Supply chain and logistics. When everything is running smoothly, it’s a breeze. When there are problems, inventory issues can cripple an eComm business. Inventory, and supply chain management has been struggle city in 2020 and 2021. Unfortunately, 2022 isn’t looking much better. 

In this episode I interview Chelsea Cohen of So Stocked and we unpack some super smart inventory and supply chain strategies. This content is a MUST if you want to remain competitive (and avoid pulling your hair out from supply chain pain). 
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Here’s a look at what we cover:

• The Golden rule of logistics - don’t let anyone have all of your stuff - and how to apply it.
• Container optimizations - with the cost of containers rising, container optimization can have a big impact on your overall profitability. 
• Carton optimizations - This is a next-level tactic that can save you big. Especially when you combine it with container optimization. 
• 4 points that impact your restock limit with Amazon 
• 3 triggers to pull to avoid restock limit crashes during out of stock periods

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Mentioned in This Episode:

Chelsea Cohen

- Via LinkedIn

- Via SoStocked

SoStocked‍

Onpallet.com

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Brett:

Well, hello, and welcome to another edition of the eCommerce Evolution Podcast. I'm your host, Brett Curry, CEO of OMG Commerce. And today, we're diving into a topic that may, on the surface, give you a little bit of anxiety. It may cause stress to well up inside of you, but you also know that this is absolutely critical and critical for your success as we move forward. So we're talking about inventory management, and we're talking about practical ways to manage your inventory in the midst of supply chain chaos, because this is one of the ways you make profit as an eCommerce business. If you don't get this right, even if everything else is doing wonderfully, like marketing and branding and conversion optimization, if the supply chain and inventory management is a wreck, you're not going to make the profits that you should be making.

Brett:

And so, I'm delighted to welcome to the show an expert in this field, Ms. Chelsea Cohen, she's the co-founder of SoStocked. And she's so stoked to be here. It's an inventory management software solution for Amazon sellers. But not only that, Chelsea is an Amazon seller, she runs her own store, and she runs a copywriting and listing optimization service. An agency. And so she knows Amazon inside and out, and is just a wealth of knowledge when it comes to dealing with your supply chain and inventory management. And so, with that intro, Chelsea, thanks for coming on, welcome to the show, and how's it going today?

Chelsea:

Yeah, thank you so much for having me, it's going great.

Brett:

Good, good, good. Well, we've got lots of good stuff to dive into. We're going to talk about how do you improve profitability with supply chain, container optimization, carting optimization, some really advanced things. We're also going to be looking at how to diversify your supply chain and how to really survive and thrive as we continue down this period of supply chain chaos. But before we do, I gave a quick intro, but would love to get a 60 or 90-second intro from you about yourself, Chelsea. So, how did you get here, and why are you so into inventory management?

Chelsea:

Sure. Yeah, so I've been selling since 2014, recognized inventory as a major issue in my business, something that was really causing my margins to suffer. I basically started asking around, "What is everybody using?" Everybody said that had tried all the software out there, they'd gone back to spreadsheets and I figured that that was a stupid answer for us in our eCommerce and also entrepreneurship space. I figured someone's got to tackle it, it might as well be me. And so for the past three years, I've been exploring that, and I've been really diving deep into inventory.

Chelsea:

I've talked to hundreds of sellers as we've built out our platform and really built it out based on what Amazon sellers need, and found that not only was a software and a system not really put in place, but also the education side of things was not in place. And so, I basically kind of stepped into that role and decided that I was going to become an Amazon inventory expert. That's where we're at today. It's been very much an interesting subject. I found it interesting, and I try to make it a little bit more interesting, a little bit less terror-inducing than it normally is.

Brett:

Yeah. And I think that this topic of inventory management supply chain, for some people, they just light up, right? Some people love logistics. A friend of mine runs this massive warehouse for a big not-for-profit, so he can geek out on logistics. Some people can, not everybody is wired that way. But right now in this environment, everybody, regardless of whether you skew towards the marketing side or operation side of your business, you've got to master this, and I know everyone is interested.

