Latest / The Retail Podcast / NRF2023 Future of Shipping with CEO of Shipium, Jason Murray 19 years at Amazon, where he spent most of his time as a VP building the tech stack powering Prime

Transcript

NRF2023 Future of Shipping with CEO of Shipium, Jason Murray 19 years at Amazon, where he spent most of his time as a VP building the tech stack powering Prime · The Retail Podcast

• 0:00
  Hello and welcome back to another episode of the retail
• 0:02
  podcast. I'm joined by Jason and X
• 0:05
  Amazonian executive rather than me.
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  Probably butcher your career history.
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  I'd love to hear about your you know where where have you come
• 0:14
  from all the way to what you guys are doing and obviously
• 0:17
  what ship being more focused on. Yeah, so I mean the the origin
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  story is actually a pretty good one for shipping but I started
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  Amazon 1999. I was there for almost 20 years
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  and the majority of my career was really focused on Logistics
• 0:30
  and technology and early days with that Min.
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  As I worked a lot on how to build the Fulfillment center so
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  we run the Fulfillment centers kind of a normal thing these
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  days. There's a lot of e-commerce out
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  there but back in the early 2000s it was really interesting
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  problem to figure out, you know, how do you actually scale and
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  build out these fulfillment center such that they're,
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  they're able to run, you know, the millions of shipments
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  through them that that you see in today's market right.
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  And figure all that was great around 2010 though, I took over
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  the supply chain and that was right about the time that I'm
• 1:00
  started to come over, come online at Amazon and, you know,
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  the whole concept, you know, Ryan became the primary growth
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  lover, for Amazon and my job. The way I looked at it was I had
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  to help make prime a profitable business, right?
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  And they do that by turning the supply chain and do an
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  intelligent model, all the world runs and Soph car think about
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  the supply chain is this series of decisions, the better you are
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  at those decisions the better outcomes you get.
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  And so it was about positioning inventory.
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  A correctly forecasting, demand deciding how much to buy
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  thinking about what you told the customer in terms of when they
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  should expect it when they should actually get a deliver
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  order flows managing transshipment sand movement of
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  imagery between the buildings and then ultimately using a wide
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  array of carriers to fulfill those orders.
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  And so you combine all that together and you get favorable
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  outcomes in terms of both speed which which was needed,
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  obviously of women Prime as well as costs which made it into a
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  profitable business and a huge huge lever.
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  Amazon. So you know the public members
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  for Prime was it. As she was selling four times, a
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  four hundred percent customers. They use prime bought four times
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  as much as customers at didn't have pride.
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  Yeah, but so was it was the won't even tell us that in.
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  Exactly, exactly. It changed all perspective.
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  So, I actually left Amazon in 2018, and I started shipping in
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  the late 2019 and really what happened. 2018 and 2019 is I was
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  looking around the industry and I kind of found this white space
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  out there that was it was very clear that Taylor's, you know,
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  did not have the technology. They needed to actually
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  Implement and compete directly with Amazon on the speed and
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  delivery front. So are both predictability and
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  how accurately shipments get delivered to people, their
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  expectations, which drives conversion and revenue as well
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  as just the actual speed of delivery based on using, you
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  know, getting inventory, the right position and then using
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  the right carrier of the right time.
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  And he's, oh, that's the heart of what should be in this trying
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  to do it. Spraying divide a tools and
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  technology that solves that a lot of Retailers have kind of
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  invested heavily in the right people to do this, but they
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  don't have the technical the technology to actually solve
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  that. And that's where should be unfit
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  sin. How much is the technology that
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  retail is already have? Because sometimes our these sunk
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  monolithic systems that have been running their stores and
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  operation centers, right? How'd you get over that?
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  Yeah I mean we've tried to position.
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  I mean the joke is always liked software, needs to be completely
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  Rewritten every five years really, right.
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  And that was that was true at Amazon we're constantly.
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  Moving shifting this round but we tried to do is you try to
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  kind of move to more of this micro Services model where it's
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  a little more composable. Yeah, where you can actually
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  plug these pieces in. They individually provide value,
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  but that in a coordinated fashion, they provide even more
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  value. So we think about it is we're
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  not ripping out the WMS. We're providing the plug-in
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  required to ship efficiently. Out of a w Rebellion, we're not
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  ripping out the OMS. We're actually providing the
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  intelligence and the data from the Transportation Network, as
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  well as the final decision, the lets you actually possess If
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  Pavilion order from the correct location, we're not ripping out
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  their website. We're providing a delivery
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  promise plug-in, that's able to be used with that, but but all
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  that being said, technology is going to be a challenge for
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  retailers. It's going to be it's much more
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  demanding on the e-commerce side than ever was on this on the
