Industrial Insights Podcast
Industrial Insights with Chris O'Brien
Episode summary
I have Chris O'Brien with Auctane and Chris and I were commiserating that we work with a lot of the same types of companies and I love finding people that are dialed into our space with both like a CPG and just general businesses that are vertically integrated all the way to the outsourced companies that have aligned with 3PLs.
Full transcript
Justin Smith 00:01
Welcome back to the Industrial Insights podcast. I have Chris O'Brien with Auctane and Chris and I were commiserating that we work with a lot of the same types of companies and I love finding people that are dialed into our space with both like a CPG and just general businesses that are vertically integrated all the way to the outsourced companies that have aligned with 3PLs. And so Chris's company Auctane is in a unique space to help people grow. And so I'm thankful for you to be here and excited to spend time with you.
Chris O'Brien 00:36
Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm definitely excited to be here.
Justin Smith 00:40
So what does Auctane do exactly? Because it's funny, the brands, there's many. And then the value add, there are many. So maybe you can help us all understand the umbrella and then the different pieces.
Chris O'Brien 00:56
Yeah, absolutely. Auctane is the parent company of 10 brands. It started off as stamps.com a long time ago in the 90s. I think that's a brand that a lot of people are familiar with. Selling stamps, literally just selling stamps and postage discounts. You still hear them, I believe, on podcasts as a supporter of a lot of them. I heard them on Marc Maron when I started listening to podcasts a long time ago.
Justin Smith 01:08
Selling stamps.
Chris O'Brien 01:26
So they started off that way and eventually acquired more brands like Indisha, which is a long time brand of people who are shipping small parcel and also letters and things like that. ShipStation came around in, I believe around 2012, 2011. That's probably the flagship brand of Auctane. One of the biggest ones that people are familiar with. ShipStation has over a million customers. And then there's also ShipStation API, which is an API first branding of ShipStation. And that's more for developers. Then there's a few other brands that are under that umbrella too, like Shipworks and ShippingEasy, et cetera. for my purposes, I'm really focused on, yeah, exactly. We're in the shipping business, right? So I'm focused on ShipStation, ShipStation API. And then of course there's a company called Metapack that we also run, which is a
Justin Smith 02:13
We're in the shipping business.
Chris O'Brien 02:25
a tier one brand that operates for some of the largest sellers in 3PLs in the country and in the North American, also in Europe.
Justin Smith 02:36
Yeah, that's a lot.
Chris O'Brien 02:37
But as far as, yeah, it's quite a few. know it's a lot to sort of like relay back, but they're all shipping softwares of different magnitudes and different sizes and for different applications.
Justin Smith 02:48
Yeah, the one-liner was, sits at the intersection of shipping software, carrier connectivity, customer delivery experience at massive volume. It is interesting to see the volumes. Like, you guys push a lot of volume or like participate in it. So I gotta imagine there's a ton of insight that comes from that and experience. And I'm excited to dig into some of that.
Chris O'Brien 03:12
Yeah, absolutely. We're touching billions of pieces of shipping piece. So yeah, every year. It's amazing.
Justin Smith 03:19
Enough about Auctane, how about Chris? So you got out of college, Michigan State and some supply chain, which I'm doing the University of Arkansas supply chain program now. I'm just about to complete it in May. so Michigan's the that's a top dog for that industry, I feel like. And then you started at CH. I got to imagine that was a great first place to get grounded and like get your bearings and get a lot of experience. What was your
Chris O'Brien 03:33
Nice.
Justin Smith 03:49
CH experience about? Like how would you describe what like trajectory or like what your major like a learning was coming through there?
Chris O'Brien 04:00
You know, it's funny. I didn't know a ton about supply chain when I was coming right out of school. I got a marketing degree within the business college and I was interviewing at a lot of places. I wanted to move to Chicago and I got the interview and I ended up getting the job with with C. Robinson. But part of the interview process was to go on site. You know, they picked you up, picked you up in a town car and all of this. when you were there, they would put you on the desk with someone. And this was like a very like high octane sort of environment at CH Robinson when I first started there. A lot of people on phones and headsets and, you know, booking loads and things of that nature. And there was a lot of money sort of flying around there. And it was very exciting for someone like I think myself kind of coming out of school. And I specifically remember there being a commission check.
Justin Smith 04:36
Okay.