Brett:

So I want to talk first about diversification. As we're looking at the current environment, we have to diversify. We can't be dependent on just one supplier or even one country in certain cases, where we get our inventory from. So what should we be thinking about in terms of diversification, and what are some practical tips that you have?

Chelsea:

Yeah. So there are a couple of things. One is where you're sourcing. Right now, there are moves into other places outside of just China. China's having various different challenges. They've got power curbing happening, which means that they're not allowed to access power for as long as they've been usually accessing power that's then being shut down. So the timelines are increasing over there. They've got material shortages.

Brett:

Yeah, and just a quick riff on that, I'm sure everyone's well aware, but I know some good friends of mine that are in the eCommerce space. They're talking to their factories in China or another good friend of mine has an employee that lives in China. And yeah, some of these factories are working four days a week or five days a week, or they've got no power at night. I've heard of some that are like buying huge diesel generators just to keep the electricity going at night when the government shuts it off. This is wild times. So that's increasing the time for things to be produced, yeah.

Chelsea:

Exactly. Yep. Yep. And you got raw material shortages. There's a cardboard shortage, which is just kind of horrific. Actually, we're seeing cardboard come through that is supposedly seven layer cardboard, but it's very, very thin. So the quality of cardboard is also wreaking havoc on people's inventory. So those are things that you have to get your inspection company to inspect as well.

Chelsea:

So people are starting to move into other countries. Places like India and Mexico have great spotlights on them currently. India probably has a little bit more of a head start to Mexico in terms of the logistics. There are upsides and there are downsides. I don't claim to be an expert in either of these countries in terms of sourcing by any means, but some of the upsides, labor is actually cheaper in Mexico than it is in China, which is interesting. And I thought that was fascinating to learn.

Brett:

Must people would not guess that, right?

Chelsea:

Yes.

Brett:

I didn't know that either, but it's super interesting. Yeah.

Chelsea:

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So-

Brett:

And guess what? No shipments, right? They just go right across the border. You don't have to worry about the port of LA or Seattle and so.

Chelsea:

Interestingly enough, because I do have a friend who is starting to source in Mexico. I talked to him, he's actually living in Mexico now. And he thought that it was going to be a lot cheaper because you don't have to deal with that, but the cost was much higher than he expected. And he did run their numbers and it wasn't nearly as profitable as he needed it to be. However, that was when he was trucking into Dallas. However, he found a warehouse on the border, right inside of the country, and then all of a sudden the numbers made sense.

Chelsea:

So you have to be creative and find creative solutions and figure out where do those numbers come from? Why is it expensive? What legs of that transportation are most expensive and why? So that became very interesting. So those are things that people are kind of exploring as India and Mexico. You're not going to get certain products out of either one of those countries. There are certain products that you'll only for now be able to get in China still, but there are specific types of products that you will start to be able to find eventually I think.

Brett:

It is so interesting, just the way we look at different parts of your marketing funnel, right? As we're running at OMG, we run top of funnel YouTube and Google search and shopping and remarketing and we're running Amazon ads, all types of Amazon ads. And we really like to look for, okay, what are the areas where cost is too high? Where cost is just proportionate to return. And so we're constantly tweaking and stuff.

Brett:

I don't know that a lot of people think about that as far as supply chain goes, but the same type of mindset applies. Where it's like, okay, I know this should be cheaper. Ah, there's this one leg of the trip that's really causing this cost to spike, let's reroute and let's find a creative solution here.

Chelsea:

Exactly. Exactly.

Brett:

Cool. Other things we should diversify, and if not, I want to get into flexible payment terms and logistics. I think there's some interesting things around there too, but any other points of diversification?

Chelsea:

Yeah. So other things to diversify, I call it the golden rule and it's, don't let anyone have all your stuff. When I talk to sellers and they tell me that they've stocked out, I ask them immediately, "Well, why did you stock out? What happened to your inventory? Where was your inventory?" And most often it was that they put all their inventory on a boat and the boat's just sitting there or that they put everything on a truck and Amazon hasn't checked it in. There are reasons why Amazon is having problems with check-ins, which we could get into if the time comes. But the rule applies, don't let anyone have all your stuff. You have to have a backup plan.

