warmup: March Madness and theater roots(08:22) Steffen discusses background in AI(10:38) Ryan's experience in mid-cap industries(14:02) Defining the titanium economy concept(19:50) Book impact and changes since 2022(23:15) Global policy and geopolitics influences(29:01) Resilience and supply chain adjustments(35:27) The great amplification cycle explained(37:14) Clusters, innovation, and regional growth(38:00) Supply chain tailwinds and opportunities(39:34) Top performers' playbook for success(41:25) Lead time and SKU management(42:39) Capacity bets that lead to success(46:02) AI as a competitive advantage(47:53) Real-world examples of AI in practice(54:36) Leadership lessons from the titanium economy(01:00:40) Trends flying under the radar todayAdditional Links & Resources:Connect with Steffen Fuchs: https://www.linkedin.com/in/steffen-fuchs/Connect with Ryan Fletcher: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanfletcher/Connect with Karin Bursa: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karinbursa/Learn more about McKinsey & Company: http://www.mckinsey.comLearn more about our hosts: https://supplychainnow.com/aboutLearn more about Supply Chain Now: https://supplychainnow.comWatch and listen to more Supply Chain Now episodes here: https://supplychainnow.com/program/supply-chain-nowSubscribe to Supply Chain Now on your favorite platform: https://supplychainnow.com/joinWork with us! Download Supply Chain Now's NEW Media Kit: https://bit.ly/3XH6OVkSupply Chain Now en Espanol WEBINAR- Visibilidad estrategica en Pharma: control, cumplimiento y resiliencia en entornos de alto riesgo: https://bit.ly/4rku7lCWEBINAR- Talent Management Playbook for Supply Chain Leaders: https://bit.ly/4uc2OfBWEBINAR- From Workforce Planning to Hourly Performance Management: How GEODIS Americas Turned Labor Productivity into a Growth Engine: https://bit.ly/4blRfKpWEBINAR- Ahead of Disruption: How AI-First Design Builds Supply Chain Resilience — and Transforms the Teams Behind It: https://bit.ly/4ldRn3bThis episode was hosted by Scott Luton and Karin Bursa, and produced by Trisha Cordes, Joshua Miranda, and Amanda Luton. For additional information, please visit our dedicated show page at: https://supplychainnow.com/titanium-economy-how-ai-supply-chains-reshaping-industrial-competitiveness-1559

Go to www.LearningLeader.com  This is brought to you by Insight Global. If you need to hire one person, hire a team of people, or transform your business through Talent or Technical Services, Insight Global's team of 30,000 people around the world has the hustle and grit to deliver. My Guest: Kat Cole is the CEO of AG1 (formerly Athletic Greens) and a renowned business leader known for a meteoric rise from Hooters waitress to Fortune 40 Under 40 executive. As former President/COO of Focus Brands (Cinnabon), she specializes in scaling global brands. Her career is defined by driving billions in sales, strategic innovation, and a strong, people-first leadership style. Key Learnings You can't market your way out of a bad product. AG1 has 3x'd the business in four years while being in only one channel (direct to consumer) for 15 years. 80% of retail is in brick and mortar, so they were doing that volume in less than 20% of where transactions happen. That only works when customers love the product, keep buying it for years, and tell their friends. Scale comes from trusted recommendations, not marketing spend. Real volume comes from people telling their friends, recommending it to their teams and companies. That's where real scale and sustainable growth comes from. Two questions guide every career decision. Is my work done here? Can someone else do what the company needs better than I can? If the answer to either is yes, that guides you toward pushing for change in your role, the way you show up, or finding the next opportunity. Sometimes the best move is the lesser-known role. Kat could have stayed running big franchise brands everyone knew (Cinnabon, Auntie Anne's), but becoming COO of the parent company, Focus Brands, was a bigger, more complex role. Lesser known, smaller team, bigger stretch, more learning. That bridged her into consumer packaged goods and got her ready for AG1. Consider financial needs, learning, and ego separately. Between financial needs, your ability to learn or contribute, and your ego or optics, there are questions you can ask yourself about a particular moment or opportunity that will help you be sharper in what you actually want versus what just looks like what's best next on the surface. The founder heard her on podcasts and asked for an introduction. AG1's founder heard Kat on a couple of podcasts, knew Sahil Bloom, and asked Sahil to make the intro. She just happened to be taking time off and had been a customer for two years. "You're interviewing for your next job every day." Whatever you do now, that choice of time, that tone of voice, that decision, how you show up or don't, creates an impact that leads to an experience and people's actions and then results. Eventually, it leads to the next thing. Showing kindness in the airport matters. A caring note to someone struggling, a teacher or stranger saying, "I see something in you," a compliment when someone's in a dark place. It helps people out of darkness. Or opportunistically, being the one who sent the email or made the ask means you're the one who got the opportunity. Don't burn bridges even when you feel wronged. When Kat was an executive at Hooters at 26, peers in their 50s and 60s would say things in meetings that weren't kind or appropriate. She would write letters expressing how it made her feel, but never sent them. She processed, reflected, and showed up professionally. Years later, those same people became advocates, partners, and references. Four key mindsets for senior leaders. Humility, curiosity, courage, and confidence. By the time candidates get to Kat, they've been vetted on technical capability. She spends time validating those four characteristics because leadership and style trickle far into the organization. Ask "if not for" questions to reveal humility. When someone tells you how they stood tall in tough moments, ask what enabled them to do those great things. They'll say, "I had access to this data, this team, this technical leader." Then ask: "If those people did not exist, if that resource did not exist, how would you have navigated that?" You peel back layers and see if they have the humility to acknowledge their success was due to critical factors. The best candidates do the job in the interview. When someone says, "If we're doing this, we'll absolutely need this person in this specific role," or they have people in mind they're bringing with them, that's a good sign. Hiring leaders who have people who are loyal to them shows something real. In reference checks, ask, "What does this person need to be successful?" It's a positive framing to get at what someone might lack or require around them to be effective. Help people answer "how should I think about this?" In a fully remote company, you have less context and fewer vibes. When you send a note about ending a product line or launching something you said you'd never launch, people's subconscious internal war is "how should I think about this?" Leaders should start communications with "here's how I think about this" or "here's how we should think about this." Sometimes the answer is to shut up and speak last. As teams get stronger, there's more weight on the few things the CEO says. Leave space for other leaders to lead. Kat removed herself from some meetings entirely because she has such great leaders and a strong culture. Pay attention to themes in criticism, not individual attacks. When competitors attack you, ask: Are there patterns? Is there something reflective of industry questions? Sometimes criticisms point to things you already do well but aren't communicating well enough. Comparison ads work short-term but don't build credibility long-term. Challenger brands use the playbook of "we're like the leader, but better/cheaper." Consumers see through it. People tell AG1, "I saw an ad comparing their product to yours, and they're clearly saying you're the leader." The rage bait is brief; the truth is long. Algorithms reward dopamine hits and rage bait. Something untrue or negatively spun can quickly become widely seen because the critique is brief and witty, but the explanation and truth are long. AG1 has more human trials on a single SKU than any other multi-ingredient product ever in the space, but that's harder to say in a sound bite. Don't criticize a car for not taking you to the moon. Someone criticized one of AG1's products for not doing something the product isn't supposed to do. When addressing criticism, clarify what the product is actually designed to do. Her husband will be the fourth person ever to row across three oceans. He's already rowed the Atlantic (set the US record as a pair) and the Caribbean. Now he's training for the Pacific. If he completes it, he'll be only the fourth person to have ever done it in the world.  It's about who you become while striving for the big thing. After her husband got rescued in the Caribbean, he questioned why he was doing this with two kids. But this pursuit is who he is, what drives him, it's inspiring for the kids, and it makes him a better person when he's home. It's about the journey and who you do it with. More Learning 476: Kat Cole - Raise Your Hand, Raise Your Voice 078: Kat Cole - Courage, Confidence, Curiosity, and Humility Reflection Questions Is your work done where you are? Can someone else do what the company needs better than you can? When interviewing someone, ask what enabled them to succeed in a tough moment. Then ask: if that team or resource didn't exist, how would you have done it differently? What communication this week needs context? Start with: here's what this means, what it's not about, and how we should think about it. Audio Timestamps 00:18 Meet Kat Cole  02:42 AG1's Growth Story: $160M to $500M+  03:28 Product-Led Growth Wins  05:57 Kat on Writing and Reflection  07:39 Two Questions for Every Career Move  12:25 How Kat Joined AG1  16:09 You're Always Interviewing  18:47 Neutralizing Opposition at Hooters  24:19 Hiring Great Leaders  27:43 Inside Executive Interviews  31:56 Reference Checks That Reveal Truth  32:52 CEO as the Storyteller  34:16 "How Should I Think About This?"  35:46 Speak Last, Empower Leaders  37:41 Handling Public Criticism  39:59 Separating Signal from Noise  44:49 Staying Focused Through Criticism 48:00 Champagne Question: Family First  48:45 Rowing Three Oceans  51:37 Who You Become on the Journey  56:14 EOPC

ABOUT JOE PINE: Joe's LinkedIn profile; linkedin.com/in/joepine Websites: strategichorizons.com (Blog) StrategicHorizons.com (Company) strategichorizons.com (Personal) SHOW INTRO: Today, EPISODE 86… I talk with Joe Pine Joe Pine, an internationally acclaimed author, speaker, and management advisor to Fortune 500 companies and entrepreneurial start-ups alike... *                     *                          *                          * I've been in the world of retail place-making for a few decades. 3 would qualify as ‘a few' I guess. I took a detour for a few years in the late 20-teens, shifting from retail design into the play space of hospitality – a wonderful diversion. The transition was transformative to be sure. I got to re-imagine what I knew about customer experience place making in terms of retail stores and turn my lens towards another fascination – hotels. The interesting thing that emerged was the recognition that in the world of retail everyone, brands, and retail designers and architects alike, were all going on about experience.  Now this in and of itself was curious because I'd been designing stores for a couple decades, and I couldn't recall one client who had ever come to the game and said – ‘hey lets create a really miserable experience for our customers…' ‘…Let's make it hard to understand the assortment, hard to read the labels, bathe the product in bad lighting, have people walk the store not being able to find the thing they came in for, etc…' Not one. Ironically though, while many clients never asked for that, we have all had the experience of that exactly being the case in many stores we go to. So no,… creating a bad experience was never the strategy. We retail designers always sought to create places where positive experience was key. The stuff was important to be sure, but the experience - the emotional residue of the retail interaction - was what was critically important. The stuff was supposed to deliver on what it purported to do, fit well, wear well, not break down, taste good, make you feel better, whatever… it was supposed to work. Otherwise why buy it? In some cases, the stuff just had to deliver on its practical, functional level, it didn't need to give you more than that. It was a commodity that lived up to its promise. In other cases the stuff delivered on function but gave you oh so much more on an emotional, socio-cultural, psychological, spiritual, level… and all of that is about brand relevance and emotional impact of owning the thing – what it says about you. It's like looking at the difference between a paper bag which you could get for about 5 cents and a Birkin bag for which you'd drop $50,000. They both provide the same functional use – they carry other stuff – I think we could make a pretty sound argument that that is true. But now the Birkin bag, well… it is supposed to offer you so much more about who you are, and what tribe you run with and a host of other non-tangibles that deeply connect us to a brand. Things way beyond function. And if the paper bag got wet and fell apart, well… you could be confident that for the price of the Birkin bag you could literally get a million replacements. The interesting thing about the stuff, or services, in retail places whether a commodity or something altogether magnificent and magical was that in either case we had to wrap it in positive experience. Mess up the experience and you've damaged the relationship. And repairing that rupture can take some time.  So, experience matters because the overt and subtle messaging that accompanies a shopping trip is important in fostering the long-term connection between a customer, product (or service) and the brand. The value proposition that determines my choice of one brand or retailer over another can't just be they have lots of whatever it is at low prices. Price point and SKU count are not differentiators in an economy where you can get virtually anything on Amazon and have it delivered to your door and, as a brand or retailer, you are hoping to engage an emerging cohort of customers who craves more than getting a good deal. Now... the interesting thing about hospitality is that industry never really sold stuff. You didn't take home the hotel room (at least not until more recently). You took in, and took home, experience - the body memory and emotional residue of being there. Your stuff, as it were, was a camera full of images and tchotchkes bought along the way during the trip that serve as a conduit or a link to, or a trigger of memories and emotional responses to experiences previously lived. You don't bring home the hotel room, though you can now buy the Westin Heavenly bed and all of the linens – I have often wondered why, if I love the room décor, I can't just walk around with my phone and point it at QR codes on everything and in a flash have the whole thing purchased and sent off to my home or apartment to redo the guest room – or my own bedroom for that matter? So…in the end retail sells stuff and wraps it in experience and hotels only sells experience though the industry is starting to get it that selling stuff may extend the brand experience beyond the hotel stay into your home…. Another interesting distinction between hospitality and retail is time. In the hospitality world you spend an overnight or maybe a few days immersed in the brand experience. In a retail store dwell time is often measured in seconds or minutes. This matters because it suggests that retail has to come on strong and be impactful quickly, capturing interest and trying to hold it. Everyone in retail knows the longer the stay the more conversion – larger basket size. Get customers to linger longer and their consideration of other things that were not on their primary shopping list begin to be a little more interesting.  There are environments that sell spectacle, the digitally immersive environments that we see emerging into the market like Moment Factory Lumina walks, meow wolf, the Monet digital experiences and things like Artechouse. While they are visual captivating, what is being sold is time in the form of 20-minute shows and 2 hour walks in a midnight forest. Time is the currency of experiences, and more companies should figure out how to charge for it. The both challenge and opportunity here is that in an economy that seems to be time starved because our attention is so fractured into micro moments,  time and attention are intricately intertwined.  And the rules of basic economics are at play suggesting that the more scarce something is the more expensive it becomes to acquire it. Customer acquisition when pedaling time becomes a costly endeavor. But then time seems to pass by without notice when experience is built on a good story. All good experiences engage the imagination in narrative. We are built for story more than logic though we have believed the at later is the dominant prowess of our species.  And stories directly effect our neurobiology in remarkable ways that allow the narrative to come alive in us. Remember, that we came to understand the world through dance, rhythm  and stories told around fires for millenia - even before language became a prime vehicle for expression. Our affinity for story is deeply woven into our very beings. So, all great experiences are built on great stories.  Narrative manifest become brand experience places.  These places for selling goods and services are like stage sets for stories to unfold.  I love the theatre and have always felt that retailers and brands should instruct their sales associates to act out their parts in the brand narrative and embrace the idea of theater as a customer interaction strategy.  I've always thought of the theatre as something into which I dove for a time, becoming full emersed in the story and emerged somehow changed. I learned something I didn't know previously, saw the world from a different point of view, I would become one of the characters in the story and was, may be, in some way transformed.  Certainly during the performance, I was definitely in and out of body state – no longer me. The world beyond the story unfolding in front of me disappeared for a time. And so great experiences can also be transformative... The NXTLVL Experience Design podcast is presented by VMSD magazine and Smartwork Media. It is hosted and executive produced by David Kepron. Our original music and audio production is by Kano Sound. The content of this podcast is copywrite to David Kepron and NXTLVL Experience Design. Any publication or rebroadcast of the content is prohibited without the expressed written consent of David Kepron and NXTLVL Experience Design.Make sure to tune in for more NXTLVL “Dialogues on DATA: Design Architecture Technology and the Arts” wherever you find your favorite podcasts and make sure to visit vmsd.com and look for the tab for the NXTLVL Experience Design podcast there too.

The CPG Guys are joined in this episode by David Gottlieb, Chief Revenue officer and Jeff Wrona, VP Product, Image Recognition for FORM, the makers of the award-winning market execution software GoSpotCheck and FORM OpX, and Trax, the industry-recognized global pioneer of Image Recognition, delivering AI-powered shelf-level insights that help brands and retailers improve execution, availability, and growth in the physical store, have merged. Follow David on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dmgottlieb/ Follow Jeff on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gospotcheckjw/Follow FORM online at: https://www.form.com/ This episode is sponsored by FORM.They answer these questions:When you combine Trax's global reach with FORM's innovative model training and deployment capabilities, what fundamentally changes for CPG brands on the ground?How does proactively onboarding the most popular SKUs in each region shift Image Recognition from just reactive reporting to a proactive competitive advantage?What does 'agentic AI' realistically look like inside a CPG organization over the next three to five years? Is it hype, or are we looking at an operational revolution? If you were building the modern CPG tech stack from scratch today, what happens when IR data is integrated directly into sales, supply chain, and marketing systems?Could shelf-level data become the fastest leading indicator of these generational behavior changes—even faster than syndicated data?In this margin-compressed world, does flawless in-store execution become the single biggest lever brands still control?How does integrating FORM's AI-powered image recognition directly with FORM's mobile task management fundamentally close that gap between identifying a shelf issue and executing a fix right there in the aisle?What unique execution challenges do traditional CPGs face when competing with the speed and emotional connection of these newer brands?How does leveraging AI and granular, SKU-level shelf intelligence help brands manage their physical presence with the same precision and responsiveness as their digital storefronts?If two brands have equal product quality and trade support, does the one with superior IR-driven visibility win every time?CPG Guys Website: http://CPGguys.comFMCG Guys Website: http://FMCGguys.comSheCOMMERCE Website: https://shecommercepodcast.com/Rhea Raj's Website: http://rhearaj.comLara Raj in Katseye: https://www.katseye.world/DISCLAIMER: The content in this podcast episode is provided for general informational purposes only. By listening to our episode, you understand that no information contained in this episode should be construed as advice from CPGGUYS, LLC or the individual author, hosts, or guests, nor is it intended to be a substitute for research on any subject matter. Reference to any specific product or entity does not constitute an endorsement or recommendation by CPGGUYS, LLC. The views expressed by guests are their own and their appearance on the program does not imply an endorsement of them or any entity they represent.CPGGUYS LLC expressly disclaims any and all liability or responsibility for any direct, indirect, incidental, special, consequential or other damages arising out of any individual's use of, reference to, or inability to use this podcast or the information we presented in this podcast.

