Episode 42
This is part 2 of our 3PL series, as we are on the hunt to find a 3PL provider. If you weren’t able to follow this series, please go back and listen to part 1.
In this episode, we will be interviewing Michael Sene, the director of sales and partnership of Deliverr. Deliverr is a 3PL service specializing in fulfillment like Amazon, eBay, Walmart, Shopify, and Wish.
Let’s dive right in and learn more about Deliverr and how they may complement our business.
[00:01 – 04:18] Opening Segment
- Michael talks about his career background
- Michael talks about Deliverr and his journey in it
[04:19 – 15:47] 3PL Through Deliverr
- Michael talks about what 3PL really is
- Michale explains the process of sales from the Deliverr perspective
- Integrate thorough Sellbrite or plugin directly to Deliverr
- Cost involves getting a unit to Deliverr and out into the M-User
- The only transparent Logistic Provider that list their pricing publicly on the page
- Fast Badge platforms in Deliverr
- Increase opportunity just by offering fast shipping badges
- The request for the Seller Fulfilled Prime Badge on the merchant program
[15:48 – 24:48] Size and Location of the Warehouse
- 45+ location across the country
- Located based on population density
- If a seller wants to ship in a large order, how many warehouses will they be sent to?
- Shipping Zone Process
- Michael talks about why Deliverr doesn’t enable returns
- Michael shares about Deliverr’s SLA Process
- Michael talks about the storage fees on Q4
- Intermediary between FBA
[24:49 – 29:09] Diversifying Risk
- Customers account on partnership eCommerce
- Michael talks about the possibility of International Shipping in Deliverr
- Michael talks about the steps to get sign up in Deliverr
[29:10 – 34:39] Diversifying Risk
- Main Question in Vetting a 3PL
- How it supports and handles cancelation from the buyers
- Lightning Round segment with Michael
- Favorite book: Factfulness by Anna Rosling Rönnlund, Hans Rosling, and Ola Rosling
- Hobbies: Hiking, Football
- Successful e-commerce entrepreneurs vs people who give up: Deep Curiosity
- How to Connect with Michael – links below
Resources Mentioned:
- Deliverr Fulfillment
- Sellbrite Integration
- Factfulness by Anna Rosling Rönnlund, Hans Rosling, and Ola Rosling
——————————————————————————————
Connect with Michael on Linkedin and Facebook . or Email him at msene@deliverr.com
Email us –> support@firingtheman.com
Ken 0:00
You’re saying that delivers got an integration with Shopify to offer a two day badge and the case study increased conversions by 40, or 50%.
Michael 0:09
Yeah, so we’ve essentially, whether you judge your conversion on ads by row class or CPA, we’ve seen about as much as a 50% decrease in CPA and then obviously, return on adspend. We’ve seen that jump almost sometimes 2x in some cases, depending on the product. And the only difference here is we’re not getting people to spend more on their ads, we’re actually just saying, hey, use deliver to fulfill, you can connect to your Facebook account via deliver. And then we are going to control when your ads are shown on Instagram or Facebook, we’re going to control which creative or which ad is shown. For example, I’m here in California, most of the West Coast is covered in next day. So when I see one of our merchants on Facebook or Instagram, it’ll say next day delivery, not shipping delivery in your area if you click on this ad and purchase through their Shopify store.
Intro 1:01
Welcome, everyone to the firing the men podcast a show for anyone who wants to be their own boss. Sit in a cubicle every day and know you were capable of more than join us. This show will help you build a business and grow your passive income streams in just a few short hours per day. And now your host serial entrepreneurs David Schomer and Ken Wilson.
David 1:25
Welcome everyone to the firing demand podcast on today’s episode we interview Michael Sene who is the Director of Sales at deliver deliver is a three PL service that specializes in fulfillment for channels like Amazon, eBay, Walmart, Shopify and wish This is part two of our 3PL series as Ken and I are on the hunt for a new 3PL provider. Can we just got finished recording that episode? And I have to say I was impressed with Michael and what he had to say about deliverr what did you think?
