EP 575: Fulfillment Operations Excellence at Scale with Dr. Squatch
31:44 Share

You don't want your employees to be idle, so why would you want your robots to be idle? Zebra Technologies is addressing idle robots by bringing their latest solution to the market, which requires 30% fewer robots.

resulting in increased asset utilization and a cost-effective entry to automation for your fulfillment operations. The Zebra Symmetry Fulfillment Ecosystem is bringing you balanced utilization, more cubic capacity, and optimized pick paths so you can operate at peak performance. Want to take your fulfillment operation to the next level? Learn more at zebra.com or click the link in the show notes.

The New Warehouse podcast hosted by Kevin Lawton is your source for insights and ideas from the distribution, transportation, and logistics industry. A new episode every Monday morning brings you the latest from industry experts and thought leaders. And now, here's Kevin.

Hey, it's Kevin Lawton with the New Warehouse Podcast, bringing you a new episode today. And on today's episode, I am going to be joined by Andrew Sutton, and he is a Senior Director of Fulfillment Operations at Dr. Squatch. And we are going to talk a little bit about

His journey, his background, he's been at two very interesting companies, I will say, and has seen some definite explosive growth, I think, in the e-commerce space. And we're going to talk to him a little bit about how he's navigated that, what he's seen from looking at distribution strategies around that, and also about his role as a first fulfillment employee at Dr. Squatch and being senior director of fulfillment operations, and a little bit between brand 3PL relationship as well. So

Andrew, welcome to the show. How are you, sir? What's up, Kevin? Happy to chat. Thanks for having me. Definitely happy to get you on. Very interested to learn a little bit about this. Obviously, you know, Dr. Squash, he

everywhere. So definitely interested to dig into that a little bit as well. But I guess kick us off here. Tell us a little bit about your background. And you're actually I saw employee number one at Tipsy Elves too, and a part of the whole Shark Tank experience there as well, which I think is pretty interesting. So, so I guess tell us about your background and how you got involved in just kind of like the e-commerce space in general.

It's all by chance, really. So going back to my college days, I went to a tiny private school down in San Diego, California, Point Loma Nazarene University. Studied business with emphasis in entrepreneurial finance. So I didn't necessarily know what I wanted to get into. In that program, you kind of took the level one and two courses for finance, sales, marketing, HR, all the good stuff. So I kind of dipped my toes in all the different business categories. I knew I wanted to be in business of some sort, not necessarily business.

what? But it ended up being great because there's an opportunity after graduation. I kind of took my time to figure out what I want to do next. And really what jumped out to me was this opportunity, Tipsy Elves. And what stood out to me is that it was completely different. And so I didn't really want to graduate and go into general sales or accounting or finance. I wanted something that take a couple of years outside of college and maybe not take life super, super serious. And it ended up being a great opportunity because originally I was hired as just a seasonal

customer support associate, to be honest. At that time, it was the two co-founders, Evan and Nick. They went to UC San Diego, so up the coast a little bit from Point Loma. And they'd only been around for about a year or so and had some significant demands. And it was all built in, like going back in the history of tip sales on, on SEO, search engine optimization. So they found that there was a need and demand for ugly Christmas sweaters.

At that time, they were practicing. Evan was a lawyer. Nick was a dentist, actually. But they wanted to do something a little more creative and fun on the side. So they spun this up, saw a great initial success the first year. Evan decided to retire from law early on in his career and take on full-time tips and yells and needed some support during the holiday season. So all to say, it was just supposed to be a three-month contract. I was going to come in, be able to work with customers however need be. And that was really my first exposure to 3PL. When I graduated...

out of college. I hardly knew what supply chain meant, to be honest. And so, yeah, I was just ready to roll my sleeves up and help this company however I can and just try to absorb as much info knowledge from, at the point, two startup entrepreneurs. And I was really fascinated by it. And that season was a success. It was super fun. It was crazy. It was wild. I had no idea really what I was getting into. And I was actually working from home. So I'd only met them once when I got the job. So I was kind of, a lot of times, like,

We're running on our own and you just had to like dive in. And so a lot of that was trying to understand, okay, our seasonality, our hyper growth, like how do we support our 3PL? And I had a ton of fun. It was crazy. It was the best, best, probably first job I possibly ever could have because it did lead to a full-time opportunity. Yeah. Because when Tipsy Elves was founded, Ugly Christmas Sweater Company, you're nine, 10 years of prep for the two month holiday season.