Chris O'Brien 04:54
on someone's desk for like $10,000 and I was just sort of sitting with them. And when I was 23, coming out of school, I had about $300 to my name. And to see a $10,000 commission check on someone's desk, was like very intrigued by that. So.
Justin Smith 05:03
Hahaha You better pick that up, don't just leave it laying around the desk.
Chris O'Brien 05:13
Yeah, I think that might have been on purpose, right, to sort of entice some of the recruits that were coming through. no, I mean, beyond just the money that you can make there, it was a tremendous opportunity back then. We learned a lot about just how logistics works from the truckload perspective and domestic and LTL and all of those things. So many pieces that I was unaware of just how much freight was moving through the country and how it happened, right? Like you'd see the trucks on the road like all of us do when I was a kid, my dad, you know, when he wanted to put me to sleep in the car, would ask me to count the truck headlights that would come from the other side of the highway if I was being too annoyed or something like that. So now being like in a role where I'm actually at work and doing these sorts of things, you know, we're on the phone. Trying to basically like make a margin in between what the load costs us to move and how much we're getting from a customer to actually haul that freight. So that's kind of like how C. Robinson makes money for the most part in their North American surface transportation unit, which I believe is still like 85 % of their business. And since then, you've seen tons of players come in and replicate that, right? And I think Robinson is still like number one or number two. I think XPO and a few of these others are still up there. But that's really how I cut my teeth in sales and transportation and logistics and just learned a ton. Being there for as long as I did. it's a fantastic experience. met so many people, really learned how. business works in a lot of different ways. It's kind of a no-holds-barred place to work and in industry. And I think it gives you a lot of real life skills coming in there.
Justin Smith 07:11
Yeah, I would say maybe it's coming back from the dark side. If you then go to like a company that then is like serving customers or like if you go to work for like the customer themselves, right, rather than being like an outsourced partner. So like, it's funny to take your perspective from there and then think through like, what does that mean now here? And when you talk with customers and like knowing who they are dealing with or like what things they might be encountering to be able to like a walk a mile in their shoes.
Chris O'Brien 07:45
Yeah, absolutely. That's a great point. And so much has changed since then. mean, there was just no, there was no real visibility into the supply chain. Whereas now there's just so much technology that's going to show you like the weather patterns and, you know, what sort of breakdowns there could be. So I think from a customer vantage point, there's so much more access to information that allows people to make better decisions. And they just didn't have that. At a certain point, and it wasn't that long ago to where you're just relying on, you know, calling your rep at CH Robinson or at. You know, total quality logistics or whatever it may be to get those updates via phone or via email.
Justin Smith 08:27
now we're doing end-to-end supply chain visibility.
Chris O'Brien 08:32
That's right, that's what it's all about.
Justin Smith 08:35
I see everything everywhere all the time. I'm new to the idea of like shipping as this idea of turning it from like the cost center to like a competitive advantage or this idea of like margin and like margin leakage or what I love to call that I got from a broker back in the day was profit recovery.
Chris O'Brien 09:02
Ooh, I've never heard profit recovery.
Justin Smith 09:04
Yeah, so good. all his like a band of brothers that were all consultants, like they called themselves like the profit recovery partners, or that's like what their name of their consultancy was. And it's such a good one, because it's like you've already created it. And then it's all about like retaining it or like, like getting it back. So yeah, I always thought that was a good one. So in shipping, like If we take that frame, then where do you, your team, and your offering fit in that frame?
Chris O'Brien 09:41
of profit recovery.
Justin Smith 09:43
Shipping. Like if you think of like shipping costs and like how people like deal with how much they spend and like how much maybe they're wasting or like how they can do better.
Chris O'Brien 09:56
Gotcha. A couple of different ways. you know, where I'm now at Auctane and where I was before, after CH Robinson, I moved into Parcel and that's where I was at APC Postal Logistics. So the Parcel space is so much different from the Freight space. And that's really where my, you know, my thing is now and where like my focus lies. So when you're talking about. leakage or profit recovery, or just basically like maximizing what you have in terms of value and in terms of like holding onto your cash. One way that the chip station helps tremendously is having access to multi-carrier strategy, right? So think this is kind of big in the zeitgeist in general right now, but that used to be that retailers, shippers of all kinds, including 3PLs especially would rely on maybe just a couple of carriers or maybe just a single carrier like a FedEx, UPS or a USPS or a DHL. And there was really good reason for that. If you had those guys and you were shipping quite a bit, they would give you excellent discounts and they still do. But now there's so many other players out there that you can access and really leverage discounts from and actually get really great delivery access depending on your geographic location. There's regional carriers that we work with like Tusk Logistics or VHOO, LSO. There's just a bunch, right? OnTrack is another one. If you incorporate these guys into your mix, you can just find little niches where you can shore up costs and really make the most of what you're doing. And you can still sort of hold onto those discounts because carriers are a little bit more flexible and hip to the fact that multi-carrier is the way to go.
