E-commerce growth strategies, choosing the right 3PL partner, and the 2023 fulfillment market predictions with Joe Spisak, CEO of Fulfill.com

Transcript

Mike Adkins, VP of Sales at WarehouseQuote: “Thank you for joining this episode of Supply Chain Unpacked. Today, we have Joe, Founder of Fulfill.com as well as several other ventures in his past, bringing a ton of experience from the eCommerce space as developed lines of product. Overall, he’s a great resource for businesses getting started within the eCommerce and retail space. We’re really excited to have a conversation with him today and really appreciate your time. Thanks and welcome to the show, Joe.”

Joe Spisak, CEO of Fulfill.com: “Yeah, thanks for having me, Michael. I’m excited to be here, man. I’ve been following you guys for a while now. Love what you guys are doing. So, I really appreciate you guys having me on the show to talk shop.”

Mike Adkins, VP of Sales at WarehouseQuote: “You bet, you bet. Yeah, it was, you know, in our introduction. It was really kind of a natural match. I think when we were chatting and some of the ways that we look at the market today and bringing solutions out to customers. So, you know, it’s exciting to find, you know, someone who’s so agreeable on some many things I guess from a strategy perspective and what customers can really do to hedge bets and position the sales for growth and really work strategically to improve their business, their bottom line and ultimately grow like they, they’re looking to. So we really appreciate the time today. Speaking of growth.

I think we’re entering a downturn from an economic perspective, some are starting to say the word “recession”, and that’s certain to creep up a little bit more and more. Even the optimists are really indicating that’s kind of where headed. 

However, your company like mine and everybody else’s is still got growth numbers in front of them projections that they wanna hit measures in which, you know, they need to really achieve in order to maintain profitability and continue to invest and do all the things that, you know, healthy companies need to do to grow. 

You speak to a lot of folks starting out and it helped accelerate a lot through periods like this and times like this. What do you see is, you know, maybe some top growth strategies for eCommerce brands or those getting started to really continue to compete and grow their bottom line?”.

Joe Spisak, CEO of Fulfill.com: “Yeah, great call. So just to make sure I heard this correctly, you’re asking for gross strategies for eCommerce brands, correct?”

Mike Adkins, VP of Sales at WarehouseQuote: “Yeah, your customers?”

Joe Spisak, CEO of Fulfill.com: “Yeah, sure thing. So some quick background on me. So I actually own a couple of eCommerce brands in the tabletop board game space. So here’s one of our games. It’s called Okay Boomer, it’s a trivia game. We actually designed this one around my family. So there’s me, my three sisters, grandma, grandpa, mama, dad, and it’s just a fun family trivia game. So within the last couple of years, our strategy even with selling Oka, Boomer has drastically changed. 

So the main example for you is we really built our sales backbone off of Facebook and Instagram advertising. And then once Apple came out with the iOS update a few updates ago, that really was kind of like a predatory attack on attribution with channels like Facebook and Google and other people that are recording data. 

We really had to pivot our strategy hard. And we saw this with a lot of brands that we are working with that, you know, really put a lot of their eggs in one basket. And we’re looking to continue this Facebook Instagram ad strategy. And it really hit the fan for lots of brands out there. So one of the things that we did was we had to look for other avenues to pivot into since we weren’t able to hit our cpa or cost per acquisition on a consistent basis as we were in the past with our Facebook and Instagram ads. 

One of the main strategies that we did was kind of double down on Amazon and really focus on running our Amazon ads correctly. Then, also double down on our content creation strategy and retention strategy. So content creation, you know, we had to really crack the code on how we can get organic impressions from channels like TikTok? How can we increase our content distribution? So we can still create this great high quality video content, but we don’t have to create it individually for 10 different channels. 