Chelsea:

So if you're going to put everything in a container, you should actually be producing a little bit more than a container's worth so that you have some inventory that you can air freight over only if you need to. You don't want to take on the expense if you don't need to, but you'll have your supplier keep that extra inventory and fly it over if you have problems at the ports. And the same thing goes with your inventory going into Amazon. You send almost everything, LTL or FTL, and then you have your three PL, your warehouse hold extra inventory that you can send small parcel delivery if needed. Again, those two other meth methods are more expensive, but they're a lot more reliable and faster.

Brett:

Yeah. They're more expensive, but they're not more expensive when you take into account the high cost of being out of stock and all the headaches that go with that. And so I love that idea. You keep it there. You always have a backup plan because stuff goes wrong. We've seen that time and time again recently, but then you've got it there. Only deploy that if you need to and makes a ton of sense. Any other thoughts on diversification?

Chelsea:

In terms of Amazon, most people who sell on Amazon sell using Fulfilled by Amazon, having a fulfilled by merchant option. Where it's not just that your inventory is sitting at a warehouse in cartons, but you have either an outside fulfillment center or maybe a fulfillment center attached to your replenishment warehouse and being able to fulfill, you shouldn't be relying only on Amazon, as we've seen the system is now broken. You can't only rely on Amazon to be your distribution center.

Brett:

Yeah. Because what happens when Amazon says, can't take any more inventory right now or I'm creating the stock limit for you, which I know we'll talk about that.

Chelsea:

Yep.

Brett:

And so, okay, that's brilliant. So have FBM set up as a backup, even if that's not what you use primarily. That makes a lot of sense as well.

Chelsea:

Exactly.

Brett:

Cool. Talk about flexible payment terms and logistics. And so what does that look like? Because I know really this all comes down to profitability and business growth, but what does that look like?

Chelsea:

Right. So one of the things that we are doing that other sellers are doing is to work with your supplier to sort of lighten the load. So we talk about that extra inventory that's currently sitting at your supplier's warehouse in case you need to deploy it by air freight. A lot of times your supplier one, won't charge you for that. They'll hold it for a period of time and not charge you storage. So instead of it sitting locally and you collecting storage fees on a monthly basis, it'll be sitting at your warehouse at your warehouse with your supplier and they'll be willing to hold it for you.

Chelsea:

Beyond that, so everyone has to pay. You pay your deposit. So you produce a little more than a container, in this particular scenario. You produce a little more than a container, you send that initial payment, but then when send that container, you only have to pay for the container. You only have to pay for the inventory that was sent. And the inventory that's being held is inventory that you've paid the initial payment on, but you're not paying storage fees on and you're not paying that final payment. That's something that is being worked out with many different suppliers and is something that helps you to better control your cashflow.

Brett:

Is that something that you found a lot of suppliers are willing to do in this environment?

Chelsea:

Many suppliers are willing to be flexible and to help you out. Some of them do get subsidies. Some of them are not big enough to be able to handle that, but we personally, our supplier is willing to do that and we've found that there are many sellers that do have that relationship. If you had a long term relationship, or if you do large volume or both, it tends to be a little bit easier for you to negotiate that.

Brett:

And you have to ask. It's one of those things that, that, you're definitely not going to get those flexible terms if you don't ask. And so you need to ask them. And more often than not, if the supplier can do it, it, they will do it. And so it definitely makes sense to ask.

Chelsea:

Exactly.

Brett:

Well, let's talk about profitability for a minute. So, thinking in terms of how to be profitable here. It's so interesting I remember when I was first learning real estate and I never got into real estate, but I was interested in it. I remember this saying that, "Hey, you make money when you buy the real estate," which good luck with that in today's inflationary real estate market. But I think in a lot of ways holds true for eCommerce as well. The profit is made on the sourcing and the production. And now the supply chain, because if supply chain costs go up three or four X, holy cow, then your profit is really suffering.

Brett:

So how do you optimize for profit right now? What, are some of your tips and suggestions there?

Chelsea:

Yeah. So, yeah, we have the same thing, you make money when you buy. And that's on the sourcing side of things. We kind of taken a step further and say you make money before your inventory even checks in. And so that's something that I've been lately very obsessed with. There are things that are changing about how shipping works. Shipping costs started in 2020, beginning of 2020 were $2,000 per container are now pushing $10,000 per container. So that's an extreme hike in shipping costs.