Ken 1:57
Yeah, absolutely. You know, as you mentioned, David this is you know, Episode Two in the in a series of finding a 3PL and and Michael you know he’s an expert in logistics and three PL then move deliver for a while and you know he’s just kind of covering some of deliverrs you know what what sets them apart from the rest which you know, the audience on this show you’re going to want to find out you know, their their seamless setup 2-day fast badges you know, they have I think he said 45 warehouses and then direct shipments just this tons of stuff. So it was a great episode, he covered lots of 3PL, you know, terms, and you know, what everybody’s looking for right now for 3PL’s So yeah, great show.
David 2:42
Exactly, exactly. One thing that stood out to me was their very high transparency on pricing, as well as things that they’re doing to help sellers increase conversion. And as a person that split tests, literally everything that really resonated with me, so I’m not going to spoil it at the beginning of the episode, but uh, check out this episode, I’m sure gonna love it.
Welcome to show, Michael.
Ken 3:07
Yeah. Thanks for having me. Glad to be on.
David 3:09
Yeah. Thank you. So tell us a little bit about yourself.
Ken 3:13
Yeah, a little bit about myself. I actually came from a media ad sales background for almost a decade actually prior to coming to deliver a little over a year ago. And I switched into the fulfillment e commerce space, mostly due to delivers ability not only to deliver things in, you know, two days, day or less, but also we have a huge emphasis on getting more sales through using those fast tag features on other channels. And we’re doing a lot of cool stuff with enhancing ads to get you more purchases by promoting things like 2day and next day shipping. And so that was those are some of the things that stood out for me, but I’ve been with deliver for a little over a year and a half now. And I oversee our fulfillment specialist team, it’s about 20 people help onboard a lot of our merchants and we you know, work across multiple channels, so they’re equipped with dealing with anything from Amazon to Shopify to Walmart, you name it. And so that’s, that’s a little bit about myself right now. I’m here at deliver more. We’re, you know, excited to continue growing and expanding. We’re a little over three years old now. So
David 4:16
very nice. Now, this is part two of our third party logistics series, Episode 38, titled finding a third party logistics company for Amazon fulfillment. Ken and I searched the internet reached into our Rolodex and and other people in the e commerce industry, and asked Who would you recommend for three PL service and now this is part two, where we’re talking to a three PL company. And so what we’d like to do today is lay out some of the questions that that we would ask a third party logistics company and our goal is to learn more about deliver and how they may complement our business. Does that sound good? Sure. Awesome. So I think a good place to What is three PL?
Ken 5:03
Yeah three PL is a third party logistics firm. And you know most folks, I mean, it is the most commonly used fulfillment service for pretty much anyone probably listen to this podcast is FBA. But you know outside of FBA, you’re usually using any kind of third party logistics firm and traditional third party logistics firms. You’re usually centralized in one or two locations and fulfilling your packages across the country. Right. And I think when you look at FBA, what they’ve innovated on that over the last decade or more, is having multiple warehouses and that’s kind of in the big thing over the last several years is how do you enable any merchant to to have that kind of fulfillment service where you can get lower rates by having less distance that those packages are traveling similar to how FBA does that with their low prices and fast fulfillment? So but overall, third party logistics firm basically, typically handles anything from fulfillment pick pack returns, a variety of things, custom boxes, customisations, kitting, bundling, storage, things like that.
Nice. Okay. So, Michael, now, how are orders processed? On the deliverr side? So like for my business, for example, I have four or five sales channels for each brand, and I have a sellbrite, which is an order aggregator, does deliver sync with those or is it manual? Or can you explain that process?
Yeah, that’s, that’s a great question, you can actually integrate in two different ways. You could integrate through cellebrite, and plug everything in the sellbrite. And use that to manage your orders and route, whichever ones you prefer to deliverr. You can also plug in channels directly to deliver for folks who may not know whether they want to get an integration tool yet, or maybe there are only a few channels one or two, they’ll sometimes experiment with just starting with deliver and direct orders directly from the channel, say Walmart, or eBay or Shopify directly into deliver. And then as they expand across more channels, they’ll go pick up an integration tool to help manage across those multiple platforms.
David 7:11
Okay, very nice. Now, as we are evaluating different three PL service providers, it’s a cost benefit analysis, right? We’re looking at what are we currently receiving from Amazon FBA? And what could we be receiving from a third party logistics company? And so in terms of pricing, what are what are all the costs involved in getting a unit to deliver warehouses in and out to the end user?