Turbopuffer came out of a reading app.In 2022, Simon was helping his friends at Readwise scale their infra for a highly requested feature: article recommendations and semantic search. Readwise was paying ~$5k/month for their relational database and vector search would cost ~$20k/month making the feature too expensive to ship. In 2023 after mulling over the problem from Readwise, Simon decided he wanted to “build a search engine” which became Turbopuffer.We discuss:• Simon's path: Denmark → Shopify infra for nearly a decade → “angel engineering” across startups like Readwise, Replicate, and Causal → turbopuffer almost accidentally becoming a company • The Readwise origin story: building an early recommendation engine right after the ChatGPT moment, seeing it work, then realizing it would cost ~$30k/month for a company spending ~$5k/month total on infra and getting obsessed with fixing that cost structure • Why turbopuffer is “a search engine for unstructured data”: Simon's belief that models can learn to reason, but can't compress the world's knowledge into a few terabytes of weights, so they need to connect to systems that hold truth in full fidelity • The three ingredients for building a great database company: a new workload, a new storage architecture, and the ability to eventually support every query plan customers will want on their data • The architecture bet behind turbopuffer: going all in on object storage and NVMe, avoiding a traditional consensus layer, and building around the cloud primitives that only became possible in the last few years • Why Simon hated operating Elasticsearch at Shopify: years of painful on-call experience shaped his obsession with simplicity, performance, and eliminating state spread across multiple systems • The Cursor story: launching turbopuffer as a scrappy side project, getting an email from Cursor the next day, flying out after a 4am call, and helping cut Cursor's costs by 95% while fixing their per-user economics • The Notion story: buying dark fiber, tuning TCP windows, and eating cross-cloud costs because Simon refused to compromise on architecture just to close a deal faster • Why AI changes the build-vs-buy equation: it's less about whether a company can build search infra internally, and more about whether they have time especially if an external team can feel like an extension of their own • Why RAG isn't dead: coding companies still rely heavily on search, and Simon sees hybrid retrieval semantic, text, regex, SQL-style patterns becoming more important, not less • How agentic workloads are changing search: the old pattern was one retrieval call up front; the new pattern is one agent firing many parallel queries at once, turning search into a highly concurrent tool call • Why turbopuffer is reducing query pricing: agentic systems are dramatically increasing query volume, and Simon expects retrieval infra to adapt to huge bursts of concurrent search rather than a small number of carefully chosen calls • The philosophy of “playing with open cards”: Simon's habit of being radically honest with investors, including telling Lachy Groom he'd return the money if turbopuffer didn't hit PMF by year-end • The “P99 engineer”: Simon's framework for building a talent-dense company, rejecting by default unless someone on the team feels strongly enough to fight for the candidate —Simon Hørup Eskildsen• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sirupsen• X: https://x.com/Sirupsen• https://sirupsen.com/aboutturbopuffer• https://turbopuffer.com/Full Video PodTimestamps00:00:00 The PMF promise to Lachy Groom00:00:25 Intro and Simon's background00:02:19 What turbopuffer actually is00:06:26 Shopify, Elasticsearch, and the pain behind the company00:10:07 The Readwise experiment that sparked turbopuffer00:12:00 The insight Simon couldn't stop thinking about00:17:00 S3 consistency, NVMe, and the architecture bet00:20:12 The Notion story: latency, dark fiber, and conviction00:25:03 Build vs. buy in the age of AI00:26:00 The Cursor story: early launch to breakout customer00:29:00 Why code search still matters00:32:00 Search in the age of agents00:34:22 Pricing turbopuffer in the AI era00:38:17 Why Simon chose Lachy Groom00:41:28 Becoming a founder on purpose00:44:00 The “P99 engineer” philosophy00:49:30 Bending software to your will00:51:13 The future of turbopuffer00:57:05 Simon's tea obsession00:59:03 Tea kits, X Live, and P99 LiveTranscriptSimon Hørup Eskildsen: I don't think I've said this publicly before, but I just called Lockey and was like, local Lockie. Like if this doesn't have PMF by the end of the year, like we'll just like return all the money to you. But it's just like, I don't really, we, Justine and I don't wanna work on this unless it's really working.So we want to give it the best shot this year and like we're really gonna go for it. We're gonna hire a bunch of people. We're just gonna be honest with everyone. Like when I don't know how to play a game, I just play with open cards. Lockey was the only person that didn't, that didn't freak out. He was like, I've never heard anyone say that before.Alessio: Hey everyone, welcome to the Leading Space podcast. This is Celesio Pando, Colonel Laz, and I'm joined by Swix, editor of Leading Space.swyx: Hello. Hello, uh, we're still, uh, recording in the Ker studio for the first time. Very excited. And today we are joined by Simon Eski. Of Turbo Farer welcome.Simon Hørup Eskildsen: Thank you so much for having me.swyx: Turbo Farer has like really gone on a huge tear, and I, I do have to mention that like you're one of, you're not my newest member of the Danish AHU Mafia, where like there's a lot of legendary programmers that have come out of it, like, uh, beyond Trotro, Rasmus, lado Berg and the V eight team and, and Google Maps team.Uh, you're mostly a Canadian now, but isn't that interesting? There's so many, so much like strong Danish presence.Simon Hørup Eskildsen: Yeah, I was writing a post, um, not that long ago about sort of the influences. So I grew up in Denmark, right? I left, I left when, when I was 18 to go to Canada to, to work at Shopify. Um, and so I, like, I've, I would still say that I feel more Danish than, than Canadian.This is also the weird accent. I can't say th because it, this is like, I don't, you know, my wife is also Canadian, um, and I think. I think like one of the things in, in Denmark is just like, there's just such a ruthless pragmatism and there's also a big focus on just aesthetics. Like, they're like very, people really care about like where, what things look like.Um, and like Canada has a lot of attributes, US has, has a lot of attributes, but I think there's been lots of the great things to carry. I don't know what's in the water in Ahu though. Um, and I don't know that I could be considered part of the Mafi mafia quite yet, uh, compared to the phenomenal individuals we just mentioned.Barra OV is also, uh, Danish Canadian. Okay. Yeah. I don't know where he lives now, but, and he's the PHP.swyx: Yeah. And obviously Toby German, but moved to Canada as well. Yes. Like this is like import that, uh, that, that is an interesting, um, talent move.Alessio: I think. I would love to get from you. Definition of Turbo puffer, because I think you could be a Vector db, which is maybe a bad word now in some circles, you could be a search engine.It's like, let, let's just start there and then we'll maybe run through the history of how you got to this point.Simon Hørup Eskildsen: For sure. Yeah. So Turbo Puffer is at this point in time, a search engine, right? We do full text search and we do vector search, and that's really what we're specialized in. If you're trying to do much more than that, like then this might not be the right place yet, but Turbo Buffer is all about search.The other way that I think about it is that we can take all of the world's knowledge, all of the exabytes and exabytes of data that there is, and we can use those tokens to train a model, but we can't compress all of that into a few terabytes of weights, right? Compress into a few terabytes of weights, how to reason with the world, how to make sense of the knowledge.But we have to somehow connect it to something externally that actually holds that like in full fidelity and truth. Um, and that's the thing that we intend to become. Right? That's like a very holier than now kind of phrasing, right? But being the search engine for unstructured, unstructured data is the focus of turbo puffer at this point in time.Alessio: And let's break down. So people might say, well, didn't Elasticsearch already do this? And then some other people might say, is this search on my data, is this like closer to rag than to like a xr, like a public search thing? Like how, how do you segment like the different types of search?Simon Hørup Eskildsen: The way that I generally think about this is like, there's a lot of database companies and I think if you wanna build a really big database company, sort of, you need a couple of ingredients to be in the air.We don't, which only happens roughly every 15 years. You need a new workload. You basically need the ambition that every single company on earth is gonna have data in your database. Multiple times you look at a company like Oracle, right? You will, like, I don't think you can find a company on earth with a digital presence that it not, doesn't somehow have some data in an Oracle database.Right? And I think at this point, that's also true for Snowflake and Databricks, right? 15 years later it's, or even more than that, there's not a company on earth that doesn't, in. Or directly is consuming Snowflake or, or Databricks or any of the big analytics databases. Um, and I think we're in that kind of moment now, right?I don't think you're gonna find a company over the next few years that doesn't directly or indirectly, um, have all their data available for, for search and connect it to ai. So you need that new workload, like you need something to be happening where there's a new workload that causes that to happen, and that new workload is connecting very large amounts of data to ai.The second thing you need. The second condition to build a big database company is that you need some new underlying change in the storage architecture that is not possible from the databases that have come before you. If you look at Snowflake and Databricks, right, commoditized, like massive fleet of HDDs, like that was not possible in it.It just wasn't in the air in the nineties, right? So you just didn't, we just didn't build these systems. S3 and and and so on was not around. And I think the architecture that is now possible that wasn't possible 15 years ago is to go all in on NVME SSDs. It requires a particular type of architecture for the database that.It's difficult to retrofit onto the databases that are already there, including the ones you just mentioned. The second thing is to go all in on OIC storage, more so than we could have done 15 years ago. Like we don't have a consensus layer, we don't really have anything. In fact, you could turn off all the servers that Turbo Buffer has, and we would not lose any data because we have all completely all in on OIC storage.And this means that our architecture is just so simple. So that's the second condition, right? First being a new workload. That means that every company on earth, either indirectly or directly, is using your database. Second being, there's some new storage architecture. That means that the, the companies that have come before you can do what you're doing.I think the third thing you need to do to build a big database company is that over time you have to implement more or less every Cory plan on the data. What that means is that you. You can't just get stuck in, like, this is the one thing that a database does. It has to be ever evolving because when someone has data in the database, they over time expect to be able to ask it more or less every question.So you have to do that to get the storage architecture to the limit of what, what it's capable of. Those are the three conditions.swyx: I just wanted to get a little bit of like the motivation, right? Like, so you left Shopify, you're like principal, engineer, infra guy. Um, you also head of kernel labs, uh, inside of Shopify, right?And then you consulted for read wise and that it kind of gave you that, that idea. I just wanted you to tell that story. Um, maybe I, you've told it before, but, uh, just introduce the, the. People to like the, the new workload, the sort of aha moment for turbo PufferSimon Hørup Eskildsen: For sure. So yeah, I spent almost a decade at Shopify.I was on the infrastructure team, um, from the fairly, fairly early days around 2013. Um, at the time it felt like it was growing so quickly and everything, all the metrics were, you know, doubling year on year compared to the, what companies are contending with today. It's very cute in growth. I feel like lot some companies are seeing that month over month.Um, of course. Shopify compound has been compounding for a very long time now, but I spent a decade doing that and the majority of that was just make sure the site is up today and make sure it's up a year from now. And a lot of that was really just the, um, you know, uh, the Kardashians would drive very, very large amounts of, of data to, to uh, to Shopify as they were rotating through all the merch and building out their businesses.And we just needed to make sure we could handle that. Right. And sometimes these were events, a million requests per second. And so, you know, we, we had our own data centers back in the day and we were moving to the cloud and there was so much sharding work and all of that that we were doing. So I spent a decade just scaling databases ‘cause that's fundamentally what's the most difficult thing to scale about these sites.The database that was the most difficult for me to scale during that time, and that was the most aggravating to be on call for, was elastic search. It was very, very difficult to deal with. And I saw a lot of projects that were just being held back in their ambition by using it.swyx: And I mean, self-hosted.Self-hosted. ‘causeSimon Hørup Eskildsen: it's, yeah, and it commercial, this is like 2015, right? So it's like a very particular vintage. Right. It's probably better at a lot of these things now. Um, it was difficult to contend with and I'm just like, I just think about it. It's an inverted index. It should be good at these kinds of queries and do all of this.And it was, we, we often couldn't get it to do exactly what we needed to do or basically get lucine to do, like expose lucine raw to, to, to what we needed to do. Um, so that was like. Just something that we did on the side and just panic scaled when we needed to, but not a particular focus of mine. So I left, and when I left, I, um, wasn't sure exactly what I wanted to do.I mean, it spent like a decade inside of the same company. I'd like grown up there. I started working there when I was 18.swyx: You only do Rails?Simon Hørup Eskildsen: Yeah. I mean, yeah. Rails. And he's a Rails guy. Uh, love Rails. So good. Um,Alessio: we all wish we could still work in Rails.swyx: I know know. I know, but some, I tried learning Ruby.It's just too much, like too many options to do the same thing. It's, that's my, I I know there's a, there's a way to do it.Simon Hørup Eskildsen: I love it. I don't know that I would use it now, like given cloud code and, and, and cursor and everything, but, um, um, but still it, like if I'm just sitting down and writing a teal code, that's how I think.But anyway, I left and I wasn't, I talked to a couple companies and I was like, I don't. I need to see a little bit more of the world here to know what I'm gonna like focus on next. Um, and so what I decided is like I was gonna, I called it like angel engineering, where I just hopped around in my friend's companies in three months increments and just helped them out with something.Right. And, and just vested a bit of equity and solved some interesting infrastructure problem. So I worked with a bunch of companies at the time, um, read Wise was one of them. Replicate was one of them. Um, causal, I dunno if you've tried this, it's like a, it's a spreadsheet engine Yeah. Where you can do distribution.They sold recently. Yeah. Um, we've been, we used that in fp and a at, um, at Turbo Puffer. Um, so a bunch of companies like this and it was super fun. And so we're the Chachi bt moment happened, I was with. With read Wise for a stint, we were preparing for the reader launch, right? Which is where you, you cue articles and read them later.And I was just getting their Postgres up to snuff, like, which basically boils down to tuning, auto vacuum. So I was doing that and then this happened and we were like, oh, maybe we should build a little recommendation engine and some features to try to hook in the lms. They were not that good yet, but it was clear there was something there.And so I built a small recommendation engine just, okay, let's take the articles that you've recently read, right? Like embed all the articles and then do recommendations. It was good enough that when I ran it on one of the co-founders of Rey's, like I found out that I got articles about, about having a child.I'm like, oh my God, I didn't, I, I didn't know that, that they were having a child. I wasn't sure what to do with that information, but the recommendation engine was good enough that it was suggesting articles, um, about that. And so there was, there was recommendations and uh, it actually worked really well.But this was a company that was spending maybe five grand a month in total on all their infrastructure and. When I did the napkin math on running the embeddings of all the articles, putting them into a vector index, putting it in prod, it's gonna be like 30 grand a month. That just wasn't tenable. Right?Like Read Wise is a proudly bootstrapped company and it's paying 30 grand for infrastructure for one feature versus five. It just wasn't tenable. So sort of in the bucket of this is useful, it's pretty good, but let us, let's return to it when the costs come down.swyx: Did you say it grows by feature? So for five to 30 is by the number of, like, what's the, what's the Scaling factor scale?It scales by the number of articles that you embed.Simon Hørup Eskildsen: It does, but what I meant by that is like five grand for like all of the other, like the Heroku, dinos, Postgres, like all the other, and this then storage is 30. Yeah. And then like 30 grand for one feature. Right. Which is like, what other articles are related to this one.Um, so it was just too much right to, to power everything. Their budget would've been maybe a few thousand dollars, which still would've been a lot. And so we put it in a bucket of, okay, we're gonna do that later. We'll wait, we will wait for the cost to come down. And that haunted me. I couldn't stop thinking about it.I was like, okay, there's clearly some latent demand here. If the cost had been a 10th, we would've shipped it and. This was really the only data point that I had. Right. I didn't, I, I didn't, I didn't go out and talk to anyone else. It was just so I started reading Right. I couldn't, I couldn't help myself.Like I didn't know what like a vector index is. I, I generally barely do about how to generate the vectors. There was a lot of hype about, this is a early 2023. There was a lot of hype about vector databases. There were raising a lot of money and it's like, I really didn't know anything about it. It's like, you know, trying these little models, fine tuning them.Like I was just trying to get sort of a lay of the land. So I just sat down. I have this. A GitHub repository called Napkin Math. And on napkin math, there's just, um, rows of like, oh, this is how much bandwidth. Like this is how many, you know, you can do 25 gigabytes per second on average to dram. You can do, you know, five gigabytes per second of rights to an SSD, blah blah.All of these numbers, right? And S3, how many you could do per, how much bandwidth can you drive per connection? I was just sitting down, I was like, why hasn't anyone build a database where you just put everything on O storage and then you puff it into NVME when you use the data and you puff it into dram if you're, if you're querying it alive, it's just like, this seems fairly obvious and you, the only real downside to that is that if you go all in on o storage, every right will take a couple hundred milliseconds of latency, but from there it's really all upside, right?You do the first go, it takes half a second. And it sort of occurred to me as like, well. The architecture is really good for that. It's really good for AB storage, it's really good for nvm ESSD. It's, well, you just couldn't have done that 10 years ago. Back to what we were talking about before. You really have to build a database where you have as few round trips as possible, right?This is how CPUs work today. It's how NVM E SSDs work. It's how as, um, as three works that you want to have a very large amount of outstanding requests, right? Like basically go to S3, do like that thousand requests to ask for data in one round trip. Wait for that. Get that, like, make a new decision. Do it again, and try to do that maybe a maximum of three times.But no databases were designed that way within NVME as is ds. You can drive like within, you know, within a very low multiple of DRAM bandwidth if you use it that way. And same with S3, right? You can fully max out the network card, which generally is not maxed out. You get very, like, very, very good bandwidth.And, but no one had built a database like that. So I was like, okay, well can't you just, you know, take all the vectors right? And plot them in the proverbial coordinate system. Get the clusters, put a file on S3 called clusters, do json, and then put another file for every cluster, you know, cluster one, do js O cluster two, do js ON you know that like it's two round trips, right?So you get the clusters, you find the closest clusters, and then you download the cluster files like the, the closest end. And you could do this in two round trips.swyx: You were nearest neighbors locally.Simon Hørup Eskildsen: Yes. Yes. And then, and you would build this, this file, right? It's just like ultra simplistic, but it's not a far shot from what the first version of Turbo Buffer was.Why hasn't anyone done thatAlessio: in that moment? From a workload perspective, you're thinking this is gonna be like a read heavy thing because they're doing recommend. Like is the fact that like writes are so expensive now? Oh, with ai you're actually not writing that much.Simon Hørup Eskildsen: At that point I hadn't really thought too much about, well no actually it was always clear to me that there was gonna be a lot of rights because at Shopify, the search clusters were doing, you know, I don't know, tens or hundreds of crew QPS, right?‘cause you just have to have a human sit and type in. But we did, you know, I don't know how many updates there were per second. I'm sure it was in the millions, right into the cluster. So I always knew there was like a 10 to 100 ratio on the read write. In the read wise use case. It's, um, even, even in the read wise use case, there'd probably be a lot fewer reads than writes, right?There's just a lot of churn on the amount of stuff that was going through versus the amount of queries. Um, I wasn't thinking too much about that. I was mostly just thinking about what's the fundamentally cheapest way to build a database in the cloud today using the primitives that you have available.And this is it, right? You just, now you have one machine and you know, let's say you have a terabyte of data in S3, you paid the $200 a month for that, and then maybe five to 10% of that data and needs to be an NV ME SSDs and less than that in dram. Well. You're paying very, very little to inflate the data.swyx: By the way, when you say no one else has done that, uh, would you consider Neon, uh, to be on a similar path in terms of being sort of S3 first and, uh, separating the compute and storage?Simon Hørup Eskildsen: Yeah, I think what I meant with that is, uh, just build a completely new database. I don't know if we were the first, like it was very much, it was, I mean, I, I hadn't, I just looked at the napkin math and was like, this seems really obvious.So I'm sure like a hundred people came up with it at the same time. Like the light bulb and every invention ever. Right. It was just in the air. I think Neon Neon was, was first to it. And they're trying, they're retrofitted onto Postgres, right? And then they built this whole architecture where you have, you have it in memory and then you sort of.You know, m map back to S3. And I think that was very novel at the time to do it for, for all LTP, but I hadn't seen a database that was truly all in, right. Not retrofitting it. The database felt built purely for this no consensus layer. Even using compare and swap on optic storage to do consensus. I hadn't seen anyone go that all in.And I, I mean, there, there, I'm sure there was someone that did that before us. I don't know. I was just looking at the napkin mathswyx: and, and when you say consensus layer, uh, are you strongly relying on S3 Strong consistency? You are. Okay.SoSimon Hørup Eskildsen: that is your consensus layer. It, it is the consistency layer. And I think also, like, this is something that most people don't realize, but S3 only became consistent in December of 2020.swyx: I remember this coming out during COVID and like people were like, oh, like, it was like, uh, it was just like a free upgrade.Simon Hørup Eskildsen: Yeah.swyx: They were just, they just announced it. We saw consistency guys and like, okay, cool.Simon Hørup Eskildsen: And I'm sure that they just, they probably had it in prod for a while and they're just like, it's done right.And people were like, okay, cool. But. That's a big moment, right? Like nv, ME SSDs, were also not in the cloud until around 2017, right? So you just sort of had like 2017 nv, ME SSDs, and people were like, okay, cool. There's like one skew that does this, whatever, right? Takes a few years. And then the second thing is like S3 becomes consistent in 2020.So now it means you don't have to have this like big foundation DB or like zookeeper or whatever sitting there contending with the keys, which is how. You know, that's what Snowflake and others have do so muchswyx: for goneSimon Hørup Eskildsen: Exactly. Just gone. Right? And so just push to the, you know, whatever, how many hundreds of people they have working on S3 solved and then compare and swap was not in S3 at this point in time,swyx: by the way.Uh, I don't know what that is, so maybe you wanna explain. Yes. Yeah.Simon Hørup Eskildsen: Yes. So, um, what Compare and swap is, is basically, you can imagine that if you have a database, it might be really nice to have a file called metadata json. And metadata JSON could say things like, Hey, these keys are here and this file means that, and there's lots of metadata that you have to operate in the database, right?But that's the simplest way to do it. So now you have might, you might have a lot of servers that wanna change the metadata. They might have written a file and want the metadata to contain that file. But you have a hundred nodes that are trying to contend with this metadata that JSON well, what compare and Swap allows you to do is basically just you download the file, you make the modifications, and then you write it only if it hasn't changed.While you did the modification and if not you retry. Right? Should just have this retry loops. Now you can imagine if you have a hundred nodes doing that, it's gonna be really slow, but it will converge over time. That primitive was not available in S3. It wasn't available in S3 until late 2024, but it was available in GCP.The real story of this is certainly not that I sat down and like bake brained it. I was like, okay, we're gonna start on GCS S3 is gonna get it later. Like it was really not that we started, we got really lucky, like we started on GCP and we started on GCP because tur um, Shopify ran on GCP. And so that was the platform I was most available with.Right. Um, and I knew the Canadian team there ‘cause I'd worked with them at Shopify and so it was natural for us to start there. And so when we started building the database, we're like, oh yeah, we have to build a, we really thought we had to build a consensus layer, like have a zookeeper or something to do this.But then we discovered the compare and swap. It's like, oh, we can kick the can. Like we'll just do metadata r json and just, it's fine. It's probably fine. Um, and we just kept kicking the can until we had very, very strong conviction in the idea. Um, and then we kind of just hinged the company on the fact that S3 probably was gonna get this, it started getting really painful in like mid 2024.‘cause we were closing deals with, um, um, notion actually that was running in AWS and we're like, trust us. You, you really want us to run this in GCP? And they're like, no, I don't know about that. Like, we're running everything in AWS and the latency across the cloud were so big and we had so much conviction that we bought like, you know, dark fiber between the AWS regions in, in Oregon, like in the InterExchange and GCP is like, we've never seen a startup like do like, what's going on here?And we're just like, no, we don't wanna do this. We were tuning like TCP windows, like everything to get the latency down ‘cause we had so high conviction in not doing like a, a metadata layer on S3. So those were the three conditions, right? Compare and swap. To do metadata, which wasn't in S3 until late 2024 S3 being consistent, which didn't happen until December, 2020.Uh, 2020. And then NVMe ssd, which didn't end in the cloud until 2017.swyx: I mean, in some ways, like a very big like cloud success story that like you were able to like, uh, put this all together, but also doing things like doing, uh, bind our favor. That that actually is something I've never heard.Simon Hørup Eskildsen: I mean, it's very common when you're a big company, right?You're like connecting your own like data center or whatever. But it's like, it was uniquely just a pain with notion because the, um, the org, like most of the, like if you're buying in Ashburn, Virginia, right? Like US East, the Google, like the GCP and, and AWS data centers are like within a millisecond on, on each other, on the public exchanges.But in Oregon uniquely, the GCP data center sits like a couple hundred kilometers, like east of Portland and the AWS region sits in Portland, but the network exchange they go through is through Seattle. So it's like a full, like 14 milliseconds or something like that. And so anyway, yeah. It's, it's, so we were like, okay, we can't, we have to go through an exchange in Portland.Yeah. Andswyx: you'd rather do this than like run your zookeeper and likeSimon Hørup Eskildsen: Yes. Way rather. It doesn't have state, I don't want state and two systems. Um, and I think all that is just informed by Justine, my co-founder and I had just been on call for so long. And the worst outages are the ones where you have state in multiple places that's not syncing up.So it really came from, from a a, like just a, a very pure source of pain, of just imagining what we would be Okay. Being woken up at 3:00 AM about and having something in zookeeper was not one of them.swyx: You, you're talking to like a notion or something. Do they care or do they just, theySimon Hørup Eskildsen: just, they care about latency.swyx: They latency cost. That's it.Simon Hørup Eskildsen: They just cared about latency. Right. And we just absorbed the cost. We're just like, we have high conviction in this. At some point we can move them to AWS. Right. And so we just, we, we'll buy the fiber, it doesn't matter. Right. Um, and it's like $5,000. Usually when you buy fiber, you buy like multiple lines.And we're like, we can only afford one, but we will just test it that when it goes over the public internet, it's like super smooth. And so we did a lot of, anyway, it's, yeah, it was, that's cool.Alessio: You can imagine talking to the GCP rep and it's like, no, we're gonna buy, because we know we're gonna turn, we're gonna turn from you guys and go to AWS in like six months.But in the meantime we'll do this. It'sSimon Hørup Eskildsen: a, I mean, like they, you know, this workload still runs on GCP for what it's worth. Right? ‘cause it's so, it was just, it was so reliable. So it was never about moving off GCP, it was just about honesty. It was just about giving notion the latency that they deserved.Right. Um, and we didn't want ‘em to have to care about any of this. We also, they were like, oh, egress is gonna be bad. It was like, okay, screw it. Like we're just gonna like vvc, VPC peer with you and AWS we'll eat the cost. Yeah. Whatever needs to be done.Alessio: And what were the actual workloads? Because I think when you think about ai, it's like 14 milliseconds.It's like really doesn't really matter in the scheme of like a model generation.Simon Hørup Eskildsen: Yeah. We were told the latency, right. That we had to beat. Oh, right. So, so we're just looking at the traces. Right. And then sort of like hand draw, like, you know, kind of like looking at the trace and then thinking what are the other extensions of the trace?Right. And there's a lot more to it because it's also when you have, if you have 14 versus seven milliseconds, right. You can fit in another round trip. So we had to tune TCP to try to send as much data in every round trip, prewarm all the connections. And there was, there's a lot of things that compound from having these kinds of round trips, but in the grand scheme it was just like, well, we have to beat the latency of whatever we're up against.swyx: Which is like they, I mean, notion is a database company. They could have done this themselves. They, they do lots of database engineering themselves. How do you even get in the door? Like Yeah, just like talk through that kind of.Simon Hørup Eskildsen: Last time I was in San Francisco, I was talking to one of the engineers actually, who, who was one of our champions, um, at, AT Notion.And they were, they were just trying to make sure that the, you know, per user cost matched the economics that they needed. You know, Uhhuh like, it's like the way I think about, it's like I have to earn a return on whatever the clouds charge me and then my customers have to earn a return on that. And it's like very simple, right?And so there has to be gross margin all the way up and that's how you build the product. And so then our customers have to make the right set of trade off the turbo Puffer makes, and if they're happy with that, that's great.swyx: Do you feel like you're competing with build internally versus buy or buy versus buy?Simon Hørup Eskildsen: Yeah, so, sorry, this was all to build up to your question. So one of the notion engineers told me that they'd sat and probably on a napkin, like drawn out like, why hasn't anyone built this? And then they saw terrible. It was like, well, it literally that. So, and I think AI has also changed the buy versus build equation in terms of, it's not really about can we build it, it's about do we have time to build it?I think they like, I think they felt like, okay, if this is a team that can do that and they, they feel enough like an extension of our team, well then we can go a lot faster, which would be very, very good for them. And I mean, they put us through the, through the test, right? Like we had some very, very long nights to to, to do that POC.And they were really our biggest, our second big customer off the cursor, which also was a lot of late nights. Right.swyx: Yeah. That, I mean, should we go into that story? The, the, the sort of Chris's story, like a lot, um, they credit you a lot for. Working very closely with them. So I just wanna hear, I've heard this, uh, story from Sole's point of view, but like, I'm curious what, what it looks like from your side.Simon Hørup Eskildsen: I actually haven't heard it from Sole's point of view, so maybe you can now cross reference it. The way that I remember it was that, um, the day after we launched, which was just, you know, I'd worked the whole summer on, on the first version. Justine wasn't part of it yet. ‘cause I just, I didn't tell anyone that summer that I was working on this.I was just locked in on building it because it's very easy otherwise to confuse talking about something to actually doing it. And so I was just like, I'm not gonna do that. I'm just gonna do the thing. I launched it and at this point turbo puffer is like a rust binary running on a single eight core machine in a T Marks instance.And me deploying it was like looking at the request log and then like command seeing it or like control seeing it to just like, okay, there's no request. Let's upgrade the binary. Like it was like literally the, the, the, the scrappiest thing. You could imagine it was on purpose because just like at Shopify, we did that all the time.Like, we like move, like we ran things in tux all the time to begin with. Before something had like, at least the inkling of PMF, it was like, okay, is anyone gonna hear about this? Um, and one of the cursor co-founders Arvid reached out and he just, you know, the, the cursor team are like all I-O-I-I-M-O like, um, contenders, right?So they just speak in bullet points and, and facts. It was like this amazing email exchange just of, this is how many QPS we have, this is what we're paying, this is where we're going, blah, blah, blah. And so we're just conversing in bullet points. And I tried to get a call with them a few times, but they were, so, they were like really writing the PMF bowl here, just like late 2023.And one time Swally emails me at like five. What was it like 4:00 AM Pacific time saying like, Hey, are you open for a call now? And I'm on the East coast and I, it was like 7:00 AM I was like, yeah, great, sure, whatever. Um, and we just started talking and something. Then I didn't know anything about sales.It was something that just comp compelled me. I have to go see this team. Like, there's something here. So I, I went to San Francisco and I went to their office and the way that I remember it is that Postgres was down when I showed up at the office. Did SW tell you this? No. Okay. So Postgres was down and so it's like they were distracting with that.And I was trying my best to see if I could, if I could help in any way. Like I knew a little bit about databases back to tuning, auto vacuum. It was like, I think you have to tune out a vacuum. Um, and so we, we talked about that and then, um, that evening just talked about like what would it look like, what would it look like to work with us?And I just said. Look like we're all in, like we will just do what we'll do whatever, whatever you tell us, right? They migrated everything over the next like week or two, and we reduced their cost by 95%, which I think like kind of fixed their per user economics. Um, and it solved a lot of other things. And we were just, Justine, this is also when I asked Justine to come on as my co-founder, she was the best engineer, um, that I ever worked with at Shopify.She lived two blocks away and we were just, okay, we're just gonna get this done. Um, and we did, and so we helped them migrate and we just worked like hell over the next like month or two to make sure that we were never an issue. And that was, that was the cursor story. Yeah.swyx: And, and is code a different workload than normal text?I, I don't know. Is is it just text? Is it the same thing?Simon Hørup Eskildsen: Yeah, so cursor's workload is basically, they, um, they will embed the entire code base, right? So they, they will like chunk it up in whatever they would, they do. They have their own embedding model, um, which they've been public about. Um, and they find that on, on, on their evals.It. There's one of their evals where it's like a 25% improvement on a very particular workload. They have a bunch of blog posts about it. Um, I think it works best on larger code basis, but they've trained their own embedding model to do this. Um, and so you'll see it if you use the cursor agent, it will do searches.And they've also been public around, um, how they've, I think they post trained their model to be very good at semantic search as well. Um, and that's, that's how they use it. And so it's very good at, like, can you find me on the code that's similar to this, or code that does this? And just in, in this queries, they also use GR to supplement it.swyx: Yeah.Simon Hørup Eskildsen: Um, of courseswyx: it's been a big topic of discussion like, is rag dead because gr you know,Simon Hørup Eskildsen: and I mean like, I just, we, we see lots of demand from the coding company to ethicsswyx: search in every part. Yes.Simon Hørup Eskildsen: Uh, we, we, we see demand. And so, I mean, I'm. I like case studies. I don't like, like just doing like thought pieces on this is where it's going.And like trying to be all macroeconomic about ai, that's has turned out to be a giant waste of time because no one can really predict any of this. So I just collect case studies and I mean, cursor has done a great job talking about what they're doing and I hope some of the other coding labs that use Turbo Puffer will do the same.Um, but it does seem to make a difference for particular queries. Um, I mean we can also do text, we can also do RegX, but I should also say that cursors like security posture into Tur Puffer is exceptional, right? They have their own embedding model, which makes it very difficult to reverse engineer. They obfuscate the file paths.They like you. It's very difficult to learn anything about a code base by looking at it. And the other thing they do too is that for their customers, they encrypt it with their encryption keys in turbo puffer's bucket. Um, so it's, it's, it's really, really well designed.swyx: And so this is like extra stuff they did to work with you because you are not part of Cursor.Exactly like, and this is just best practice when working in any database, not just you guys. Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. I think for me, like the, the, the learning is kind of like you, like all workloads are hybrid. Like, you know, uh, like you, you want the semantic, you want the text, you want the RegX, you want sql.I dunno. Um, but like, it's silly to like be all in on like one particularly query pattern.Simon Hørup Eskildsen: I think, like I really like the way that, um, um, that swally at cursor talks about it, which is, um, I'm gonna butcher it here. Um, and you know, I'm a, I'm a database scalability person. I'm not a, I, I dunno anything about training models other than, um, what the internet tells me and what.The way he describes is that this is just like cash compute, right? It's like you have a point in time where you're looking at some particular context and focused on some chunk and you say, this is the layer of the neural net at this point in time. That seems fundamentally really useful to do cash compute like that.And, um, how the value of that will change over time. I'm, I'm not sure, but there seems to be a lot of value in that.Alessio: Maybe talk a bit about the evolution of the workload, because even like search, like maybe two years ago it was like one search at the start of like an LLM query to build the context. Now you have a gentech search, however you wanna call it, where like the model is both writing and changing the code and it's searching it again later.Yeah. What are maybe some of the new types of workloads or like changes you've had to make to your architecture for it?Simon Hørup Eskildsen: I think you're right. When I think of rag, I think of, Hey, there's an 8,000 token, uh, context window and you better make it count. Um, and search was a way to do that now. Everything is moving towards the, just let the agent do its thing.Right? And so back to the thing before, right? The LLM is very good at reasoning with the data, and so we're just the tool call, right? And that's increasingly what we see our customers doing. Um, what we're seeing more demand from, from our customers now is to do a lot of concurrency, right? Like Notion does a ridiculous amount of queries in every round trip just because they can't.And I'm also now, when I use the cursor agent, I also see them doing more concurrency than I've ever seen before. So a bit similar to how we designed a database to drive as much concurrency in every round trip as possible. That's also what the agents are doing. So that's new. It means just an enormous amount of queries all at once to the dataset while it's warm in as few turns as possible.swyx: Can I clarify one thing on that?Simon Hørup Eskildsen: Yes.swyx: Is it, are they batching multiple users or one user is driving multiple,Simon Hørup Eskildsen: one user driving multiple, one agent driving.swyx: It's parallel searching a bunch of things.Simon Hørup Eskildsen: Exactly.swyx: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So yeah, the clinician also did, did this for the fast context thing, like eight parallel at once.Simon Hørup Eskildsen: Yes.swyx: And, and like an interesting problem is, well, how do you make sure you have enough diversity so you're not making the the same request eight times?Simon Hørup Eskildsen: And I think like that's probably also where the hybrid comes in, where. That's another way to diversify. It's a completely different way to, to do the search.That's a big change, right? So before it was really just like one call and then, you know, the LLM took however many seconds to return, but now we just see an enormous amount of queries. So the, um, we just see more queries. So we've like tried to reduce query, we've reduced query pricing. Um, this is probably the first time actually I'm saying that, but the query pricing is being reduced, like five x.Um, and we'll probably try to reduce it even more to accommodate some of these workloads of just doing very large amounts of queries. Um, that's one thing that's changed. I think the right, the right ratio is still very high, right? Like there's still a, an enormous amount of rights per read, but we're starting probably to see that change if people really lean into this pattern.Alessio: Can we talk a little bit about the pricing? I'm curious, uh, because traditionally a database would charge on storage, but now you have the token generation that is so expensive, where like the actual. Value of like a good search query is like much higher because they're like saving inference time down the line.How do you structure that as like, what are people receptive to on the other side too?Simon Hørup Eskildsen: Yeah. I, the, the turbo puffer pricing in the beginning was just very simple. The pricing on these on for search engines before Turbo Puffer was very server full, right? It was like, here's the vm, here's the per hour cost, right?Great. And I just sat down with like a piece of paper and said like, if Turbo Puffer was like really good, this is probably what it would cost with a little bit of margin. And that was the first pricing of Turbo Puffer. And I just like sat down and I was like, okay, like this is like probably the storage amp, but whenever on a piece of paper I, it was vibe pricing.It was very vibe price, and I got it wrong. Oh. Um, well I didn't get it wrong, but like Turbo Puffer wasn't at the first principle pricing, right? So when Cursor came on Turbo Puffer, it was like. Like, I didn't know any VCs. I didn't know, like I was just like, I don't know, I didn't know anything about raising money or anything like that.I just saw that my GCP bill was, was high, was a lot higher than the cursor bill. So Justine and I was just like, well, we have to optimize it. Um, and I mean, to the chagrin now of, of it, of, of the VCs, it now means that we're profitable because we've had so much pricing pressure in the beginning. Because it was running on my credit card and Justine and I had spent like, like tens of thousands of dollars on like compute bills and like spinning off the company and like very like, like bad Canadian lawyers and like things like to like get all of this done because we just like, we didn't know.Right. If you're like steeped in San Francisco, you're just like, you just know. Okay. Like you go out, raise a pre-seed round. I, I never heard a word pre-seed at this point in time.swyx: When you had Cursor, you had Notion you, you had no funding.Simon Hørup Eskildsen: Um, with Cursor we had no funding. Yeah. Um, by the time we had Notion Locke was, Locke was here.Yeah. So it was really just, we vibe priced it 100% from first Principles, but it wasn't, it, it was not performing at first principles, so we just did everything we could to optimize it in the beginning for that, so that at least we could have like a 5% margin or something. So I wasn't freaking out because Cursor's bill was also going like this as they were growing.And so my liability and my credit limit was like actively like calling my bank. It was like, I need a bigger credit. Like it was, yeah. Anyway, that was the beginning. Yeah. But the pricing was, yeah, like storage rights and query. Right. And the, the pricing we have today is basically just that pricing with duct tape and spit to try to approach like, you know, like a, as a margin on the physical underlying hardware.And we're doing this year, you're gonna see more and more pricing changes from us. Yeah.swyx: And like is how much does stuff like VVC peering matter because you're working in AWS land where egress is charged and all that, you know.Simon Hørup Eskildsen: We probably don't like, we have like an enterprise plan that just has like a base fee because we haven't had time to figure out SKU pricing for all of this.Um, but I mean, yeah, you can run turbo puffer either in SaaS, right? That's what Cursor does. You can run it in a single tenant cluster. So it's just you. That's what Notion does. And then you can run it in, in, in BYOC where everything is inside the customer's VPC, that's what an for example, philanthropic does.swyx: What I'm hearing is that this is probably the best CRO job for somebody who can come in and,Simon Hørup Eskildsen: I mean,swyx: help you with this.Simon Hørup Eskildsen: Um, like Turbo Puffer hired, like, I don't know what, what number this was, but we had a full-time CFO as like the 12th hire or something at Turbo Puffer, um, I think I hear are a lot of comp.I don't know how they do it. Like they have a hundred employees and not a CFO. It's like having a CFO is like a runningswyx: business man. Like, you know,Simon Hørup Eskildsen: it's so good. Yeah, like money Mike, like he just, you know, just handles the money and a lot of the business stuff and so he came in and just hopped with a lot of the operational side of the business.So like C-O-O-C-F-O, like somewhere in between.swyx: Just as quick mention of Lucky, just ‘cause I'm curious, I've met Lock and like, he's obviously a very good investor and now on physical intelligence, um, I call it generalist super angel, right? He invests in everything. Um, and I always wonder like, you know, is there something appealing about focusing on developer tooling, focusing on databases, going like, I've invested for 10 years in databases versus being like a lock where he can maybe like connect you to all the customers that you need.Simon Hørup Eskildsen: This is an excellent question. No, no one's asked me this. Um, why lockey? Because. There was a couple of people that we were talking to at the time and when we were raising, we were almost a little, we were like a bit distressed because one of our, one of our peers had just launched something that was very similar to Turbo Puffer.And someone just gave me the advice at the time of just choose the person where you just feel like you can just pick up the phone and not prepare anything. And just be completely honest, and I don't think I've said this publicly before, but I just called Lockey and was like local Lockie. Like if this doesn't have PMF by the end of the year, like we'll just like return all the money to you.But it's just like, I don't really, we, Justine and I don't wanna work on this unless it's really working. So we want to give it the best shot this year and like we're really gonna go for it. We're gonna hire a bunch of people and we're just gonna be honest with everyone. Like when I don't know how to play a game, I just play with open cards and.Lockey was the only person that didn't, that didn't freak out. He was like, I've never heard anyone say that before. As I said, I didn't even know what a seed or pre-seed round was like before, probably even at this time. So I was just like very honest with him. And I asked him like, Lockie, have you ever have, have you ever invested in database company?He was just like, no. And at the time I was like, am I dumb? Like, but I think there was something that just like really drew me to Lockie. He is so authentic, so honest, like, and there was something just like, I just felt like I could just play like, just say everything openly. And that was, that was, I think that that was like a perfect match at the time, and, and, and honestly still is.He was just like, okay, that's great. This is like the most honest, ridiculous thing I've ever heard anyone say to me. But like that, like that, whyswyx: is this ridiculous? Say competitor launch, this may not work out. It wasSimon Hørup Eskildsen: more just like. If this doesn't work out, I'm gonna close up shop by the end of the mo the year, right?Like it was, I don't know, maybe it's common. I, I don't know. He told me it was uncommon. I don't know. Um, that's why we chose him and he'd been phenomenal. The other people were talking at the, at the time were database experts. Like they, you know, knew a lot about databases and Locke didn't, this turned out to be a phenomenal asset.Right. I like Justine and I know a lot about databases. The people that we hire know a lot about databases. What we needed was just someone who didn't know a lot about databases, didn't pretend to know a lot about databases, and just wanted to help us with candidates and customers. And he did. Yeah. And I have a list, right, of the investors that I have a relationship with, and Lockey has just performed excellent in the number of sub bullets of what we can attribute back to him.Just absolutely incredible. And when people talk about like no ego and just the best thing for the founder, I like, I don't think that anyone, like even my lawyer is like, yeah, Lockey is like the most friendly person you will find.swyx: Okay. This is my most glow recommendation I've ever heard.Alessio: He deserves it.He's very special.swyx: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Amazing.Alessio: Since you mentioned candidates, maybe we can talk about team building, you know, like, especially in sf, it feels like it's just easier to start a company than to join a company. Uh, I'm curious your experience, especially not being n SF full-time and doing something that is maybe, you know, a very low level of detail and technical detail.Simon Hørup Eskildsen: Yeah. So joining versus starting, I never thought that I would be a founder. I would start with it, like Turbo Puffer started as a blog post, and then it became a project and then sort of almost accidentally became a company. And now it feels like it's, it's like becoming a bigger company. That was never the intention.The intentions were very pure. It's just like, why hasn't anyone done this? And it's like, I wanna be the, like, I wanna be the first person to do it. I think some founders have this, like, I could never work for anyone else. I, I really don't feel that way. Like, it's just like, I wanna see this happen. And I wanna see it happen with some people that I really enjoy working with and I wanna have fun doing it and this, this, this has all felt very natural on that, on that sense.So it was never a like join versus versus versus found. It was just dis found me at the right moment.Alessio: Well I think there's an argument for, you should have joined Cursor, right? So I'm curious like how you evaluate it. Okay, I should actually go raise money and make this a company versus like, this is like a company that is like growing like crazy.It's like an interesting technical problem. I should just build it within Cursor and then they don't have to encrypt all this stuff. They don't have to obfuscate things. Like was that on your mind at all orSimon Hørup Eskildsen: before taking the, the small check from Lockie, I did have like a hard like look at myself in the mirror of like, okay, do I really want to do this?And because if I take the money, I really have to do it right. And so the way I almost think about it's like you kind of need to ha like you kind of need to be like fucked up enough to want to go all the way. And that was the conversation where I was like, okay, this is gonna be part of my life's journey to build this company and do it in the best way that I possibly can't.Because if I ask people to join me, ask people to get on the cap table, then I have an ultimate responsibility to give it everything. And I don't, I think some people, it doesn't occur to me that everyone takes it that seriously. And maybe I take it too seriously, I don't know. But that was like a very intentional moment.And so then it was very clear like, okay, I'm gonna do this and I'm gonna give it everything.Alessio: A lot of people don't take it this seriously. But,swyx: uh, let's talk about, you have this concept of the P 99 engineer. Uh, people are 10 x saying, everyone's saying, you know, uh, maybe engineers are out of a job. I don't know.But you definitely see a P 99 engineer, and I just want you to talk about it.Simon Hørup Eskildsen: Yeah, so the P 99 engineer was just a term that we started using internally to talk about candidates and talk about how we wanted to build the company. And you know, like everyone else is, like we want a talent dense company.And I think that's almost become trite at this point. What I credit the cursor founders a lot with is that they just arrived there from first principles of like, we just need a talent dense, um, talent dense team. And I think I've seen some teams that weren't talent dense and like seemed a counterfactual run, which if you've run in been in a large company, you will just see that like it's just logically will happen at a large company.Um, and so that was super important to me and Justine and it's very difficult to maintain. And so we just needed, we needed wording for it. And so I have a document called Traits of the P 99 Engineer, and it's a bullet point list. And I look at that list after every single interview that I do, and in every single recap that we do and every recap we end with.End with, um, some version of I'm gonna reject this candidate completely regardless of what the discourse was, because I wanna see people fight for this person because the default should not be, we're gonna hire this person. The default should be, we're definitely not hiring this person. And you know, if everyone was like, ah, maybe throw a punch, then this is not the right.swyx: Do, do you operate, like if there's one cha there must have at least one champion who's like, yes, I will put my career on, on, on the line for this. You know,Simon Hørup Eskildsen: I think career on the line,swyx: maybe a chair, butSimon Hørup Eskildsen: yeah. You know, like, um, I would say so someone needs to like, have both fists up and be like, I'd fight.Right? Yeah. Yeah. And if one person said, then, okay, let's do it. Right?swyx: Yeah.Simon Hørup Eskildsen: Um. It doesn't have to be absolutely everyone. Right? And like the interviews are always the sign that you're checking for different attributes. And if someone is like knocking it outta the park in every single attribute, that's, that's fairly rare.Um, but that's really important. And so the traits of the P 99 engineer, there's lots of them. There's also the traits of the p like triple nine engineer and the quadruple nine engineer. This is like, it's a long list.swyx: Okay.Simon Hørup Eskildsen: Um, I'll give you some samples, right. Of what we, what we look for. I think that the P 99 engineer has some history of having bent, like their trajectory or something to their will.Right? Some moment where it was just, they just, you know, made the computer do what it needed to do. There's something like that, and it will, it will occur to have them at some point in their career. And, uh. Hopefully multiple times. Right.swyx: Gimme an example of one of your engineers that like,Simon Hørup Eskildsen: I'll give an eng.Uh, so we, we, we launched this thing called A and NV three. Um, we could, we're also, we're working on V four and V five right now, but a and NV three can search a hundred billion vectors with a P 50 of around 40 milliseconds and a p 99 of 200 milliseconds. Um, maybe other people have done this, I'm sure Google and others have done this, but, uh, we haven't seen anyone, um, at least not in like a public consumable SaaS that can do this.And that was an engineer, the chief architect of Turbo Puffer, Nathan, um, who more or less just bent this, the software was not capable of this and he just made it capable for a very particular workload in like a, you know, six to eight week period with the help of a lot of the team. Right. It's been, been, there's numerous of examples of that, like at, at turbo puff, but that's like really bending the software and X 86 to your will.It was incredible to watch. Um. You wanna see some moments like that?swyx: Isn't that triple nine?Simon Hørup Eskildsen: Um, I think Nathan, what's calledAlessio: group nine, that was only nine. I feel like this is too high forSimon Hørup Eskildsen: Nathan. Nathan is, uh, Nathan is like, yeah, there's a lot of nines. Okay. After that p So I think that's one trait. I think another trait is that, uh, the P 99 spends a lot of time looking at maps.Generally it's their preferred ux. They just love looking at maps. You ever seen someone who just like, sits on their phone and just like, scrolls around on a map? Or did you not look at maps A lot? You guys don't look atswyx: maps? I guess I'm not feeling there. I don't know, butSimon Hørup Eskildsen: you just dis What about trains?Do you like trains?swyx: Uh, I mean they, not enough. Okay. This is just like weapon nice. Autism is what I call it. Like, like,Simon Hørup Eskildsen: um, I love looking at maps, like, it's like my preferred UX and just like I, you know, I likeswyx: lotsAlessio: of, of like random places, soswyx: like,youswyx: know.Alessio: Yes. Okay. There you go. So instead of like random places, like how do you explore the maps?Simon Hørup Eskildsen: No, it's, it's just a joke.swyx: It's autism laugh. It's like you are just obsessed by something and you like studying a thing.Simon Hørup Eskildsen: The origin of this was that at some point I read an interview with some IOI gold medalistswyx: Uhhuh,Simon Hørup Eskildsen: and it's like, what do you do in your spare time? I was just like, I like looking at maps.I was like, I feel so seen. Like, I just like love, like swirling out. I was like, oh, Canada is so big. Where's Baffin Island? I don't know. I love it. Yeah. Um, anyway, so the traits of P 99, P 99 is obsessive, right? Like, there's just like, you'll, you'll find traits of that we do an interview at, at, at, at turbo puffer or like multiple interviews that just try to screen for some of these things.Um, so. There's lots of others, but these are the kinds of traits that we look for.swyx: I'll tell you, uh, some people listen for like some of my dere stuff. Uh, I do think about derel as maps. Um, you draw a map for people, uh, maps show you the, uh, what is commonly agreed to be the geographical features of what a boundary is.And it shows also shows you what is not doing. And I, I think a lot of like developer tools, companies try to tell you they can do everything, but like, let's, let's be real. Like you, your, your three landmarks are here, everyone comes here, then here, then here, and you draw a map and, and then you draw a journey through the map.And like that. To me, that's what developer relations looks like. So I do think about things that way.Simon Hørup Eskildsen: I think the P 99 thinks in offs, right? The P 99 is very clear about, you know, hey, turbo puffer, you can't run a high transaction workload on turbo puffer, right? It's like the right latency is a hundred milliseconds.That's a clear trade off. I think the P 99 is very good at articulating the trade offs in every decision. Um. Which is exactly what the map is in your case, right?swyx: Uh, yeah, yeah. My, my, my world. My world.Alessio: How, how do you reconcile some of these things when you're saying you bend the will the computer versus like the trade

