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HERO STUFF update: 🥳 We're launching a FB Marketplace integration today! Now you can instantly scan stuff to identify it & price is in seconds, then we'll autogenerate a listing for FB Marketplace It's not totally perfect but definitely a step in the right direction. We're already seeing people sell stuff wayyyy faster with this app & integration. Plus, scanning is just super fun This week while you're with family and surrounded by gifts, try scanning stuff, and then listing items that you might want to sell 🤑 We're in the US App Store for iOS right now, and if you haven't signed up yet, just go to herostuff.com Here's a lil video of the flow:

This game isn’t fun.

I’ll ask you nicely to buy this new, color-changing campaign mug. But I know someone who won’t: joe.link/mug

Here was my strategy. I realized that fulfillment is a commodity but technology is not. I wanted a 3PL that was run by people with the vision to choose great tech and implement it deeply. So I called @weareshiphero and asked for their 3 best customers. All 3 were fantastic: YourLogistics Dollar Fulfillment ******* (chose because they have climate control we needed Any of the 3 would have been a great choice.

Here we go again. I know more about fulfillment and WMS software than 99% of the people you know. Let's talk about @weareshiphero Click to read more. ------------- First, do I really know what I'm talking about? A decade in eCommerce, scaling our eComm company from $16mm to $56mm. Went from $20mm to $56mm in 2020 alone. Now hovering around $45mm. 15k sku's, 150 different vendors, 200+ employees. Acted as COO for the company for 6 years, and oversaw the development and implementation of our own custom WMS... We’ve shipped nearly $400mm in orders ourselves. It's obligatory that I mention that we have a great team, a good CTO, and some tail winds with COVID. Half that business was on our site, a custom Magento instance, the other half was marketplace, dominated by Amazon. We were THE premier Seller Fulfilled Prime fulfillment center in the midwest -- a now closed to new entrants program where your operation has to meet Amazon's VERY strict guidelines to earn the Prime badge for orders fulfilled out of your own DC. We sold $26mm on Amazon in one year without a single FBA shipment. We were good enough that Amazon literally flew out and designated us as an FBA fulfillment center, and allowed us to ship FBA shipments from OUR facility. They closed that program too. It took 5+ years of development and millions of $$ to create a WMS that bridged the gaps left from Magento and our ERP, which allowed us to pick/pack digitally, pre-generate labels, rate shop with 5+ carriers, manage inventory, cycle count, receive, validate, and ship orders, and much more. I KNOW what it takes to make a good WMS, and I know what's possible when you need solutions custom tailored to your operation. Also, I've been adjacent to the industry and had many under-the-hood views of other custom WMS implementations. I also run a 3PL slack group where 40+ operators compare notes I'll stop qualifying myself here. I'm bonafide :-D --------- In 2020, we decided to launch a 3PL on the side of our retail business. We waited until November to start (not smart). We could have used our custom system. Choosing ShipHero was the smartest move we made. We were up and running IN A WEEK. We received 250,000 pieces of inventory, across 2300 sku’s, and shipped 200,000 pieces of fragile dinnerware before the end of the year. What makes a good WMS? A good one needs to be the multi-tool on your belt. It should be easy to navigate, have all the tools you might need, and the critical tools you use all the time need to be durable. You need accountability, transparency, and speed. It should replace people's jobs. It should make managing exceptions swift and accurate. It should give all the stakeholders a view that meets their needs and inspires confidence. It should be scalable for big operations, and accessible for small ones. It should have support, and most importantly, it should be used by the developers. I demo'd or actually used all the major WMS systems. At best, they're at feature parity with ShipHero. So why ShipHero? Speed - We were up and running in a week - Picking speed increased over 100% thanks to multi-item batch picking (for multi-piece orders, you never want to walk backward, you want to grab everything you need to fill 25+ orders in one pass through the aisles) - Single sku and single item fulfillment speed went up by 200% - Batch shipping allows skipping the packing line altogether and putting shippable orders directly to the carrier - iPads or iPhones for picking and packing, which are very accessible and cheap to buy refurb. Accuracy - All inventory has a chain of custody that is trackable all the way to its origin, with names of the team member associated with it - Errors are minimal, identifiable, and reversible - Cycle counting is new and improved. Double verification, blind counts, and custom adjustment reasons - SCANS. Everything scans. You shouldn't be mis-shipping orders. Accountability - Everything that happens has someone’s name associated with it. Moving inventory, picking, packing, shipping, receiving, counting, returns, etc etc - Users and permissions restrict access appropriately - Order dashboard and hero board keep orders moving and measure pickers and packers on their pace, and set a goal for the day, which keeps pace to know if you're on target Transparency - Clients, companies, users all have