So one of the things we did was, you know, create a TikTok to put it on a TikTok watermark remover, upload that to Instagram reels and YouTube shorts, and start to create standard operating procedures to streamline these processes. Then lastly, you know, start to look for different influencers that we could work with just other alternative marketing metrics that we created these hypotheses that these could work really well for us, but we didn’t really have to push into them as hard in the past because, you know, the Facebook and Instagram ads were such a sure fire thing. 

And then the last one that I was gonna say retention. So we already had, you know, tens of thousands of customers that were on our email list in the past that we could follow up with email and text message marketing. So, how could we continue to upsell these people that we already had in our system and how could we streamline new product creation to sell expansion packs and things of that nature? So, long story short, to answer your question, I think we’re going to start seeing a reckoning for eCommerce brands that don’t have the ability to be agile and our one trick pony is in their marketing approach. 

We really had to go back to the drawing board and force ourselves to think differently and change our strategy for just, you know, a simple change that just happened overnight with something like that. So, I think if eCommerce brands aren’t able to pivot and quickly move and find new alternative marketing channels that work for them, they’re going to quickly come to that reckoning and have a tough time.”

Mike Adkins, VP of Sales at WarehouseQuote: “You know, generally speaking, you know, really taking that marketing aspect of the business and really being in as much control as possible. It sounds like, you know, I think prior to some updates like that, I know Gmail has got some different things coming out against really mass email and spam, and one technologically making sure you’re set up to successfully deliver those messages, getting technical and Decom, and, you know, all the fun stuff to properly certify an email. But outside of that, I can only imagine the scramble cause when some outside force decides, hey, we’re gonna shut off your primary mode of marketing here. How long did it take you to really retool and get a strategy in place to be able to then?”

Joe Spisak, CEO of Fulfill.com: “Yeah. So months and months at a time, there was a lot of testing involved. You know, we had again general hypotheses based on our years of experience in the industry on what we thought was going to work well. But at the end of the day, you just don’t know until you actually start testing things and you see what works and see what does it. We really double down on our content creation approach because you can use that content that you’re creating for lots of different things. You create different content. 

You can post it on social media and look to get organic impressions. You can look to distribute it to influencers to repost on their channels. You can use it as digital assets for your website, for blog posts, for email and text message marketing. So content really is king in the day and age that we live in. Now creating a content generation engine is a whole other story. It’s really tough to do. But once you can start to create these what I call ‘net profitable positive feedback loop systems’ where you can create these automated loops and have these loops create more money for you than what you’re putting in to actually get those loops going. You’re able to start creating multiple automated systems that can start making money for you instead of you spending as many hours as you can in a day.

And the correlation being how much time you can spend with how much money you can make. That’s not a, that’s not a valid way to actually grow your business. So, it took us really months and months at a time, but we didn’t totally recover and hit the numbers that we hit the year before, but we still did a lot to be dangerous a, you know, we survived the hard times and we’re still battling through and doing well and starting to pivot into other avenues like B2B and big retail and things of that nature. 

So, I think this year for a lot of people was even just a survival mode, just make it through, keep your business going, keep things profitable and pivot your strategy where you can, but live to fight another day. So, yeah.”

Mike Adkins, VP of Sales at WarehouseQuote: “We’ve certainly been in growth mode as well, right? And I think you find out a couple of things, one, you got to wear a couple of hats and then really just become immersed in, you know, whatever domain and experience you’re getting. I’m sure you didn’t imagine or plan to be a content marketer at any given time, you know, like if you’re anything like me, it was like, I know what it is, but I don’t need to necessarily know really the tools of the trade or strategies around it. But in working with a pretty tight net group here on the marketing and sales engine, certainly you got to be willing to jump in and get your hands dirty. I think I really understand that and really get the most out of it.”