And so they didn't think that they needed somebody full time the whole entire year. Thankfully, I did get the opportunity and was able to work side by side, Nick and Evan for a couple of years there. It's just us three. They did a lot of the customer facing stuff, supply relations, product design, web design. I did more like back in SEO strategy. I did some social media. My bosses were the models. So I take the photos. I'd edit the photos. I put them up on the website. And again, the whole entire time I'd

Started diving more and more into the supply chain, some more in like importing from China, getting inventory too.

The warehouse, all that good stuff. But all that to say, like after eight or nine years at Tipsy Health, we'd really gotten to the point where fulfillment was the crux of our customer journey. And a couple of years in, that hyper growth prevented us from executing on that customer experience to deliver timeliness. And that is so important in the Ugly Christmas Sweater world or any holiday world because you're ordering specifically for a party or for an event on a Friday. And if you order on a Monday and your product's there the next Tuesday after the party, it's

it's worthless. Right. And so a couple of years in, I was able to hone in on operations and then purely on fulfillment the last couple of years there to make sure that we weren't ruining the customer journey or eating away our lifetime or LTV potential and making sure that we could just execute on

what we offer to customers. So long winded way of saying I fell into it is great opportunity. And I, I'm fascinated by the 3PL industry, but I think it's, yeah, I just love working internally, externally with partners chasing the common goal. And in the 3PL world that you definitely get the opportunity to do that day in, day out. Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's so, so interesting too. And I can relate. I mean, I started my career in the warehousing side and as a temp too, and, you know, wasn't expecting much of it or what this was all about. And then it turned into a full-time thing. And, uh,

Yeah, now I'm here with a podcast about warehousing. So that's kind of how that went. Definitely. Yeah, but I think it's interesting, too, that you were there for, like, all that kind of explosive growth. Because I think you could probably say, I mean, if I think back, like, Tipsy L's was kind of like the...

the catalyst to really like this ugly Christmas sweater idea and trend. And now obviously like you see ugly Christmas sweaters all over the place and, and things like that. But they were really the ones that I think kind of pushed it totally out there and made it like this big kind of like party thing and all that stuff. So pretty interesting. And, and I do want to touch on too, because I see you have on your, your LinkedIn and I,

I think that's you in the picture there on your profile, right? But you guys were on Shark Tank as Tipsy Elves. So tell us a little bit about it.

that experience and i'm curious because a lot of times you know people talk about this shark tank effect like you're on shark tank and then you see a spike in sales whether you get an investment or not right and then there's reruns too and there's another spike then but how did that kind of work on the like the fulfillment side of things i mean was that kind of like crazy to to deal with that

Yeah, it was insanity. And specifically it was insanity because we were able to be recorded and featured on their Christmas holiday episode. So not only is December already our busiest time of the year, it was on Friday, December 13th, 2013. So it's kind of three weekends right in a row because the last Friday of November that year was Black Friday. So that kicks people in the shopping mood and specifically they start thinking towards Christmas, towards holiday season.

Then you had the next Friday, which is the first Friday of December. Again, more people thinking about December holiday parties, ugly Christmas sweaters. And then our episode was December 13th, just a couple of weeks before Christmas. So it was just like snowballing, like all this momentum building, building, building. And you can't really predict. And you read blogs, you watch interviews of what the Shark Tank halo effect is. But what I don't think we'd seen at that point is

a product or brand be featured in like their Super Bowl season. Like that timing couldn't have been any better for us. So it's just incremental volume on top of what have already been like our busiest weeks of the whole entire year. So we did everything we...

We could on our end in terms of providing forecasts or anticipated volumes, like timeline is going to be all hitting Friday or is it going to bleed into the weekend? What does that look like? And I think operationally, we actually had a pretty like smoother than expected, maybe uptick. But that was because we did have some web issues. Our checkout page specifically could not handle the amount of traffic we're getting from Shark Tank. Wow.