intelligent views of the system - Clients can help themselves to problems they can fix, no need to tie up the help line for simple changes - Employees can see the important metrics they need to hit goals Expense - ShipHero is cheap. Not cheap as in poor quality, cheap as in it is so high quality that it saves you more money than it costs - Rate shopping shipments is stellar. Lots of rules and automations you can build to ship cost effectively. Expanding margin on free or subsidized shipping is invaluable. - Accuracy prevents countless investigations on inventory and orders that take precious time. A single inventory error can cost an hour of a team's time - Accountability keeps high performers efficient and keeps low performers from staying out of the spotlight. There's nothing more discouraging than 20% of people doing 80% of the work. - Speed. Time = money. - Efficiency. Time = money. Features reduce headcount. Support - SH support is on it. Their help line is communicative and they escalate appropriately. - Higher service can be purchased for those that need it, and it’s worth the expense. However, anyone reasonable savvy can make their way through the robust help library and solve nearly any issue. - This has been an obvious priority for them in the last 3 years and they’re constantly improving. Shout out to @JWilliams_1228 - They love beta testers and @aaronrubin and @yohaas are happy to give access and love feedback. - They're accessible. @aaronrubin isn't the VC backed tech startup CEO you're used to seeing. He's humble and he engages. He's also not afraid to call out BS. You want to know something, tweet him. He also responds to emails in like 3 minutes. Features - Other WMS are at best at feature parity. Trust me, I’ve checked. - SH has all the critical functions available and refined. Plus, peripheral functions that expand functionality dramatically - Of special note are the automation rules. Essentially an If/Then logic builder that modifies items and orders based on a huge set of variables and conditions. - Multi warehouse. Whether you’re shipping from 2 DC’s or 1 DC and a retail store, or 10 DC’s, SH has all the order routing you need. - For 3PL's the billing feature set is killer. Custom rules, many different billing styles, and shipment cost reconciliation by ingesting actual carrier bills. Connections - For Shopify, set up is like 5 minutes. Seriously. - Native connections to Amazon, eBay, Walmart, Magento, WooCommerce, Big Commerce, etc - EDI capable - Netsuite native connector - Very easy custom API connecter — easy, like no developer needed - All the major carrier connections which take 5 minutes to set up, and like 50+ more regional and international carriers, plus custom API connections. - Loop, returnly, etc etc. All connect seamlessly. - Cart Rover, Order Desk, Skubana, etc. MOST IMPORTANTLY: They use their software. They have several DC's and a huge fulfillment operation. You wouldn't trust a chef that doesn't eat their own food. Also, software companies are notorious for making software the way they think it should work, when practically it doesn't apply to real problems. Recall what happened with Shopify's internal fulfillment network? They aren't their own customer, they can't empathize. It wouldn’t be an honest review without highlighting some of the cons. SH is a mass market software, much like Shopify. That means that out of the box, extremely custom set ups will require some work. They help guide you through these though. Still a little refining to do in consistent naming conventions across different screens. Some things aren’t as intuitive as I thought, and some training is required for new employees to solve more complex problems. SOP's with videos and links to SH help docs fixed a lot of this for us. Shout out to @Reinfish Intermittent bugs. Nothing critical, but not obvious at times. However, nothing that has ever been show stopping or long lasting. They have a status page with text and RSS alerts that we all receive to slack which keeps us posted. Most issues are resolved in less than 30 min. Wholesale orders have been a challenge to separate from standard orders. We're told this feature is on the edge of rollout. Bringing this to a close. We literally built a WMS. We know what is possible in a WMS and we researched and demo’d nearly every competitor. No software is perfect, but ShipHero is in pursuit. Bugs happen with every software, it’s how they respond to issues that really matter. I’ve been using it for 3 years and I’ve never seen anything systemic. I'm not a shill, and I'm not getting paid for this. We pay full price. If you’re interested in seeing under the hood, we're stretching ShipHero to it's limits with our stealth 3PL and I’d be thrilled to show you our setup. We'll ship 1mm packages with ShipHero this year. I love talking shop. If you take an intro through us and sign up, we might get a referral reward. However, I assure you. I write these things to help you, the way so many others helped me without asking for anything in return. Happy shipping!

🚨📦🚨📦🚨📦 Calling all **brands** in NYC Hosting a little Happy Hour this Thursday night in the LES. Would love for you to be there - DM if interested! 🚨📦🚨📦🚨📦

Update from a fund I'm an LP in saying the quiet part out loud: "There are so few Series A’s/B’s getting done by the larger funds that it's impossible to get enough signal as to what kind of Seed company we can invest in now that will be attractive to the major funds in ~18 mo"

How do you currently connect the dots between inventory and media buying?