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From AI Marketplace Automation to Beef Tallow Soap: Two Founders Building Differently · Beyond Fulfillment Podcast

• 0:00
  Shop Talk is one of the largest commerce conferences in the world, bringing together thousands of founders, operators and retail leaders who are actively building what comes next.
• 0:12
  Today's episode comes to you from the floor of Shop Talk Spring 2026 in Las Vegas, where I caught up with some of the sharpest operators and founders in retail.
• 0:25
  Let's get into it.
• 0:30
  All right, Asher Adelman, welcome to Beyond Fulfillment.
• 0:33
  Thanks for having me.
• 0:34
  Yeah, thanks for being here.
• 0:35
  So we are on site recording at Shop Talk.
• 0:39
  And Asher, you are the founder, the CEO of Stone and Spear, and we were just talking off camera about your entrepreneurial journey.
• 0:49
  And so I'd love for you to set the stage for our listeners because you went from running a mental health clinic to.
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  To founding what was first a soap company and now expanded to a full beauty line, Stone and Spear.
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  Can you just tell us how that happened?
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  Yeah, pretty randomly.
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  So, yeah, in the mental health company has not too much to do with the, with Stone and Spear, with skin care and cosmetics.
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  Has more to do with me being carnivore for the past seven, seven and a half years.
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  Because of that, I obviously ate a lot of meat as a carnivore and ended up having a ton of meat, beef tallow, frozen beef tallow in my freezer.
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  And the amount kept growing and growing and I knew I'd never be able to get through all that.
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  But I didn't want to throw it away because I love beef tallow.
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  I eat it, I cook with it.
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  I had started using a tallow soap about a year prior to that and which was great work wonders on my skin.
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  I had really dry, cracked skin in certain places on my, my knuckles, my feet, and really worked wonders and got rid of the dryness.
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  So I thought, okay, maybe I'll use some of this tallow.
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  I'll learn how to make soap.
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  Which I did.
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  It took some time, but ended up with a really good formulation that worked really well.
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  And, but I went from a problem of having 50, 60 pounds of towel in my freezer to having 400 bars of soap, which I'm, which I'm also not going to be able to go through and utilize myself.
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  So I figured maybe I'll put up a website and see if any other crazy carnivores might want.
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  I want to purchase the Nutella soap that I made.
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  And yeah, it's slowly, the business slowly and gradually grew from that one soap product to, to moisturizers, face creams, to deodorants, to lip balms.
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  And yeah, now we have about 70 or so products in skin care, hair care, cosmetics, makeup.
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  Okay, all right, so you're big in the carnivore diet.
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  You have all this excess tallow.
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  You go, you make soap with it.
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  Now you have 400 bars of soap.
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  Say, let me, let me set up a website and I'll sell some of these, maybe some other people.
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  It takes off and before you know it, this accidental business expands to 70 products and a full range of beauty products and all this.
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  So, I mean, and this is.
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  This company's just been around three years.
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  Yeah, a little over three years.
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  Over three years.
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  So what's been the process like, of kind of scaling that out when you never intended to even start this company in the first place?
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  Yeah, it's been interesting.
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  We started off, started off in my garage and did that for I think almost a year.
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  And yeah, then got to a point where had a few employees who were also working in my garage, in my kitchen.
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  And then it just got too chaotic, so I rented a facility.
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  And yeah, that's where we've been since we've expanded obviously to larger space.
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  But, but yeah, it's been, it's been a challenge.
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  It's been interesting and growing into so many different products.
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  And we do also make all of our own products in house.
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  We don't have any co manufacturers or any other companies that manufacture our products.
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  We do it ourselves, small batches, handcrafted.
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  And that's really what we're about, using top quality, only natural ingredients.
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  We don't use any synthetic or artificial ingredients in any of our products.
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  And we make them all by ourselves and ensure that the quality is going to be the best, you know, that we can have it.
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  So yeah, it's been, it's definitely been a journey.
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  Okay.
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  And so the, the process of doing it because like you mentioned, nothing synthetic, everything made by yourself, you're not outsourcing this.