And so what ultimately actually happened is that I think the volume, we still did actualize it, but it was over multiple days instead of like one huge, large dump on a Friday. And that continued on. And so our partners did, I think, a great job keeping up with that. Because again, there's no crystal ball. We don't know the volumes. There's anticipated. But they're willing to roll up their sleeves and staff up as much as they possibly could and keep up. But yeah, I think that was really the first year. And that put us on a national level and got us that attention that...

continued to grow year over year and started putting us in a couple of tough positions in the following subsequent years where our three PL partners and maybe our infrastructure in place couldn't support that kind of growth to keep up. And we did start falling behind. So it was a good opportunity in all ways, exposure, but also started growing

prompting a lot of growing pains that we then had to look internally like what can we do better like how do we more proactive on the operational side to ensure that we're lean all the way through and efficient and not bleeding money for no reason yeah absolutely i can't imagine that would be like a big just kind of a big shock and stress test the system essentially like see like

where are we really right and like you said you know that kind of like you know yeah it was like a wild ride but it certainly you know gave you the chance to to look and see like okay like where do we need to to improve or you know optimize some of some things a little further which i think is really interesting there so so now you're at dr squash right and and for people maybe that aren't familiar with dr squash when you tell us kind of quickly what what that is

Yeah, totally. So we're a men's all natural personal care company. So we started out a number of years ago in the cold process bar soap space. But now we beyond just bar soap, we do deodorant, we do shampoo, conditioner, we do some shave products, body wipes. And our latest big category was body wash that launched a couple months ago. And so our mission is really to inspire men to be happier and healthier through personal care, and really just educate and inspire men to be aware of and passionate about what they put in or on their body to lead a healthier life, a longer lasting life.

Nice. Nice. All right. I like that. Definitely. And, and so, you know, you guys are doing e-commerce from like direct to consumer, but you're also in retailers as well. Right. And some big retailers too. I think I've seen you guys at as well. So tell us a little bit about kind of like, what is your distribution strategy at Dr. Squatch? How did you guys do any self-fulfillment? It's all 3PL. What's, what's the strategy there?

- Definitely, definitely. Yeah, I think in short, I'll just get right to the point. We actually outsource all fulfillment. And so I think it's probably interesting that I'm a senior director of fulfillment operations at a company that doesn't actually do our own fulfillment. But kind of going into the backstory. So Digitally Native Brand launched around 2012, 2013 as a passion project of our founder, Jack. 2018, 2019 took on some PE money.

put all that into advertising, specifically YouTube ads. And we're one of the first men's brands to really take advantage of that ad strategy. And it's very lucrative, very affordable, and just put us in front of a ton of eyes. And we had specifically one video that pretty early on after, I think a couple of days or weeks after putting it on online in 2020, got a hundred million views on YouTube. And that really put us on the map. That's where our volume spiked, excuse me, that's 2019 going in 2020 and COVID happened. I've

Everyone was at home shopping online, stimulus checks, and our DTC volumes continue to just grow, grow, grow. So up until really 2021, early 2022, we're primarily DTC business. Slow to get into retail at that point, not because of lack of trying. We did get in front of Walmart, not in front of Target. We got in front of what we thought would be perfect retailers, but

They, for whatever reason, weren't taking a bite. That being said, 2022, we finally got in with Walmart and the stuff just sells like crazy. That was our first primary core retailer. We're now in Target, Costco, Sam's Club, CVS, Rite Aid. We're up in Canada, Walmart. I mean, we're everywhere. I think at this point we're about 45,000 doors nationwide here in the U.S. Wow.

And it's been really fun. So at this point, B2B retail is our biggest sales channel. And that's where a lot of our focus now is on production and fulfillment. And then going into our fulfillment strategy, again, we use 3PLs. And when I joined, we had one 3PL partner and location Midwest in the Southern California areas.

Since then, we've expanded both domestically and abroad. We work with seven 3PLs in 12 different global locations. And specifically here in the US, which might be the most insightful or actionable is we've decoupled all our sales channels. So our primary ones are D2C, retail,

And then we call it Amazon or marketplaces. I know everyone's heard of Amazon, but we call it marketplaces. So what we do is when we collect orders or sales or against those channels, we actually have different 3PL partners that we feel are best in class to support that growth, that performance. Because what we've seen is as we got into this crazy hyper growth period that are, again, we weren't able to find what we thought was

providers could be great in multiple channels. They could be really good in one, okay in a second, but the third would drag behind. So after that caused enough frustration or customer experience issues or refunds, or we just felt was handcuffing our growth, we made the intentional decision on our end to take on that complexity through additional integrations, additional inventory, allocation strategy, all that effort to ultimately support better customer experience, drive up that demand LTV, but then also eat down cost. So we've also seen cost wins as a result of it.