PlantSwitch CEO Dillon Baxter won a 25-million-unit Walmart contract before his company had a production facility. He flew to China, stood up a 300,000 square foot vertically integrated factory in 45 days, and delivered 100 million forks in the first year. This episode covers what he learned about vertical integration, GTM sequencing, and why selling materials to legacy manufacturers is a trap most founders fall into too late.Winning a Walmart contract with no factory and executing a 45-day China buildoutThe failure mode of selling raw materials to legacy manufacturers — and the vertical integration pivot that unlocked PMFCompeting against greenwashing in the "industrial compostable" categoryHow tariffs and trade war disruption killed national procurement cycles and forced a distribution pivotBuilding a full product catalog as the precondition for distribution network leverageLive Nation partnership and the shift to mid-market B2B distributionPricing strategy against plastic alternatives, not commodity plasticSelling materials to legacy manufacturers is a distribution trap PlantSwitch originally raised on the premise of creating the raw material and letting large manufacturers take it to market. It looked clean on a pitch deck. In practice, a legacy plastics manufacturer has no urgency to sell a new sustainable material — it's a rounding error on their P&L. For PlantSwitch, it was survival. The insight isn't just operational; it's about sales intensity asymmetry. Whoever has the most to lose will always outsell the partner who doesn't. "If you sell a new material to a manufacturer, they still have to go sell that to the customer. Who is going to be better at selling that material to the customer — is it going to be the legacy manufacturer who's been selling plastic for 50 years, or is it going to be the young, innovative startup where that's our livelihood?"Distribution network before product catalog — then invert When trade war uncertainty froze national procurement cycles, PlantSwitch pivoted away from chasing large direct accounts and spent 2024 building a distribution network. The sequencing was deliberate: no distributor wants a single SKU. PlantSwitch had to build straws, cutlery, cups, and variations across all of them to have a compelling catalog. Now that the network exists, every new product launch has immediate reach. "Now that we've built out that distribution network, it's a lot easier to just get penetration for those products and sell them to our existing customers."Your biggest contract shouldn't require a factory you don't have — but it might be your best outcome anyway The conventional wisdom is to ramp into enterprise. PlantSwitch skipped it entirely, went straight to Walmart, and had to build a 300,000 square foot factory in 45 days to deliver. The compressed execution forced operational rigor that a slow ramp never would have. The cost was pressure. The benefit was capability consolidation. "Trial by fire at its finest."Compete against the greenwashing tier, not commodity pricing PlantSwitch's customers have already ruled out plastic. The real competitive set is the "industrial compostable" category — products labeled sustainable that require special high-heat facilities to compost, and which still create microplastics if they end up in the environment. Customers in that category are paying a premium for a sustainability story that doesn't hold. PlantSwitch competes on being genuinely home compostable, at competitive pricing, with higher performance. "Companies are paying double for this sustainable messaging and it's not solving any sort of sustainable problem."// Sponsors: Front Lines — Silicon Valley's leading Podcast Production Studio. We help B2B tech companies launch, manage, and grow podcasts that drive demand, awareness, and thought leadership. Mention you are a listener and get a 10% discount. www.FrontLines.io/Podcast-as-a-Service