Michael 7:41
Yeah, so as to answer this question, you know, the main reasons people use deliverr or the fast badging I mentioned to you prior, and then the second main reason is our transparent pricing. We’re one of the only or I believe we are the only logistics provider that lists their pricing publicly on our page, full price, pick, pack, label, everything, and the storage costs. In most websites you go to, you’re gonna have to schedule a meeting with someone, talk to them negotiate a contract, you name it, we want it to make it very much like Uber, you know, what you’re gonna pay when you schedule that ride. And that’s the big thing about our platform is you can go on www.deliverr.com. Right now click on cost calculator, you can do one of two things, you can enter the weights and dimensions. Or you can just copy the URL from your Amazon page, paste it in there. And we’ll pull the weights and dimensions off of it. And we’ll give you all the rates. And that rate, you see, we get this question a lot. Does that include everything? Yes, it includes the label, it includes everything. And I think people will be very pleased when you see what the rate is, when you go in there, we put a lot of focus on our pricing, by having a large data science team that we’ve invested in to make sure we’re getting the lowest possible rate across multiple carriers. And we’re positioning product in the correct places to get you those best rates. And we pass that along to the merchant.
Ken 9:05
Yeah, like that transparent pricing. And for all the listeners, I would encourage you as David and I did a lot of research on 3pls deliverr was the only one that I found where you could go in and put your put your license and and it will tell you the pricing straight out. And that was a really, really nice feature. I really like that. So a couple things that come to mind you you mentioned the what you called it the fast badge, like the two day badge. Yeah. Um, so let’s dig a little deeper in that. So one of the things that’s really that David and I and probably a lot of ecommerce sellers moving on to you know, Amazon’s had a hiccup in terms of the pandemic, they couldn’t fulfill orders. If you did not have essential products, you just, you didn’t get a two day that you didn’t get shipped at all. So, with deliverr let’s say you go on to Walmart Or what are the platforms that you’re integrated in with that you can offer that that fast badge because I think that’s huge.
Yeah, that’s a great point. So the main ones people are using us for are Walmart, eBay and our own that we created, which is our Shopify 2-day, which also gets you next day to 40% of the country at no additional cost. I’ll touch on that one in a second. But the Walmart one is a really important one. Because we have a great relationship with Walmart, they’ve done a fabulous job expanding their marketplace over the last several years. And, and we communicate directly with them. And we actually have our own Walmart application, if you aren’t on Walmart, you can go to deliver.com slash Walmart apply, and it goes to the Walmart team and, and we try to help streamline merchants that way as well. So they can also take advantage of Walmart, they can take advantage of the two day tag as well. And so when you’re using deliver, you get that badge, we actually control that badge through where your inventory is placed. So whether you’re integrated with sellbrite, or whether you’re integrated directly, we’re actually the ones controlling that badging where it’s shown when it’s shown and we’re charging you one fixed costs, like I mentioned, eBay, and then Shopify is a big one, we also have Wish we are the only provider of wish today right now, right now, which has which Express which is 11-14 days, which is not really that fast. But you can do wish 2-day via deliver. And that’s that’s offered exclusively through deliver right now. And we are looking at other platforms as well, right now. So one of the more recent productions was, we can if you’re advertising on Facebook, or you’re advertising on Instagram, or you’re advertising on Google, and you’re advertising your Shopify store, we can funnel a badge onto your ads as well, which helps with conversion. And so for anyone who’s really trying to get their store off the ground, in addition to their Amazon store, and that actually offers some great conversion, we’ve seen a reduction of about 50%. And cost per acquisition, we had some merchants spending 5-10 thousand dollars a day on ads for their Shopify store, and they were getting 40-50% more purchases just by offering today and next day on their own store. So that’s another area of opportunity for offering fast shipping badges. Because as we know, prime, the prime badge is kind of the cream of the crop and people purchase off of that, right, whether you have that badge or not.
Yeah, so I want to go back a little bit and explore that. So you’re saying that deliverrs got an integration with Shopify to offer a 2-day badge and the case study increased conversions by 40, or 50%.