Justin Smith 11:51
Yeah, everyone has a different regional strength or like the national players, can't cover all like they can't be strong on all routes and all regions.
Chris O'Brien 12:02
Yeah, and there's so many technologies and softwares out there now that are going to be able to help you pinpoint where you might be losing delivery strength, right? it's hard. It used to be really hard to tell. You just might say, well, we're not hitting. We're not doing great like this week or this month, but now you can get it down to the zip code level and say, we're not. We're really not strong around this part of Oklahoma or this part of Pennsylvania, and you can maybe find a regional carry to help you fill that gap. So now you're not only talking about shorting up costs, you're improving your delivery.
Justin Smith 12:36
All the better. How many is too many? Like, what's the ceiling of complexity there?
Chris O'Brien 12:44
That really depends on how deep your tech stack is, how deep your capabilities are, and how complicated you want to make your logistics. So I would say for a smaller 3PL, for instance, you probably don't need 12 carriers, right? Like you can probably just get by with a handful. If you're a larger one, like say take a company like Stord, S-T-O-R-D, these guys are like highly technologically advanced. they leverage a ton of carriers for different reasons and different routes, different locations. They can handle as much as you can throw at them. So it just totally depends on where you are on the market.
Justin Smith 13:28
it. That's awesome that like you can get to a point where you're so advanced where you're like if they're better we can handle another one or another one like you're optimizing without the limitation. I love it that's such a change and then to have more transparency there, to be able to utilize technology there, and then to be able to ultimately have it turn into service levels, right? Because go back to the customer and customers being happy and return and repeat customers and being able to maximize that and save margin at the same time, all the better.
Chris O'Brien 14:07
Yeah, totally. I'll actually give you an example of this. there's a company in California called American Giant, an apparel company. And I've been an American Giant fan for probably five years. And they're like one of my most coveted brands, right? And they do like sweatshirts and hoodies and that kind of stuff, but it's all made in America and it's all like really like high quality thick stuff. They claim to have...
Justin Smith 14:23
What did they do? What's their product?
Chris O'Brien 14:35
like the most durable, like the best hoodie in the world.
Justin Smith 14:38
I have teenagers. All we do is wear hoodies and sweats. So we're going to.
Chris O'Brien 14:42
check out American giant, like free plug for American giant. love their stuff. I love that it's all made in America. It's awesome. So, it used to take like whatever a week to 10 days, pretty typical. I live in Chicago for it to get from their facility to my house. I don't really care. Like no big deal. I understand the logistics of it. I think they used, you know, like a big three or big four carrier, but then, just around, I think I just put it, I placed this order like last week.
Justin Smith 14:48
Nice.
Chris O'Brien 15:11
On a Saturday, I got something from them and I got, placed the order on a Saturday and then I actually received it on Monday morning. And this was just like a standard order. didn't pay up for shipping or anything. So I really didn't get it. So I'm like, what is this? So then I look into it and it moved through stored. So I was like, okay. And stored as a customer of ours too. So I moved through stored. What else? It was delivered by Dasher, which means it was connected through DoorDash. So I just kind of like peeled the young and back and figured out what they were doing. they sort of has facilities all around the country. They have eight to 10 of their own main facilities, but then they have up to 500 partner facilities that they work with. So I think what's happening is American giant and other retailers are doing this. They're actually storing product at different facilities with stored and maybe partner facilities. And then once an order is placed, it's getting facilitated and processed through those local facilities. And then it's actually being delivered by a door dash driver. So now they're rivaling what Amazon is doing, but with apparel through partners that are highly technologically integrated, like stored. And I was blown away because I was like, wow, this is crazy. Right?
Justin Smith 16:21
It's all done. Yeah. You didn't have to do that. I would have been happy with Tuesday or Wednesday or whatever. Yeah.
Chris O'Brien 16:36
I would have, right? I'm a loyal buyer, but I could see how that could make people want to buy more, right? And I think it's a really positive experience for like an end consumer.