Brett:

Yeah. I even heard there's some periods of time and it depends on when you're listening to this, but I heard containers being like 30K for a little while in some instances. And so it's just insane.

Chelsea:

Yeah, depending on where you're going. Yeah, definitely. It's just been crazy. So finding ways to kind of shave some of those things off and paying attention to what's happening. What are those new fees and there are new minimums, there are new maximums. For example, we had a particular product that we actually, by just changing the container, we were able to save 68 cents per unit for this particular product. And it was because for one, our freight forwarder had some minimums. Their minimum was every container's going to be charged at least 12 kilograms. Even if it's under 12 kilograms.

Chelsea:

So we had our cartons at 7.7 kilograms. So we're losing all of that money because we're being charged of weight that doesn't exist. And so there was that side of things. There was the weight fees that we were able to counteract by changing the carton size and putting more units per carton into that. But the other side of things, putting more units per carton, because everyone used to send to Amazon and you know, you didn't really have to worry about the third party warehouse. Now you have this middle man that's charging you for every single thing that happens. They're receiving it, they're unpacking it. They're palletizing it, they're doing all of these things. And one of those things is called a carton pole, which means it's just handling the carton and then carton labeling. Carton labeling is just slapping a label on a carton. But combined, those two costs can average you about $3 and 50 cents, $3 and 60 cents.

Chelsea:

And so when you put more units per carton, that particular cost gets dispersed over more units and you're able to then save more. So that's one of those things where it's important to start looking at, can I optimize my cartons? And I'm actually currently in a spreadsheet right now, building out a tool to be able to calculate these things as something that we built ourselves. For our business, we had to do that calculation and figured this is something that doesn't exist that now needs to be developed because the amount of money that someone can save is just extraordinary.

Brett:

Yeah, it's unbelievable. And it really is the death by a thousand cuts on the cost side, but also the real creation of profits if you're able to start saving some of those little fees over time.

Chelsea:

Yeah. There are other free tools that I thought would be good to mention. Some of them are free. One of them is paid, but in terms of there are other levels. You have carton optimization, but then you have container optimization and you have pallet optimization. There's a tool called onpallet.com and that will help you to build out a pallet. You need to remember that there are six inches that will be the pallet measurement. So when you're using the tool, make sure to include the six inches when you're following Amazon specs.

Chelsea:

And then the other tool is a container optimizer. It's called Pier2Pier. So pier meaning where you drop pier.

Brett:

Like pier2pier computers, pier2pier in the water, okay, got it.

Chelsea:

Exactly. So pier2pier with the number two.com/loadcalc, and it helps you to calculate your container. So those are some tools that people can use to help save them on cost across the supply chain.

Brett:

Nice. Love it. Love it. Very cool. So, one of the things we're really trying to avoid here and you've talked about this a little bit where we've got inventory on a container, but we're keeping some that we need to air freight over just in case. But one of the things you want to avoid with inventory management is being overstocked, right? That's no good. At Amazon, they're going to charge you extra fees and then you've got money tied up in inventory, whether you're financing that and then paying down the loan or whatever. Being overstocked is not a profitable move, but being under stocked can be the death of a listing or can really cripple your business. And so how do you find that balance of not running out of stock, but also not being overstocked?

Chelsea:

Yeah. So one of the things that you need to be able to do when you're trying to estimate is to look at your data in full. So for example, we had prime day last year in October, but we had prime day in the normal time, which is July this year. So if someone were to try to project out October of this year, using last year's data, they have this huge spike in sales, this two day sale, that could cause them to overestimate.

Chelsea:

So being able to analyze your data better, and it's difficult when Amazon doesn't give you all that data. They give it via the API, but they don't give to you in your reports. So if you don't have a software that handles that data and it gets granular with that data, you need to start tracking some of these big sales events or some of these spikes that you see. Some people have a spike that happens just because someone in a Martha Stewart found their product and listed it on a list of favorite things or something like that. And they get this huge spike in sales for that reason temporarily.