Joe Spisak, CEO of Fulfill.com: “Yeah, absolutely. So I am a marketer by trade and it’s what I really enjoy doing. So, I like to get my hands dirty because in my experience, before you can outsource and create these positive feedback loops, you need to understand exactly what it takes to make that system successful or otherwise, there is a high likelihood that you’re going to get burnt and end up losing money while you outsource that system. I mean, I’ve had to learn the hard way too many times outsourcing to a marketing agency that was promising me the world. But whenever it actually came time to deliver, they weren’t able to hit the results that they were promising me and my team from the start, right? 

So I’ve kind of found the best way to mitigate that risk is by having a really deep understanding of what is going to work when creating these systems, creating a really great standard operating procedures around it to a, and then plugging in labor to help take over those standard operating procedures and get them to the point where they can handle that autonomously. And then you can do that over and over again. And before you know it, you know, you have some automated systems that are making you money instead of you spending time to make money yourself.”

Mike Adkins, VP of Sales at WarehouseQuote: “Yeah, 100 percent. Yeah, the bar is never as high. I think for companies you’re working with internally when you’re looking at it now, it’s always hard to be, I think overly pleased when it comes to implementation and having somebody do that for you. And I think everybody’s business is a little bit different. So there are nuances that are big into those processes. I feel from automation that if you really want to scale for your business, there are some nuances you have to kind of incorporate into lead generation strategies, content generation strategies, pursuit strategies, right? On being able to scale… repeat and repeat just to get the full effect of this out of them. 

So I think you and I probably have similar bloody foreheads and banging our heads up beginning from all trying to figure this out and still doing it every day. I don’t know. I feel like there’s always something new to learn, that’s for sure.”

Joe Spisak, CEO of Fulfill.com: “Yeah, I always tell my team. It fails faster. You got to take the lumps. It’s kind of a right of passage with being a successful onto and really just a successful executive or leader at companies is you have to fail faster and take your lumps so you can learn and see what works and what doesn’t work. And the quicker you can learn those lessons and not make the same mistake twice, the more experience you get and ultimately the better leader and employer you can be.”

Mike Adkins, VP of Sales at WarehouseQuote: “100 percent. Yeah. So obviously you had a lot to get up to speed with and kind of changed and shifted your strategy, not only doing that but measuring it because we can’t improve anything. We don’t measure right? Data becomes a big part of that obviously from just a knowledge source, where do you find yourself going to really get up to speed on some best practices or thought leadership? I mean, I live on LinkedIn primarily and find some really good people to follow since I’ve been paying attention to your content lately. So it’s always good to find somebody new and innovate, but where you’ve found the best place to get skilled up and really become an effective leader in this area.”

Joe Spisak, CEO of Fulfill.com: “Yeah. So, great question. And I think my answer to that is it depends where you’re looking to get skilled up. So there are some great eCommerce influencers out there. I have lots of people that I like to follow that are experts in specific subset niches of eCommerce. So, for example, someone who I’ve worked closely with for several years, a guy named Chase Dimond, he is one of the most well known eCommerce email marketers has hundreds of thousands of followers across Twitter and LinkedIn. 

And this is a guy who is just a copy writing wizard and is just pumping out best practice on email and text message marketing. But on top of that, he incorporates bleeding edge tech to this as well. Like we’re living in the age of the birth of artificial intelligence in ChatGPT and how that’s literally right before our eyes revolutionizing the way that we do marketing and blogging and ad creation and ad tracking. And it’s just great to follow people like that. 

Not only are students of the sport and have a really great general background over the course of years and years, but they’re also on the forefront of innovation and are leading the charge and pushing the boundaries on what the future of marketing is gonna look like for logistics. 

So our CMO and our COO, Dan White and Jackson Pinkolski, they’re phenomenal guys to follow in the logistics space. So, Jackson, our CMO for example has run over 10,000,000 dollars in logistics specific ad spend on Google. So I mean I can’t really think of too many other people in the space that have the experience like he has on working with dozens and dozens of three PLS all across the country to help them successfully create that automated feedback loop system of getting a Google ad system up and running for your 3PL. 