Justin Smith 16:47
Yeah, yeah. And what an advantage when you think of like, that's just them doing what they know how to do best. Like, does that make you more likely to be happy with them? And then you're like, wow, they're at the top of their game. This is, this is like service to the max.
Chris O'Brien 16:59
Totally. Yeah. I was pumped.
Justin Smith 17:03
Yeah, I love it being in the industry where you're like, let's look at the label. Let's look who the carrier was. Let's delve into this a little bit. It's fun with every package that shows up on your door to take a look at it.
Chris O'Brien 17:18
Yeah, we nerd out on that stuff.
Justin Smith 17:21
Yeah, so if we got multi-carrier, that's like today's reality that's become best practice and then like organizations maturity and their tech stack helps like dictate how many they can handle and why they may want to go with more or less to optimize. What else is in our ship station? Returns, returns is another focus I think. And it's interesting to think of like returns of like what's going wrong there that can be fixed or like where can we do better? How would you frame the returns conversation?
Chris O'Brien 17:59
You know, returns is an interesting thing because it just keeps going up. think every year more and more returns are happening, right? And it's gotten to the point where companies have had to make it just a better overall experience for people. Like returns has become an experience. It used to just be something you had to service. Now it's like, no, we need to make returns something that's easy for people. Because Amazon, of course, like a lot of things sort of like paved the way. So when you look at a company like Happy Returns, they partner with UPS. So you've probably experienced this. think a lot of people have, if they have a return now, they can take it to, if they partner with Happy Returns, like a local UPS store, or they'll have other places like a Kohl's or not Whole Foods, I think that's Amazon. But all you have to really do is just take it in and they just scan the label and you're done.
Justin Smith 18:54
Chris, I need it at my gym where you go to the gym and you take your returns there too. then I get 24 hour fitness as returns or, you know, something like that. Yeah. Yeah.
Chris O'Brien 18:58
that's a great idea. That's a great idea. Is it big enough, Jim? Yeah, just return anywhere. But yeah, these companies are really highly facilitating that. And I think it's like really, really important. And from a ShipStation point of view, you know, we're able to facilitate the label print aspect of that. And then we partner with companies that actually are really, really good at returns. So we focus on what we're really good at. And then we partner with any company that does things that are part of the ecosystem that aren't really in our wheelhouses hard.
Justin Smith 19:34
Yeah, it's funny to think of the idea of Amazon paved the way for returns or for having like a door dash, like outsourced drivers where people show up in their Toyota Corolla. What else do you think they're doing now that hasn't flowed through that you guys might be working on or that is on the horizon?
Chris O'Brien 19:58
That's a really good question. I think this DoorDash boom is sort of just starting to be honest. Like I was, we talked to a lot of companies, right? And I don't think I'm giving anything away that's proprietary. If you go on their website, Macy's is now partnered with DoorDash. So retailers as large as these guys are using independent drivers to your point to make local deliveries. you know, from their company. So I think that's a huge shift. think a lot of these partner warehouses that work with companies like Stord and others, I think that's a big opportunity for 3PLs and others beyond like their, just their standard business. Now they can maybe get into this and be like an extension of some of these larger companies. I think just a lot of technological integration. And API driven solutions are making just new possibilities for the field in general. And it's super exciting and it's almost hard to keep up with.
Justin Smith 21:09
Yeah, like that has room to saturate and like maybe it's 5 % of its potential. That just one aspect of it. I could totally see that. I love it. That's always good. It's like using them to see the future. Yeah, and then ship station and like a cross border shipping. Is that something that I think I was reading a little bit about?
Chris O'Brien 21:19
Yeah. Absolutely.
Justin Smith 21:37
It's funny to think of like a... the tariff dance of Q2, we saw in industrial real estate with people pulling inventory forward if they had foresight into it, or all of the cautiousness of stop, wait, or people who had not cheap plastic Chinese goods, but things that had less margin associated with it, where the tariff caused people to just close their doors in some instances we saw in Southern California. It is interesting to think of how the border changes, where goods are coming from, our relationship with Mexico and Chinese goods. And we have seen this last 10 years. I'm 20 years in the biz. You are the same vintage as me. So where does ShipStation play in this space? And what do you see from clients and the challenges that they're dealing with and how you guys help them?
