Key Takeaway
- Justin Wall's transition from an event planning background to spearheading operations at KNS International illustrates the adaptability required in today’s job market.
- KNS International has grown from a small dropshipping operation to a major player in e-commerce with revenue exceeding nine figures, showcasing the potential of scalable business models.
- The company's strategy involves deep understanding and control over its supply chain, which allows it to maintain high standards of quality and service.
- Customer-centric approaches are integral to KNS’s strategy, emphasizing the importance of aligning product quality with customer expectations to foster brand loyalty.
- Justin discussed the importance of operational efficiency, including the monitoring of key performance indicators like on-time fulfillment rates and cost-per-unit processing to ensure the smooth running of operations.
- The integration of advanced technologies and methodologies such as Lean, Six Sigma, and Kaizen are pivotal in driving continuous improvement in their operations.
- KNS’s ability to adapt to consumer demands and market changes is a testament to its agile operational strategy, which has been crucial for its rapid growth.
- Justin highlighted the significance of data-driven decision-making in operations, ensuring that strategies are based on accurate insights and can lead to effective outcomes.
- The discussion also covered the balance between maintaining product excellence and efficient fulfillment processes, which is critical for customer satisfaction and operational success.
- Finally, Justin's insights underscore the broader theme that visionary leadership and strategic operational management are essential for thriving in the competitive e-commerce landscape.
View Written Interview
Hey everybody, welcome back. I am pumped for today's guest because not only is he doing a bunch of really interesting things inside of a big brand and I know he's gonna share a wealth of knowledge, but also this is a portfolio of brands. This is a really big company. We're talking about a company that started drop shipping, for all you drop shippers out there, and is now above nine figures and killing it where they have a portfolio of their brands. We're talking about KNS International And today I am fortunate enough to be talking with their director of operations Justin Wall. Welcome to the podcast.
Thanks, Samir. Glad to be here.
Would love for you to just kind of kick things off and tell us a little bit about KNS International and tell us a little bit about the brands.
Absolutely. I think probably my story is a little weird. I'll just kind of describe how I dropped into e-commerce because maybe it just gives more legitimacy to everyone's sort of journey in their career. But COVID graduate, I was planning on graduating in experience design and management, going into more of the events, event planning, and event tech space. Events don't happen in COVID. So I bounced into manufacturing for three years kind of figured out how to do project management and ops management, and learned this whole space. And that ultimately prepared me to drop into an e-commerce role as a director of ops at KNS. And KNS is awesome. Like we've been drop shipping for 20-something years. We started shipping anything we could under the sun. The story begins with drop shipping left-handed hockey sticks. Cause I think our founder said, why not? And we built a business around this idea that, you know, we can be the best in the space and it was about seven or eight years ago, we started doing shoes and having a lot of success with shoes and realizing, you know, the, Hey, this is something that people love. Maybe we can do it better than anybody else as well. And, you know, you just have that entrepreneurial fire, that spirit. So we started to build a brand and the journey collection is kind of our women's line. That was our flagship. We've had a couple of other micro brands and have since acquired Taft clothing, which is a premium men's brand that started in Utah as well and that's just become like our business, our passion. And that's what we love doing every day, is shoes.
I love it. And you just said the best in the business. So I'm curious potentially, how do you define success at the company and how is it measured, especially where you've got this big portfolio? You've also got all these little, not little, you've got all these other brands kind of underneath the portfolio. How do you define success?
Yeah, I do, so I'll take the more philosophical approach. I think Simon Sinek in his book, The Infinite Game, is one of my favorites, he's like, you can't win business. No set of rules says after this point, you're the sum ultimate winner. Everyone's done. Everyone goes home. So I've tried to start to internalize this idea that for us to be the best and to be most successful It just means we have to be able to challenge what we were yesterday and show that we're becoming better than we were yesterday and growing and progressing both in the way that we do business and our mentality around how we treat our customers and the quality of our product, all of those things together. But philosophy aside, obviously there are measures you've got to kind of use to figure out the answers. We've got a lot of financial goals that tell us we're successful.
We are owned by Private Equity, so they have financial goals and we know we're successful as we're meeting targets and we're on track to reach kind of the payout at the end. So I feel like a lot of times at this point it comes down to the financials and how much money can you make and how much can you put away for the business.