Yeah, so we’ve essentially whether you judge your conversion on ads by roas, or CPA, we’ve seen about as much as a 50% decrease in CPA and then obviously, return on adspend. We’ve seen that jump almost sometimes 2x, in some cases, depending on the product. And the only difference here is we’re not getting people to spend more on their ads, we’re actually just saying, hey, use deliver to fulfill, you can connect to your Facebook account via deliver. And then we are going to control when your ads are shown on Instagram or Facebook, we’re going to control which creative or which ad is shown. So in some zip codes will show next day, for example, I’m here in California, most of the West Coast is covered in next day. So when I see one of our merchants on Facebook or Instagram, it’ll say next day delivery, not shipping delivery in your area if you click on this ad and purchase through their Shopify store.
Wow. That’s the first time I’ve heard of that.
David 13:30
Yeah, I can’t tell you the number of reviews that I’ve got that have nothing to do with my product. But they comment on fulfillment. They’ll say, you know, showed up in two days. And that’s really early Amazon, but little do. They know that has very little to do with me as the business owner. It’s excellent fulfillment. And so that’s awesome. It just enhances the customer experiencing really excited about that.
Ken 13:57
Yeah, for sure. Yeah.
Yeah, absolutely. Now, Michael, does the r&d team are you guys looking into adding WooCommerce in the future?
We are actually that is on our roadmap. We’re testing out some stuff on big commerce right now. WooCommerce is next. We have a lot of things in the works with regards to direct channel integrations. Typically what happens is the channel comes first and then our badge iteration comes next. That’s how it’s typically always happened right? How do we funnel a fast badge on this specific channel? And if they don’t have it, how can we go ahead and create it right and and that’s typically kind of been our process for the last few channels.
Okay, nice. One more thing on the on the 2day before we move on, I know this is kind of a sore spot on on a lot but the the Amazon FBA the seller fulfilled prime. So let’s say you know, a merchant signs on with deliverr and they want to offer their The seller fulfilled prime badge on Amazon. You guys have that enabled? Can you guys fulfill that? or?
Yeah, that’s a great question. Unfortunately, we do not we did have a program for it when the Amazon waitlisted. Folks, there was just not enough demand, there’s definitely demand for people to get seller fulfilled prime. But if you can’t get approved by Amazon, then you know, we can’t fulfill it. So we would love to support that program. From the sounds of it. It sounds like Amazon set the bar so high that pretty much most merchants can’t fulfill it as a February, right? Yeah, we would definitely invest if it weren’t open program. But from the looks of it, that waitlist page is still up for seller fulfilled prime. So we get that request a lot. It’s really not something that we wouldn’t want to fulfill. It’s whether or not there’s enough demand and enough merchants who are approved by Amazon to go ahead and get that.
Yeah, I think I don’t know about you, David. But whenever I try to, I’ve looked a few times in the last six months and that seller fulfilled prime, like the signup, I can’t even find the page anymore. So I don’t think Amazon’s playing nice with seller fulfilled prime anymore.
From what I’ve heard, it sounds like you know, a lot of merchants were unable to really even meet that criteria. And then you take into consideration the raising the criteria. So, I mean, I heard a rumor that and this is all hearsay, but I heard a rumor that it was like only maybe one or two merchants in the entire country can fit the bill for what they want in February’s.
David 16:30
So one thing that we learned when we were researching 3PL companies was that size matters. And where you are geographically across the country is important. And so where are your fulfillment centers located?
Ken 16:45
Yeah, so we partner with our fulfillment centers, we have 45 plus locations across the country. And it’s probably in no way shape or form any different than how FBA positions it right? Because you initially position based off population density. So you got a lot along the western California coast, la down into Dallas, Georgia, and all the way up the eastern seaboard, right, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and you name it. And so that’s kind of the initial route just due to population density, but we do have 45 plus locations spread out across, I’d say it’s 15 plus states right now in the country. So.
David 17:25
Okay, and so if I were to send in inventory, if I had one large order, how many different warehouses would that be sent to?
Ken 17:34
Yeah, so all our products are in at least four warehouses. And that’s whether or not you choose to use our forwarding option where we forwarded into those from across stock, or whether you send it directly into those four or more, the more factor on that is really determined by your velocity of your sku. So let’s say for example, you have an item that, you know, does 1000 a day, 1500 a day, and you’re sending in, you know, 30,000 units, it may get spaced out into about eight or 10 different warehouses, a max of 10. But in most cases, for most merchants, they’re doing you know, they have multiple skus, and it’s usually in four or five warehouses across the country.