And then I guess just one more to touch on is there’s some really great mastermind groups out there. So one that I’ve been a part of for a long time is with the whiz of eCom who I’ve been working with for years now, this dude, it literally doesn’t show his face. You literally, his avatar is an FT of his head is a digital picture of him. So it’s hilarious because nobody even really knows who this guy is, but he has thousands and thousands of followers and his eCommerce mastermind group. And this guy knows his stuff and has built a community of eCommerce fanatics like myself and like you who can get in there and really talk the nitty gritty in forum based style and help propel each other to the top.

So, you know, you find different groups like that. You find different communities of people that are as hungry as you are and are as excited as to be a part of the grind as you are. And those are the people that I like to follow and get my information from. It’s. The energy is contagious. It makes it fun to learn and grow.”

Mike Adkins, VP of Sales at WarehouseQuote: “100 percent. Yeah. And what I found out is generally speaking, you know, no matter how long somebody’s been around or, you know, how many followers they have on LinkedIn or Twitter, you know, what they’re following or how grand, yes, they seem generally speaking, almost everybody I’ve ever reached out to first of advice or a conversation or maybe some perspective on something is more than willing. It’s pretty amazing how open the sales and marketing community is and just wanting everybody to really improve their position from a revenue perspective, growth perspective, et cetera.”

Joe Spisak, CEO of Fulfill.com: “I totally agree with that man. And so I used to be big on Twitter in college, and then I ended up deleting it once I got my corporate job and I just came back to Twitter. I don’t know, probably like six months ago and I’ve been going hard on it and that’s one of the big reasons is that I forgot or maybe I just didn’t have this back in college or wasn’t looking for it. But there is such an amazing community of contributors, eCommerce, brand owners, logistics owners, people that you can slide into their DMS and say what’s up and talk best practice with them and schedule phone calls and pick people’s. Brain. There’s really great people out there that are willing to help if you aren’t afraid to ask. And that’s one of the reasons why I’ve really been leaning towards, you know, growing on Twitter is it’s tough to find that elsewhere even LinkedIn nowadays, like still, you know, I’ll have great conversations on there, but the DM seem like they’re getting flooded so much with spam and like cold outreach prospecting that it’s so hard to sift through some of the BS sometimes. And actually, you get to have real meaningful conversations with people.”

Mike Adkins, VP of Sales at WarehouseQuote: “100 percent, 100 percent. Yeah. And I think, you know, as you’ve moved through your career and everything, you know, I think early, it’s all about how fast can I get up the ladder, grab the next wrong? And then, you know, as you get a couple of years underneath, yeah, you know, you’re probably the same way it’s just you enjoy helping, you know, like that’s kind of where some of the joy comes out. So, yeah, it’s awesome to have such a great network of folks out there to reach out to. And, you know, my advice, anybody listing is just like that first cold call, right? Make it, you know, it gets easier to ask for help and have some of those conversations and getting over the fear of reaching out is a big way to get the help you need.”

Joe Spisak, CEO of Fulfill.com: “Absolutely. Man. It’s like you said, once you get to the stage of your career where, you know, we’re at right now, I get so much joy just like I get from coaching wrestling and you get your practice and help to mentor the next generation of entries. Other people that are hungry, watching people that work for you at your company, get their hand raised and get these big wins. That’s some of the best feelings and really a large portion for why I do this. Like it is just so rewarding. And, yeah, you know, it comes back to the adage it’s like the more you give, the more you can get and it’s just kind of hilarious to see how the more you can put yourself out there and help other people without any expectation of receiving something back. It’s kind of funny how it seems like karma always has a way of making sure you get taken care of when you’re doing the right thing. So.”