Makes a lot of sense. Yeah, I love it. I'm especially because you're on the ops side. I get curious about performance there and different aspects of that, right? Because I think it's if you do not have an operations person and you're listening to this podcast and you're a founder or a CEO or like get an operations person unless that is 100 % your skill set. If that's your skill set, then great. Then you're the ops person and make sure you've got a marketer or someone else in your corner helping you grow the business. But that was the most important hire I ever made. And it's such an important role in every business. And so I'm curious in your view, as in your position, like what are the key performance indicators that companies should prioritize when assessing maybe their fulfillment operations, right? And how do these metrics kind of impact just the overall business success?
Yeah, I agree with you on the ops piece. I mean, I joined the team over a year ago. I think I was kind of their first official ops person coming in with at least a little bit of ops experience. So, I mean, what I know is what I know. Granted, there's a lot more there for me to figure out over time. But I think the benefit is getting an outside set of eyes that looks at things from more of like a throughput and capacity standpoint.
I think that's probably the biggest difference of an ops perspective versus finance or marketing or some of those. I'm gonna look at things like what's our on time and at full rate for fulfillment. Like are we getting stuff out when it needs to get out and if not, why? I think that the other benefit that comes with ops is you don't ever stop at the top level. You're gonna dig down to get into the details. And there are tons of methodologies, right? You've got Lean and Six Sigma, you got Kaizen, take your pick but you're gonna understand what's happening, kind of like get a pulse on the operation, know what's happening on the ground floor and the shop floor. And that's where you're gonna be thinking and making decisions to help improve your throughput. So to kind of answer your question, when I look at the success of our operation and what KPIs to kind of use, probably the three biggest things are on time and full rate. And that's just a quick gut check of whether we're okay. The second is our cost-per-unit processing rate and it's easy to just dump it all in together and save all the cost against what you shipped. There's a really clean number. So we like to use that. We can break it down by department too. But I find that the throughput rate for those departments, like your pick and pack rate, and our replenishment rate, are critical to building a really clear view of what's happening on the shop floor and where your bottlenecks are going to be.
Yeah, I love those. That makes a lot of sense. I feel like we've had this complete counterargument with so many guests at this point where some guests are like everything's about the customer, right? Amazon is a prime example. Everything's about the customer. They don't care about the product, right? It's the customer experience. How can I optimize the conversion rate? How can I make the user experience the best, the returns, the deliveries, all that stuff, right? Then you got on the other side.
It's all about the product, right? I gotta make the best product in the entire world. It's gonna speak for itself, right? Maybe Apple, even though of course they do have their experiences and their tech guys and everything else, but just for lack of a better example. Everything's about that unboxing experience and just making the customer happy by creating the best product ever. I'm curious, right, as you're kind of in this position of both a little bit, you're like, hey, we've got these brands where we are trying to make these incredible shoes and these incredible, incredible products, but then fulfillment and everything else, the time it gets delivered, all that kind of stuff, you know. Is it a balancing act for you? Is it, are you like, hey, there are key aspects here that if I focus on that, it's going to develop into meaningful growth? Like, I don't know if I'm asking it the right way, but I'm just kind of curious about your thoughts on it.
So I think you can have all of it and hopefully, I'll be the peacemaker that gets everyone on the same page here. But I think if you're having to compete with the product experience, your customer experience and the success of your fulfillment operation at the same time, something might be wrong. And maybe that's the first red flag. I think if each team in your company has the mentality that we are gonna have the best craft, whatever that may be, and spends their time focused on just polishing and perfecting it. It flows through the sequence, in time, and it has the effect that it needs at the appropriate time. Like I'm trying to get orders out. I don't necessarily want to be thinking about the product per se and being worried about like, maybe I shouldn't ship this product. Does that make sense? So have your product team be the absolute best they can be and make the best product. And when they give it to you, then you can be the best fulfillment operation the world's ever seen right and get that thing out. I think a lot of times like service rates and delivery times now are becoming the biggest thing, the Amazon effect, right? They want it in two days. They want it this morning. Like that's where operations and fulfillment I think have to dial down and figure that out. But knowing that ultimately as long as things get out on time, that's a big part of the customer experience. So it is a balancing act. I think we can trust the rest of our team to help balance it for us.