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  And you know, being, I'm sure, as you've learned in the beauty industry, so many other companies say it's natural or say it's, you know, whatever, clean, but then there's so many synthetic ingredients.
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  So I mean, what's that process been like, just maintaining the integrity of the brand while you're trying to scale and operate efficiently and compete with other people in the space that maybe aren't staying true.
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  Yeah, it's certainly not the easiest way of going about it, but we do want to remain, and we will remain true to our mission, which is really helping people improve their skin health and vibrancy and using natural ingredients
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  like tallow and other natural ingredients, I believe makes a huge difference.
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  And our customers are amazed at how well their skin responds to our products because one, they're using very nourishing natural products or natural ingredients, and they're not using synthetic toxic ingredients, which can inflame our skin and cause other
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  issues such as endocrine disruption, inflammatory issues, and so forth.
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  So, you know, very important for us to stay, stay focused on staying true to our goal.
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  And yeah, it would be a lot easier if we didn't really care about or didn't care as much about product quality and we outsourced to an outside manufacturer or we cut corners with some products.
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  And okay, we'll allow, you know, this agreements or this ingredient's kind of iffy, but we'll allow it because it'll enable us to get the right scent or the right texture or the right color.
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  But yeah, we don't do that.
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  And there are some limitations when you're only willing to use natural, healthy ingredients.
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  Like our lipstick line, for example, we have six beautiful shades, beautiful colors of our lipstick line, but.
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  And natural colors, which, fortunately for us, happens to be popular nowadays.
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  A lot of women are interested in, in natural beauty and natural, natural shades and not like the very flashy lipstick and makeup shades that maybe we saw in the 80s or 90s.
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  But we get asked, oh, do you, can you make a red, like a really, like, fire engine red lipstick color?
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  And we've tried.
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  We've tried using different natural ingredients to, to create a really, like, deep, bold red shade, but it's not, not really possible, given the constraints that we put on ourselves, to only use natural ingredients.
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  And so we tell them, yeah, you know, we can't.
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  We tried, but we can't.
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  So there are some types of products or some variations, colors, scents and so forth that we're not able to do because we refuse to use any artificial, intense.
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  Okay.
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  All right.
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  And so we're here at Shop Talk now.
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  So as you've expanded, you've been like, we talked about going to a lot of the beauty shows and the circuit here, but specifically Shop Talk.
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  Why is it so important for a growing beauty brand to be at a show like this?
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  Yeah, so I think one aspect is we're learning a lot about different technologies out there, many of which we weren't aware of and weren't aware of the capabilities that things we'd be able to do or improve in our
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  different aspects of our operation with those technologies.
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  And so, yeah, it's been very eye opening, being exposed and learning about some of Those and also, I think just being in a community with other brands, other retailers in this B2C world.
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  And we're also looking to expand the retail partners that we work with.
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  We do work with small local retailers across the country and beauty salons, hair salons, massage therapists and so forth that they use our products in the facials and other services, massages that they provide, and also resell to their
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  customers.
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  So we're looking to make connections with potential partners, private label partners as well.
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  We do manufacture product for other skin care and beauty brands.
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  So we manufacture the products for them, and then they brand it as their product and sell it to their customers.
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  Okay.
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  All right.
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  And looking back at how this all started, like you said, accidentally, you weren't planning on starting a company, and then the way this whole thing has grown and where you're at now, what's been the best part of this
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  journey for you?
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  Yeah, I mean, it's.
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  It's all been.
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  It's been challenging, but it's been very fun.
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  And I have not worked in the skincare beauty industry in my entire career.
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  So this is something that's very new.
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  And it's been a, you know, a big learning experience for me.
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  And it's, It's.
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  I love it.
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  I love being, Being to work in a.
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  Being able to work in a field where I've always been interested in working with physical products.
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  I spent a lot of time in technology and as I mentioned, mental health.
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  Not really a product that you have that you can sell, make and sell.
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  So that's always been something that's been of interest to me, which I'm able to do now, which I love.
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  But also the product is really helping people.
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  So we have a lot of our customers have either skin conditions like eczema, psoriasis, acne, or they have just really sensitive skin and can't use a lot of other products, whether it's soaps, cleansers, deodorants, moisturizers, makeup.