Chris O'Brien 22:34
Yeah, the tariff thing has been wild. There's only so much I think that you can control as someone who's in this business if you're shipping product or you're manufacturing product, right? So a lot of companies have basically just moved, you if they have overseas product that they need to get to the United States, if they've moved it away from China as much as they can and they've sort of just outsourced to another place. Right? Because this is kind of what happens, I think, with tariffs is it's a game of whack-a-mole with people. They're like, well, we can't do from China. We're going to pull it from Vietnam or we're going to pull it from another country like Malaysia. And I think that's just.
Justin Smith 23:17
It's like Pharma going to Ireland for lower corporate taxes or something like that. Yeah, different version of a similar game.
Chris O'Brien 23:23
Exactly. Exactly. I have an accountant joke, like how many accountants can you fit in a PO box and Ireland, things like that. But yeah, that's kind of how it works with manufacturing and shipping and tariffs. And that's been a big thing that we've seen. It's definitely had an impact on pricing. think pricing overall has kind of gone up across the board in a lot of different sectors.
Justin Smith 23:33
you
Chris O'Brien 23:52
That's just like a natural response, I think, to the tariffs because ultimately that's a cost that gets passed along to consumers in the long run. That's been a big challenge. from a solution standpoint on the ship station side, we consult a lot with how we can help, things that we advise on, et cetera. But a lot of those challenges that help from, or I'm sorry, that arise from, you know, like an overseas, like a bonded warehouse, like those sorts of things, the supply chain challenges. A lot of those happen like before they get to the software side of things, right? So a lot of it, like we observe, we write about, we put blog posts up to kind of like give people indications as to which way the wind is blowing, things of that nature. And then we're here to help facilitate, you know, once the product is ready to go and it's warehoused and you know, all that sort of thing. So we just love to be a partner any way we can.
Justin Smith 24:56
Yeah, that's not your jam. That's already happened by that point, because that's more of like thinking of like cargo and inbound than it is like parcel and outbound.
Chris O'Brien 25:08
Correct. Yeah.
Justin Smith 25:10
Yeah, I love that. It has been interesting to see if any of these bonded warehouses come and go, or these foreign trade zone designated warehouses come and go. And it's such a small segment, even in Southern California near the port, we don't see that change as much as I would have thought that we would have with this.
Chris O'Brien 25:33
I was actually curious about that with your business, if that was something that you got into on the real estate side, if you were contracting warehouses for like Bonded and things like that.
Justin Smith 25:44
Yeah, it's funny. It's like not a black box per se, but like it's rare. It's infrequent. It's only in really narrow lanes. And then... like nobody really knows how it works a little bit because you're going to the government as best I understand when you go to like apply to have this so that you can provide this. where when is it okay in any city? Is it only only okay in certain counties? Is it only okay in like certain areas of certain counties? And then you really only see it crystallize in like the South Bay near the port, like kind of in one or two cities like Carson and Rancho Dominguez. And then you see some of it like in the furthest east, like our inland ports, if you will, where a lot of like the biggest of the big boxes are like a Moreno Valley in Paris. And so you don't see it as often where you would expect to see it, which is like in Ontario, where like a ton of the major like distribution hub is, or like the real like meat and potatoes of Southern California for distribution centers. And so...
Chris O'Brien 26:41
Mmm.
Justin Smith 26:56
I have also found talking with some people that are in those types of warehouses, it provides a little less flexibility in the sense of like you make a 10-year commitment on one of these large facilities and the market shifts and now you have excess space, well you can't just like sublease half of your building because the market's soft to fill a hole like because with the regulations like they don't allow you to do that. And so I'm not sure that's like the crux of the matter but it's interesting when I've talked with people that already have buildings like that and then they're halfway through their lease and like it doesn't fit for them anymore and it's kind of become a little bit of a liability in the sense of like I can't do anything other than just try and keep growing my business. Like I can't do what most other distribution center operators would do, which is like, let's work out a deal to share the space or to put up a wall and divvy the space into two or into three. Like you can't make use some of the real estate mechanics or like a tools to solve that problem. You just have to go back to like, how are we going to grow the business or like win a new account or something to like backfill the space. that's been an interesting thing that's like a limitation. And I don't think that prevents people from doing it, but it just like between the regulations and some of the limitations, like only the people that are real niche players and are really deep in that game like end up getting those buildings from what I understand.
Chris O'Brien 28:28
Interesting, okay.