Interesting, yeah. Yeah, that's a pretty interesting strategy because I think oftentimes you hear people trying to...

and not saying that what you're set up is is complicated necessarily but you know thinking that like well if i have multiple different 3pls and i'm working with and stuff it's going to make it like more complicated or complex for me but but i think your your approach there is pretty interesting because you're saying like well you know this one's best in class for our retail right this one's best in class for d2c this one's best in class for marketplaces and you know i think that makes sense too right so you're not like you know where you're with

one 3PL and they're like, eh, not so strong on marketplaces maybe. Right. But they're good on the rest. And then you're kind of like not getting that full customer experience, like all the way around and every channel that you're in. Right. So, uh, so that's pretty interesting. So, so tell us a little bit about kind of like how you manage that in a sense, because you, you said something earlier where you said, uh,

you know, why am I, you know, senior director of fulfillment operations and we don't do any fulfillment ourselves, right? It's all outsourced, right? So tell us a little bit about like, you know, why do you have that in-house fulfillment team even though you're not doing like in-house fulfillment itself? Yeah, yeah. I think the short answer there is that

Our costs, our fulfillment costs are actually the biggest operational cost bucket that we have here at Dr. Squatch. So in my past life at Tip Sales, there's a lot of brands out there in e-commerce, especially apparel. AOV tends to be much higher than maybe what we have at Dr. Squatch. We're usually in the $50 range, but our average shipment weight D to C wise is

three, three and a half pounds. So we're collecting less revenue, but it's heavier to ship, more expensive to ship and UPT is up as well. So what all that means is like we're in the weeds, we're in the data day in, day out. And there's actually a team of 10 alongside me on the fulfillment team, different channel heads and managers, and also have a manager of fulfillment excellence that leans into business systems and integrations. And yeah, we're looking at click to delivery, click to ship. We're looking at time and transit costs. Like

Because it's so crucial to our bottom line. Anything we could do to save 10 basis points or point here and there year over year means a lot to the whole entire business. And yeah, in every way that we've invested in hiring up the internal fulfillment team has yielded positive benefits, improved forecasts, improved communications. We break bread with all our 3PLs multiple times a year. So we're visiting their sites or they're coming to our HQ, our production facilities. So what we've seen is that

this intentional effort, yes, it costs money. It's not cheap to have 10 people managing a fulfillment operation that you actually don't have. You're just kind of representing Dr. Squatch, the brand, but it's yielded much greater savings than that and allows us to grow in a reliable sense. And why we don't look at it internally and why don't we stand up our own fulfillment operation? We have looked at it multiple times, really the volatility and it's kind of an insurance play. We are pretty everyday steady state in terms of demand, but there are definitely peaks and valleys and there's some headwinds and

And ultimately, at the end of the day, too, what Dr. Squatch is best at and what we're known for is producing top-tier products and then having amazing advertising, what we call edutainment or educational entertainment, as a way to promote

suck people's attention in and then get them in front of our product and inspire them to care about what they're putting in or on their body. So we want to focus on those two core areas, we'd rather as best we can. And actually, there's a third area I haven't got into yet, we do produce most of our own bar soap and a growing portion of our own deodorant now out of Southern California. So those actually are two or three core common disease that we want to focus on. And as long as fulfillment is operating at a good enough clip hitting all our core KPIs or quick delivery expectations that align with our customer needs,

then we don't see any real potential net benefit at bringing in-house. If anything, there's a lot of risk if we do and things go sideways for whatever reason. Volumes don't actualize. There's too many spikes, volatility. We really value working with a 3PL to where we can pull volume or they can push and pull resources if need be to keep up with overall volumes. And it just, at this point, it's,

It's no longer a distraction like it was because early on in my career here at Dr. Squatch before we decoupled, it was tough. Fulfillment was like the number one complaint from CX. It's cost us a lot of money. And thankfully, we've gotten to that point where it's no longer the case and we're working outsourced with 3PLs. And so there's no longer that internal dialogue in my own head that's like, what if we did this ourselves?