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  And they do really, really well with our products because we do use, like I said, nourishing natural ingredients which actually nourish and heal the skin.
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  And people are amazed at how well their.
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  Their skin responds and improves and heals with our products and getting rid of the commercial artificial ingredient products.
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  And, you know, one of the things that's really cool is that we've gotten a lot of feedback from women who tried our lipstick, and they'll tell us, my gosh, I can't.
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  I haven't been able to wear lipstick in 2025.
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  Years, because any other lipstick will just inflame my lips and my skin and.
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  And, you know, very painful.
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  So I haven't been able to wear lipstick in decades.
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  And I tried to lipstick and it feels so good.
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  No reactions.
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  I feel beautiful now.
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  And so it's really nice being able to hear things like that or people with skin conditions that tried even.
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  Even prescription remedies, nothing worked.
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  And they try our products and their skin condition and skin health is significantly improved.
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  And so that's a really cool thing to be able to be a part of.
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  Okay.
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  All right.
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  And Asher, if people want to find out more or order some of these products, what's the best way they can find you online?
• 11:13
  Yeah, you can go to our website.
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  We're@stoneandspeartalo.com or you can go to Instagram @stone and spearskincare or TikTok, stone and spear Tallow.
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  Okay.
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  And we'll link all that in the show.
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  Notes for everyone.
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  Asher, thank you so much for taking the time to be here.
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  Thank you for having me.
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  It was great talking to you.
• 11:35
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• 12:24
  All right, J el Khaki.
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  Welcome to Beyond Fulfillment.
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  Thank you for having me.
• 12:29
  Yeah, thanks so much.
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  So we are live here on site at Shop Talk and Jay, you are the co founder and the CEO of oselo.
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  We'll get into what Oselo does here momentarily, but you've had a couple exits already within the e commerce industry.
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  Can you just give our listeners kind of background about who you are and what you've been on your entrepreneurial journey up until now?
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  Yeah, so, yeah, I've been in the e commerce industry for a while, mostly just building technology for e commerce merchants.
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  I fell in love with it at a very early age because my father was a refugee and always wanted to start businesses and it was never super successful starting retail businesses back before the Internet was that big.
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  And I really wanted to help him and Then I discovered computers and felt like it was a match made in heaven for me.
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  And I realized that E commerce tech was a way that I could help him succeed.
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  And so I started working on the first platform, which was a product called Smile, which became the largest loyalty software in the world among E commerce merchants.
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  Used today and exited that, started another reviews company for Shopify that became one of the most popular reviews companies called Farah, and then exited that recently and started oselo.
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  So combined there's hundreds and hundreds of thousands of merchants that are using software that I started or built around the world right now, which is kind of cool.
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  And still in my 30s, so a lot more to go.
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  Okay.
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  Wow.
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  So that's quite impressive because a young kid wanted to help his father, son of a refugee, and kind of great timing with computers and whatnot.
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  But your first two businesses you started became like some of the largest companies within their respective fields.
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  Yeah, it was.
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  I was lucky enough to be around very smart people and I was very driven.
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  I hope I'm still driven, although now I'm on hard mode because I've got a two year old and a four year old to also take care of while I'm doing another startup.
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  But I still love it nonetheless.
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  Okay, love that.
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  And so many of our listeners are all about the entrepreneurial journey and a lot of serial entrepreneurs.
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  So you had some very successful exits, some great success early on, and then here you are again launching another startup.
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  So tell us about oselo and what problem that solves.
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  Yeah, Oselo Automates Marketplace listing on Macy's, Nordstrom, Amazon, etc.
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  Using AI agents to do it.
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  And if anybody's actually tried to sell on multiple channels, even using the existing tools, it is a massive pain right now.
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  And I had met my co founders right after exiting my last company, they told me about this problem.
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  They were on the retailer side, they were working for some of the big retailers and I just fell in love with the problem.
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  And at the time, which was around last year, AI was starting to boom and I could see what it was becoming.
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  Yeah, it's been something I've been so it's been something I've been working on day and night ever since.
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  Okay, all right.