Distribution finance is complex: thin margins, thousands of SKUs, intercompany inventory transfers, fluctuating freight costs, and constant working capital pressure. Yet many organizations are still managing consolidation and reporting with disconnected systems and spreadsheets. In this episode of CPM Customer Success, we explore the biggest financial challenges facing wholesale and industrial distribution companies—from fragmented ERP environments to slow, risk-prone close cycles and limited margin visibility. Through two real-world customer stories, we highlight how a unified CPM platform helped modernize consolidation, automate intercompany processes, accelerate close, and deliver deeper insight into profitability by SKU, customer, and region.

Double Tap - Ep 452 This episode of Double Tap is brought to you by: Gideon Optics (Code: WLSISLIFE) Primary Arms Blue Alpha Rost Martin (Code: WLSISLIFE) Otis Technology (Code: WELIKESHOOTING15) Mitchell Defense (Code: WLS10) Text Dear WLS or Reviews +1 743 500 2171  Public https://welikeshooting.com/titles/ DEAR WLS Question from Mistertheguyaskingaquestion Question from Mistertheguyaskingaquestion. I recently ordered my first suppressor since I live in a comme state now and they're trying to put a $500 tax on suppressors. I got a resilient suppressors, simple man 30 cal can. 2 questions. One, Is this a decent suppressor for the $500 I paid. Two, how many rounds do you think it will last. I will mostly be using it on bolt actions with occasional use on an ar. Great show! Some notes Question from Scott G Scott G here I own a few different scopes in varying quality and price points I'd say my lowest ” grade” being a vortex cross fire and my highest being a nightforce atacr , with the middle point being a meopta optica 6 and low end middle ( but still very nice) being a swamp fox Warhawk . My question on a that scale Nightforce to cross fire where would you guys rank the new Gideon 5-25 in quality , clarity and chromatic aberration. ? Keep on kicking ass . PS I sent this in around shot show time frame so I will be ready…… march ish what do you guys think is the sjngubeat thing to come out of shot? My .02 is the integral sub 2k ! Question from Mark S Shawn – thought yall might wanna talk about this one in the show. I a show or 2 behind so you may have already talked about it though. https://odysee.com/@Nopel:6/M1337_VersionB1:5 Question from KY Horseman from Kentucky Aaron sucks Put a Mediator II on my Echelon. What do y'all think? Thanks KY Horseman Question from Scott G from Washington Scott G here simple question… rideout dragon what are the team's thoughts? Question from Ted H. from Virginia Ted H. What is a good scope for hunting in the woods/mountains (think appalachia). i currently hunt in NC and WV and im looking to get a higher end scope. The farthest ive shot and can see is about 200 yards but my scope get blurry at that distance. Im currently using a Vortex diamondback 3-9 but would like to go higher to ensure better shot placement. I plan budget and spend around $2000 not including the mount, caps, etc… Thank you and have a good day GUN INDUSTRY NEWS Imported Story https://pew.report/c/PXu40U Strike Industries Modular Chassis for Ruger 10/22 Receivers Strike Industries has released a modular chassis machined from 6061 aluminum, designed specifically for Ruger 10/22 receivers. It features a short one-piece handguard with bottom ARCA rail, M-LOK slots, QD sling swivel sockets, thumb rests, AR-15 pistol grip compatibility, flared magazine well, and support for AR-15 buffer tubes and Picatinny rail stocks. A 0-MOA Picatinny rail is included for optics mounting. Smith & Wesson Performance Center Equalizer Carry Comp Smith & Wesson has added the Performance Center Equalizer Carry Comp to its Carry Comp Series, a 9mm micro-compact pistol featuring EZ technology, PowerPort recoil reduction, and optics-ready slide. It includes a single-action Performance Center trigger, Picatinny rail, enhanced serrations, and Ameriglo Trooper sights. Announced on March 5, 2026, it targets defensive use across diverse shooters. EAA Corp CMX & CMXX Double-Stack 9mm Pistols Now Shipping EAA Corp's Witness2311 family CMX and CMXX are double-stack 1911-style pistols with 4.25-inch barrels and 8-inch overall length, featuring aggressive grip texturing, no grip safety (replaced by Auto Firing Pin Block), tuned 4.5 lb trigger, and RMSc optic-ready slide. The CMX has a bull barrel in 9mm (SKU 395060), while the CMXX adds an integral compensator in 9mm (SKU 395065, shipping now), with 10mm (SKU 395026) and .45 ACP (SKU 395068) versions pre-orderable for later spring. They are compatible with many standard 1911 parts and magazines. US Army GTA 07-10-005 Sniper Reference Book The United States Army Sniper Reference Book, designated GTA 07-10-005, is now available for public download. The PDF is hosted on the Army's training catalog site. No pricing or detailed contents are specified in the announcement. Thompson/Center Encore ProHunter Pistols Thompson/Center has reintroduced the Encore ProHunter pistol series, built on the same break-action platform as their Encore rifles. The pistols feature interchangeable barrels, with 12-inch and 15-inch options available, and a stainless steel/rubber grip and forend on a CNC-machined frame. This reboot allows buyers to purchase the frame separately and add barrels without gunsmithing. Sig Sauer P365 DH3 Series Sig Sauer has released the P365 DH3 series, including models P365-XF DH3, P365-DH3 AXG, and P365 DH3 Romeo-X SIG-LOC, designed for competition with the MACRO grip module. Developed with world champion shooter Daniel Horner, these striker-fired 9mm pistols feature enhanced recoil management via a slide-integrated expansion chamber and 3.7-inch barrel. Key highlights include custom serrations, XRAY3 sights, high-capacity magazines up to 21+1, and optic-ready configurations. Smith & Wesson Equalizer Carry Comp Smith & Wesson has introduced the Equalizer Carry Comp, the latest carry-comp version in its handgun series, featuring Performance Center upgrades on a micro-compact 9mm frame. It incorporates EZ technology for easier slide operation, a PowerPort for recoil reduction, and optics-ready slide. The model offers flexible magazine capacities of 10, 13, or 15 rounds. Vertx Everyday Fanny Pack+ The Vertx Everyday Fanny Pack+ is a compact 4-liter waist pack designed for everyday carry with integrated concealed carry functionality. It features a water-resistant 100-percent nylon outer shell, a dedicated loop-lined CCW compartment measuring approximately 9.75 by 6.25 by 2 inches that accommodates full-size handguns, and organizational pockets including a main compartment with loop panel, front zippered pocket with mesh sleeves and key lanyard, and a back smartphone pocket. Unique elements include the Modular Holster Retention system, swappable Rapid Access Pull tab for ambidextrous use, and options for waist or cross-body wear. Before we let you go – JOIN GUN OWNERS OF AMERICA We'd love if you supported the show, join Agency 171 at agency171.com. Lot's of prizes, rewards and kick ass swag. No matter how tough your battle is today, we want you here fight with us tomorrow. Don't struggle in silence, you can contact the suicide prevention line by dialing 988 from your phone. Remember – Always prefer Dangerous Freedom over peaceful slavery. We'll see you next time! Nick – @busbuiltsystems | Bus Built Systems Jeremy – @ret_actual | Rivers Edge Tactical Aaron – @machinegun_moses Savage – @savage1r Shawn – @dangerousfreedomyt | @camorado.cam | Camorado

GFA 484. Basil Zaidi of Make Brands Big breaks down Amazon's Halo sales data, placement modifier mistakes, and SKU-level budget allocation — plus why emerging Asian brands should sell direct on Western marketplaces before signing distributors.

Resale is evolving from a fragmented, thrift-driven experience into a technology-enabled infrastructure layer for the apparel industry. James Reinhart, co-founder and CEO of ThredUp, joins Bloomberg Intelligence senior equity retail analyst Poonam Goyal on this episode of the Tech Disruptors podcast. They discuss how automation, machine learning and AI are reshaping the economics of secondhand retail. He explains the “single-SKU” challenge that makes resale fundamentally different from traditional e-commerce, and how ThredUp's investment in supply-chain automation and data science aims to unlock scale, margin expansion and improved inventory velocity. Reinhart also explores the company's shift toward AI-driven discovery, its expansion into direct-selling capabilities and the growing role of resale as a recommerce partner to brands. He outlines why he believes technology — not just consumer demand — will determine which resale platforms achieve durable profitability in the next phase of retail disruption.

Dr. Mark Young, the Founder and CEO of Jekyll & Hyde Advertising, a powerhouse agency that's been helping challenger consumer brands break through the noise and scale into household names with billions of revenue and exits for nearly three decades.He's also the host of the CPG insiders podcast, the number 2 podcast in all consumer packaged goods niche.Mark is also the author of a new book 27 Unbreakable Rules of Retail, how to build a $100M+ brand in brick and mortarMark is not your average marketer — his background blends neuroscience, persuasion, and behavioral psychology with decades of hands-on experience in CPG and direct-response advertising. Through his agency, Jekyll & Hyde, he's helped hundreds of emerging brands launch, grow, and dominate retail shelves and online marketplaces.Highlight Bullets> Here's a glimpse of what you would learn…. Importance of brick-and-mortar retail in the consumer products industry.Challenges faced by e-commerce brands in a competitive market.Strategies for successfully entering physical retail spaces.The significance of product differentiation and authenticity in retail.The impact of traditional media, especially television, on brand awareness and consumer demand.The concept of SKU rationalization and its role in retail product selection.The necessity of creating consumer demand before approaching retail buyers.Understanding the economics of media buying and the Media Efficiency Ratio (MER).The principle of "Who Not How" in building a successful business team.The role of AI as a collaborative tool in enhancing business strategies.In this episode of the Ecomm Breakthrough Podcast, host Josh Hadley interviews Dr. Mark Young, CEO of Jekyll and Hyde Advertising. Mark shares his expertise on building $100 million consumer brands in brick-and-mortar retail, emphasizing that 80% of product sales still occur offline. He discusses the challenges of retail entry, the importance of unique, premium products, and the power of TV advertising to drive demand. Mark also highlights the value of expert partnerships and leveraging both human intuition and AI, offering actionable advice for e-commerce brands aiming to succeed in physical retail.Here are the 3 action items that Josh identified from this episode:Prove Demand Before Approaching RetailersBuild real consumer pull through DTC + paid media (TV, social, influencers). Retail buyers want evidence of demand, not Amazon screenshots. Come in with a buyer-ready pitch showing how you'll drive traffic to their stores.Position Your Product as a Clear Upgrade or Category ExpanderEnsure your SKU hits at least one winning lever:Premium trade-up (higher-margin, innovative)Demographic expander (brings new shoppers)Category expander (increases consumption)If your product is a “me-too” item, it won't make it onto shelves.Build a Retail-Ready P&L With Strong Margins & Media PlanYou need minimum 5:1 markup and a funded media strategy (TV recommended) to support retail sell-through. Retailers expect marketing that drives velocity—without it, your product risks getting cut during SKU rationalization.Resources mentioned in this episode:Josh Hadley on LinkedIneComm Breakthrough ConsultingeComm Breakthrough PodcastEmail Josh Hadley: Josh@eCommBreakthrough.comAmazonChatGPTShopifyHelium 10IRI (Information Resources, Inc.)Meta AdsWRTVJekyll+Hyde LabsCPG InsidersThinking, Fast and Slow"Who Not How" by Dan Sullivan and Ben Hardy"The Science of Scaling" by Dr. Ben HardyPrimal IntelligenceWalmartShark TankThe Home DepotDan SullivanSpecial Mention(s):Adam “Heist” Runquist on LinkedInKevin King on LinkedInMichael E. Gerber on LinkedInRelated Episode(s):“Cracking the Amazon Code: Learn From Adam Heist's Brand Scaling Secrets” on the eComm Breakthrough Podcast“Kevin King's Wicked-Smart Tips for Building an Audience of Raving Fans” on the eComm Breakthrough Podcast

What does it take to build a successful textile brand when you're competing against legacy companies with household names? Otis Weis answers that question by sharing his decade-long journey of growing Otis Textiles from a 20-fabric startup to a 260-SKU collection that serves hundreds of high-end design firms across the United States and internationally. After leaving investment banking due to health issues, Otis discovered his passion for textiles while helping his mother Catherine Ireland streamline her fabric business, ultimately deciding to create his own line focused on woven fabrics with a contemporary, California-inspired aesthetic.Otis reveals the unconventional strategies that fueled his success, particularly his decision to abandon the traditional showroom model in favor of selling directly to designers. By sending branded boxes containing his entire collection to nearly 3,000 design firms, maintaining exceptional inventory levels, and offering fast turnaround on custom orders through integrated relationships with Italian mills, Otis created a competitive advantage based on service and accessibility rather than marketing spend. He discusses the importance of listening to customers—noting how simultaneous requests for similar colors or textures reveal emerging trends—and his philosophy of creating timeless fabrics that remain relevant season after season.The episode also explores the practical challenges of running a textile business, from navigating complex tariff regulations to deciding whether to expand into new categories like wallcoverings or furniture. Otis shares his perspective on pricing integrity during economic uncertainty, the value of working with small artisan mills where generations of expertise create irreplaceable quality, and why he chose to launch outdoor fabrics despite initially wanting to focus solely on natural fibers. His approach—organic growth, relationship-building, and refusing to compromise quality for scale—offers a refreshing alternative to the rapid-exit startup mentality and demonstrates how staying true to your vision can build both profitability and legacy.