So now it's like, how do we support our partners? And that's my focus. But it's, it's no longer that noise like day in and day out of my, my really my job or the board or whatever it is like worried about fulfillment. Interesting. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Cause I think that's the thing, you know, with, with fulfillment especially, or any type of like distribution shipping in the warehouse side, it's like,

If you don't hear anything, it's good. But then when you hear something, typically it's bad. Something's happening, right? Yeah. Yeah, so that's pretty interesting there. So I'm curious, I mean, because you were the first employee on the fulfillment side for Dr. Squatch, right? So I guess tell us a little bit about, because you've been with two brands now that have had explosive growth, right? And lots of fast growth too. So tell us like,

You know, when as a brand, like, you know, should you start to build out this fulfillment team or make that like first fulfillment hire? Like what was the I mean, for Dr. Squash, I mean, maybe like what was the that point where they were like, OK, we need to bring somebody in and, you know, we bring we bring Andrew in. Right.

Yeah. So it's kind of tough. It's going to vary by industry and your specific product or AOV or whatever it looks like revenue. The short answer is if it's cheaper to staff up an internal team to optimize that fulfillment strategy and flow and save you more money than you're losing in customer complaints or refunds or cancellations, I think is the easy answer. So it's going to vary to every brand. At Tipshelter, we were in like the, I think, $3 to $5 million range a year. So it was kind of early on when it became apparent there's pain points. And again, that's like three to five and like a

two month period. So significant uptake in the last part of the year. Dr. Squatch, we were closer to like the 50 to $75 million range. A lot of it too, we were also chasing the hyper, hyper growth. So there's less of concern about, okay, where are we bleeding money or losing money? It's like, how do we chase that extra dollar? How do we get in front of this additional customer and chasing insane growth? But then once every company gets to that maturity point and they start worrying about profitability, margin, EBITDA,

I would be surprised if most brands going through hypergrowth don't see fulfillment as being a handcuff or an area that they're bleeding money, again, through returns, refunds, complaints that not only are directly costing you money, but also hurting you potential long-term growth. Because

Because specifically at Dr. Squatch, we got to an opportunity or situation here internally where we want to launch new products. Like could we, could the fulfillment team and our partners support that hyper growth? Because every time we launch something new, there's always a dump of volume, but we don't want to bring in new customers that have never experienced Dr. Squatch. And then it takes three weeks to get their order or only half the order ships. At that point, it's a waste of ad money. You're probably refunding the whole entire order. So then it becomes, okay, can we grow on this current foundation? If the answer is no, then,

Then it's serious time to like look internally and be like, okay, what does it cost to staff up? And that's part-time employees. There's full-time that, yeah. And I hired up pretty quickly for managers for the various channels or teams that I mentioned earlier. And then now up to 10. So it's, yeah. It's not cheap, but it's saving us more money than we're losing. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's such a great point that you made there too. Like, you know, you don't want to...

you know acquire a new customer and then all of a sudden it takes like you know like you said three weeks for them to actually get their order right then it's kind of like uh like why did i choose to do this especially you know in your space too you know specifically like

It's not like, you know, there's plenty of other options, right, for soap and the things that you guys offer. So it's important to, like, you know, make that first transaction. I mean, make all the transaction, but especially important to make that first transaction, like, successful and a good consumer experience. So, I mean, I think it's a great point there where you're talking about,

It is a cost, right? It is an expense to add this team in here. But kind of the dividends that's going to pay off in the long term and the overall cost savings you're going to get from that is certainly one that you want to make that investment in.