David 18:19
Okay, very nice.
Ken 18:22
Now, Michael, as I was researching the three pls, I noticed shipping zones, there was like five zones. I know you guys offer 2day. So the zones might not matter. But can you speak to the shipping zones and how those impacts 3PL?
Yeah, I mean, in most cases, when you’re working with a traditional three PL, they’re going to have shipping zones, and that’s going to determine the price of your were based off where your items located, what you’re going to pay. The deliverr model is different in the sense that we charge one fixed cost nationwide. So we don’t utilize shipping zones. What we do have that are similar coverage zones, and coverage is based off of your replenishment. So hypothetically, if you sent in product to four or five warehouses, but you didn’t replenish when one warehouse needed it, you may lose coverage in that area. That doesn’t mean we can’t fulfill it on standard order. But it may mean that your Walmart two day tag may not show in that specific region. And so you’re paying a standard price for that and the buyer is therefore only seeing standard they’re not seeing the two day so you’re not getting as much of the lift as well. It should note though, we do try to mitigate that happening by when you initially inbound, your items are not spaced out evenly across everywhere else and that’s done intentionally to mitigate having one warehouse run out much sooner than than another warehouse.
David 19:49
When we were researching deliverr, one thing that we noticed was that you guys do not process returns and just a little background here. Both Ken and I are probably about on a first name basis with our ups guy, because he shows up every single day with returns. And I’ll tell you what, taking those returns, repackaging them and sending back the warehouses. It just takes time. And it’s something I don’t like to do. And so knowing that you guys don’t handle returns, what are some of your higher volume customers doing to address this?
Ken 20:23
Yeah, that’s a great question. And a side note, our plan was to have returns out by this point of this year, that plan was made pre COVID. So with COVID, it became Black Friday, every day. And then a bigger priority was how do you expand and still have next day to day delivery when everyone’s doing three to five to 10 X the volume? So we will have returns at one point, what our larger customers doing? Yeah, it’s interesting. We we have some, the skews that 10 had the most returns are things like clothing or shoes. And we do have some large merchants that do have those items. And a lot of them are sent directly, they actually have a location where they send it to and, and they like to inspect it themselves. When we do get returns, it’s both a way in which we can on the UI end where we can make sure we update it and merchant can sign off on it and labels can get printed, but also this the operational side of inspecting it to the merchant standards and making sure it’s resellable. And so a lot of our warehouses do handle returns, not the ones not maybe clear our warehouses handle them for other clients. They don’t for deliver, we don’t enable returns yet. And so it won’t be too much of a difficult shift when we do allow it. But most of our merchants to answer your questions that want returns or, or have returns, they’re having it being sent to either their location or a neutral warehouse where they tend to send their inventory in and they package it and then it goes out to FBA and goes out to the liver. That tends to be the more common case with with folks who want to handle returns. Also with Walmart, you can return in store. So sometimes people are okay with that end on the marketplace side. On the Shopify side, it really kind of depends on the merchant and what kind of operation they have set up.
David 22:09
Sounds good.
Ken 22:11
So Michael, um, let’s just say we get we got our Shopify store, and we’re selling tennis shoes. Right, we got it, we got an order that comes in at 12 o’clock central time, or tennis shoes. What? What is the delivers SLA for shipping that out to the customers at two hours at 24?
Yeah, if it comes in at 10am. Our SLA right now is 2pm. Eastern. So depending on where that’s at either way, that would make the cutoff that would get sent out that day. And you would you know, get the tracking info submitted by end of day into the account on Shopify, the buyer would see that tracking info. And if that were on a two day order, and that was placed, you know, on a Wednesday, that would make it there on a Friday.
Okay, that’s straightforward. So if it came in at so 2pm Eastern Time, any orders before that they’re out that they’re out the door that day tracking is sent to Shopify back end? What if an order comes in at 3pm? Is it shipped out first thing in the morning and tracking is sent overnight or?