We'd love to have your feedback and ideas for future episodes of Retail Unwrapped. Just text us!The consumer movement to invest in secondhand is led by values: meaning, provenance, and sustainability. Re-commerce is not a niche; it's a $180-$200 billion global, parallel economy growing up to five times faster than traditional retail. The brands that get this right think beyond the first sale and plan for the lifetime value of a product, including multiple sales. Join Shelley and Romain Fouache, CEO of Akeneo, as they discuss why eBay's acquisition of Depop for $1.2 billion strengthens its core business and marks a structural inflection point.  A data expert, Romain makes the case for the power of transparency. Secondhand operations are logistically incompatible with firsthand retail models. Every resale item is its own unique SKU, its own story, condition, and context. Brands that attempt to glue re-commerce onto traditional operations without rethinking their infrastructure are setting themselves up for expensive failure. Listen and learn how the brands that will win in re-commerce will be the ones with the richest, most comprehensive product information, including materials, origin, manufacturing details, and use history. Special Guest: Romain Fouache, CEO, AkeneoFor more strategic insights and compelling content, visit TheRobinReport.com, where you can read, watch, and listen to content from Robin Lewis and other retail industry experts, and be sure to follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter.

In "Is Your ERP a Data Graveyard: How to Unlock Millions with Nauta's Valentina Jordan", Joe Lynch and Valentina Jordan, Co-Founder and CEO of Nauta, discuss how structuring fragmented data turns supply chain silos into actionable revenue. About Valentina Jordan Valentina Jordan is the Co-Founder and CEO of Nauta, where she is re-engineering supply chains through clean AI data infrastructure. Previously, Valentina led product for Rappi's largest business segment, helping build and scale the core product stack behind Latin America's largest delivery platform, before bringing that same operational rigor to leadership roles at Amazon. At Nauta, Valentina brings a product-first, systems-level perspective to rethinking how supply chains operate, tackling the industry's most foundational challenge: building clean, structured data infrastructure that enables smarter decision-making. About Nauta Nauta is the AI-native operating system that connects your inventory, logistics, and procurement data into one intelligent layer. By acting as an intelligent membrane over existing ERP, TMS, and WMS systems, Nauta eliminates "data graveyards" by unifying fragmented data from emails, documents, and spreadsheets into a single source of truth. The platform moves beyond simple visibility, providing SKU-level insights and automated workflows that allow shippers to proactively manage exception handling and cash flow. Trusted by multinational leaders in the food, beverage, and retail sectors including distributors for brands like New Balance, Modelo, and L'Oreal, Nauta manages data for enterprises representing over $15B in annual sales. SOC 2 Type II certified, the platform empowers manufacturers and retailers to reduce container lifecycle times, prevent stockouts, and eliminate costly penalties like detention fees. Nauta's mission is to provide the standardized "rails of data infrastructure" necessary for truly autonomous and resilient global supply chains.  Key Takeaways: Is Your ERP a Data Graveyard: How to Unlock Millions In "Is Your ERP a Data Graveyard: How to Unlock Millions with Nauta's Valentina Jordan", Joe Lynch and Valentina Jordan, Co-Founder and CEO of Nauta, discuss how structuring fragmented data turns supply chain silos into actionable revenue. The "Data Fragmentation" Mess: Global shippers are stuck with data trapped in emails, PDFs, and clunky legacy systems. This chaos forces teams to waste 75% of their day babysitting spreadsheets instead of making moves that actually scale the business. One Single Source of Truth: Nauta fixes this as an AI-native engine that pulls those messy data streams into one place. From finance to procurement, everyone works off the same live data—killing "tribal knowledge" for good. The Real Cost of Stockouts: For brands like Modelo or L'Oreal, a stockout isn't just a missed sale; it's a hit to your reputation and a massive financial penalty. Nauta shifts you from reactive "firefighting" to proactive prevention. Saving Millions in Revenue: Using predictive analytics, Nauta's inventory engine flags risks weeks in advance. One customer even saved $1.2M in a single quarter by dodging retail penalties and lost sales. Killing "Dry Runs" and Fees: Shippers pay for empty trucks because they can't see what's happening at the port. Nauta's predictive tech and automated communication can slash detention costs by up to 80%. SKU-Level Control: Most platforms track the box; Nauta tracks the product. We map data down to the individual item, so you know exactly which vessel is carrying your high-priority promotional stock. Smarter Procurement: With SKU-level insights, your team can make surgical decisions—like rerouting high-demand items before they even dock—ensuring the right product hits the right shelf every time. Learn More About Is Your ERP a Data Graveyard: How to Unlock Millions Valentina Jordan | Linkedin Nauta | Linkedin Nauta The Logistics of Logistics Podcast If you enjoy the podcast, please leave a positive review, subscribe, and share it with your friends and colleagues. The Logistics of Logistics Podcast: Google, Apple, Castbox, Spotify, Stitcher, PlayerFM, Tunein, Podbean, Owltail, Libsyn, Overcast Check out The Logistics of Logistics on Youtube

In an era of low-and-no headlines, one contrarian wine brand leaned into flavor high ABV. It scaled to 2.5 million cases in just three years.In this episode of Business of Drinks, Erica sits down with Kaitlin Silva, Director of National Accounts at Tri-Vin Wines & Spirits, to unpack how XXL went from roughly 85,000 cases in its first year (2023) to 2.5 million cases in 2025, while much of wine was flat or declining.The story isn't just about virality; it's about execution.XXL didn't start by winning Walmart. It was built in independent markets first - including roughly 100,000 cases in Maryland and about 300,000 cases in New York in year two. Consumers were actively looking for the brand. That pull-through gave Tri-Vin leverage when approaching national chains. Kaitlin offers a rare inside look at how national accounts actually function, with two reset windows a year and six-to-eight-month feedback loops. It's a “hurry up and wait” cycle where you're pitching into fall's reset before knowing your spring results. We also discuss how data is the real language of chains. Kaitlin talks about living in SKU rankings, flavor segmentation, and state-by-state performance slicing. As she says, you may not be top 100 overall - but you might be top 5 within a specific subsegment in that region, and that's the conversation that opens doors.Perhaps most interesting for trade listeners: Velocity is currently winning over pure margin optimization. Many chains are focused on moving units and driving incremental shoppers in a value-conscious environment. XXL's ability to turn - and to bring new consumers into the wine aisle - has been central to its expansion.If you're building a beverage brand, pitching national accounts, or trying to understand where wine's real growth pockets are emerging, this episode offers perspective on how independents create momentum, how data earns scale, and why sometimes the biggest opportunity comes from zigging while everyone else zags.For the latest updates, follow us:Business of Drinks:YouTubeLinkedInInstagram @bizofdrinksErica Duecy, co-host: Erica Duecy is founder and co-host of Business of Drinks and one of the drinks industry's most accomplished digital and content strategists. She runs the consultancy and advisory arm of Business of Drinks and has built publishing and marketing programs for Drizly, VinePair, SevenFifty, and other hospitality and drinks tech companies.LinkedInInstagram @ericaduecyScott Rosenbaum, co-host: Scott Rosenbaum is co-host of Business of Drinks and a veteran strategist and analyst with deep experience building drinks portfolios. Most recently, he was the Portfolio Development Director at Distill Ventures. Prior to that, he was the Vice President of T. Edward Wines & Spirits, a New York-based importer and distributor.LinkedInCaroline Lamb, contributor: Caroline is a producer and on-air contributor at Business of Drinks and a key account sales and marketing specialist at AHD Vintners, a Michigan-based importer and distributor.LinkedInInstagram @borkalineIf you enjoyed today's conversation, follow Business of Drinks wherever you're listening, and don't forget to rate and review us. Your support helps us reach new listeners passionate about the drinks industry. Thank you!

Nationwide Whole Foods distribution. A seven-figure DTC engine. A five-person team. In this episode, Ashley Nickelsen, the founder and CEO of nutrition bar and chocolate brand B.T.R. Nation, breaks down the systems behind her brand's growth, from using DTC zip-code data to unlock retail expansion, to building a creative-first Meta ads strategy that drives real revenue (not just impressions).  She shares why velocity is her North Star metric, how she thinks about omnichannel as a flywheel – not separate businesses – how she evaluates when syndicated data is worth the cost, and why she chose to self-warehouse to maintain margin and operational control.  Ashley also unpacks her approach to pricing across channels, portfolio expansion beyond a single hero SKU, and constant creative testing in one of grocery's most competitive categories.  Show notes: 0:20: Ashley Nickelsen, Founder & CEO, B.T.R. Nation – Ashley talks about her deep ties to New York City and a life largely spent on the road for work. She also shares her path into CPG from a master's in higher education and then into the supplement world and applied lessons from her experience to B.T.R., Ashley's discusses evolution as a spokesperson and her belief that brands need a consistent "face," explains B.T.R.'s origin story and how losing both parents to rare cancers before age 30 shaped her mission and her decision to avoid natural flavors. She describes how trust and community grew "organically" through direct customer engagement and helps generate retail discovery and online reorders across channels. She also details how B.T.R. approaches growth with constant iteration while keeping affordability and velocity in mind, and shares practical learnings on Meta advertising and how to pair digital attribution with retail data stories to win new accounts. Brands in this episode: B.T.R. Nation, Spindrift, Mid-Day Squares, Graza, Simple Mills, Siete, Perfect Bar, Lily's, Unreal, Heinz, Crumbl

Today, I'm joined by Kat Cole, CEO of AG1.   Evolving from a $160M single-SKU brand to $500M+ revenue, AG1's in hypergrowth mode — adding flavors and sleep aid AGZ, entering Costco, and investing $30M in clinical research.   In this episode, we discuss building foundational capabilities before scaling complexity.   We also cover:   Handling criticism and competition Insights from early operational mishaps Strategies for retail expansion and packaging redesign   Subscribe to the podcast → insider.fitt.co/podcast  Subscribe to our newsletter → insider.fitt.co/subscribe  Follow us on LinkedIn → linkedin.com/company/fittinsider    AG1's Website: www.drinkag1.com  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drinkag1  Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@drinkag1  X (Twitter): https://x.com/drink_AG1  The Fitt Insider Podcast is brought to you by EGYM. Visit EGYM.com to learn more about its smart fitness ecosystem for fitness and health facilities. Fitt Talent: https://talent.fitt.co/  Consulting: https://consulting.fitt.co/  Investments: https://capital.fitt.co/  Chapters: (00:00) Introduction (01:50) Kat stepping into CEO role (02:30) Multi-product, multi-channel evolution (03:05) US blending capacity expansion (04:00) First flavors after 10+ years (04:45) AGZ launch: consolidating sleep stack (07:01) Operating gaps despite hypergrowth (09:00) New Zealand supply chain dependency (10:30) Leaky shaker bottles insight (13:00) Real growth at scale (14:20) Delaying retail expansion (16:00) Packaging redesign for shelf (18:20) NSF certification delays (20:10) D2C relationship advantages (22:05) $30M research commitment (23:15) Double-blind trials and skepticism (25:20) Larger studies: 100 vs. 30 participants (27:00) Why competitors don't invest in research (28:20) Handling criticism and competitors (30:00) Apple, Lululemon comparison (32:00) Using critique to improve (33:30) Marketing science strategy (35:00) Scientific advisory council (36:21) Podcast marketing reality (38:25) Referral and gifting conversion (40:00) Multi-channel integration (41:20) Retail as billboard (42:20) Costco untapped awareness (43:20) Slow operational work pays off (44:02) Future retail expansion (45:00) Stacking products customers request (45:39) Conclusion

If you've ever wondered why selling on Amazon feels harder than it should, you're not alone.In this episode, I unpack why selling on Amazon can feel so complicated, even when you're capable and experienced. From navigating Amazon Seller Central to dealing with inconsistent updates, suppressed listings and unclear responses from Seller Support, the platform often creates unnecessary complexity.But it is not just a systems issue.It is the mental load of not knowing whether something is normal.The second guessing when a change works on one SKU but not another.The time lost searching Google or watching tutorials that may not apply to your situation.Selling on Amazon becomes heavier when you are trying to figure it all out alone.In this episode, I also talk about what actually helps. Faster answers. Ongoing guidance. Being able to sense check decisions. Learning from other Amazon sellers who are navigating the same challenges.I share more about the Amazon Sellers Support and Connect call I held recently, and my new-and-improved membership, Amazon Made Easy.Amazon Made Easy is for product based business owners who are already selling on Amazon, or actively preparing to launch, and want practical, ongoing support without paying for full account management. It's designed to help you take action, grow your account, get support when you need it and feel more confident in your decisions, without carrying the weight of it on your own.Because while we can't change how Amazon is built, we can change how supported you feel while building your business on it. Episode Chapters:00:00 Welcome, and why selling on Amazon feels harder than it should01:20 Seller Central, outdated systems and lack of clear training02:45 The isolation of selling on Amazon alone04:10 Inconsistencies, suppressed listings and second guessing yourself05:50 Where most sellers look for help, Google, YouTube and Seller Support07:10 Why quick answers and ongoing support make such a difference08:30 The power of community and learning from other Amazon sellers09:50 Introducing Amazon Sellers Support and Connect10:40 Amazon Made Easy, what's changing and why12:00 Who the membership is for, and who it is not for13:20 Final thoughts, selling on Amazon does not have to feel this hardLET'S CONNECTEpisode 338: Why selling on Amazon feels overwhelming (even when you're doing things ‘right'): https://vickiweinberg.com/membership/Join Amazon Made Easy: https://vickiweinberg.com/membership/ Follow me on YouTubeFind me on InstagramWork with me Buy My Book: Bring Your Product Idea To LifeIf you enjoy this podcast, and you'd like to leave a tip, you can do so here: https://bring-your-product-idea.captivate.fm/supportMentioned in this episode:Hosted by CaptivateIf you've been inspired to start a podcast in 2024 then I recommend my podcast host, Captivate. They were my top pick when I started 4 years ago because of how easy it was for a complete novice to get started. I've stuck with them because it's still simple, they keep adding great new features (like the ability to share ads like these!) and it's been so reliable. When you're ready to start your own podcast, use the link for a free 7 day trial: https://www.captivate.fm/signup?ref=vickiweinberg&tap_a=53455-ceb3a2Support this podcast for the price of a coffeeif you loved this episode please consider sending me a one-off tip. It helps me to keep bringing this podcast to you, for free. If you'd like to support this podcast, you can do so here: https://bring-your-product-idea.captivate.fm/support

Your SKU System Doesn't Have to Be Complicated Your SKU system does NOT need to be complicated...but it does need to be consistent. If you're an apparel brand owner setting up your Shopify backend, preparing for a 3PL, or scaling beyond self-fulfillment, this episode of The Business of Apparel Podcast breaks down exactly how to structure your SKU numbers the right way from day one. In this short, tactical episode, Rachel simplifies SKU creation for clothing brands and explains why overengineering your numbering system can hurt your reports, your inventory accuracy, and your ability to scale. Whether you're fulfilling from your home office or preparing to work with a warehouse, this episode will help you avoid messy backend data and inventory confusion as your brand grows. Click here to get your FREE Smart SKU Generator: https://www.thebusinessofapparel.com/smart Sign up for the FREE Shopify Workshop here: https://www.thebusinessofapparel.com/shopify-workshop Sign up for the Secrets Behind Billion Dollar Apparel Brands Masterclass here: https://www.thebusinessofapparel.com/secrets Join The Board here: https://www.thebusinessofapparel.com Key Moments: 00:00 SKUs Don't Need to Be Complicated 00:26 What a SKU Is & Why It Matters for Inventory 01:10 The 3 Must-Have Parts of a SKU 01:50 Do You Really Need SKUs/Barcodes If You Fulfill Yourself? 04:01 Why Warehouses/3PLs Require Scannable SKUs (Avoid Inventory Chaos) 04:59 Introducing 'The Board' Membership 06:19 Shopify Backend: Standardize SKUs to Keep Reports Clean 07:22 Free Smart SKU Generator + How to Use It 11:09 Wrap-Up: SKU vs UPC/Barcode + Next Steps   Watch The Business of Apparel Podcast: Wholesale 101: https://youtu.be/lpezH1YwCyE Use AI in Your Apparel Brand: https://youtu.be/Dn9tjPNmfaw  Grow A 7-Figure Apparel Business: https://youtu.be/rpQYDyo5Rao We can't wait to hear what you think of this episode! Purchase the Business of Apparel Online Course: https://www.thebusinessofapparel.com/course ABOUT RACHEL: Rachel Erickson—Fractional COO, Apparel Industry Consultant, and founder of Unmarked Street and The Business of Apparel. With 20+ years in technical design and product development leadership, I've sat at the executive table of a $25M apparel line and helped scale it to $60M in one year. After decades working inside major fashion companies, I learned the truth behind billion-dollar brands, and it's not about chasing trends or pumping out endless products. It's about building clean processes, tightly edited assortments, and obsessively focused customer targeting. I help founders and CEOs of performance apparel brands: ✅ Build lean, profitable product lines ✅ Streamline operations for growth ✅ Replace overwhelm with executive clarity ✅ Create garments that fit bodies in motion   Whether you're just hitting $1M in revenue or trying to break through the $10M ceiling, my team joins you as an embedded operations and product partner—running fittings, line plans, tech packs, and vendor communications so you can get back to leading.   To connect with Rachel, you can join her LinkedIn community here: LinkedIn. To visit her website, go to: www.unmarkedstreet.com.   

Hi all, I'm Marty and welcome back to Warehouse and Operations as a Career.  Today we're talking about one of the more important roles on the shipping side of things, and oddly, it’s hardly ever brought up. I find myself discussing it today only because a listener wrote in that they had applied for the position and was told they would need at least 1 year of equipment experience for the position. We're talking about the Short Chaser.  If you've never worked in a high-volume grocery, retail, produce, or foodservice DC, this position may not even be on your radar. But if you have, well, you know why I mentioned it's a very important role. When a trailer is staged, sealed, and about to be dispatched or leave the yard, yet the paperwork says we're missing a case of product, there is only one person standing between our success and customer dissatisfaction. The Short Chaser.  Today we're going to break down why the position exists, how the WMS helps drive it, some of the different types of equipment used to accomplish the task, the pressure and safety considerations, and why it's actually one of the best career-building roles in outbound operations. But then, as we've learned, in my humble opinion anyway, is that every position in the light industrial fields are great career building opportunities.   So why is the short chaser needed or why is it such an important role? Well, in large distribution centers, outbound selection is built on speed and engineered productivity standards. The Order Selectors are measured by things like cases per hour (CPH), lines per hour, and maybe pallets per hour. And then you'll have their Direct vs. indirect time metrics and travel time efficiency. In these environments, we cannot afford for selectors to stop and wait when a pick slot is empty.  So here's what happens. A selector travels down the aisle. They scan the location. The slot is empty. The Replenishment hasn't been dropped yet or the inventory count is off for one reason or another. Instead of waiting, which would destroy productivity metrics and delay the batch, the selector marks the item short in their RF unit and continues moving. The Warehouse Management System (WMS) logs that short against the load. Multiply that by 40 to 60 selectors across a shift. It adds up quick! Now you have a short list or another batch created.  Once the replenishment has been made, the WMS recognizes that inventory is now available. It then creates what most operations call a short batch. This batch includes load number, trailer number, stop number, SKU or item number, quantity shorted, slot location, and required completion time or dispatch time. The Short Chaser logs into their RF device and sees a prioritized list, usually sorted by the dispatch time. So, this role is a little bit selection, and a little bit loading, but really 100% recovery. The order selectors are pulling throughout the shift, the short chaser is of course running behind the original batch, gathering any missed or shorted cases. That means the Short Chaser operates closest to dispatch time. And in distribution, the dispatch time is sacred. If a trailer misses its dispatch window drivers lose hours, customer delivery windows are affected, route sequencing breaks down, we're outside the WMS perimeters, think of it as manual mode, and of course overtime increases and service levels can drop. So the Short Chaser works under what I like to call controlled urgency. Not chaos or panic. But controlled urgency!  Now Depending on the facility, the Short Chaser may use several types of powered industrial equipment. In the produce or specialty world we may be using the single electric rider pallet jack. Ideal for quickly grabbing partial pallets or a few cases and delivering them directly to dock or staging area for the loaders or even running the product out to the yard and adding them to the trailer. Fast, agile, and highly maneuverable. When multiple shorts are tied to the same trailer or dispatch times, the double rider jack allows movement of two pallets at once, reducing travel time and improving efficiency. We may even use the sit-down forklift, it could be used when handling full pallets, or delivering larger quantities of freight directly to trailers staged in the yard. Of course, the short chaser role requires certification and strong equipment handling skills. There is no room for unsafe operation, especially with urgency involved.  I mentioned the yard, maybe I should explain what I meant. In many large operations, once trailers are loaded, they are pulled from dock doors and staged in the yard awaiting dispatch or the driver arriving. The Short Chaser's job can expand beyond the building. They may need to identify the correct trailer in the yard, verify trailer number and route number, confirm the stop sequence, properly load secure the product, ensure the load stability and communicate back to dispatch that the load is complete and ready to go.  Sounds simple right? Think about this though. Delivering a short to the wrong trailer is worse than not delivering it at all. Because now you've created two shortages. Again, in our environment, accuracy is critical. Let's paint a real-world scenario. It's 45 minutes before dispatch. Three trailers are staged. The short batch drops with 22 SKUs, across 3 routes, with 3 different dispatch times. What does a great Short Chaser do? They prioritize by dispatch time, our warehouse route complexity or the possible different pick path we'll be taking, the items difficulty, or things like stack ability and weight. We can't stack a 50 case on top of eggs, and then of course the yard location. They communicate early. They don't wait until 5 minutes before dispatch to say, “I can't find this item.” They involve replenishment or inventory control immediately.  Here's where, I feel, the role becomes powerful for career growth. A strong Short Chaser begins to recognize patterns. They see certain SKUs consistently being shorted, replenishments that seem to always take longer to be made, slotting inefficiencies, Mis-picks during selection and cycle count issues. They begin to understand the system says one thing, but the slot sometimes says another. This is how future inventory control specialists are born. This is how future supervisors learn to ask things like why are we shorting this item three times a week? I guess I'm saying the short chaser sees things and we should speak up and communicate. It'll only help us in our careers.     Ok, I've used the word urgency several times, but it cannot override our discipline. A few of the common risks in this role include speeding through the aisles, cutting through the cross aisles, yard traffic, blind corner visibility issues and fatigue late in shift when people are tired. The expectation must be clear. You cannot rush safety.   When Short Chasers perform well, our success shows with improved on-time dispatch, higher fill rates, reduced customer claims, and reduced driver wait time. Operations managers know a strong short chasing process protects revenue, because incomplete deliveries damage our customer relationships.  And our modern WMS platforms are becoming more advanced too. We now see real-time replenishment triggers, automated alerts for low slots, dynamic slotting has really helped the order selector, Voice-directed picking systems and even AI forecasting.  All these improvements reduce shorts, but they will never eliminate them entirely. Physical inventory and system inventory will never be perfect. There will always be human error, inventory discrepancies, slotting adjustments and late replenishments.   Here's why I believe this is one of the strongest development roles in outbound operations. The Short Chaser learns WMS navigation and logic, Dispatch prioritization, Yard operations and why trailers are staged where they are, Cross-department communication, Inventory issues, and how to balance productivity. This naturally transitions into dock Lead or outbound Lead roles. Dispatch Coordinator, Inventory Control assignments and even Supervisor positions.  The best ones share some of these common traits. We'll be calm under pressure, detail-oriented, and be a strong communicator, confident and skilled on the equipment, system literate and safety disciplined.   So if you're listening today and you're working in sanitation, selection, loading, or general warehouse operations and you want to understand the bigger picture, pay attention to the Short Chaser role.  When that trailer door closes and the seal goes on and the route leaves complete and accurate, that's not luck. That's execution. And the Short Chaser is often the last line of defense before that door shuts.  Well, there's a bit on another great light industrial position! I hope you all join us again next week, and that each of you sends over a topic you'd like to hear a bit about. We love getting mail each week! Until then, remember to put safety first in all that you do and to never get on or touch a machine or piece of powered industrial equipment you've not been trained on and certified to operate. Yall be safe out there.  