Mike Adkins, VP of Sales at WarehouseQuote: “100 percent. Yeah, everybody always said that, right? But, you know, I don’t learn so well. It took me a little while to really figure it out. And yeah, it’s amazing to see that that’s the way it really works out there. So, you know, speaking of experience, you’ve got it on both sides of the table, right? One trying to grow a brand, and then one on the really the fulfillment and execution side with Fulfill.com, and really kind of working with the other side of the table. 3PL, in addition, their customers, fulfillment is obviously a huge part of any eCom business, right? 

Like you got to get your product out to the people. When you see customers and businesses go out and try to find that ideal fulfillment provider. Somebody’s gonna partner with them and help them be kind of part of that growth equation for them. I see ranges in like formal RFP out to, hey, I just had a phone call with a guy for 10 minutes and told them how many orders I’m sending and what type of product it is. And I got pricing and I’m gonna move forward. 

This typically ends up being horror stories. You know, I know the RFP process can seem a little bit overwhelming. And I know I saw speaking of posts on, I’m pretty excited to kinda see some content on really getting that fulfillment operation up and running here pretty soon. But what would you say is the best way to go through, find that 3PL provider to really, you know, hash them out as a potential partner that’s going to be there for the long term. We all know that changing this is very painful. It can be expensive and very distracting to the business. You know, what can folks do to really get it right? The first time? You know, at least for what stage they are in their growth arc?”

Joe Spisak, CEO of Fulfill.com: “Yeah, this is a really great question and this is literally the exact reason that I started to Fulfill.com. First of all, I’ll drop a statistic on you. There is a 37 percent year over year turnover rate with brands looking for new 3PL’s. That’s ridiculous. If you actually break down that number, it’s insane. So, Shopify just released that in their 2023 kind of state of fulfillment report which has some super interesting metrics if you haven’t checked that out yet. 

But that’s one of the numbers that just blew my mind. And I knew it was high but I didn’t quite know it was that high and there’s lots of reasons behind that, right? It should tell you that it’s really hard to find the right fulfillment center yourself. And I think there’s lots of takeaways that you could dive into and kind of pull out from that. But it’s really hard to find someone that has pricing that meets what you should be getting. It’s really hard to find someone that will offer you a quality of service where you can hit these under 24 hour shipping SLA’s from the time your order gets placed on your store to coming in. 

I, it’s really hard to find someone that has a really high level of customer service working with you. So instead of sending them an email and it getting triage to an account executive which takes 72 hours to fix your problem. And you have to say a prayer that it gets fixed. You want a fulfillment center that has dedicated slack channels and you can talk to the people on the warehouse floor in real time and they’re acting as an actual extension to your business and not just another third party that will get around to shipping your items whenever they can get around to it. There’s just so many different variables that people don’t consider when looking for a fulfillment center. Then you look at the fact that there are 22,000 give or take 3PL in the United States and I’ll put a little asterisk besides that because 3PL is a super broad term third party logistics, right? Not all of them are eCommerce fulfillment companies, right? Like they can be freight companies, they could be import export, they could be, you name the other different subsets of fulfillment. But more importantly, there’s a lot of options out there. 

And whenever you go and look and you’re trying to compare all these variables to see what your best option is. There is a lot to sift through. A, and then you add on top of that. Whenever you’re looking, what happens whenever you go to Google and you’re looking for, need a new warehouse or need a new fulfillment center, you are seeing the internet blanketed and dominated by the top 15 Fortune 500 fulfillment centers that have raised hundreds of millions of dollars and have millions of dollars in monthly ad spend. And they’re just blanketing all of these social media channels. 

So, people don’t even know there’s better options than these top 15 people that are out there. When in fact, probably 95 percent of the time those top 15 people aren’t going to be the best option for your business. So, all of that considered in my own biased opinion is why you should come to someone like us at Fulfill.com and give us your information, things like what vertical are you in? What’s your monthly order volume? Where are you shipping a heat map in the country and internationally? Is your inventory coming in? What port is it coming into? Do you have special categories? Like are you apparel? Are you cold storage? Are you big and bulky shipping? And we can take all that information, run it against the hundreds of warehouses on our network and bring back a short list to you of what we think would be the best fulfillment options for you. Based on your top criteria. 