Yeah, no, that makes sense. I love that. Thank you for being the peacemaker, Justin. I mean, but it is like it's, it's your balancing the customer experience, you're balancing operational efficiencies, cost-effectiveness, right? You're kind of touching upon a lot of these aspects. Right. So, I mean, as, as, right, as, as you're kind of looking at all this, right, you've, you, you, I'm sure you have access to a lot of raw data. And so how do you take that raw data and kind of try to sink it into actionable insights that do drive improvements in operational efficiencies or cost-effectiveness or other aspects of the business?
Yeah, I think to exactly that point, if you can layer in some customer feedback data, layer in some like products if you can kind of scrub the internet for wherever your product's being sold to get return ratings, reviews, right? Just get that raw qualitative data. You can start to derive those insights. But I like how you talk about raw data because I joke that I like to swim through our data lake, you know, just of the, all the unstructured stuff, and just like, what am I going to find today about insights? Um, that was kind of how I started a year ago and I've learned a lot about the business doing that, but it does take a lot of time. So understand the importance of structured data. This is where I'd love to do a shout-out for our systems engineer guy, cause he is like, he's 20 and he is a whiz when it comes to all things data. And like, that is his craft and he is like, perfected it with passion.
This kid is amazing, but having someone who understands your data, where it's coming from, and how it's structured in meaningful ways, you can make insightful connections that tell you a lot. For example, when we were looking at like our average quantity per line on our orders, what the differential between single item orders for shoes versus multi orders, when we started getting down into it, we're like, oh, hey 5 % of all of our orders are a half size different within the same style and color, or they're the same size, they're just a different color. Like these are all getting ordered together. Let's go and put them together. And all of a sudden, you know, our fulfillment rate goes up because we know 5 % of orders are always gonna be the same. So like, let's quit, you know, spreading them out. That's the cool kind of stuff you can find you can put structure to the data. So I would say, yes, gather as much raw data as you can, store it in a meaningful way, and then find somebody who understands it to structure it and display it for you. Cause ultimately it's no good if it's just sitting, you know, on a server.
Yeah, no. I love that. Because you're kind of touching upon, hey, there's these key performance indicators that no matter what size you are, you gotta be paying attention to these things. But then of course, the bigger your business gets, pivot tables are important, spreadsheets are important, and charts are important. Every data point that you can get access to literally is improving cost efficiency, customer experience, and endless amounts of aspects of the business. And then you're just kind of weighing. Almost the 80 -20 rule in a way, I assume, where it's like, where can I have the biggest impact for either the lowest amount of money that will then either help grow the business or help whatever it is, the bottom line, et cetera.
Yeah, exactly.
Makes a lot of sense. So one thing I'm curious about because maybe your time there has given you this experience. Maybe it hasn't, but regardless, your insights would be very valuable I see this all the time where everyone is always having the hardest time choosing a new warehouse, a new three PL provider, or a new right. They've either outgrown their fulfillment house. They're debating whether to take it in-house or not. Of course, that's a ton of new costs but could lead to efficiencies.
There's 10,000, there's like a million providers in this country, and half of them, you ask them what, and it's such a, I guess, thankless job, right? Cause if you're not at a hundred percent, like then it's unacceptable, right? I'm just, I'm always expecting them to be 100 at a hundred percent. And so I'm curious, like if you have any maybe points or ideas that someone needs to look for, right? Maybe they're outgrowing their current vendor or something like that, any provider is the key things they should try to look for that can, you know, especially help them either, you know, whatever it is, reducing costs, have growing pains, mainly just try to avoid going with the wrong one, I guess?
Yeah, so I'll give two answers and they're from different points of view in the business. So hopefully these are valuable. The first one I'd say is, first of all, you always need to know your data. You need to know the cost per unit fulfillment. You need to know your storage costs, like all of those basics. If you're using a 3PL, if you're doing it in-house, find the number, because that's going to be valuable for you. Having that, the second point that I would make is, that it might not be appropriate to bring fulfillment in-house. And the reason I say that is you need to decide what your strategic directory is for your business. This is a point that we went through extensively as we were building a strategy for KNS. We're like, are we a drop-ship company or are we a brand? The answer to that influenced a lot of what we were gonna do to help us grow and scale over the next five years for some brands starting, it might not make sense and maybe you just never want to touch it. But what I would say is whoever you choose to do fulfillment, make sure they have a really solid understanding of their operation, the seasonality, what their peak of peak looks like, what the contracts stay as far as, you know, what's your capacity and then they're not going to fulfill any more of your product. Like these, all these things are starting to drop in as everyone moves back into the 3PL model and then I'd say, what's their long-term vision for automation, robotics, you know, all these buzzwords? And I could talk a ton about robotics because we just went to a trade show, MODEX, and learned all about this for our operation and, you know, what makes sense and frankly, what doesn't. So that was rrearealningfor us too.