Chelsea:

So those types of things need to be tracked, those sales spikes, so that you're actually estimating properly. That coupled with being able to plan out your inventory paired with your marketing. So those are kind of some of the basics on why people tend to over order, it's not analyzing their data properly.

Brett:

Nice. And then, what about ways to prevent from going out of stock and certainly an element there too is forecasting and understanding. But other tips there, because some of that is just dealing with Amazon as well.

Chelsea:

Yeah. Yeah. So Fulfilled by Merchant is one of those ways. It's not, you're going out of stock in FBA, but you're not necessarily going out of stock. Your sales aren't stopping. So having that other distribution channel becomes very helpful. A lot of Amazon sellers right now are facing restock limits. And restock limits are wreaking havoc on a lot of businesses. They're a bit unpredictable, but there are certain things that we know can help to boost those.

Chelsea:

So not getting into what we call a restock limits cycle. The cycle of your restock limits are such that you're having a hard time getting your inventory in and then you stock out and then your restock limits go down and then it's then harder to continue to actually recover from that.

Brett:

Yeah, it's a downward spiral, so to speak, of this restricting restock limits. And I hear this is hitting a lot of people. I know some very successful sellers, some big brands that you all would know of, that also have weird restock limits. Just based on some of these things. And so you and I were talking about as we were prepping a few weeks ago, they're kind of four points that impact your restock limits with Amazon. Can you unpack those a little bit and give us some tips there?

Chelsea:

Right. Well, I will make a little bit of a differentiator. There's restock limits and then there's the IPI score. It's really frustrating, but you have these two different inventory factors that are battling. There are a lot of sellers that don't have a problem with the IPI score. The IPI score means Inventory Performance Index. That's basically looking at how good are you at managing your inventory? And they're going to give you a score. If you go below that score, the score right now, it's 450. If your score is below 450 for each quarter, for that entire quarter, you not only have restock limits, which is a per unit, right? They give you, you can only send 5,000 units of inventory in, and that's your restock limits. But your Inventory Performance Index score and your IPI score actually when you have it below 450 hurts your storage volume.

Chelsea:

So they give you a unit limit and then they give you a volume limit. And very often the volume limit is lower than even the unit limit. And so that's kind of-

Brett:

Volume, meaning the amount of space on the shelf, not just how many units we'll accept, but hey, we're carving out this much shelf space, so fill it up.

Chelsea:

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, and it can be very extreme. So we had someone reach out to me and he was having problems understanding why he couldn't send inventory in. And he had the ability to send in 3,000 units, but the size he was allotted, I looked at the size limitations and I did the math and it was actually the size of a refrigerator.

Brett:

Wow.

Chelsea:

Yeah.

Brett:

Not put 3,000 Units in there, unless it's silicone wedding rings like my buddy.

Chelsea:

Right. Exactly. So he was having a hard time. And then at that point, the only solution is to fulfill outside of Amazon, which will help. It will help your sales velocity. It will help with those factors. So improving-

Brett:

By selling on Fulfilled by Merchant that increases your volume and velocity and that can actually increase those stock limits.

Chelsea:

Right, yes. It helps you to start to improve that. The thing, if anyone has that problem where they're being restricted by those storage volume limits, their number one focus needs to be getting that score up. And that score as we were talking about before, it is actually four different things. It includes excess inventory. So you need to remove that excess inventory and Amazon will let you know what that excess inventory is. Then there's in stock rate. So being in stock, whether it's fulfilling outside of Amazon or within Amazon, being in stock is a factor. Stranded inventory is a factor. And that basically means that you've got inventory that ...What's that?

Brett:

Stuck on a boat or something like that.

Chelsea:

Well, it's stranded within Amazon. So it's sitting at their warehouses, but the listing is not live. So maybe the listing was shut down. Maybe you're selling another brand's product and they no longer allow you to sell it. Whatever it is, to fix whatever that problem is, either pulling the inventory or getting that listing live will fix that. And that's I think really the lowest, the most easy problem to solve.

Chelsea:

And then the last one is sell through. How quickly is your inventory moving from the point you check it in to the point it actually leaves. And when you look at all of them, the stranded inventory in stock, excess and sell through, they're all components of sell through and they can all be improved by sell through.