It will save you so much heartache, so much time, so much money. And that’s the new place you should start working with logistics, a consulting expert to do the heavy lifting for you and put the ones on them to present you with the best opportunities and walk you in front of the best opportunities. And by the way, we do it for free and we’ll get it done for you in under seven days. So it’s kind of a no brainer. It’s really no risk and we’re building out some tools right now to automate this even further and make this even more accurate. That’s my advice right there. And that’s really why we created fulfill, which is a marketplace that connects brands and fulfillment centers.”

Mike Adkins, VP of Sales at WarehouseQuote: “Yeah. And you know, I think we have slightly different targets as we were talking about the other day, but, you know, the concept with us was the same, right? It all starts with alignment and fit. And as you mentioned, there’s when you say 3PL, that can be a whole range of different things. And even within sections of I’m a 3PL specializing in B2B. 

Okay. Well, what does that mean? Does that mean you’re coming on, you know, retail and you understand the compliance that goes in with that. Are you used to handling durable goods, bulky goods? Like what if I have 5,000 parcel shipments going out a month? Is that something that is gonna be able to be facilitated through that facility? And like even with the mixed fulfillment three, we found that, you know, not everybody is great at everything and it’s not rocket science, right? 

And everybody figures out a niche to really focus on and be really good at. And really uncovering that niche is kind of the really the first step, you know, we look at it at partners is, you know, our first question is other than do you have capacity, right? You know, do you have the ability to take on additional business because we wanna help fill that space? But what do you want to focus on? Because those are the types of opportunities and customers that we want to bring them. 

So that at the end of the day, like you’re not in that 37 percent customer that is dropping off and looking for a new 3PL, 12 months later, you know, how do we make this a long term relationship something someone that can continue to understand your business and incorporate improvements to help you scale and grow.”

Joe Spisak, CEO of Fulfill.com: “100 percent. And that’s why it’s not enough just to understand the logistics side of the house. You have to understand the other side of the house with eCommerce as well because you need to have an intimate knowledge of both sides of the businesses in order to accurately forecast where these eCommerce brands are going. So you can set them up with a 3PL that they’re going to have long term success with and not someone that can handle their needs for that year.”

Mike Adkins, VP of Sales at WarehouseQuote: “100 percent. And, you know, I think there’s a wide range of operations that I mean they work depending on if your business is aligned to fit within that particular model from, you know, the pretty manual like good old boys, this set in our product and we love those guys move a lot of products but, you know, so the other side of like highly automated robotic run warehouses, right? And even inside the facility, there’s a lot of indicators of whether you’re going to be set up well for an eCom operation or not, you know, pick lines and just the way it’s organized. So just having a friend of your company be able to evaluate that and ask the questions that are warehousing in nature, operational in nature and really do some due diligence. I think it’s of incredible value. And to get to that shortlist that’s a very viable candidate then, you know, potentially go into business with, right?”

Joe Spisak, CEO of Fulfill.com: “Yes, 100 percent and even to piggyback off of that point even further, you know, we have hundreds of warehouses on our network. Just having that overarching view and are able to see a real time competitive analysis and be able to compare pricing and tell people what’s good, what’s not good is hugely valuable because that’s one of the things that takes the biggest time suck is that comparing pricing apples to apples and trying to see, hey, can all these warehouses do everything I need them to do? And now we need to try and compare these warehouses that have all different pricing models together to see what is going to be our best fit. 

So, to be able to have good competitive analysis and see the warehouse industry as a whole is very valuable. And then something that I wanted to touch on earlier is for really large brands. It does make sense sometimes to run a full blown RFP and that’s something that we can do as well. That’s whenever, you know, we’re talking multi location, we’re talking tons of freight, we’re talking, you know, different legs of the logistics solution coming together. We have our RFP broken down into a couple of different categories. And I can even link this to you as well because we have our RFP template and maybe this is something that could be good to share with your audience just like a premium resource. So they can see how a, and, you know, we’ve run this RFP with, you know, people doing hundreds of millions of dollars, 1,000,000,000 plus dollars in sales a year. So this can work at literally any level. 