So you've already placed an order for a thousand new robots, right? I assume. You've got like two in the office with you right now.
We're not quite to Amazon's humanoid. I would, for a second, need to put everybody in the warehouse on those little hoverboards, the little segue standing skateboards, and have them toward us that way. I'm like, that'll just help our throughput. That'll make us so much faster. And people rightfully shut me down, but man, I'd be on bot so fast.
I love it. I mean, yeah, it makes sense. There was one of those viral videos that came out recently and the guy was riding that, not the one wheel, traditional one wheel, but it's like, you know, that one wheel that you sit on and he's like literally at the Starbucks counter on it. He's got the VR headset, you know, the AR headset on and Apple vision. And then he's like literally just like grabs his coffee, turns around and he's like on this little one, you know, this little one wheel thing out the door in two seconds. They're like the future is already here. I'm like, dang, yeah, you know, it's kind of true. It's kind of true. So you brought up a good point though. I am very curious. Like how are you approaching this integration of robotic automation within fulfillment operations, just ensuring, right? It complements human capabilities, right? Cause we all, we've all heard all the Tesla stuff, right? Of him doing too many robots and then it causes problems and everything else. How are you, how are you going about that? And how are you approaching that?
Yeah. So I'd say we probably expedited the process most people experience when they're asking, should I start doing robotic automation? So at this stage, full transparency, we have been fully scoped by three, maybe four different robotics automation providers and have struggled to find the right thing that's gonna have a return for us.
But here's typically how this starts. You're struggling to find labor, especially when you need labor and you're having a really hard time managing the labor when they're in your warehouse. And I say managing as in like, maybe you don't know your throughput rates. Maybe you don't have clear rate expectations or people aren't consistently meeting those. And so your cost fluctuates a lot. Robotic automation is primed to fit that niche need and solve both those issues.
The challenge that we ran into is we moved into a new warehouse a year and a half ago where it was pretty much a new build, the sky's the limit, what do you want? And we built a warehouse that was efficient for one particular kind of picking packing and storage. And then we filled it with product. So now we can't move. But what we found is, that Utah is different than most places. We don't have a labor shortage here. We have a surplus, which is backward from what I hear talking to anybody else. But we've also found a way to manage our team pretty effectively. And it's a lot of just communicating clear expectations, showing their productivity rates versus the team just making that available so that the team understands where they need to be and what they need to do. And then on the back end is just relentless pursuit for continuous improvement, operational excellence, like what can we do today that'll be better than yesterday?
And we found ourselves with a pretty efficient pick rate, a pretty low cost per unit for fulfillment. And the robotics companies were having a hard time beating it. And it was the most frustrating thing because I'm sitting here like, you can't tell me that what I have right now is as good as I can be. After all, that's going to drive me nuts. You know, there's got to be something else. So of course, if we tore out the racking and redid something, naturally, yes, we can do something else. But that's our story. That's the irony. And I think that there's still an opportunity. So we're still working on that. But when you're looking at robots, like you're picking orders isn't a career. It's not a life passion. Robots are great to replace the mundane stuff. That's dangerous. That's dirty. Like they can do that just fine. And I say. You know, let's give people jobs and work. That's a lot more ergonomically pleasing and less stressful and complements, like you said, complements the human work with the automation beautifully.
Yeah, no, it makes perfect sense. I mean, it's, it is one of those jobs, right? You're, you're, you know, I had a lot of buddies in college doing those jobs, working at FedEx and UPS and all that kind of stuff. Like, yeah. I get it. And it's hard because some of those communities rely on it kind of, you know, you're alluding towards that a bit, I think, you know, even so, but on the other hand, yeah, you can work your way up and be the person controlling the robots versus doing the same mundane tasks kind of over and over again. I mean, I think my number one takeaway from this so far is that you and I are gonna go into business and we're gonna get robots to ride segues. Perfect. They can't wait. I'm curious, what technologies or tools are you using to gather analyze, and visualize all that data?