Yeah, shipped out first thing in the morning tracking info will get likely added when the package leaves so it will not get sent out that same day, but it will get ingested into it, you’ll get marked as fulfilled in Shopify and then we’ll add the tracking info to it as well by that day that it gets sent out. Our SLA doesn’t include weekends. Having said that, I it’s funny. I actually just ordered something on Walmart from us right now. And like even though it said that it would make it here by Tuesday, I ordered this yesterday actually it said it would make it here by Tuesday the FedEx just said Saturday so even though we don’t do it but we don’t guarantee over the weekends it’s it’ll be set up as if two days on a Thursday would be on a Monday or a Tuesday of the following week. But we do notice a lot of times our packages are making it there on a Saturday or Sunday.
Nice. That’s good.
David 24:08
A lot of our listeners are selling on Amazon FBA. And one common gripe of theirs is in q4 storage fees tend to go up by about a factor of four. What are Do you guys have any changes in storage fees in q4?
Ken 24:23
Yeah, it’s funny. They’re not gonna like this then because we match Amazon. We are 72 cents per cubic square foot off peak. They’re 75 but we are the same on peak. So yeah, we get that a lot. No one likes the high storage costs. During that time. We don’t have any sku limit. We don’t have any limits though. I’ll tell you that much. But uh, yeah, we do have the same storage as Amazon. So
David 24:46
but no storage limits is I tell you, as of recently has caused major issues with my inventory and I know Ken has had the same where you know when you’re ordering 5000 units from China in New York, can only send in 200. It creates issues.
Ken 25:04
Yeah, we’re seeing that a lot across a lot of merchants coming in looking for a even just a storage option that can send into Amazon which we can’t do as well. So we are last mile, you can’t send inventory between deliverr Amazon Amazon to deliverr, you know, get Mark non compliant. And so there are a lot of people out there we noticed are looking for that we do have people we partner with but naturally you would need to find some hub to to send into FBA or deliver if you couldn’t use us as a intermediary between FBA.
Nice now, Michael, you touched on Walmart earlier and that you had a partnership with Walmart, let’s say a, you know, someone that’s listening to this, they’re thinking about going into Walmart, is it beneficial for someone to sign up for a Walmart account through deliver? Is it like a special relationship? Or how does that work?
Yeah, I mean, they can sign up either way through Walmart or through the deliverr one, we tend to try to have a little bit more visibility on the one going through deliver. But at the end of the day applying if they reach out to deliver and ask us we can try to do our best to see where it’s at. on Walmart’s end, we don’t have any influence of like, getting it through, you know, certain things that Walmart may require. Because there are certain requirements tax ID number being a US seller, things like that, that Amazon doesn’t have as many restrictions on and so, you know, we don’t have any way of circumnavigating that but if you did submit an application and you reached out to our live chat functionality, or any person on delivery comm you can book a meeting with anyone you can actually tell him that you applied and and we could try to do our best to help streamline what we’re trying to do whatever we can right now, we also know Walmart’s seeing a very high volume of applicants right now. And so if anyone’s considering applying, and they’re kind of kicking the can down the road to see how October plays out, my recommendation would be Apply today. At least you get your application in and then you can decide whether or not you use it later on in October when you’re approved.
Nice. So Okay, that sounds good. So no bat phone. But but you guys can check the status on it. Yeah, no, no bat phone, the circumnavigate we try to do our best here. I think if they fit the criteria of the products, they have a tax id either in the US it should get approved. And we can we can help push it as much as we can. We do get sometimes a lot of Amazon merchants who are international or don’t even meet the criteria asking us for a bat phone, unfortunately can’t do anything.
Yeah. Nice. Very nice.
David 27:41
Now, what about international shipping?
Ken 27:44
Yeah, that was also something we piloted in January. And then once COVID hit, we said, Alright, let’s put this on the shelf right now. And let’s focus on the priority. So we will have international shipping. We don’t do it. Now, we funny story about international, we tried to take our same model. And we’re trying to find a way where you can have a fixed price. internationally. Clearly, that’s impossible. If you match up a package to Canada versus a package to Somalia. It doesn’t make financial sense there. So you know, I think there’s some iterations there. I think that’ll be something next year, you’ll see from us since we already started it. But I think it’s you know, given the current climate, we want to make sure our priority is the domestic market.
David 28:25
Sounds good.