When it's possible to do that and probably sooner than later, I would imagine in that sense as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I love fulfillment. I love what I'm doing right now. But we totally realize that we're not going to make a customer's journey. Like they're not going to come back to Dr. Squatch because they get stuff next day or today. But it's one of the quickest ways to lose a customer. Poor fulfillment or poor product quality would be my two opinions, like the worst, easiest way.

to lose customers so we take our job very serious to make sure that everything we do with product design web design social media advertising like that whole entire amazing journey that our team puts together is continued all the way through delivery yeah and in perfect world they don't know that a fulfillment team exists like we're just we're just forgotten because it's so smooth so easy and everything as expected or needed by the customer is met and completes that that life cycle journey definitely yeah yeah they just click click checkout shows up and they're able to use it when they

Yeah. Yeah. And especially we're, we're pretty heavy. We haven't talked, touched on this, but pretty heavy in the subscription volume game. Okay. Um, and so that's an easy way to lose like subscribers too, if they, they know that their, their subscription is renewed, but it takes multiple weeks. They run out of soap or deodorant, whatever. That's an easy way to, so you don't want those subscribers to think twice about canceling that subscription. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Cause if you're subscribed, you're like,

These guys knew that I needed this like in a month, right? Like why is it not here? We have all the data. Yeah, that's the best thing you have to a crystal ball is upcoming subscribers. So if you can't perform against that, that's tough. Yeah, definitely. Definitely. So you guys work with 3PLs and you mentioned, you know, you call them your partners, right? Which I think is important to emphasize there. So you're obviously very focused on like solidifying and nurturing those relationships to make sure that

you know, at the end of the day, like they're servicing your customers the way you want them to service, like we're just talking about. So what are some of your biggest lessons, you know, from working with these three PLs over, you know, over the course of these two different brands and just your career in general?

Yeah. Yeah. So I'd go and go back to the early days and probably like more silly lessons learned that looking back at, I don't know why we didn't think about, but when I first joined tips, we actually didn't have UPC or barcodes on our products. I'll get Christmas sweaters, multiple sizes. So that's a silly thing that hopefully most brands don't don't for

forget when they first go live with 3PL. Anything that makes it scannable increases efficiency and integrity of fulfillment operations. So that was a tough lesson learned because you have two sweaters next to each other. One's medium, one's large. Associated things are grabbing large, you're grabbing medium. There's no way to verify that. And so that was an early lesson and something I never would have thought of until we ran into that issue. I see some other ones, maybe more positive is it's

Take your forecast very seriously. So internally here, we have finance plans, we have demand production plans. So what we need to be able to support all the demand moving forward, we don't necessarily have, at least internally across a greater organization, order forecasting. But we take as a fulfillment team, historicals and forecasts on those two different like finance and demand plan and try to mold that together. Okay, what does it look like for order volume or unit per transaction or lines to then perform

provide that to our 3PL for them to plan against. So labor throughput, carrier strategy. I think if you just think, okay, this year I'm going to be up 5%. You just throw them a forecast and it's up 5% last year. They can only operate so good as like you support them with their info. They don't know your brand as good as you do and they want to perform well. But if you don't actually invest in operating and like supporting your partners, then you're doing a disservice and they're going to most likely perform not as good as they could. Your customer is going to be frustrated, annoyed,

likely not come to your brand again or complain to you and it's just it's a win-win to really invest in anything you could possibly do to support that 3pl another one is just visiting the 3pl i've heard from a number of 3pls that it's not very common they only hear from brands when they're upset or frustrated they don't they don't receive a kudos they don't receive like anything like during anything to support the team we occasionally buy our 3pl teams like just pizza parties or like sandwiches or whatever just something that

the team, not only the management team, but also associates know that, you know, we recognize that they're there. We, we appreciate them. We value them. We, and we by no means treat them as an afterthought because we want them to be invested in, in a mutual win-win opportunity on both sides through all the levels. And so,

And so when we walk the floor and people see that we're from Dr. Squatch, they actually want to come up and like, we love this scent and we saw this advertising. Like it actually brings that brand to life outside of them just picking and packing orders. So I think that that's been huge for us. And yeah, all this kind of stuff, like anything you can do to actually like invest and support your 3PL, I think really does come back around because there's ultimately going to be tough conversations, whether it's negotiations or GRIs or poor performance or they miss KPIs. And if you have this foundation of this positive, healthy,

respect for each other and support and like wanting to create a win-win situation it makes those conversations just a little bit easier because yeah some of them might get tough but once they're over you dust yourselves off and you get back to right right to work and for me specifically like i have a big background and i grew up playing competitive sports primarily team sports baseball football basketball yeah and i just i value so much being part of like a greater team