Yes, it'll be perfect, and also just another note on this idea of data collection. It's not as easy as just dropping a robot in the warehouse. You need to have a really solid data stack so that it can work with that. So as much as I'd love to just release an army of those Amazon bots, we've got to make sure some other things are in place. So I think this is valuable. I will say I hope nobody is still using paper pick lists just as a process for a lot of reasons. I'm sure that there's probably a reason to use it still. I haven't found it. I'm happy to argue that with anybody, but you got to get off of the paper. You've got to find a system that's going to manage a lot of that work for you. So our WMS uses a WMS period. Our WMS allows us to gather a lot of data on the backend. And so I can get down to the person, the time, the task, the place, all of that to start to understand some of those throughput rates. I can also start to aggregate orders by sales channel to understand when those are dropping when they fluctuate, and what our on-time rate is for them. You start to get these structured in a way, like we use a SQL database and then we populate a lot of this data into Power BI to visualize it. There's a million and one tools out there that'll do all of that for you and store it in the cloud.
If you're just starting, you don't want to try and go back, like go find somebody that'll do it for you. But then we found some other tools that helped us forecast some of our planning. Anaplan gives us a little bit more ability to have a precise inventory forecast and sales forecast. And those are invaluable to forecasting our labor throughout the year. So like it took a lot of time to build up to that point where now we can plan for a lean workforce to carry out the rest of the fulfillment for the year. So I'd say that your systems are critical, but choose systems that give you data and then find a way to put that data together. Hopefully, that answers the question. I can probably clarify though.
No, it's super helpful. And it's so silly because this is one where we've made this mistake of assuming, hey, we're crushing it for this brand. It's growing fast. We're doing a great job. Clients are really happy. Grew from seven to eight figures. We're growing from eight to nine figures, whatever it is, right? We're crushing it for them. We assume they've got all their ducks in a row until in the middle of the summer, we find out we're out of stock of three of the best sellers and we're gonna be out of stock for like the next two months and it's the peak of the summer right. And, then it's like, Oh no, we had this trajectory. We had these plans, right? We were scaling like now it hinders everything because performance is going to drop from all the marketing we're doing and everything else. Customers, you know, now we've, now we have to put a whole new plan together to make sure that we're on track. And you do, you have to plan for those orders. You have to plan to make sure that you're getting things on time, right? That you're not gonna get out of stock, especially if those best sellers kill me. Can't tell you how many times this happened to us. And it is, it's so important. So absolutely to your point, if you're able to have that data and use those tools available to you, I feel like it's so important and it sucks because I know the switching costs are brutal you know, working with one client right now to implement NetSuite and a few other things and it's like, oh, it's so hard. Right? It's so difficult. But once you have it, it's there. Right. And, and, and I mean, maybe I'm curious a little bit on, on should someone be looking for something that they can grow into as opposed to, you know, going with something that like may or may not kind of fill their needs now, but then they're hopefully where their trajectory is, right? Because you've touched upon the goals side of things, which I appreciate, right? I've just kind of like, hey, every business has different goals and that's okay. But if you're on this trajectory of growth, maybe you're venture-backed or something like that, yeah, do you recommend kind of going with something? Hey, this is gonna be a little bit pricey, we're gonna take a hit, but we're gonna have this data and we're gonna be able to grow into it and we're not gonna need to switch two years from now.
Yeah, that's the hardest thing because it depends, right? Like the size of the business. So the manufacturing company I worked for before, was a very small startup entrepreneur, right? But we're in a regulated industry. So at the same time that we want to find a cheap and flexible system, that'll work for us, it also has to be compliant to a laundry list of different organizations. So you end up running back and forth.
I think finding a tool that can work for you in the right way is probably the biggest and the most important thing. Knowing that everyone has got some ability to display some data on the backend and everybody's always trying to build those out, you know, and build better reports. But I think you gotta be careful. You gotta right-size your system. You don't wanna pay for NetSuite if you're trying to just get a few hundred orders out, right?
You gotta find something that's the right size that'll scale with you for a while. And the reason I say that is if you can chart out your growth over, you know, five or six years, obviously excluding like hyper-growth and that throws a wrench in a lot of things, but give yourself a runway for five years, pay that back and then evaluate your business at that point. Cause you might be doing something new, something different, and your needs have now changed. So I think you got to keep that horizon just a little bit closer. Get a contract for a couple of years, and get yourself a good price. But you gotta, I think you gotta pay attention to what else is out there. Because, you know, technology is constantly evolving, it's constantly changing. And if there's a better system and a better thing for you and for your business that makes you more strategic or competitive, you gotta be willing to make the jump, right? I think if you have the right people on the bus, that transition can be pretty easy.