So we break it down into seven different tabs. Well, eight actually one being instructions two three P company profile basically just the overview of your organization size scope as well as insurance questions. Two general capabilities, three tech requirements, four security requirements, five warehousing requirements, six KPI requirements, seven pricing proposals. It’s basically a Google sheets doc where each one of those tabs is an in depth analysis where you can give that to warehouse providers, have them fill that out and do the heavy lifting and then bring back all that information and do your comparison there. Whenever we’re talking about spending millions and millions of dollars on shipping a year. You’re going to need an in depth breakdown. There’s. Just so many moving parts and it’s not just enough to come to our team and have us look through our network and say, all right here’s, your five shortlisted companies for something like this, you wanna do something that’s more RFP grade.”

Mike Adkins, VP of Sales at WarehouseQuote: “Absolutely. Yeah. And the one thing I add to that is just the cultural side, you know, it’s you know, it’s important to meet with and talk to. And here’s some of the things that have not gone well and how those were handled. And, you know, I think for the most part, I think every 3PL I’ve worked with has got the best intentions. It wants to do nothing but good work, right? Everybody wants to run an honest business and really execute for their customers. That’s why they’re there, you know, and that’s what really motivates them. But, you know, things go wrong in this industry. Nothing that goes 100 percent as planned. There will be issues which need to be navigated that crop up that are unplanned. And really knowing how folks are gonna really run out of those problems and attack them, I think is incredibly important. You know, it’s not all about the sunny days. It’s the cloudy days that are, I think, you know, the most important when really having a good partner in your back pocket to help you through some of those times.”

Joe Spisak, CEO of Fulfill.com: “Yeah, absolutely. Man-like things are eventually inevitably going to hit the fan when we’re talking about the supply chain. So, you want a great culture fit partner. Again, someone who’s going to act as an extension of your business, not just another partner that’s going to throw you off to the side. And that’s always been my beef with some of the bigger 3PL in the industry. And, you know, it’s no necessary fault of their own. Whenever you’re raising hundreds of millions of dollars at a time. There’s bound to be operational stuff that’s going to break. But that’s you know, kind of the stigma that I really tried to break down against eCommerce brand owners. Is that bigger or is it better? Like you see people raising hundreds of millions of dollars, their company’s worth billions of dollars. That does not mean that they are the best option as a fulfillment partner for you.”

Mike Adkins, VP of Sales at WarehouseQuote: “100 percent. And sometimes that’s what you need, right? Sometimes you just need people to move products. You know, you mentioned the transition to Amazon right there’s, pros and cons of working with Amazon and other strings attached with kind of hidden the easy button. But sometimes, you know, whether it’s resources or the marketing front that you can leverage within Amazon. And depending on what you’re shifting like that’s the need, you know, especially when there’s a lot to figure out though best to have a partner, you could at least call up on the phone, you know, rather than sit in line at a service desk.”

Joe Spisak, CEO of Fulfill.com: “Yes, that is 100 percent exactly how I feel. I want someone there in the trenches with me and I don’t want to be at, to be, have to be put on hold, wondering if my business is going to survive to next week, right?”

Mike Adkins, VP of Sales at WarehouseQuote: “Yeah. Why am I talking to somebody in India about my product sitting in Dallas? Like who’s got eyes on this, right?”

Joe Spisak, CEO of Fulfill.com: “Yeah, exactly.”