chasing a common goal. And with a 3PL, I think you really need to treat it that way, even though, yes, they're supporting 10, 20, 50 other clients. You want it to seem like we're chasing the same goals and it's ultimately going to win-win for both sides. I think that, yeah. So I probably have a lot more thoughts there, but those are the ones that really stick out to me that

silly lessons learned that have benefited operations, but also just like emotionally investing and showing that you care and that you want them to succeed too means a ton. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's super important there. And I love that you said, you know, investing in giving them some, some better visibility to, and to some of that data as well. Cause that's, that's one thing too, I would say like, as you know, as I talked to three pals there, they're like, you know, yeah, we wish our clients would, you know,

know, give us better heads up on forecasting and things like that all the time. So I think the fact that you recognize that and really developing that relationship is such a, such an important thing. It's such a great takeaway to, to be able to put that out there. So yeah,

So very interesting to talk to you and learn about your journey here. Now, at the time we're recording this, we're just kind of like on the tail end of Black Friday, Cyber Monday, right? Beginning of December here, but we're heading into the new year. I mean, what's most exciting to you like right now or coming in the near future in the fulfillment space in general?

Yeah, in general, I'd say continue to carry your diversification and optimization here in the US. So upcoming, we've heard for a while now, USPS getting rid of DDU or limiting it and whatever that looks like. I think there's a lot of carriers that are changing the way they operate or there's net new carriers. I saw one the other day, UniUni. I don't even know if that's how you pronounce it. That one's starting to get some buzz now. So it's just like all these ones that are popping up to see how they can fill this gap of still offering, yeah,

economical performance, but at a better price than maybe what USPS postal share might turn into. So yeah, regional carriers, we have great strategy going on with our D2C US primary 3PL. They have a great relationship with a couple of regionals that have really benefited our overall quick delivery while keeping costs down.

So I think what I'm most excited and nervous about is how the overall market responds to what USPS is threatening to do or actually does. Yeah, I think, yeah, that's probably the biggest one. Automation, we'll see what sticks around. I think there's a huge push in the last few years. Some have maybe fallen by the side, but to see how warehouses can optimize their throughput internally without just dumping a ton of money that doesn't ever hit ROI, at least on a timely fashion. And then

And then I think for our brand specifically, what I'm most excited about is next year will probably be our first time we don't make some sort of 3PL change, whether domestically or abroad. So it should be a year of continuity in terms of 3PL partners and allow us to really

turn probably the magnifying glass more internally to see how we can better support our overall data flow, forecast integrity, all that good stuff, like internal operations to support our production partners, our 3PL partners, our carriers, and ultimately just provide the best customer experience we can. Very interesting. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's, uh, and that's great too. Uh, you know, I'm happy to hear that you will not have to move any 3PLs next year because that is a headache. So, uh,

Yeah, really appreciate you coming on. Great to hear your story, definitely, and those insights of what you're excited about, too. And we'll continue to watch what Dr. Squatch is up to and how the industry itself continues to evolve as well. So really appreciate you coming on. If people are interested in getting in touch or learning more or maybe getting some soap or something, what's the best way to do that with Dr. Squatch?

Yeah, totally. Yeah. Best way to drsquatch.com is our website. A ton of good products on there. Great website. A lot of deals going on right now. I don't know when this airs, but we're always running some sort of promotion, new product launch. So check that out. If you'd like to get in touch with me, I always love chatting fulfillment, nerding out fulfillment. So LinkedIn is a good way. Just Andrew Sutton on LinkedIn or Andrew at Dr. Squatch is my email. Always happy to have a chat fulfillment. And yeah, I'm really excited for what the fulfillment world is bringing and all the technology and what brands are doing out there to leverage 3PL to grow and succeed.

All right. Awesome. And we'll definitely put all of that stuff at thenewwarehouse.com as well as in the show notes so people can find it very easily. So, Andrew, thank you once again for your time on the show today. You've been listening to The New Warehouse Podcast with Kevin Laughton. Subscribe and check us out online at thenewwarehouse.com.

Enjoyed this episode? Make sure you are subscribed to the podcast and for more content from The New Warehouse, find us on LinkedIn and YouTube. Links to subscribe can be found in the show notes and for everything The New Warehouse, head to thenewwarehouse.com.