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  So I mean, AI is all about automating kind of lower level menial tasks so people can focus on higher level stuff.
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  Right?
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  Exactly.
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  And I mean, I can't think of a better task to be automated than filling out data for marketplaces.
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  Exactly.
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  Anyone that's familiar with how that process works, I mean, what a Headache.
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  So, I mean, talk about what that's like, building something like this, especially as AI is evolving and changing and advancing so rapidly in real time.
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  Sure.
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  I think the world is sort of underestimating how much everything is going to change.
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  AI agents are a shift different than the movement of AI because they can work and do things and reason like a human would.
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  So every piece of software today was built around processes and built around connections and integrations.
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  But when you have a human that is unlimitedly scalable, brilliant and fast, then all those things are no longer necessary.
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  You just need to give permission to the human to connect what it needs, access whatever it needs, and that's it, and then it'll get things done.
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  And just even the way that you maintain it is different now.
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  Instead of maintaining, you know, approval systems, you're now maintaining a team of agents and making sure that your content that they're working on is maintainable and making sure they're talking to each other, which is, you know, so even
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  just as I'm saying that you can hear, you can.
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  The light bulb kind of turns on for all the entrepreneurs out there.
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  Of all the huge amount of opportunities out there like Slack for agents, you know, we've already seen multiple Book was just acquired by Meta, which was a Facebook for agents.
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  And so, yeah, there's just, there's so much.
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  And for us, we're basically replacing like the offshore side of things, which, as you said, was, you know, perfectly timed because every country is sort of going nationalist, you know, america first.
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  And how better to do that than to embrace AI?
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  Then we're driving more revenue to North America and not to offshore agencies.
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  Okay, now you've said too that the AI agents are four times more accurate than the offshore teams to do the same work.
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  How do you measure that?
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  That's a good question.
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  So what we did is we worked with a very large seller.
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  We replicated their listings on.
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  We asked them to give us 100 listings.
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  I'm sorry, there's more than 100, but 100 listings, much more SKUs, but parent listings and that were already built and created by the Offshore team.
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  Then we asked them to give us access to their source data.
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  So where was that data?
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  Like, what were the spreadsheets and data that they provided to the Offshore team to build those hundred listings?
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  Then we connected it into OSELO and we ran the.
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  Actually an early version of the AI, by the way, so those stats are going to be way better now.
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  But we ran the AI to build the same listings that were built by The Offshore team.
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  So then what we did is we put them side by side.
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  So on the left you have the listing that was created by the AI agent and on the right you have the listing that was created by the.
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  By the Offshore staff.
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  Typically people in India are Philippines.
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  And then we had a third party go through and say who did it better.
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  Which one do you like better?
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  Which one is more accurate relative to the source data?
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  And what we found was that for every five listings, four out of five of the best selections were the AI agents built listings, not the Offshore ones.
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  So for every five listings going through that, the third party was saying, I like, not just I like, the one built by the AI agent is more accurate.
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  And they didn't know which one was built by the AI agent or by the Offshore.
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  So it was a scientific method to figuring out is it actually being more, is it actually better?
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  Because also Accela is worth mentioning is that we do also optimize the images in different ways around constraints.
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  And so there are different things like that.
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  Now this doesn't include all the operational efficiencies that we gain with AI agents.
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  It just says that not only are you going to get all these operational efficiencies, but it's also way more accurate, which is kind of a mind blowing moment for me and my team.
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  And that's really when we were like, okay, put the gas on this.
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  You know, like all in.
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  Like that's like we're just.
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  This is the tip of the iceberg of AI.
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  Like it's moving so fast.
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  Even when we actually did that, that was like eight months ago.
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  That was initial and that.
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  So that was like GPT4.
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  And if anybody's used this, that's compared to GPT 5.4, which was released last week, or some of the Gemini models, it's like caveman.
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  So you can imagine today it'd be like probably 100%.
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  Isn't that crazy?
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  Because you're talking about eight months ago, technology in this field.
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  Now you're caveman type compared to what is.
• 21:24
  Yeah, it is.
• 21:24
  I mean, just the image generation is funny to see how the difference.
• 21:28
  But yeah, you're right.