Brett:

Yep. Yep. Totally makes sense. And I was about to ask that like, what is the one metric? Because if you look at there's several things and I won't get into it in this podcast because it's not relevant, but Google has a quality score they give to every ad and there's one component of quality score which is really more important than others, it's called click through rate. But yeah, that sell through rate, that's really what you want to optimize for. And so if you can increase that, then everything becomes easier.

Brett:

Amazon's happier, you're happier, customers are happy, ideally. So any thoughts on increasing sell through it? I know that that then opens up a big new world of advertising and listing optimization and all that.

Chelsea:

Yeah. I mean, it really is two factors. It's utilization. So it's how much inventory you have sitting at Amazon, versus how many sales you're making. The formula is looking at your 90 day sales divided by your utilization. So the average number of units you have inside of Amazon. So really, when you increase your sales, let's say you're doing some Fulfilled by Merchant stuff. I would say, pull out some access inventory. If there's a product that's slow selling, continue to sell it on FBM. Those sales will contribute to that top line, but not be contributing to that bottom line. So that will help you increase your sell through. That as well as smaller orders more frequently.

Brett:

Yeah. Nice. I love it. I love it. And so we may have already addressed this a little bit, but some tips to avoid your restock limits decreasing if something does go out of stock, right? Because lots of issues going on right now, some things are going to go out of stock. Other levers you can pull things you can do to avoid those restock limits from crashing?

Chelsea:

Yeah. So for sure there are three different things to focus on. One is like we talked about, Fulfilled by Merchant. Those sales do contribute to your restock limits. They contribute to your sales velocity. So fulfilling the by merchant, seller fulfilled any sort of fulfilling by merchant, that's going to help you. Those sales do positively affect your restock limits.

Chelsea:

Then there would be excess inventory flash sales. So let's say for example, you have a product that you have a lot of inventory on. The beauty of it's called storage type limits. So for about a year, a little less than a year, there was something called ASIN type limits. Which means that you've got a limit for every single skew. So if you run out of one, it's a very difficult thing to get it back. Because for a period of time, you've basically have no inventory. You have no sales and you have no way to correct the depletion of your restock limits.

Chelsea:

Now we have storage type limits and it's been painful for a lot of people because they've dropped things very low, a lot lower than the ASIN type limits, but at the same time, you have the ability to use your entire catalog to boost the limits. So you run out of stock in one of your products, you can look at what products do I have that I can push a little bit harder so that I can create, fill that gap that's going to be created, or at least try to fill that gap to avoid the plummeting of that restock limit?

Brett:

Brilliant. Brilliant. I love it. Awesome. Well, Chelsea, this has been incredibly insightful and impactful. I do want to talk about your software and hopefully people are watching the video, they see the clever usage of toilet paper on your shirt. Running out of stock, and it's got a little toilet paper roll running off, which is appropriate for 2020, which is last year. And then also the fed up with this sheet, and then it's got toilet paper with, looks like a spreadsheet. Sort of clever.

Brett:

What is SoStocked? I think we all know kind of the basics, but what does it do for people? And so give us kind of the quick walkthrough.

Chelsea:

Sure. So, SoStocked is designed to be able to take your eCommerce data. We're moving into Shopify, hopefully by the time that this episode airs we'll be in Shopify, we're in Shopify beta. But we started out with Amazon and really finding and creating a solution for Amazon sellers that was better than their spreadsheets. Because every other software out there left people going screaming back to their spreadsheets. So that was a big red flag.

Chelsea:

So we take what is possible within a spreadsheet and make it understandable and customizable so that people who are selling on the platform can not only forecast their inventory based on past data, but also the future planning. We call it inventory minded marketing. Which is plugging your marketing into your inventory to be able to help you to forecast more accurately. And then once that forecast has been created, they'll be able to click a button and place a PO with your supplier. You can email it directly from the system, and then it tracks everything, which was a big problem for a lot of sellers, not being able to know where their stuff is and when it was supposed to be arriving.

Chelsea:

And so it helped you to track everything from your three PLS, your open orders with your suppliers, and to be able to understand why the numbers are what they are.