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  physical store side and it's going to be a continued push to
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  upgrade and and move those along.
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  So I mean, it sounds like a dream right now.
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  If you turn up to reach and I said, by the way, would you like
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  an Amazon Prime asked by a software?
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  And you're like, well, yeah, We could do it from from The Last
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  Mile in terms of fulfillment and your this is just a curiosity
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  thing, your experience in the marker, your experience of
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  having to get things 24 hours for how, how do people overcome
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  the last mile? Should they be trying to solve
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  that themselves as a retailer or from your experience?
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  Forget about it, just get a partner and get them to do the
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  low. Would I'm just curious what?
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  Yeah I these are I think the first thought would just be
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  Amazon didn't really get into In their own stuff and dobre 2014
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  2015, maybe even a little later in the US.
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  And so, you can go a long ways of carriers and actually think
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  has been a really growing ecosystem of carriers in the
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  u.s., especially that are that are kind of approaching an
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  innovative ways reg. You have the videos that are are
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  using the white goblet, you know, more gig type.
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  Flex were Persia handy on her stranded.
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  You Dynamic routing is more cargo, which is using the are
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  the belly of the airplane. And I think all that, Tough.
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  It my point is is there's a lot of new carriers out there that
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  are are doing a great job of kind of innovating and pushing
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  the envelope. It's more about optionality and
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  acts having the ability to kind of use them at the right place
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  at the right time. Yeah.
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  And so and I would say most most companies can't justify doing
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  their own delivery. Now look at this point yeah it
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  makes a lot more sense to partner with someone like ship
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  IAM where we can actually broaden you out and and I will
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  give you access to this large carrier base.
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  I went with wedge. You stop a wedgie.
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  Stop in terms of your that the software stack, or the services
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  that you offer. I didn't give you think about it
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  as the e-commerce supply chain kind of once.
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  The inventory is, is in the network, right?
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  There's all these decisions required around positioning and
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  delivery promised an order routing and and carrier
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  management array chopping. And we handle all of that in our
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  platform. And also the post order
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  tracking. We handle that stuff on our bi
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  form. We definitely don't work with
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  orders. We're not an OMS.
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  And we're definitely not a ocean Freight competitor or Freight
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  forwarder or anything like that and so yeah.
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  Okay. And then in terms of the, you
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  mentioned early on some of the, I think you may have been off
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  camera. Conversion as a retailer, what,
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  what type of conversion are what type of conversion numbers
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  exist? Or why have you seen from your
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  experience? Yeah, I think I think so so you
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  can kind of triangulate a couple things and week.
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  Yeah, I can provide all the, all the Gory details.
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  I think when you have a predictable delivery experience
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  that's reasonably fast, you can expect about a five percent
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  conversion rate Improvement in, you're selling right hand in you
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  up so bad in your upsell. Yeah so you think about it as
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  people to come? Visit a page are they, you know
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  100 people that visit if there was 10 people that were going to
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  buy before? There's 15 now?
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  Wow. And then in terms of the complex
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  or the how much of a friction that is in terms of what is the,
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  how long would it take me to get Get a new sort of service in
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  that does worship Him does. What's this all lead time that I
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  should be thinking about? Yeah, I mean we like to believe
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  like I kind of said earlier we are composable type solution and
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  you can bring pieces in somewhat independently and somewhat in a
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  way that that you're kind of incrementally adding value.
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  So we really recommend, we want to launch in one fulfillment
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  center start getting value from that and then build on that win
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  and continue to grow. And so that's kind of how we've
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  typically approach. State.
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  I think all that being said, we're definitely not a sign up
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  with a credit card and use it in an afternoon.
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  It does, it's a we work with larger retailers, who have
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  complex networks complex needs. We want to understand what
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  they're trying to do, so we can solve their specific fallible,
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  but we're also not an Erp or re-platform, which requires
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  years and years. So, I'll just say, maybe two or
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  three months realistically, like, and get everything going.
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  That's fantastic. Your US based company.
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  So, if I want to learn more about you, how do I find out
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  about where Are you based? How does he, how do we gain
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  called? How do people get in contact
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  with you guys how to Seattle, but you can definitely just go
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  to ship um.com and there's information about how to contact
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  us. So I love Seattle.
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  Jason, thank you so much.