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  It's overwhelming actually sometimes.
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  And that's, that's even for me, it's overwhelming.
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  I can't imagine everybody else, you know, and I'm deep into it.
• 21:37
  Right, right.
• 21:38
  And I wanted to be on that because you said people are underestimating how much the world is going to change with the way AI agents are evolving.
• 21:46
  So it's one thing with the Entrepreneurs where they can, how they can do more with less light bulbs going on about what they can create.
• 21:53
  But for people that are just in the industry, maybe like what's your message about how people think about using AI and how they can best use that to their advantage?
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  Regardless of.
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  Just embrace it, be open minded.
• 22:18
  Anybody that's hiring young people right now, it feels like the shift of when a generation came in, which would have probably been my generation coming in where we googled everything and then the previous generation didn't Google anything.
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  And then it was a weird thing where they're like okay, but you don't have the PhD in this topic.
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  But we were like, okay, well we can Google it.
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  And the new generation is coming in and they have a, they don't need to even know how to do something because they have AI backing them.
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  So they have a different mindset that I've noticed.
• 22:48
  I think everybody's kind of noticing that.
• 22:50
  So you have to be sort of open minded because it's easy to say to push back on it especially with hires and stuff like that.
• 23:00
  But yeah, the best example I know probably short on time here, but the best example I could give to people so they understand how everything's changed.
• 23:09
  So when robots are going to.
• 23:12
  Eventually we're starting to test robots to in the house household robots and right now a lot of people probably use for their to do list tracking or their shopping list tracking.
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  They say hey Google, add this to the shopping list.
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  And that's a pretty good way to add to your shopping list because everybody in the family can contribute to it, et cetera.
• 23:33
  When the home robots start to kick in, they're going to have an easier time.
• 23:39
  Those robots that are using the current AI models and the advanced ones by then have an easier time with a pen and paper to do.
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  If you tell them hey, add this to my to do list.
• 23:48
  It's going to be better for you to just maintain it on your fridge again because it's easier for that robot to go write it on there than to communicate in the language of the other AI and have to
• 23:59
  access via the API of the other.
• 24:04
  Then you think about okay, then just even to do list apps now almost have to take a step back and say okay, how does this change again?
• 24:13
  You know, that's, that's, you know, maybe I don't know when that's going to be.
• 24:17
  But that's, that's an example and it's the same thing for every other software and we're definitely seeing that in the marketplace software world.
• 24:23
  Yeah.
• 24:24
  Yeah, absolutely.
• 24:25
  And so what.
• 24:26
  What would you say to.
• 24:27
  Well, first of all, with Ocelo 2, when are you planning to launch?
• 24:33
  Soon, but we are doing trials right now that have been very successful.
• 24:39
  And we're actually.
• 24:40
  The reason we came to Shop Talk, actually, is to host an appreciation dinner for our launch partners for having the conviction to work along with us.
• 24:52
  And they're very happy.
• 24:53
  They've already started referring and they just want to expand the other marketplaces, but I still really appreciate them taking the risks on AI because it's scary.
• 25:02
  It's confusing and scary, and everybody's saying they're using AI and everything, and.
• 25:06
  And it's a real world.
• 25:10
  It's overwhelming.
• 25:11
  Yeah.
• 25:11
  And it's evolving.
• 25:12
  Right.
• 25:12
  You definitely have to be using it.
• 25:14
  You have to be experimenting.
• 25:15
  You have to find the ways that it can truly work for you.
• 25:18
  And that's going to involve some trial and error, especially.
• 25:21
  Yeah.
• 25:22
  Okay.
• 25:23
  So, Jay, if people want to learn more about oselo, get in touch and even potentially be a customer, what's the best way people can find you online@just.
• 25:31
  Oselo.com or could go find me on LinkedIn or find Oselo on LinkedIn.
• 25:38
  I think we're accepting waitlist signups right now, but it should be ready soon.
• 25:47
  Okay.
• 25:47
  Okay, Fantastic.
• 25:48
  All right, Jay, thanks so much for your time.
• 25:50
  Hey, thank you so much.
• 25:51
  I really appreciate it.