Justin Smith 28:31
Yeah, our junior guy Chris did like a 101 on that with our local association that like it helps educate brokers and investors and owners on that particular topic. So I just got like a new update on some of the Cliff Notes on that. But like we call pretty wide and like know most of the major players in the marketplace. And it's just surprising that it's like point two percent of the market or something like ridiculously small.
Chris O'Brien 29:00
Yeah, so not really impacting you very much at all.
Justin Smith 29:04
good to know and then it popped up on the radar when like the tariff talk came back and then it like kind of quickly went back away and so if you didn't have like a specific client like that did not become a long-term structural shift in strategy for people.
Chris O'Brien 29:21
Yep, that makes sense.
Justin Smith 29:24
Yeah. Cool, what else? 3PLs. Those are customers for you. How much of your customer base would you say are 3PLs?
Chris O'Brien 29:38
Boy, that's a hard question to answer. 3PLs are a huge part of our business simply because so many brands over the years have been, brands and customers have been outsourcing to 3PLs. I think when it comes to running a business in this country, a lot of folks don't necessarily want to deal with the distribution, the shipping, the physical aspect of it. And there's so many qualified operators out there and options that, hey, why don't I go this route? These guys are way better at it than I would be and it's not really something that I wanna handle, right? So I don't really know the exact percentage, but it's something that I specialize in personally on our team at ShipStation and ShipStation Enterprise. I love working with 3PLs. It started for me when I was at APC, simply because if you go after as a salesperson, like individual retailers, that's great. And you can really land some big ones. But I thought if you go after a 3PL, maybe you can score five or six brands in one account, right? That was my thinking. And I also like working with 3PLs because they really are on top of the shipping game. They know exactly what they're doing. They're very serious about it.
Justin Smith 30:49
Yeah.
Chris O'Brien 31:02
they're typically just like really salt of the earth people. And as things have progressed over the last like five, six years, like so many new people have come into the business and it's gotten so much more like technologically advanced too. At this stage with like Auctane, the connections and integrations that are happening are just like sort of mind blowing. So yeah, I mean, absolutely love it. It's great and I kind of references before we hopped on and started recording, but this I want to shout out this organization that were a part of at Auctane called IWLA, the International Warehouse and Logistics Association. I would imagine that you're familiar. A lot of your listeners are familiar with these guys since we've joined. They've just been an awesome partner for Auctane and we just absolutely love working with them. I'm actually going to be out your way in two weeks. I'm going to tour the Port of Long Beach and do some classroom training. So just kind of do a little remedial stuff around 3PL. I just want to get closer to it and just continue to do some continuous learning around around everything. Just aspects of it. I haven't really touched yet like HR and sort of more of the like daily day to day like as if you're an unoperator and and that sort of thing.
Justin Smith 32:04
Thanks I love it. They almost sucked me in last year to the one of theirs was like, like how to start a 3PL or it was like scaling like your small 3PL or like finding scale growing like for the startups and kind of the same vein. And was like, Oh dude, that's perfect. Like, cause there's plenty of people that could use the 101 that are not all like maybe the partners of a lot of 3PLs like would like would do them a service to do a lot of the 101 type
Chris O'Brien 32:40
Yeah.
Justin Smith 32:57
of class that like startups would be going through with them. So that was one that I was like that's a great idea and I have my list of conferences and stuff to go to and that one's on there for sure. It's always funny with some of the associations to figure out like what their niche is and where their strengths are. So if it's on like the worker in the warehouse or if it's on like this specific segment of the business or if it's more like a regulation. like I have found that There's quite a few, but that one keeps popping up on the list as being one of the best of the best.
Chris O'Brien 33:32
As far as I know, it's the only association in the United States that's solely focused on third party logistics companies.
Justin Smith 33:39
Yeah, yeah, there's one in SoCal DMA, I think it's Distribution Managers Association. Hopefully I'm not like butchering that one. That's another one we've looked into that I've seen that's like a SoCal specific. I'm not sure if it's national in scope, but another one that's always worth looking into.
Chris O'Brien 33:58
Nice.
Justin Smith 33:59
Yeah, back in the 3PL talk, mind blowing integrations. How could I not ask more about that? tell us more. What are some of the ones that are maybe a leading edge that you have found impactful?
