This fireside chat recap is from FreightWaves’ Domestic Supply Chain Summit on Wednesday.
FIRESIDE CHAT TOPIC: Navigating Black Friday trends in e-commerce and the evolution of outsourced fulfillment.
DETAILS: Casey Armstrong, chief marketing officer at ShipBob, and FreightWaves’ Tony Mulvey dive into the recent Black Friday shopping holiday and how e-commerce shopping has evolved over recent years. The discussion looks into the future of outsourced fulfillment, allowing for brands to focus on product development and sales and marketing of their core business, while eliminating choke points in the fulfillment process.
KEY QUOTES FROM CASEY ARMSTRONG:
“One way that companies can plan is how can you reduce all the variables that you need to fully control. You still need to figure out how much you need to order, which SKUs to order, what’s the lead time with our manufacturer to get things to our fulfillment center, whether you’re manufacturing overseas or in the United States.”
“Something that we hear from a lot of brands is, ‘I want to get bigger, but I’m scared. … And I know that if I sell X number of orders today, I either need to pick and pack and ship those today and I’m going to fall asleep and then I’m going to get more orders, so I’m going to have to pick and pack those. I never have time to actually grow the business.’ … So how can you remove that from your plate so you can focus on the core business?”
“Customer acquisition costs are up. Competition continues to increase. So it gets more and more difficult. So when you think of ways you can really differentiate from your competition, of course you want to provide this amazing post-purchase experience.”