Mike Adkins, VP of Sales at WarehouseQuote: “Well, as we kind of look into 2023, you know, you’ve been doing this for a while, you’ve seen some ups and Downs. And in between, what do you see is kind of some of the major trends and things to look for and kind of the hallmarks of 2023 sitting here in January, pull out that Joe Crystal ball and kinda let us know what you’re thinking this year looks like just from a logistics and industry perspective.”

Joe Spisak, CEO of Fulfill.com: “Yeah, man. I think that’s like the trillion dollar question right now is what is logistics going to look like this year? I have a couple bets that I’m making kind of across the industry in a couple of different spots. I think there’s going to be a continued drive in the rise of boutique level fulfillment centers. 

I think we are going to see an increase in eCommerce brands starting to move into micro fulfillment centers and take on customers that are in a similar niche as them. As a way to combat revenue deficits that I experienced from a depleted economy. They’re going to look to take on fulfillment customers to add extra revenue streams and push into that space. And I think as people start to expand the eCommerce sales channels that they sell on and they start to sell into more niche market places. Because if you can list on more things than just Amazon in your own website, in Walmart, and you can get on more niche and obscure marketplaces, you’re going to be able to sell more volume. 

So, I think that boutique level fulfillment centers are going to be able to have an increased integration capability to move into these, this changing environment of getting new sales centers. And we’re going to see an increase in people going with these boutique level fulfillment centers because they can handle all of these one offs that are going to be increasing at a more and more rapid pace in our industry.”

Mike Adkins, VP of Sales at WarehouseQuote: “Nice. Yeah. So kind of just a general consolidation not necessarily a brand but of operations that’s a pretty interesting take on it. And, you know, I think I’d probably have to agree. I know there’s a lot of folks that have made investments in, you know, warehousing space or personnel or labor that, you know, again given your take and which I think is 100 percent accurate, just a decrease in consumer demand, like to still be pumping. You know, it is a volume game at the end of the day. You gotta be able to move products. And I, you know, I think that co-mingling and kind of a fulfillment assisted by other eCom companies is definitely something that’s highly possible this year. So really insightful stuff. 

Well, thanks for your time, Joe. And we covered a lot of stuff and really talked a lot about some of the things between the lines and the numbers I think that help make all this work, which I think is just as important, you know, in order to get to the balance sheet, everybody’s looking for from here on out, how do people get a hold of you? Follow you? Where should they be looking for? You? Give you a chance here to talk about really what you’re focused on here to Fulfill?”

Joe Spisak, CEO of Fulfill.com: “Yeah. So I am very active on Twitter and LinkedIn. So my Twitter is at Joe Speezy and my LinkedIn, Joe Spisak, my last name is spelled S-p-i-s-a-k. I am an open book and my DMS are wide open. So, if anybody ever wants to talk shop or has a potential partnership opportunity or even just wants to, you know, see if there’s like a mentorship opportunity. I’m always down to talk. 

I really love what I do and I’m always happy to talk as far as possible. We’re going to continue to push into building our marketplace. We are the best spot to come if you guys are looking for a new 3PL home, I think that’s pretty much it.”

Mike Adkins, VP of Sales at WarehouseQuote: “Awesome, man. Awesome. Well, I know you’re incredibly responsive on LinkedIn because I think I tried to throw my name in the hat to get some output from you on fulfillment operations, and I think you had responded to me within like a minute and a half at 1,111 central last night. 

So, you know, I don’t know if I caught you at the right time or if you’re sitting there waiting for those to follow in but incredibly approachable and reachable and have been since we really started chatting about a month and a half ago. So, it’s been a pleasure having you on Joe. 

Thanks for your time. I know you’re busy, you got lots going on. You probably got the next fire to run off too, so we’ll let you go, but we really enjoyed having you today and look forward to collaborating in the future.”

Joe Spisak, CEO of Fulfill.com: “Yeah, absolutely. Man. Thanks again for having me again. Love what you guys are working on and excited to keep working together in the future.”

Mike Adkins, VP of Sales at WarehouseQuote: “100 percent appreciate it”