Yeah, no, it makes perfect sense. I like that. I mean, and at the end of the day, exactly what you're talking about, setting goals, making sure you know where you're at, talking to an expert, even if it's a consultant, right? You can, you could kind of figure that out, right? Depending on your size and just trying to figure out where you're at, you know, reach out to someone who's already done it at a bigger company that's maybe in a similar niche or something like that. Right? I mean, yeah. I'm sure Justin's not going to give away his trade secrets but on the other hand, he's got a wealth of knowledge as it pertains to all of this.
I try, I had to change my opinion on business consultants, cause they are just, they're really valuable. If you get the right one in the right industry, these guys just marinate in the space that you've got questions on. They know everything. Like they know what everyone's doing. Just pay them. They're gonna make it so much easier to get to where you want to go faster. So I will put in that plug.
It's true. No, absolutely. I mean, and it is you got to be careful. Get a referral. Find someone in your industry like this. You know, absolutely. I'm with you. I mean, yep. Yeah. So you have to be very careful. I am curious though. You know, we've kind of talked about quite a few things here, but we've talked about some of the customer experience and aspects as it relates to that as well as right like. You know, what's going on in the fulfillment side and what you're doing there. I'm curious, especially as you're in the shoe business, shoes, you know, there's a lot of variables to that. You know, you're, I'm sure you're always dealing with returns, high return rates, and all that kind of stuff. Cause anything in the fashion world, no matter what it is, you're dealing with returns and everything else. I'm curious just kind of as these customer expectations continue to evolve, right? Where you pointed it out, the Amazon effect and e, everything else. How do you anticipate the role of customization and personalization, which is a very hot topic and is only gonna continue, I think becoming bigger and bigger, especially in the fashion industry. So how do you anticipate the role of that customization and personalization within the fulfillment process and potentially what challenges does this present or opportunities?
Yeah, so I'll give some manufacturing perspective, which is how we've approached our fulfillment operation, which I think helps. But anytime in manufacturing that you're investing in equipment, in line setup, in all of those things, you're looking to do one very specific thing and do it well. And the challenge comes when you want to throw something in that you're not built for. And I'll say it like that, because of course, like if someone wants us to you know, put their product in a box and into another box and throw like confetti or something on it and pack it, we'll do it. We're just going to charge you a ton of money to do it. But then as soon as you have 10 people asking to do that, you're like, all right, let's kind of evaluate our life choices here. So what I would say about customization and personalization within the fulfillment process is to find a system, and find equipment that will give you the flexibility within a standard process.
So like, I'll use printers for example, if you wanted to ingest a photo and print a photo as part of the fulfillment process of the person or the gift or whatever it's going, right? Having one piece of equipment that can print your pack slip and your marketing insert and a photo and whatever you need, just spit it out automatically through the fulfillment process, that's gold for you. And then you just are setting up rules for if I sell it on Walmart, this is what it does. Or if I sell it on Amazon, this is what it will spit out. But no one has to make choices and no one has to have multiple touches in the process. I think those are the biggest things for me. As soon as someone has to find something different and put it on an order, their rates are gonna drop. We wanna preserve the rates because it's cost-effective, but it's also easier for people just to be in a rhythm. So get the right kind of equipment that will help people stay in rhythm.
You can do a lot with customization tech through technology and not have to You know expand too broadly out of that now I do recognize that we're a shoe brand and we can ship in our shoe boxes So we don't have a lot of reboxing. We don't have a lot of extra, you know printing and fluff some brand has a more premium pack process we see it there but I know some people have to deal with that I would say whatever you can do to align things into the same process would be valuable.
I love that. Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. I mean, my favorite one was CCS, which is like this online, one of the biggest online skateboard companies. And I customize everything, the wheels, the trucks, the grip tape, every aspect of that board was I get to choose, right? And right as they, you know, when they finished it, they sent me a text with the picture of my board, like, Hey, your board has been built.
it's about to be shipped out to you. And exactly like you're alluding towards, as long as, like that's a cool customer experience, right? I got the text messages and I was pumped. Oh, it looks so cool. It's on its way, woohoo. But as long as that doesn't take up, and then you're looking at that data, right? What does the customer experience look like? What's the sticky point of all of this, right? Versus, of course, it's gonna take our staff a little bit extra time to take that photo but as long as you have the systems and processes in place to make it effortless in a way by just saying, yes, this order is done. Here's the picture and done. It's like an extra three seconds. Great. It's awesome. But if it requires too many steps and it requires this person three extra minutes to take this photo, upload it to this random place, do this, figure out where the order number is, it's not worth it in that way, I'm sure. So.