Brett:

Yeah. Extremely, extremely valuable. And your software also helps when you create some of these scenarios we talked about, where you've got some product that you're putting on a container, other product you're holding back and you're going to air freight it, and so it can kind of help track all of that as well, right?

Chelsea:

Right.

Brett:

Yeah. Very cool. So if someone wanted to check it out more, what would be the best place to go and how should they view a demo or check it out?

Chelsea:

Sure. I would say go either go to sostocked.com or you can also go to, sostocked.com/connect. That's where you'll find me, you'll find my socials and a demo link as well as a link to the webinars that I do.

Brett:

Yeah. Awesome. I've seen some of the webinars. They're very good. If you gotten this far in the podcast, you realize this was a wealth of knowledge and a wealth of information that Chelsea has unpacked. And so I'm extremely grateful for that. Any final tips, final thoughts, and/or do you have any bold predictions for 2022 and beyond, as far as supply chain goes?

Chelsea:

Sure. I would say one of the final thoughts I like to leave people with that recently would kind of opened my eyes, was how much your vendors know and how much you need to use them as allies. We've been using them a lot as order takers. And what I mean by that is that, we've got these three PL warehouse owners, and we've got these freight forwarders and they're constantly shipping inventory across the planet and into Amazon. And they know more than we do. So we've got people who sellers usually go and they do an Amazon order and they send that order, the Amazon shipping plan, and they send that to their three PL. And they say, send my stuff. But that currently, it could change in three months, that currently is not the best way to send things.

Chelsea:

Your three PL managers will know the best ways to send your inventory, the best workarounds, the best providers, the best companies. Right now Amazon's really falling all over itself and really getting a lot wrong in logistics. So Amazon partner carriers are a little bit less reliable, and that's why people's stuff is not checking in. So talking to your freight forwarders, talking to these people and finding out, really picking their brain, it is extremely valuable. It's one of the ways that we saved all that money on the carton calculators we had our freight forwarders say, "Hey, the size is wrong. You're going to be charged extra." And so the conversations that I've had have just completely opened my eyes into how much we don't know.

Brett:

Love it, love it. So play Nostra Damas here, predictions for 2022, what happens to supply chain?

Chelsea:

I think maybe it'll get a little bit better. I don't think it's going to get a lot better.

Brett:

Maybe we'll see things like the cardboard crisis and some of those things, but yeah, is it going to get back to normal, pre pandemic normal?

Chelsea:

No.

Brett:

Yeah.

Chelsea:

No, I don't think so. I think that we need to be prepared for it not to. I think that Amazon personally, in that whole ecosystem, they say that restock limits are going away, I don't believe it. They have these other programs that they're rolling out. There are programs that are in beta for logistics, for supply chain and also for storage and restock limits. But it's Amazon, they have been really not reliable lately. So I'm kind of waiting to see what happens. I'm not ready to hit my toe in that pool.

Brett:

Exactly. Let's feel confident about that. When we see it with our own eyes, rather than just hearing it. Yeah. And I've heard and not to end this show on a doom and gloom note, but I've heard some people with the no supply chain, well say, "Hey, there's likely could be a strike at one of the ports. Port of LA." Thank you so much. Because about do about every five years, they say the longshoreman like to strike out there in LA. So we could see something like that. Suffice it to say, things will continue to not be normal and things will continue to be challenging. That's why you need expertise like Chelsea provides. And that's why you need to really consider tool like SoStocked, if that's a good fit for your business.

Brett:

So check it out. Chelsea, this has been so much fun who, who would've thought that inventory management and supply chain and logistics could be this much fun and this enlightening, but you have delivered pun intended I guess, but thank you so much.

Chelsea:

Awesome. Thank you for having me

Brett:

And you bet you. And as always, thank you for tuning in. We'd love to hear from you. What would you like to hear more of? What topics should we delve into? Give this episode some love if you enjoyed it, share it with people that you know would find it interesting. That's a great way to give a thanks back to the show. To let other people find it.

Brett:

Also, if you found this useful, we'd love that five star review on iTunes that not only makes my day, but also helps other people find the show as well. And so with that, until next time, thank you for listening.