In this episode of Future Fuzz, Vince Quinn sits down with Michelle Breyer, Chief Marketing Officer at SKU, to explore the powerful ecosystem at the center of a consumer product accelerator.Founded in Austin 15 years ago, SKU was built specifically to support emerging consumer product brands with education, mentorship, and meaningful connections. Michelle shares how the accelerator evolved from an in-person, Austin-focused program into a national hybrid model—unlocking access to top-tier mentors from companies like Coke, Mars, Pepsi, Whole Foods, L'Oréal, and more.The conversation dives into what makes mentorship truly transformative, how SKU intentionally builds seven-to-nine person mentor teams around each founder, and why community—not curriculum—is the real secret sauce.Michelle also shares her own entrepreneurial journey, including building and selling NaturallyCurly.com, one of the first online communities for textured hair. Her firsthand experience as a founder shapes how she supports brands navigating fundraising, scaling, and sustainable growth today.If you're interested in accelerators, community-building, or scaling consumer brands the right way, this episode is packed with insight.Guest BioMichelle Breyer is the Chief Marketing Officer at SKU, a leading accelerator dedicated to consumer packaged goods (CPG) brands.Before joining SKU, Michelle co-founded NaturallyCurly.com in 1998, one of the earliest online communities and e-commerce platforms dedicated to textured hair. What began as a passion project grew into a media, e-commerce, and market research powerhouse serving millions of users monthly. In 2018, the company was acquired by Richelieu Dennis, founder of SheaMoisture, following SheaMoisture's billion-dollar sale to Unilever.At SKU, Michelle leverages her entrepreneurial experience to help emerging brands scale sustainably through education, mentorship, and strategic connections.TakeawaysSKU was built specifically to serve the unique needs of consumer product brands.The accelerator model combines structured education with highly curated mentorship teams.Each brand receives 7–9 mentors with specific subject matter expertise.Community and connection are the true long-term value of accelerator programs.The pandemic accelerated SKU's shift to a hybrid model, expanding access nationally.Sustainable growth requires strong unit economics and operational clarity.Authenticity is essential when building a community—audiences can sense when it's forced.The best communities are built around real pain points, not trends.Founders benefit most when they don't have to “recreate the wheel.”Alumni engagement strengthens and perpetuates the ecosystem.Chapters00:00 Introduction to Michelle Breyer 00:34 What SKU Is and How It Started 02:00 The Pivot to a Hybrid Accelerator Model 03:02 How SKU Builds Mentor Teams 04:35 The Power of Long-Term Community 06:36 Michelle's Role as a Connector 07:52 The NaturallyCurly.com Origin Story 09:52 Scaling a Community into a Business 11:28 What Makes a Community Thrive 14:20 Authenticity vs. Opportunism in Community Building 17:41 Scaling SKU's Impact 18:00 Why Unit Economics Matter for Founders 19:59 The Ongoing Power of the SKU Network 21:15 Mentor Culture and Alumni Engagement 23:00 How to Get Involved with SKULinkedInFollow Michelle on LinkedIn Follow Vince on LinkedIn

Join Kaya Cast host Tommy Truong for a deep dive with Ryan Hunter of Spherex Labs. From Colorado to multi-state expansion, Ryan shares the playbook behind a disciplined, retailer-focused cannabis brand. Learn how Spherex wins at the shelf through authentic budtender relationships, in-store merchandising, and a full-stack marketing program that travels with retailers across markets. Discover why they keep a lean SKU set, how they iterate products—from rosin cartridges to a sleep gummy—tied to a relentless focus on quality hardware and reliable manufacturing. See how field marketing cadence, retailer partnerships, and data-driven programs drive sell-through and reduce over-assortment risk in a cash-constrained industry. The conversation also covers leadership, overcoming imposter syndrome, meditation and personal development, and how their consulting work intersects with cannabis entrepreneurship. If you're a dispensary or brand looking to scale sustainably—without chasing every trend—this episode offers actionable GTM and partnership insights you can apply right away. Find out more about Spherex Labs at:https://www.wearespherex.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanhunter/linkedin.com/company/6614091/ 00:00 Net Promoter Score (NPS) Explained + Why It Matters00:51 Podcast Intro + Meet Ryan (Background & How He Entered Cannabis)03:02 What Drove Spherex's Growth: Team, Discipline, and Relationships04:27 Marketing Personas & The Budtender-First Strategy06:44 Retail Partnerships, Road Game, and Scaling to New Markets10:55 Customer Journey Thinking: Community, Experimentation, and Iteration12:39 Sales + Marketing Shaping Product: Tight SKU Strategy & Quality Control15:04 Why Launch a Rosin Sleep Gummy: Market Insight + Smart Rollout21:57 Budtender Education Playbook + Measuring Impact with NPS26:23 What Sets Spherex Apart in a Commoditized Vape Cartridge Market27:24 Flavor Formulation + Hardware Quality: The Product Fundamentals28:22 Winning Budtenders: The Real Decision-Makers in Dispensaries31:35 Staying Top-of-Mind: Store Visit Cadence & Relationship Building32:14 The Over-Assortment Problem: Sell-Through, Payment Terms & Industry AR33:36 A Costco-Style Dispensary Model? Curating Fewer Brands for Better Turns34:13 Anti-Gravity Consulting: From Go-To-Market Strategy to Coaching & Psychedelics36:28 Imposter Syndrome & Unworthiness: What Shows Up in Coaching38:24 Psychedelic Facilitation (Cannabis): Softening Ego & Reworking Identity40:12 Meditation as the Antidote: Losing Anxiety, Not Your Edge48:56 Attention in a Dopamine World: Mindfulness, ADHD, and Social Media Boundaries51:13 Savoring & Presence: Relearning Joy in Everyday Moments52:56 Where to Find Ryan + Podcast Wrap-Upcannabis retail strategy, cannabis brand expansion, multi-state cannabis brand, Colorado cannabis market, cannabis merchandising strategy, dispensary shelf strategy, cannabis sell-through optimization, cannabis retail partnerships, budtender relationships, budtender engagement strategy, dispensary product merchandising, cannabis go-to-market strategy, cannabis GTM playbook, cannabis SKU optimization, lean SKU strategy cannabis, cannabis product assortment planning, dispensary inventory strategy, cannabis manufacturing reliability, cannabis hardware quality, rosin vape cartridges, cannabis rosin carts, cannabis sleep gummies, infused sleep gummies cannabis, cannabis product innovation, cannabis brand scaling, cannabis retailer marketing programs, dispensary field marketing, cannabis field marketing cadence, cannabis brand consulting, cannabis entrepreneurship, cannabis leadership development, cannabis founder mindset, cannabis business growth strategy, cannabis retail expansion strategy, cannabis brand partnerships, dispensary sales enablement, cannabis retail analytics, cannabis data-driven retail, cannabis merchandising analytics, dispensary sell-through metrics, cannabis inventory turnover, cannabis retail operations strategy, cannabis retailer loyalty programs, cannabis brand positioning, cannabis product quality strategy, cannabis packaging strategy, cannabis compliance manufacturing, cannabis supply chain reliability, cannabis distribution strategy, dispensary category management, cannabis category optimization, cannabis retail marketing strategy, dispensary marketing partnerships, cannabis consulting services, cannabis operator insights, cannabis podcast insights, Kaya Cast podcast, cannabis industry leadership, cannabis personal development, cannabis founder meditation, cannabis imposter syndrome leadership #kayacast #cannabis #tips #dispensaries #business #podcast

Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupKareem Raslan (co-founder of BrainGain) breaks down how a “25 dumbbells in a garage” COVID side-hustle turned into a home gym brand with 100,000+ customers across 30 countries. We talk heavy-product logistics, why “just run Meta” isn't the whole story, and what it really takes to expand across Europe without margin leakage.For DTC operators selling high-AOV, physical products who want to expand beyond one market without getting crushed by fulfillment and localization.In this episode, we cover:Why BrainGain skipped dropshipping and went product-in-hand from day oneThe Europe expansion reality: VAT, language, regulations, and market-by-market nuanceWhy Germany can be the “logical” move… and still the hardest operationallyTheir channel strategy today: ~50% Amazon / ~50% Shopify, with Google doing the heavy liftingHow YouTube affiliates drive trust for high-consideration purchasesWho this is for:Founders and marketers selling heavy, high-AOV products (fitness, home goods, equipment) who need a real playbook for scaling across regions.What to steal:Build SKU-by-SKU unit economics so you know your true ceiling CAC (by market + channel)Use YouTube affiliates for “proof” when the purchase isn't impulsiveAudit 3PL invoices line-by-line (surcharges hide everywhere)Timestamps0:00 BrainGain's growth from garage sales to 100,000 customers2:00 How BrainGain started during COVID with Facebook Marketplace sales5:00 Post-lockdown demand, competing in “big and heavy” products7:00 Switching to Shopify and Amazon, building the brand online14:40 Expanding across Europe: VAT, regulations, and localization realities22:00 Channel mix breakdown: Amazon vs Shopify, Google vs Meta24:00 Why BrainGain is saying no to TikTok influencers and leaning into YouTube affiliates27:30 Picking the right 3PL in Europe and avoiding hidden surcharges31:00 Fulfillment cost levers: packaging thresholds, pallet rules, invoice audits34:10 SKU-level unit economics audit and setting a real CAC ceiling37:20 Pricing strategy: Shopify vs Amazon and controlling channel mix39:30 What US expansion could look like for heavy, bulky productsSubscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupAdvertise on DTC - https://dtcnews.link/advertiseWork with Pilothouse - https://dtcnews.link/pilothouseFollow us on Instagram & Twitter - @dtcnewsletterWatch this interview on YouTube - https://dtcnews.link/video

You Can't Scale a Mess: Fix Your Shopify Backend & Unlock Profitable Growth for Your Apparel Brand If your Shopify backend is messy, your growth will be too. In this episode of The Business of Apparel Podcast, Rachel breaks down why clean backend data is the hidden key to scaling your apparel brand. If your reports are unreadable, your SKUs are inconsistent, and your product names are all over the place, you're making growth decisions blind. Rachel shares real brand audit stories, including one where 20 products turned into 100 report lines because of inconsistent naming, and explains how messy data can quietly cost you revenue, time, and clarity. You'll learn how to clean up your Shopify backend, standardize your SKU system, and finally pull reports you can actually use to make strategic, profitable decisions. If you're serious about scaling, this is where you start. Sign up for the FREE Shopify Workshop here: https://www.thebusinessofapparel.com/shopify-workshop Sign up for the Secrets Behind Billion Dollar Apparel Brands Masterclass here: https://www.thebusinessofapparel.com/secrets Join The Board here: https://www.thebusinessofapparel.com Key moments: 00:00 Scaling Your Apparel Brand 00:28 Understanding Your Shopify Store 02:14 Masterclass and Workshop Announcements 02:50 Importance of Clean Data 06:21 Client Success Stories and Data Cleanup 11:24 Free Resources and Tools for Your Brand 16:33 Final Thoughts and Upcoming Shopify Workshop   Watch more of The Business of Apparel Podcast episodes: Wholesale 101: https://youtu.be/lpezH1YwCyE Use AI in Your Apparel Brand: https://youtu.be/Dn9tjPNmfaw  Grow A 7-Figure Apparel Business: https://youtu.be/rpQYDyo5Rao We can't wait to hear what you think of this episode! Purchase the Business of Apparel Online Course: https://www.thebusinessofapparel.com/course ABOUT RACHEL: Rachel Erickson—Fractional COO, Apparel Industry Consultant, and founder of Unmarked Street and The Business of Apparel. With 20+ years in technical design and product development leadership, I've sat at the executive table of a $25M apparel line and helped scale it to $60M in one year.   After decades working inside major fashion companies, I learned the truth behind billion-dollar brands, and it's not about chasing trends or pumping out endless products. It's about building clean processes, tightly edited assortments, and obsessively focused customer targeting.   I help founders and CEOs of performance apparel brands: ✅ Build lean, profitable product lines ✅ Streamline operations for growth ✅ Replace overwhelm with executive clarity ✅ Create garments that fit bodies in motion   Whether you're just hitting $1M in revenue or trying to break through the $10M ceiling, my team joins you as an embedded operations and product partner—running fittings, line plans, tech packs, and vendor communications so you can get back to leading.   To connect with Rachel, you can join her LinkedIn community here: LinkedIn. To visit her website, go to: www.unmarkedstreet.com.   

Welcome back to Warehouse and Operations as a Career. I'm Marty, and today we're talking about a piece of equipment that almost everyone in our industry recognizes, but not everyone fully understands it. If you're a long time listener you'll remember I spent about 6 years operating it on the 2nd shift, in the outbound operations within the food service distribution arena. We're going to talk about the cherry picker today. Now its proper name, or if your ordering one from the manufacturer, it'll be referred to as an order picker. This machine helped shape the modern warehouse, the newer e-commerce departments, and really, distribution as a whole. It's increased productivity, allowed us to build higher racking, with many more selection slots, helping reduce the buildings footprint, reducing the cost of real-estate needed. But it's also one of the most unforgiving pieces of equipment to operate. So today, I want to really walk through where the order picker came from, why it exists, what it's good at, where and what it struggles with, how it's used, and most importantly, the dangers, limitations, and responsibility that come with it. This isn't just about the equipment. And I know I harp on it, but it's about our mindset, maturity, and our career. And you ought to know, I'm going to take this opportunity to again stating that you should never get on or even touch a piece of equipment or machine that you have not been trained and certified to be on. Now that all that’s out of the way, let’s talk about the cherry picker! Believe it or not, the cherry picker didn't start in a warehouse. Its earliest versions were used in agriculture, specifically for harvesting fruit. Farmers needed a way to lift workers safely into trees so they could hand-pick produce without ladders or unsafe climbing. The concept was simple, instead of bringing the fruit down, bring the worker up. As warehousing evolved, especially in the mid-20th century, that same idea became essential indoors. Warehouses started growing up instead of out. Land became expensive. Inventory counts increased. SKU or item counts exploded. Full pallets weren't always the answer anymore. Traditional forklifts could move pallets just fine, but they couldn't safely lift people to pick individual cases. And that's where the order picker was born. By combining a powered industrial truck with an elevated operator platform, warehouses could store product higher, pick individual cases efficiently, reduce walking and ladder use, and dramatically increase picking productivity. Over time, these machines were refined with better controls, safety systems, harness requirements, and more stable designs. What we ended up with is one of the most productive, and demanding machines in the building. The defining feature of an order picker is simple but powerful, the operator rises or goes up in the air, up to the higher pick slots with the platform and forks, with a pallet usually. And that changed everything. Instead of pulling pallets down to floor level or relying on ladders and mezzanines, the operator works directly at the pick face or pick slot. Here's why that matters. First, vertical access. Order pickers allow warehouses to fully utilize high-bay racking. Space that would otherwise be wasted becomes valuable inventory real estate. Second, case-level picking. This machine is built for piece and case selection, not full pallet movement. That makes it ideal for retail, grocery, and e-commerce operations where accuracy matters as much as or more than speed. Third, productivity and accuracy. A trained operator following a clean pick path can maintain a strong cases-per-hour average while reducing errors, with less walking, less searching for the product, less backtracking. And fourth, when used properly, reduced physical strain. The machine does the lifting, not the operator. No constant ladder climbing. No unsafe stretching to reach the product. And no carrying cases long distances. But, and this is a biggie, all of those benefits only exist when the equipment is used correctly and the warehouse is layed out and slotted properly. It needs to be said that order pickers are a specialized piece of equipment. They are not one-size-fits-all machines. They perform best in the high-bay warehouses, and narrow-aisle configurations. They require clean, dry, flat floors, and facilities with defined pick paths and in operations with high SKU and item counts. They are common in retail distribution centers, grocery warehouses and those large e-commerce fulfillment operations. They are not ideal for outdoor use, on uneven or damaged flooring, and up front in our dock areas or congested pedestrian zones and walkways. If your facility isn't designed for elevated picking, an order picker becomes more risk than reward. Now we get to the part that separates training from experience. The order picker is one of the most dangerous pieces of equipment in the warehouse if misused. The biggest risk is obvious, falls from height. That's why harnesses and are not optional and why lanyards must be properly anchored and why gates must be closed before elevation. A fall from an order picker is rarely a minor incident. It's usually life-altering or worse. Another major risk is stability. Order pickers are designed to lift vertically, not travel or turn at height. Sudden movements, improper positioning, or failure to fully lower before traveling can and will create serious tip-over hazards. Then there are the pinch points and struck-by hazards. Operators work inches from steel racking, the beams, and product. One moment of distraction can result in crushed fingers, head injuries, or worse. And I want to point out, one of the most common unsafe behaviors, and that is overreaching. Instead of repositioning the truck, operators may stretch just a little farther. That's when our balance can be or is lost, and that's when falls happen. Your machine will always win that fight. A professional order picker operator follows a rhythm and the rules. It starts with his or her pre-shift inspection. Brakes, tires, controls, mast, chains, horn, lights, harness, and lanyard. This isent just more paperwork or a law, it's self-preservation! Mounting the platform means three points of contact. Harness on. Lanyard secured and the gate closed and latched. Traveling means forks down, eyes up, horn used when needed, and awareness of surroundings. When elevating, the operator is square to the rack, lifts smoothly, and keeps their body inside the platform. No leaning and no shortcuts. After the pick is completed, the platform comes all the way down before travel every time. That consistency, following the procedure is what prevents injuries. Lets see, what else, uh, let’s talk about some of the controls. Theres several different models but most order pickers share common controls, forward and reverse travel, lift and lower, steering controls, a horn, an emergency stop, a deadman switch, and a battery indicator, and a pallet clamp or pallet grab vice. A trained operator doesn't just know what each control does. They know to use them. It's important to understand that training is not optional. Operating an order picker is not a right, and it's a lot of responsibility. Of course that proper training includes classroom instruction, demonstration of the controls and handling, a hands-on evaluation, a review of the site-specific hazards and the observation and certification. Our powered industrial truck training or PIT training. And here's another opportunity for me to state to never, ever, get on or touch a piece of equipment or machine that you've not been trained or certified to be on or operate! And remember that authorization can be removed if unsafe behavior is observed or we don't act and operate it responsibly, and that's not punishment, that's our own fault and for our own good and the good of others. Because the goal isn't speed. The goal is going home. Here's the bigger takeaway. The order picker rewards discipline, patience, awareness and respect for process and position. By the way, those same traits are what make great leads, supervisors, and managers. People who master this equipment often become the people others trust because they understand the consequences. The cherry picker teaches you that rushing doesn't save time. Shortcuts don't make you efficient and safety isn't a rule, it's a responsibility. I loved my time on the cherry picker, it is one of the most powerful tools in the warehouse and one of the most dangerous when disrespected. The difference in those two statements isn't the machine. It's the operator. I always love talking about the many different pieces of equipment and the machines we use in our industry. If you have any positions or tools used in the light industry world, shoot us an email to host@warehouseandoperationsasacareer.com or post a comment on our Facebook page using @whseops, or hit us up on Instagram at waocpodcast and I'll do my best to find us an answer! Well, I hope you enjoyed today’s episode and thanks for spending your time with us, and I'd appreciate it if you'd share the show with a friend or two! Remember to respect our equipment, to be safe at all we do, and that we have others depending on us and waiting for us to return home each day! Y'all be safe out there!