Chris O'Brien 34:14
Yeah. So, this kind of like ties into the, the multi-carrier strategy when we're working with three PLs. And this is something that I really kind of get into when I'm talking to, companies like this is, you know, maybe they're using a homegrown WMS system. Maybe it's something that they've bought, with our, so we, we have a product called ship station API that I was kind of alluding to before. There's other ways that we can do things with like a 3PL add-on feature that we have through our user interface product. But either way, we can connect to their WMS system and then give them access to all of our carriers, right? So all the regionals that we were talking about earlier, the nationals, and then they'll have access to our discounted rates through those carriers. And then they can also bring their own accounts. to that API connection as well. So they can actually shop their rates against our rates and they can choose whatever they want. We're fairly agnostic to that, but it just opens up a whole world of possibility and connection for them. And there's different integration paths depending on what sort of system that they're using. mean, whoever you're talking to, they're not gonna be using the same as like the company down the street, right? The WMS. an ERP landscape in this country and this, guess in this world really is just like so vast. It's wild. There's a ton of them that you can choose from. A lot of companies choose to build their own. So I just find it fascinating when I get into conversations with the technology folks, the operations leaders, you know, how they're actually doing these things, how they're carving up parcel versus their full truckload versus their LTL and how we can work together to sort of bring it all together.
Justin Smith 36:10
Yeah, that's great perspective. It's funny that like not that no two do it the same, but like the amount of variety and the amount of like iterations and maturity out there is like so vast that like with each person you got to really sit down and figure out like what they have going on to figure out like how it would work, much less have a product that's like all built out that can integrate cleanly.
Chris O'Brien 36:34
Yeah, it's it's really cool and there's just so many different things that you can do with the technology, right? It's and it's not just really carrier connections. There's also. There's also web hooks right that kind of connect out and they can share information internally back tracking information so you can run reports internally to see what carriers are actually like running on SLA's which carries are sort of giving you problems, which zones are giving you problems. And then of course there's like external. that are reaching tracking information out to your customers and doing some of those same things. Address validation, all of the pieces that put the puzzle together for you and make an efficient shipping operation and sort of solve a lot of the puzzle pieces and mysteries and pain points for a shipper.
Justin Smith 37:25
Yeah, speaking of pain points, selling software. What's a? That's gotta be fun. I sell buildings. I can only imagine like how you work a territory or decide like What's noteworthy or who may have the type of pain that you guys can help solve or like who's ready for the evolution that you can help provide Like how do you address the market or how do you build like a pipeline? Not that we have to belabor sales, but we are all selling to some degree and
Chris O'Brien 37:34
Yeah.
Justin Smith 38:00
are very successful so I thought it would be good to spend two minutes on what that's like in your role.
Chris O'Brien 38:07
Yeah, no, that's an awesome question. So the way that the organization that I'm part of is pretty small. So ShipStation in and of itself is more like a mid-market operation, but we are part of a small team of enterprise and we focus on 3PL. We focus on marketplaces. So if you look at like Meta slash like Facebook, GoDaddy, Intuit, the real real companies like that, they all use ShipStation API, that product that I was talking about, to manage their transactions. So that's another ICP of ours. We work with some retailers as well. Those are kind of like big focuses of ours, also technology companies. So we span four of us. I'm in the Midwest. We have someone in Los Angeles in your area. We have someone in New York. And then there's someone who works the South and we're handling a lot of inbound because we're, obviously like known in the market, but we're also reaching out to and trying to figure out the type of companies that we think could use our products. And the reason I like 3PL is because I know that every 3PL is shipping. know they're using the same carriers that we use, maybe not all of them, but they're at least using the big four or a mix of the big four, and they have some sort of tech stack, most likely if they're like to a certain degree. So a lot of them build out their own, some of them buy, and they get into the situation where it's build versus buy. Do we continue to build our own tech stack or do we outsource to a company like ShipStation and allow their products to come into our field and our engineers can relax? So this is sort of the issue with build versus buy, right? When you have a carrier integration like say UPS or FedEx, there's work to do. Like you build the API, it's not over. have to like, there's ongoing maintenance that happens. They update things on their side, then you have to update things on your side. If you use, you know, an operation like ours, like ShipStation API, it's one integration. And then we take care of all that maintenance on our side. You don't really have to worry about as much ongoing maintenance. as you would if you do the direct integration. So it's less dev work, it's less time they can focus on whatever sort of strategic initiatives that you have at your company instead of worried about that. So it's a cost benefit analysis that every company has to do if they're looking at their tech stack that way. So that's sort of how we look at it. And like I said, 3PLs are big marketplaces and some retailers as well.