Yeah. And I guess if your brand is really like customization-heavy personalization and you're kidding a lot of the product before it's done, yeah, make that your process. You're gonna have to pick one of each of these anyway. So that doesn't impact you at all. If you just get to pick something more specific for the person. I think that's kind of cool.
Yeah, absolutely. As we wrap up, could you share maybe one key piece of advice for companies looking to optimize their operations and gain a competitive edge?
Oh, yes, I'll share a couple of things. Hopefully, it's not just, I don't know, dumping tons more of information. Hopefully, this is valuable. But the biggest thing for me, like when I walk out of work every day when I'm making decisions, sending emails, I'm like, I hope that I have good information. That's the biggest thing. You've got to trust the data that you have and you have to know it. And if you know it well and you can trust it, you can do a lot with it. So that says number one, make that your baseline. And then once you have that, start kind of diving into your metrics, break it down as granular as you can, find a way to track it, and find a way to display it. Cause it'll tell you a lot about your operation. And those are helpful to give you new insights into things that you can change or different steps you might be able to take. I think when I think of strategic advantage, just since we went through this process recently,
 The technical term, what I think you're alluding to is like, whatever you're doing is rare, it's really difficult to imitate and it's extremely valuable and you're organized in a way that you can deliver on it. I think for a lot of people, that's your labor management. If you can have your labor management plan rock solid, you can weather a lot of storms and deal with a lot of variability and demand. One thing that we have found is we can sort of blend the demand of different areas like our returns processing department with our pick and pack, because we'll spike on a Monday for pick and pack and maybe we can just wait on returns. We're just not going to do anything on Monday, but they are flexible and can work with us and that helps us stay lean. I'd say know your data and find a way to manage your labor workforce effectively. And I think that puts you in a great spot.
I love it. Yeah, great advice. And it is it's it's a hard it's not an easy job. I know you have your work cut out for you. You're doing you know, I love what you're doing. Great brands that I highly recommend everybody to check out. I mean, the Journey's collection looks cool. I know my fiance immediately was on it and was bugging me to get some orders here. So secretly, I might ask Justin for a discount when we get off this call.
Last question real quick, I ask everybody, any, you already dropped Infinite Games, so I know you're a Simon Sinek fan, which is great, I am as well, but is there one business book maybe that's changed your life or career the most or something you're reading lately?
I mean, it's funny that you say this on my LinkedIn. I just dropped a post. I did 23 books last year, just all the things. And you know, I probably shouldn't have done as many because I don't know that the recall is there, but there were like five that were just fundamentally shifted. So yes, Infinite Game by Simon Sinek. I think Think Again by Adam Grant also just put a total shift in the assumptions that I have made, and the opinions that I have, and realizing that a lot of them are based on nothing. That frees you in a lot of ways to be open to new ideas, new ways of doing things and to talk with people, you know, more effectively. I think Good to Great by Jim Collins is always, always a good pick. And then Range by David Epstein. Range confronts the 10, 000-hour rule and I think it is a valuable way, because a lot of times we're not dealing with the same kind of problem day in, day out that 10,000 hours will make us the best at. I think the value of analogies and being able to pull from a wealth of experience in other areas makes you more productive in your work. So I'd say those are probably my top picks. Those are worth the read for anybody.
I love it. I love it. I was just speaking to a group of students earlier today and I was encouraging them that liberal arts degrees are gonna make a big comeback in a big way. I mean, you just said it, why do generalists triumph in a specialized world? I mean, yeah, I'm with you, but the thing again sounds great. I've not heard of that and the power of knowing what you don't know. All right, that sounds like a lot of fun.
Well, thank you so much, Justin. I appreciate the time and the insights you've provided. If anybody wants to reach out to you, I think you already plugged in your LinkedIn. Is that probably the best place for them to reach out to you?
Yeah, LinkedIn is great. I always loved talking shops. Just reach out and I'll see what I can do to help.
Awesome, really appreciate it, Justin.
All right, Samir, pleasure.