In this episode, we break down what really belongs in COGS, how to read gross margin correctly, and how to dig deeper to uncover hidden margin leaks. If you want stronger cash flow, smarter pricing, and better decisions, this episode will help you master the numbers that matter most.

A 10‑day wait for a refrigerator became the spark for a smarter last mile. We sit down with OneRail CEO Bill Catania to unpack how a racing mindset—frugality, failure tolerance, and relentless iteration—translated into a platform that helps retailers move from static delivery workflows to real‑time orchestration at scale. Bill shares the throughline across three startups: aggregate fragmented supply, connect it cleanly to demand, and let data science make the hard choices in milliseconds.You'll hear how RaceFan aggregated 650 local tracks to unlock national sponsorships, why MDOT's 200‑millisecond cloud coupon switch won over skeptical retailers (and how Bill timed the sale), and the moment OneRail shifted from gig moving to an enterprise platform. We break down OneRail's three‑layer model—software first, an aggregated carrier network across sedans to flatbeds, and a human exception team—and how the company takes on risk under its authority to deliver accountability most intermediaries avoid.AI is not a bolt‑on here. Bill explains how courier “credit scores,” market‑level performance, and dynamic assignment replaced manual dispatch, enabling one person to triage roughly 4,000 orders instead of 80. We explore exceptions in furniture and cold chain, SKU‑level loss analysis, and how pushing intelligence upstream into order management can reshape cost to serve before a truck even moves. Along the way, Bill shares the “yes if” leadership mantra that keeps doors open while aligning risk and reward—fuel for winning enterprise trust and recognition like Lowe's Innovation Partner of the Year.If you care about last mile logistics, enterprise retail, or building resilient platforms, this conversation is a blueprint: aggregate wisely, decide precisely, own outcomes, and scale through partnerships. Subscribe, share with a teammate who obsesses over SLAs, and leave a review with your biggest “yes if” moment—we'll feature the best on a future show.Follow The Freight Pod and host Andrew Silver on LinkedIn.Thanks to our sponsors:Stuut Technologies: Your AI coworker that collects your cash automatically.https://www.stuut.ai/Cloneops.ai: Not just AI. Industry-born AI.https://www.cloneops.ai/Rapido Solutions Group: Nearshore solutions for logistics companies.https://www.gorapido.com/GenLogs: Freight Intelligence on every carrier, shipper, and asset via a nationwide sensor networkhttps://www.genlogs.io/

Send a textMulti-packing is an effective way to significantly increase sales and revenue on Amazon. This strategy helps you better manage Amazon fees and improve overall profitability. Learn how to implement multi-packing to grow your business and enhance your selling on Amazon presence.Multi-pack strategy on Amazon can increase sales volume, improve keyword ranking, and raise overall conversion rate. Adding a lower priced three-pack alongside a five-pack listing can increase SKU-level ranking and long-term sales growth. This approach challenges zero sum thinking and shows how multi-pack offers can improve Amazon profit and organic visibility over time.If your listings are stuck and you want a real growth plan built around your numbers, schedule a strategy session and get a direct action roadmap for your Amazon account: https://bit.ly/4jMZtxu#AmazonFBA #AmazonSeller #AmazonSales #EcommerceGrowth #AmazonListingOptimization--------------------------------------------------------------------------Want free resources? Dowload our Free Amazon guides here:Amazon Proft Margin Defense 2026: https://hubs.ly/Q042trRH0Amazon PPC Guide 2026 is here!: https://bit.ly/4lF0OYXAmazon SEO Toolkit 2026: https://bit.ly/4oC2ClTAmazon Seller Strategy Report 2026: https://bit.ly/3YN1RME2026 Ecommerce Website & SEO Readiness Checklist: https://hubs.ly/Q040Jg0M0Amazon Crisis Kit: https://bit.ly/4maWHn0Timestamps:00:00 – Why Multi-Packs Are Underrated on Amazon00:30 – Three-Pack vs Five-Pack Profit Breakdown01:05 – Does Lower Price Hurt Your Main Offer?01:34 – Example: 500 Five-Packs vs 1,000 Three-Packs01:58 – How More Sales Improve Ranking and Conversion02:29 – Why the Five-Pack Can Grow After Launch03:04 – Breaking the Zero Sum Mindset in Amazon Sales________________________________Follow us:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/28605816/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stevenpopemag/Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/myamazonguys/Twitter: https://twitter.com/myamazonguySubscribe to the My Amazon Guy podcast:My Amazon Guy podcast: https://podcast.myamazonguy.comApple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/my-amazon-guy/id1501974229Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4A5ASHGGfr6s4wWNQIqyVwSupport the show

In this episode of Clothing Coulture, hosts Bret Schnitker and Emily Lane break down why fashion brands must rethink their economic strategies for 2026 as growth slows and costs rise. Instead of chasing volume and expansion, they argue the new winning playbook is margin protection, operational efficiency, and resilience. They explore how consumer behavior is shifting toward fewer purchases, higher quality, and stronger alignment with brand values, pushing companies to rethink pricing, storytelling, and product strategy. The conversation covers practical ways to improve profitability without cutting quality, including smarter assortment planning, tighter SKU counts, supplier negotiation, and better demand forecasting to reduce overproduction and markdowns. The episode also highlights the rise of seasonless collections, modular design, and smaller, more frequent drops as strategies that reduce inventory risk while keeping customers engaged. Bret and Emily close with a reminder that long-term success in 2026 will come from building systems, empowering mid-level teams, and staying focused on adaptability instead of growth for growth's sake.

Ever launched a beautiful product only to watch payments derail the experience? We sat with Viktoria Soltesz - founder of PSP Angels and the Soltesz Institute - to map the hidden decisions that make or break money movement. From onboarding demands and documentation to routing choices and settlement timelines, Viktoria shows how banking and payment flows now shape product, compliance, data, and brand trust. The takeaway is bold and practical: treat payments as strategy, not plumbing.We dig into messy, real-world stories: a global group juggling multiple entities, providers, and file formats; a luxury e-commerce brand whose purple checkout clashed with a green identity and crushed conversions; and a marketplace shut down over a single high-risk SKU. Viktoria explains why “cheapest fees” can cost the most when integration pain, risk appetite, and provider incentives are ignored. She also exposes conflicts in referral-driven deals and makes the case for an ethical, merchant-first approach that starts with a comprehensive payments health check.The conversation builds toward a clear solution: appoint a Chief Payments Officer. This role owns the end-to-end flow, negotiates with a holistic lens, and adapts strategy to each market - whether that means leveraging UPI in India, adopting open banking in the US, or planning redundancies that protect authorization rates and cash flow. We also scan the horizon: instant payments in the EU, QR adoption beyond Asia, and the rise of agentic commerce where AI discovers, orders, and pays. With new rails come new risks - refunds, disputes, and fraud models must be redesigned for machine-initiated purchases.If you care about lower fees, fewer shutoffs, stronger UX, and faster global expansion, this is your playbook. Learn more about PSP Angels here and The Soltesz Institute here. Viktoria has also written two books both available on Amazon and here.Moving Money How Banks Think The CPayO - The Chief Payment Officer The Role Which Doesn't Exist (But Should!)

In this episode of The New Warehouse Podcast, Kevin Lawton chats with Naveen Chandra, Director of Distribution at EssilorLuxottica. Chandra oversees strategy across labor planning, slotting, and real-time operational control for a complex, high-SKU distribution network. EssilorLuxottica is best known for eyewear brands like Ray-Ban and Oakley, but its footprint spans eyewear, wearables, retail, and vertically integrated supply chains. The conversation explores how the company approaches automation, forecasting, and slotting while keeping human workers central to warehouse design. Rather than chasing lights-out operations, Chandra emphasizes resilience, safety, and reducing cognitive load for human-centered warehouse automation.Learn more about Sonaria here. Follow us on LinkedIn and YouTube.Support the show

Sarah Lee went from cold-emailing 700 journalists by hand and sleeping two hours a night to building Glow Recipe into a nine-figure global skincare brand inside Sephora. And she did it without raising venture capital. In this interview, the co-founder of Glow Recipe breaks down how a $50,000 bootstrapped Korean beauty curation site turned into one of the most recognisable modern skincare brands in the world — including how they broke even in just three months, why they walked away from millions to stay in control, and the exact moment they knew it was time to build their own products. From getting on Shark Tank in year one to launching their first SKU with nothing but a white jar and an iPad mockup, this episode is a masterclass in brand building, retail strategy, and founder-led execution. What you'll learn in this interview: • How Glow Recipe broke even in just 3 months with a $50K bootstrap • Why Sarah and Christine personally cold-emailed 700+ press contacts • The real economics of starting as a curated marketplace vs owning the brand • How they validated product demand before manufacturing anything • What it took to pitch Sephora with no finished product • Why Glow Recipe walked away from millions in potential funding • Lessons from Shark Tank — and what didn't make it on TV • How Korean beauty education became their unfair advantage • The biggest mistakes founders make when launching beauty products • How Glow Recipe scaled from curation to a nine-figure product brand By the end of this episode, you'll understand how to validate demand early, build leverage without capital, and turn brand education into long-term defensibility — even in one of the most competitive categories in ecommerce. If you're building a product brand, thinking about retail expansion, or deciding whether to raise capital or stay bootstrapped, this conversation will fundamentally change how you think about control, growth, and timing. SAVE 50% ON OMNISEND FOR 3 MONTHS Get 50% off your first 3 months of email and SMS marketing with Omnisend with the code FOUNDR50. Just head to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://your.omnisend.com/foundr⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to get started. HOW WE CAN HELP YOU SCALE YOUR BUSINESS FASTER Learn directly from 7, 8 & 9-figure founders inside Foundr+ Start your $1 trial → ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.foundr.com/startdollartrial⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ PREFER A CUSTOM ROADMAP AND 1-ON-1 COACHING? → Starting from scratch? Apply here → ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://foundr.com/pages/coaching-start-application⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ → Already have a store? Apply here → ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://foundr.com/pages/coaching-growth-application⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ CONNECT WITH NATHAN CHAN Instagram → ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/nathanchan⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ LinkedIn → ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathanhchan/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ CONNECT WITH SARAH LEE Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/sarah_glow/ LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarahleenewyork/ Website→ https://www.glowrecipe.com/ FOLLOW FOUNDR FOR MORE BUSINESS GROWTH STRATEGIES YouTube → ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/2uyvzdt⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Website → ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.foundr.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Instagram → ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/foundr/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Facebook → ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.facebook.com/foundr⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Twitter → ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.twitter.com/foundr⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ LinkedIn → ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/company/foundr/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Podcast → ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.foundr.com/podcast⁠

Brian Phillips, Director of Product Marketing at HP, joined Doug Green, Publisher of Technology Reseller News, on opening day of ISE to discuss HP's latest collaboration announcements and the strategy unifying its product portfolio around AI-enabled hybrid work. Phillips explained that HP's collaboration roadmap is centered on enabling effective communication across a wide range of work environments—from home offices and hoteling desks to meeting rooms, training spaces, and immersive collaboration settings. Rather than deploying AI for its own sake, HP is embedding machine learning and cloud-based intelligence into collaboration solutions to tangibly improve meeting quality, clarity, and engagement. “We're putting AI into action in collaboration in a way that makes meetings more effective and more lifelike,” Phillips said, emphasizing HP's focus on real-world value. A key highlight at ISE was the introduction of next-generation HP Poly Mission headsets, designed to support hybrid and high-noise environments with advanced AI noise reduction. Phillips noted that the new headsets can isolate a speaker's voice even in challenging settings such as cafés or open offices, while maintaining strong privacy protections. “AI is being used to deliver better experiences, but we're not tracking conversations or personally identifiable information,” he said. The new lineup also reflects HP's effort to streamline its headset portfolio, reducing SKU complexity and making it easier for resellers to quote and recommend the right solution for each user. On the meeting room side, HP unveiled advancements in Poly VideoOS 5, the collaboration operating system that powers HP Poly video devices. The update brings support for Android 13, extended certification with partners such as Microsoft Teams, Zoom, and Google Meet, and lays the foundation for long-term investment protection with support planned through 2032. New capabilities include multi-camera experiences that dynamically frame participants from multiple angles, ensuring everyone in the room is clearly seen and heard. Phillips also highlighted HP Dimension with Google Beam, a hyper-realistic 3D collaboration solution designed to deliver an “across-the-table” experience for remote participants. The system combines spatial video and audio to create an immersive, lifelike presence suited for executive meetings, negotiations, and high-impact conversations. Live demonstrations were available at ISE, with broader availability planned later this year through HP and Google experience centers. More information about HP's collaboration portfolio and hybrid work innovations is available at https://www.hp.com/us-en/home.html.

In this episode, we explore how to fix messy product data and creative assets that slow down your brand. Lynn Herman, APM Marketing Manager at Canto, explains how a digital asset management system acts as a single source of truth for your business. She shares why organizing content around your products—rather than random folders—helps you launch faster on Shopify and other marketplaces. You will also learn how to maintain a consistent brand image and stop losing sales due to data errors.Topics discussed in this episode:   What a DAM system does for your content. Why you should organize assets by product SKU. How spreadsheets lead to manual data errors. How to create a launch once publish everywhere flow. What prevents friction in the approval process. How to push assets directly to Shopify stores. Why inconsistent images damage customer trust. What signs show you need a better asset system. How AI search finds specific brand images fast. Why centralizing data stops operational chaos. Links & Resources Website: https://www.canto.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/canto/Shopify Integration: https://www.canto.com/integrations/shopify/X/Twitter: https://x.com/cantoGet access to more free resources by visiting the show notes at https://tinyurl.com/4n838wvz______________________________________________________ LOVE THE SHOW? HERE ARE THE NEXT STEPS! Follow the podcast to get every bonus episode. Tap follow now and don't miss out! Rate & Review: Help others discover the show by rating the show on Apple Podcasts at https://tinyurl.com/ecb-apple-podcasts Join our Free Newsletter: https://newsletter.ecommercecoffeebreak.com/ Support The Show On Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/EcommerceCoffeeBreak Partner with us: https://ecommercecoffeebreak.com/partner-with-us/

Dan Brownsher is the Founder, Executive Chairman, and CSO at Channel Key, a full-service channel management marketplace agency. A recognized national thought leader in marketplace retail strategy and emerging eCommerce trends, Dan is a trusted commentator on Amazon and marketplace technologies and is frequently quoted by outlets such as Bloomberg, Forbes, Reuters, MSN.com, and the LA Times. He also co-founded Trend Nation, a top-200 global Amazon private label developer and seller that surpassed $1 billion in merchandise sales and achieved a private equity exit. In this episode… As digital commerce scales across marketplaces and AI-driven experiences, brands aren't deciding if they should sell online — they're deciding which channels to prioritize, which products belong on each, and how to operate at scale. From Amazon and Walmart to TikTok Shop and emerging agent-led buying journeys, the number of viable paths to purchase is expanding fast. How can brands pursue growth without wasting margin, media spend, or internal resources? According to national eCommerce thought leader Dan Brownsher, this shift is driven by consumer trust in digital commerce and expanding shopping habits across marketplaces. He advises brands to evaluate channels based on SKU-level profitability, fulfillment constraints, and measurable incrementality rather than solely omnichannel expansion. Dan also recommends narrowing assortment by channel, actively shifting media spend to where returns are provable, and using AI to accelerate analysis and execution — not replace judgment. In this episode of The Digital Deep Dive, Aaron Conant chats with Dan Brownsher, Founder, Executive Chairman, and CSO at Channel Key, about the future of omnichannel commerce. Dan discusses why consumers are driving marketplace expansion, how brands should manage assortment and media across channels, and what agentic commerce and AI-powered discovery mean for search, trust, and buying behavior.

Would you like access to our advanced agency training for FREE? https://www.agencymastery360.com/training Are you feeding your data into AI and assuming the insights it gives you are accurate? What if those confident-sounding answers are quietly steering you in the wrong direction? More agency owners are turning to AI to analyze and interpret performance data, and for good reason. Used correctly, it can save massive amounts of time and move teams beyond using AI to crank out blog posts, ads, or emails faster. But when it comes to attribution, performance analysis, and real decision-making, AI has a dangerous flaw: it's often wrong with absolute confidence. Today's featured guest understands where most agencies go wrong with AI-driven data analysis. He'll break down why large language models frequently misinterpret marketing data, how flawed inputs and assumptions lead to misleading insights, and what it actually takes to get reliable answers from AI without burning budget or making bad strategic calls. Scott Desgrosseilliers is the founder and CEO of Wicked Reports, a marketing attribution platform built specifically for e-commerce brands doing between $5M and $50M in annual revenue. Scott has spent years deep in attribution, analytics, and now AI, figuring out how to separate real signal from noise in an ecosystem where every platform claims the win. He'll talk about how most platforms may be misleading you and the framework he uses to bring sanity back to attribution for serious e-commerce brands. In this episode, we'll discuss: Why AI is sounds smart but gets marketing attribution wrong. Injecting intention into AI. The Five Forces framework to improve your AI data. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio Sponsors and Resources E2M Solutions: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by E2M Solutions, a web design, and development agency that has provided white-label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service. Why AI Sounds Smart But Gets Marketing Attribution Wrong One of the biggest myths around AI is that it's inherently "smart." Scott shared that it took eight months for Wicked Reports to release their AI analyst, not because the tech wasn't powerful, but because it was too confident while being wrong. AI models are designed to sound affirmative. Ask them a bad question, and they'll still give you a polished answer. If you ask ChatGPT if you should jump off a bridge, it'll say, "Yes, that's a great idea," unless you explicitly train it to be critical. That's a massive problem when you're dealing with revenue attribution and ad spend decisions. Another major issue is that AI lacks native understanding of time, which is foundational to attribution. Clicks, impressions, tags, and conversions happen in sequence over days or weeks. Without heavy rules, coaching, and sanity checks layered in, AI can't naturally interpret cause and effect. Left alone, it simply fills in gaps, and those hallucinations can cost you real money. Why Intention and Metrics Matter More Than the AI Tool The first thing Scott's team had to "inject" into the AI was intention. Not all campaigns exist to do the same job. Prospecting, retargeting, direct response, and existing customer campaigns each have different goals and therefore require different scoreboards. If you don't tell the AI what the intention is for each row of data, it will make assumptions. And those assumptions are usually wrong. The "North Star" metrics and leading indicators change depending on what you're trying to accomplish. A prospecting campaign shouldn't be judged the same way as an abandoned cart flow. The second big issue is AI's obsession with ROAS. ROAS is easy to latch onto because it gets rewarded with "thumbs up" feedback, but it's often misleading. If two-thirds of your reported revenue comes from repeat customers via email or SMS, AI might tell you your ads are crushing it when they're not. Simply separating new customers from repeat customers already puts you ahead of 95% of advertisers. The Five Forces Framework for Making Better Attribution Decisions To solve these problems, Scott introduced his Five Forces Framework, (intention, expectation, action, outcome, and optimization) a methodology most agencies simply aren't using. The first force is Intention, which defines both the scoreboard and the timeframe. New customer acquisition might need a 30–90 day window to show results, while an abandoned cart campaign can be evaluated in seven days. Without this context, teams panic too early and kill campaigns that haven't had time to work. The second force is Expectation, which is all about alignment. Brand owners often look at Shopify, GA4, Meta, Google, Klaviyo, and SMS dashboards—all showing different numbers. Without agreeing on a single version of truth, clients freak out and shut down top-of-funnel campaigns after five days because the data "doesn't look good yet." Setting expectations isn't a one-time conversation; it has to be reinforced constantly. Reducing Drama: Use "Scale, Chill, and Kill" to Guide Ad Spend The third force is Action, which includes launching the campaign but only after defining clear boundaries. Scott recommends setting "Scale, Chill, and Kill" zones before you spend a dollar. For example, if your acceptable new customer acquisition cost is $50–$70, that's your Chill zone. Below $50? Scale it. Above $70? Kill it. These predefined rules remove emotion, reduce second-guessing, and dramatically lower what Scott calls "psychic stress" inside agencies and brands. Once campaigns run, the fourth force—Outcome—is simply measuring performance against those zones. Did it scale, chill, or die? Optimization Is More Than Creative Tweaks Most agencies obsess over creative, constantly swapping headlines, images, and copy. For Scott, optimization should be more structured. At his agency, they use a decision log to rank potential actions by impact, focusing on whether the problem is the offer, the creative, the traffic, or the budget. But Scott added a fourth optimization factor most teams miss: signaling. If you don't send the right signals back to ad platforms, your optimization efforts don't matter. Meta, in particular, is very good at claiming credit for conversions it didn't truly drive and if it sees quick conversions, it will chase more of those, even if they're just repeat customers. Training Ad Platforms to Optimize for What Actually Matters To fix this, Scott recommends creating separate events in Meta's Events Manager for new customer purchases versus repeat purchases. That way, ad sets can optimize specifically for the outcome you want. If you're closing existing customers through email or SMS, you don't want Meta learning from those conversions. But when a new customer buys, Meta gets a clean signal and starts finding more people like them. Scott noted that when creative and offer are solid, sharpening signals alone can dramatically reduce acquisition costs within a month. You can even go deeper by signaling based on SKU types, allowing platforms to optimize toward higher-quality or more strategic purchases—not just any conversion they can grab credit for. Do You Want to Transform Your Agency from a Liability to an Asset? Looking to dig deeper into your agency's potential? Check out our Agency Blueprint. Designed for agency owners like you, our Agency Blueprint helps you uncover growth opportunities, tackle obstacles, and craft a customized blueprint for your agency's success.