Justin Smith 41:03
Yeah, we use Salesforce and it was one of those same ones where you're like they continue to reinvest in it. They take care of all of like the app exchange and the vendors and the partners and like you don't deal with any of that and you just trust that like they're pretty dialed in and like you can now focus on what you do best and where you can like multiply your top line. And yeah, I love it. That's great. I love that you guys can be that for them and help them grow. Last one as we come up on our time would be the hot take of software and logistics coming together. You think there will be more like acquisitions and &A activity and that's something that like we'll see more of as companies find that like, hey, if we can acquire that, we don't like that can be our superpower or is that something that like those two never shall meet and like they can stay focused on what they do best.
Chris O'Brien 42:03
Boy, that's a great question. I think that those things will continue to be in the zeitgeist for sure. think that there will continue to be conversations like that being had because there are things like that happening as we speak. And there's plenty of room for that. think there's companies that want to do everything. One thing that we run into is We're very, very strong in parcel. have LTL connections, but our truckload isn't quite as robust. We don't really have like that sort of feature. So if you run into a 3PL who wants you to do everything, a lot of people will want like a single source software. We don't have the perfect answer for truckload. So they're gonna need a TMS and then they're gonna need our platform for instance. you know, a nice... answer to that would kind of be something like what you're alluding to, right? If there was a combination of our software and then like a logistics company that also had a TMS in-house and then boom, you got the full stack all the way across the board and we can handle everything. So to your point, I think you'll probably continue to see that, especially as logistics companies become more technologically enabled. Yeah.
Justin Smith 43:32
Yeah, it's something that I was less cognizant about. And then I was talking with Nikhil at Benjamin Gordon, it's BGSA, and they do &A for like the transportation and logistics industry. And then a lot of what the space that they're in is on like, a lot of the tech side is where they see like a lot of growth and opportunity. So it is interesting to connect the dots there and see like, what does that change? Or like, does that lead to more deal flow for &A or more deal flow for companies like yourself or will that cause people to need more buildings or less buildings on my side of the ledger? So it's always fun to look at like the different like legs of the stool and like how they affect one another.
Chris O'Brien 44:10
Mmm. Yeah, I'm not really sure on the building side, but I can say, because that's not exactly my wheelhouse, but certainly over the last couple of years, we've just seen a ton of innovation on the technology side in logistics, just a ton.
Justin Smith 44:33
Yeah. Any last takes on anything you're pumped on for the year? As a new year, new you, new conferences, new products, new things happening in the world?
Chris O'Brien 44:46
Yeah. I mean, we're as a team headed out to quite a few shows. We're going to be at manifest, in Las Vegas. we're going to do, NRF national retail federation here in New York. I'm actually leaving tomorrow for that. we are going to, IWLAs event in San Antonio, their main event at the end of March. boy, there's like, there's more. The Q1 is super busy. Yeah. Q1 is super busy. Yeah, for sure.
Justin Smith 45:00
Nice. Dude, you got the robe show going, you're heavy. Yeah.
Chris O'Brien 45:16
So I'm excited about all of that. I love connecting with people at shows. I think it's just a great way to network and meet like-minded folks. in terms of like strategy this year, there's some big things happening with ShipStation. I can't talk about everything, but definitely like keep your eyes peeled for that. And yeah, super excited for the year. I think it's going to be a great year for us. I think it's going to be a good year in general for logistics and transportation. Hopefully we see a little bit more control around tariffs. It would be nice to get some consistency. I think a lot of business leaders are looking for more guidance that way. And if we can have some more assurance, there'll be a lot more positive momentum in terms of like growth and investment and that sort of thing.
Justin Smith 46:04
You can feel confident making bigger bets. Yeah, awesome. Thank you, Chris. That's been great. That was awesome to delve into a lot of things with you and get to know you better. And there's a chance I'll see you at one of those functions. I haven't figured out which one yet, but if I were guessing today, I would guess San Antonio.
Chris O'Brien 46:07
Absolutely. All right, yeah, end of March. It'd be great to see you there.
Justin Smith 46:25
Yeah, I did do Manifest last year and loved every minute of it. It was really good and it super solid.
Chris O'Brien 46:32
Yeah, cool. Well, it's great to meet you as well. Thanks for having me on. Really enjoyed it.
Justin Smith 46:36
Yeah, cool. I'll catch you around. Yep. Bye bye.
Chris O'Brien 46:38
All right, see ya.