He quit Amazon, then launched One TikTok Shop SKU to 7-figures. Our guest breaks down content systems, creator outreach, FBT, cash flow, and scaling his product into the US.

If you focus on what you can do, what you cannot do will diminish in size. As THG CEO Matthew Moulding recently stated, “we can't control commodities or currencies.” After more than a decade of marketplace stability, MyProtein faced a “Great Shutdown” era spike in whey input costs and the Japanese Yen collapse (impacting its second largest market). And these two external factors almost entirely wiped-out profitability delivered by MyProtein in 2019 (which would be the last annual results prior to THG IPO'ing in September 2020). But THG must stay focused on what it can control like continuing to diversify territories, sales channels, and product category mix to reflect the record global consumer demand for protein…along with making deliberate trading decisions to protect margins and retain market share while whey commodity prices remain elevated. THG (aka the company formerly known as The Hut Group) recently updated the public markets by releasing its 2025 Q4 trading statement. I'll be utilizing that financial information, along with notes I took listening to the earnings conference call, and any relevant publicly disclosed information to obviously update you on the recent performance of THG Nutrition division, which includes the world's largest online sports nutrition brand MyProtein, but also utilize everything as the contextual backdrop for my expanded strategic commentary around global sports nutrition market dynamics and trends. Additionally, for those unfamiliar with the up-to-date THG portfolio configuration…due to the THG Ingenuity demerger action occurring at the end of 2024, it now would be described as a global, cash generative, health and wellness consumer brands group. During the fourth quarter of 2025, THG Nutrition revenue was approximately $211 million, which increased 8.5% YoY. Also, THG Nutrition reported generating full-year 2025 revenue of approximately $816 million, which increased 6.2% YoY. THG Nutrition delivered its fourth consecutive quarter of revenue growth, driven by average selling prices recovering to pre-rebrand levels. Moreover, momentum was said to be broad-based across categories outside of the core protein range, especially in activewear and creatine. But I'll dive into several strategic decisions impacting MyProtein including its global digital sales channel strategy, offline retail expansion efforts, product licensing strategy, and let's just say A LOT is riding on the success of the MyProtein global rebrand that started its initial staggered market rollout two years ago. Myprotein maintained its leading position (holding a 25% share of the UK online sports nutrition market). THG Nutrition still mainly deploys a global digital-first commerce strategy, with around 80% of its total revenue in the full-year of 2025 coming from direct-to-consumer, online marketplaces, and social commerce…but MyProtein has continued to invest in offline retail partnerships where it places a limited (or exclusive) SKU range as part of a bigger demand generation strategy. Nonetheless, this ambitious level of offline retail expansion globally will undoubtedly help drive a more diversified retail mix over the next few years.

In this episode, Emma and Jason O'Toole (Head of Connected Commerce at Hanesbrands) dive into the evolving world of commerce strategy. They cover everything from building commerce-focused organizational structures to the unique challenges of selling apparel online. You'll hear how Hanesbrands approaches SKU complexity, 3P competition, and brand protection, plus how they're building connected commerce teams to meet the demands of today's omnichannel landscape. Jason also shares his perspective on the agency of the future, and why adaptability matters more than ever.

提到日本旅行，药妆店几乎是所有人必去的“景点”之一；而在英国，药房却更多是一个功能明确的存在。本期「东观西望」两位主播从一个再日常不过的消费场景出发，对照日本与英国截然不同的药妆店形态，拆解背后的历史脉络、制度设计与消费心理。从中世纪修道院与药剂师协会，到 NHS 体系下的医药分离，英国的药房为何始终未发展成“药妆集合体”？日本的药妆店又是如何在战后，从社区药局一路演变为兼具美妆、保健、食品与旅游属性的零售奇观？节目中还聊到日本药妆店密集的 SKU、斜放的镜子、无背景音乐的叫卖设计，以及“限定”“地方款”背后的心理机制。当药房被赋予不同的社会角色，它自然就长成了完全不同的样子。希望可以通过英日药妆店的对比聊天，让你不仅能了解零售形态的不同，也能体会关于制度、生活方式与文化价值的不同。【本节目由Withinlink碚曦投资协作体出品】【主播】李倩玲 Bessie Lee广告营销行业资深从业者，商业观察者蒋美兰前数字营销公司「费芮互动」创始人、前电通集团合伙人，现定居日本的零售科技观察者【本期内容提要】[00:20]英国药房的“迷信传统”[03:50]日本药妆店的空间与声音设计[05:04]药妆店里那个斜斜的镜子你发现了吗？[06:30]英国药房发展是从修道院到药剂师协会再到如今的与NHS系统配合 [11:36]日本药妆店是欧聪战后社区药局发展至连锁化和品类大扩张[15:50]日本药妆店为何SKU爆炸？[18:23]英日药妆店的药剂师存在很大的角色差别[23:10]为什么英国人不逛药妆店[25:30]英日药妆消费习惯大不同[27:45]化妆是否是一种社会礼仪？[33:30]英国百年药妆老店的特色[38:40]你在日本/英国买过最难忘的药妆是什么？【后期制作】Jean【收听方式】推荐您使用Apple Podcast、小宇宙APP、喜马拉雅FM、网易云音乐、QQ音乐、荔枝播客、Spotify或任意泛用型播客客户端订阅收听「贝望录」。【互动方式】微博：@贝望录微信公众号：贝望录+商务合作：beiwanglu@withinlink.com

#746 If you're still thinking about Amazon FBA as a keyword game, this episode will completely change how you see selling online! In this episode hosted by Kirsten Tyrrel, Neil Twa returns to break down what “omnichannel” really looks like — and why you shouldn't rush into TikTok Shop, Shopify, Walmart, or retail until your Amazon business is truly incubated and profitable. He shares a three-stage framework (discover, build, optimize) and explains how today's winning sellers think less like “keyword hackers” and more like data scientists — feeding Amazon's AI the right listing data so the engine can match your product to customer intent. Neil also demos how his team uses customer-need driven product research to build SKU pipelines inside proven “nodes,” avoid the low-price commodity trap, and identify higher-margin opportunities — then pairs it all with the capital strategy required to scale without running out of inventory! What we discuss with Neil: + Amazon as an incubation engine + Omnichannel timing matters + Discover, build, optimize framework + Customer need over keywords + AI-driven listing data + SKU depth before scale + IDQ scores and algorithms + High-margin node selection + TikTok halo effect + Capital strategy for scaling Thank you, Neil! Check out Voltage Digital Marketing at VoltageDM.com. Check out Greenlight Caiman Data at CaimanData.com. Use code MillionairesU to get a free copy of Almost Automated Income With FBA — limited to the first 10 people! Follow Neil on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, and Twitter. To get access to our FREE Business Training course go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠MillionaireUniversity.com/training⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ To get exclusive offers mentioned in this episode and to support the show, visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠millionaireuniversity.com/sponsors⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this Omni Talk Retail episode, recorded live from NRF 2026 at Vusion's booth, Todd Garner, Chief Product Officer at Sam's Club, joins Anne Mezzenga and Chris Walton to share how Scan & Go has become a defining pillar of the Sam's Club member experience and what's coming next as agentic AI reshapes shopping. With Scan & Go now approaching 40% member adoption and nearing its 10-year anniversary, Sam's Club is using its limited SKU, membership-based model to reduce friction, shorten the distance between intent and purchase, and unlock new personalized, agent-driven experiences. Todd explains why mobile-first shopping, curated assortments, and AI-powered insights give Sam's Club a unique advantage and how all of it ladders back to engagement, renewal, and loyalty. Key Topics covered: -Scan & Go nearing 40% adoption and what's driving member usage -Why membership engagement and renewal matter more than individual feature metrics -How Scan & Go fits into a broader frictionless shopping ecosystem -Why limited SKUs make agentic shopping more powerful, not less -Using mobile-first experiences to shorten intent-to-purchase -The role of AI in merchandising, discovery, and personalized insights -How Sam's Club thinks about product, associate tools, and member experience together -What Todd is most excited to deliver next as Scan & Go approaches its 10-year milestone -Stay tuned to Omni Talk Retail for continued coverage from NRF 2026, and stop by Vusion booth #4921 to say hello. #NRF2026 #SamsClub #ScanAndGo #RetailAI #AgenticAI #MembershipRetail #RetailTechnology #OmniTalk #RetailInnovation

In this Omni Talk Retail episode, recorded live from NRF 2026 in the Vusion podcast studio, Mark Propes from Vusion and Art Miller from Qualcomm reveal how their partnership is enabling "detect and connect" capabilities that transform physical retail into personalized experiences, and why retailers still testing need to operationalize now before the gap becomes permanent. From edge computing that processes 4K video locally instead of streaming to the cloud, to closed-loop attribution tracking customer intent in real-time physical space, Mark and Art break down the multimodal signal taxonomy (RFID, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, vision) powering connected stores. They share insights on why scanning barcodes continuously creates data-poor environments, how agentic AI creates new doorways into physical stores, and the precision needed for sub-30 minute delivery promises. If you've wondered what detect and connect actually means beyond buzzwords, this conversation delivers the technical foundation and business applications.

Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupAlbert Chow built Silk & Snow in the shadow of the DTC mattress wars—but instead of racing to burn VC cash, he played the long game. Today, Silk & Snow has grown into a full home brand with 10 retail stores, a thriving Canadian customer base, and a strong U.S. expansion roadmap.For DTC founders scaling from $5M to $50M...Why they skipped the mattress arms race and leaned into vertical integrationHow bundling less (and planting trees instead) saved $1.3MWhat they learned scaling from 1 to 10 retail stores in a yearThe metrics they track now that ROAS is irrelevantWhy launching a sofa was more about customer affinity than furnitureWho this is for: Operators scaling past one SKU or one channel—and looking for a sustainable path to growth.What to steal:Bundling with purpose (optional tree planting vs. free stuff)Bottom-up brand building: low-funnel mastery firstHow to use DTC data to drive brick-and-mortar strategyTimestamps00:00 Organic growth and surviving the DTC mattress crash02:00 Entering the crowded mattress market in 201704:00 Why Silk and Snow became a full home brand06:00 Factory-first supply chain and Canadian manufacturing08:00 Launching with Kickstarter and early traction10:00 The 2019 DTC apocalypse and sustainable growth12:00 Expanding beyond mattresses into sleep accessories14:00 Functional vs aspirational buying in home goods16:00 Becoming a multi-channel retailer18:00 Using customer data to choose store locations20:00 Canada vs US growth strategy22:00 Building brand from the bottom of the funnel24:00 Replacing bundles with tree planting26:00 Performance marketing roots and early Google28:00 Shifting into awareness and brand media30:00 Why ROAS isn't the real growth signal32:00 Retail partnerships and staying DTC34:00 Black Friday for big-ticket home products36:00 Fulfillment, returns, and sustainability38:00 Repeat customers and long-term LTV40:00 Sleep Country acquisition and retail scale42:00 Vancouver store and physical retail strategyHashtags#DTC #EcommercePodcast #SilkAndSnow #AlbertChow #DTCBrands #HomeGoods #MattressIndustry #BrandBuilding #RetailStrategy #DirectToConsumer #EcommerceGrowth #StartupPodcast #FounderStory #CanadianBrands #PerformanceMarketing #Omnichannel #RetailExpansion #DTCpodcast Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupAdvertise on DTC - https://dtcnews.link/advertiseWork with Pilothouse - https://dtcnews.link/pilothouseFollow us on Instagram & Twitter - @dtcnewsletterWatch this interview on YouTube - https://dtcnews.link/video

Nala was built by two founders with no fashion background who invested $200,000 before making a single sale and went on to sell over 400,000 pieces in just two years. In this interview, Chloe and Phil Derwent break down how they identified a gap in the intimates market, validated demand with fewer than 300 survey responses, and scaled an Australian lingerie brand into a cult favourite with a 70% repeat purchase rate and a national retail partnership with David Jones. What you'll learn in this interview: • How Nala validated product-market fit with just 250 survey responses • Why they invested $200K upfront before making their first sale • The guerrilla marketing stunt that went viral across Australia • How spending 30% of revenue on marketing drove hypergrowth • Why a 70% repeat purchase rate changed their ad strategy • How to manage extreme SKU complexity in apparel ecommerce • The real challenges of selling bras online at scale • How Nala overturned TikTok bans and platform restrictions • What founders get wrong about inclusivity and product design • How Nala secured a national retail partnership with David Jones By the end of this episode, you'll understand what it actually takes to launch, fund, and scale a product-based ecommerce business in a competitive category, and how to make bold decisions without losing control of cash, culture, or customers. SAVE 50% ON OMNISEND FOR 3 MONTHS Get 50% off your first 3 months of email and SMS marketing with Omnisend with the code FOUNDR50. Just head to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://your.omnisend.com/foundr⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to get started. HOW WE CAN HELP YOU SCALE YOUR BUSINESS FASTER Learn directly from 7, 8 & 9-figure founders inside Foundr+ Start your $1 trial → ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.foundr.com/startdollartrial⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ PREFER A CUSTOM ROADMAP AND 1-ON-1 COACHING? → Starting from scratch? Apply here → ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://foundr.com/pages/coaching-start-application⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ → Already have a store? Apply here → ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://foundr.com/pages/coaching-growth-application⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ CONNECT WITH NATHAN CHAN Instagram → ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/nathanchan⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ LinkedIn → ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathanhchan/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ CONNECT WITH NALA Website → https://wearnala.com/ Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/wear_nala/ Chloe's Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/gochlo_pilates/ Phillip's LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/in/phillip-de-winter-9b480631/ FOLLOW FOUNDR FOR MORE BUSINESS GROWTH STRATEGIES YouTube → ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/2uyvzdt⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Website → ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.foundr.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Instagram → ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/foundr/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Facebook → ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.facebook.com/foundr⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Twitter → ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.twitter.com/foundr⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ LinkedIn → ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/company/foundr/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Podcast → ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.foundr.com/podcast⁠

"Send me a text"To learn more about the group coaching click here: https://creativethirst.com/group/ You've got your supplement manufacturer lined up, your ingredients sourced, your packaging designed. You think you're ready to launch. But you're building on quicksand.Most supplement founders obsess over the wrong things pre-launch. They focus on COGs, fulfillment partners, SKU count, and pricing strategy while completely ignoring the one thing that actually determines success: supplement buying psychology.In this episode, you'll discover why supplements don't sell like other products, what the "dual-mind problem" is and why it changes everything about how you market, and the four forces (Desire, Hope, Trust, and Belief) that drive every supplement purchase.If you're pre-launch or early stage and your conversion rates are terrible despite having a great product, this episode reveals the foundation you're missing. Because you're not in the supplement business. You're in the supplement buying psychology business.To learn more about the group coaching click here: https://creativethirst.com/group/ If you're interested in working with me and my team to improve your supplement business. You can learn more at my website https://creativethirst.com Click here to grab your copy of the Health Supplement Ad Swipe Guide. Discover what really works in funnel marketing Need help increasing sales on your own? Click here Stuck at $1 - $5M in revenue? Click Here Case Study on how Creative Thirst added over $200,000 for one supplement brand

Send us a textWondering why your Amazon ads aren't showing or why your product image disappeared? This video explains what really happens when you change your bid and how it affects impressions. If your main image says “not available” or you're dealing with packaging issues from multiple suppliers under one SKU, here's what to check before it turns into a bigger problem.Learn how Amazon handles bid adjustments, what to do when your main image fails to show, and how different packaging from multiple suppliers can confuse the FBA system. From troubleshooting a broken listing to understanding how bid changes impact your ad visibility, this walkthrough is built for active Amazon sellers running PPC and FBA in 2026 and beyond.Need help troubleshooting Amazon listing or PPC issues? Work with the team at My Amazon Guy: https://bit.ly/4jMZtxu#AmazonPPC #AmazonSellerHelp #FBAProblems #AmazonListingIssues #MyAmazonGuy --------------------------------------------------------------------------Want free resources? Dowload our Free Amazon guides here:Amazon SEO Toolkit 2026: https://bit.ly/4oC2ClTQ4 Selling Playbook: https://bit.ly/46Wqkm32025 Ecommerce Holiday Playbook: https://bit.ly/4hbygovAmazon PPC Guide 2025: https://bit.ly/4lF0OYXAmazon Crisis Kit: https://bit.ly/4maWHn0TIMESTAMPS00:00 - Does Bid Affect Ad Rank or Impressions?00:22 - Bid Changes Explained Like Driving01:00 - Fixing “Image Not Available” in Inventory01:48 - How to Tell If Your Listing Is Down02:25 - What to Do If Amazon Image Fails02:38 - Two Suppliers, One SKU: Packaging Conflicts03:30 - What Amazon Actually Cares About in Packaging________________________________Follow us:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/28605816/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stevenpopemag/Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/myamazonguys/Twitter: https://twitter.com/myamazonguySubscribe to the My Amazon Guy podcast:My Amazon Guy podcast: https://podcast.myamazonguy.comApple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/my-amazon-guy/id1501974229Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4A5ASHGGfr6s4wWNQIqyVwSupport the show

On this episode of WHAT THE TRUCK?!?, host Malcolm Harris breaks down the biggest stories shaping freight as we head toward the end of 2025. Malcolm covers major industry headlines including the pending Union Pacific–Norfolk Southern rail merger, long-term investment at the Port of New York and New Jersey, consolidation in auto transport logistics, and a high-profile cargo theft case that underscores ongoing risk across the supply chain. The show features an in-depth conversation with Valentina Jordan, CEO and co-founder of Nauta, and Rafa Santiago, COO and co-founder, as they unveil Nauta's AI-powered inventory optimization engine. They explain how SKU-level visibility, harmonized data, and agentic AI workflows are helping shippers reduce stockouts, improve fill rates, and create more predictable freight flows that benefit truckers, 3PLs, and brokers alike. The discussion explores real-world customer wins, faster time to value, and how better inventory planning leads to smoother routes, consistent loads, and stronger revenue across the network. Later in the episode, Malcolm is joined in studio by Virind Gujral, CEO and founder of EV Bots. Virind shares his journey from fleet operations to building autonomous robotic solutions for EV fleet charging. He explains how EV Bots is tackling one of the biggest barriers to electric fleet adoption by eliminating driver downtime, optimizing charging costs, and automating vehicle inspections and maintenance checks. The conversation dives into Chattanooga's growing innovation ecosystem, pilot deployments, and what the future holds for electric fleets and logistics automation. Watch on YouTube Visit our sponsor Subscribe to the WTT newsletter Apple Podcasts Spotify More FreightWaves Podcasts #WHATTHETRUCK #FreightNews #supplychain Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Meta's new Andromeda retrieval engine demands REAL creative diversity. Get Tier 11's Creative Diversification Package and access Media Buying + Data Suite for FREE:https://tiereleven.com/cd Is Meta forcing all your ad spend into one product, regardless of what you actually want to scale? What if the very thing limiting your business isn't your ads or your offer but the algorithm you've been unintentionally training?In this ad lab session, John Moran breaks down how we rebuilt a campaign architecture using a Meta version of the “feeder strategy” and unlocked the ability to steer Andromeda rather than be steamrolled by it. We share how we took a business stuck with 80% of its conversions tied to a single SKU and created a system that grows multiple products profitably, on demand.If you've ever wrestled with product concentration, SKU imbalance, or runaway algorithm bias, this episode is your roadmap out. We cover the data, the levers, the mistakes, and the surprising benefits we didn't see coming. In This Episode:- Applying Google's feeder strategy to Andromeda- Case study: Training Meta to sell more products- CTR and CPC change after restructure- All clicks versus link clicks- The story-first creative advantage- Real results from testing the feeder strategy- Risk, scaling, and product diversification- How the strategy impacts company valuation- Final insights and episode wrap-upMentioned in the Episode:Previous Episode on Google's Feeder Strategy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xndq5dyX5sU Listen to This Episode on Your Favorite Podcast Channel:Follow and listen on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/perpetual-traffic/id1022441491 Follow and listen on Spotify:https://open.spotify.com/show/59lhtIWHw1XXsRmT5HBAuK Subscribe and watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@perpetual_traffic?sub_confirmation=1We Appreciate Your Support!Visit our website: https://perpetualtraffic.com/ Follow us on X: https://x.com/perpetualtraf Connect with John Moran:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnmorangads Connect with Ralph Burns: LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ralphburns Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/ralphhburns/ Hire Tier11 -