All right, Michael, I am sad to admit that this was on my to do list for probably three or four months. And for some reason, it just seemed so daunting, finding a 3PL getting signed up. And so once someone finds deliverr, and they decide that they want to move forward with using you as the third party logistics company, what steps does it take to get signed up?
Ken 28:50
Yeah. So I mentioned at the beginning, one of the main reasons people use this as our fast tag badging. The second main reason our transparent pricing listed on our site. The third reason is our hassle free setup. Unlike any other fulfillment company, you can go on to deliverr you don’t have to talk to anyone take two minutes, create an account, integrate, create a shipping plan, send it in, get it received. So that whole process can happen very quickly. And you don’t need to talk to anyone to even do that. Having said that there are resources on the site, both in live chat and booking a time on our main page, it says let’s chat, you can book a time right away with someone if you want to review that with any fulfillment specialist. So I think getting set up is a very big positive, especially for folks who are looking to move quickly. They can do it very quickly with deliver and I think it’s really important to know you can use as little as you want or as much as you want. There’s no minimums on deliver the minimum amount you have to send in as one unit. So we don’t require any kind of minimums that most traditional three peels require.
Excellent. So Michael, as you you know, your team on boards clients, what is the main question that clients like? You know, forget to ask or don’t know what to ask deliverr whenever they’re their vetting of 3PL.
Michael 30:06
Yeah, I think, you know, we get a lot of merchants from Amazon. And I think if you’ve only use FBA, one of the questions that a lot of folks forget to ask is around support and how that’s handled with regards to cancellations from the buyers and and things like that. FBA has made it really easy for a lot of merchants to not have to worry about that, right, someone cancels FBA, it’s notified, everything gets handled there, when you’re using a 3PL whether that be deliver or anyone else, that onus is on you, the merchant to make sure that that gets cancelled with their 3PL and to make sure that that type of support happens. And so I think it’s really important that when you’re going outside of Amazon, I use it specifically for that subset of people that you understand. That’s something that you’ll have to factor in. And so asking questions around to any three PL whether it’s deliver up or 3PL? How do you guys handle the support stuff? And how do you go ahead and handle whether someone cancels, like last minute, and when that comes to fast shipping fast delivery, like deliver? That’s really important, because we send it out right away, you know, and and if there has to, there can’t be this lag behind, you know, US sending it out and you deciding to cancel the order when it’s already at the doorstep.
Ken 31:21
Nice. That’s that’s crucial. Excellent. Now, Michael, to wrap up the show. We have a lightning round. And David and I ask all of our guests. Are you ready for the lightning round?
Michael 31:34
All right, let’s go. I love I love lightning round.
Ken 31:37
All right, what is your favorite book?
Michael 31:39
Oh, my favorite book. You know, I’m reading this one right now. That’s actually pretty, pretty solid, I think relevant for the time it’s called factfulness. I forget who the author is. But it really puts if you’re feeling like things are kind of gloomy out in the world ever. It’s a great book to read. And it’s all based on facts highly recommend.
Ken 32:00
Okay, excellent. I haven’t heard that one. Nice.
What are some of your hobbies?
Michael 32:06
I enjoy hiking, mountain biking, huge football fan 49ers. So those are those are probably my three big things hiking here in Oakland Hills, mountain biking and watching football.
Ken 32:19
Nice. Yeah. So how is what been watching football this year compared to past?
Michael 32:25
years? Yeah, it’s interesting. I usually go to most of the games here in here in the Bay Area. But man, it’s you know, football is a TV sport. Right. So I think they probably done the best job out of any professional sports team in terms of making it still feel like you’re not watching it in a bubble. And there’s no any there’s no fans, right? So.
Ken 32:45
Yeah, it’s different. And they’re trying you know, it’s it’s good to see it. In Motion. I like it. Yeah.
Michael 32:52
Yeah, for sure.
Ken 32:54
All right, the last one in the lightning round. What do you think sets apart successful ecommerce entrepreneurs from those who give up fail or never get started?
Michael 33:04
Yeah, that’s a great question. It’s actually one of our values. And I think we we all try to embody it. It’s and I would have never said this two years ago, because I didn’t think much of it. But it’s being really curious. I think, the entrepreneurs that I’ve seen that work for our company that co founded our company, and also the people that work here, everyone’s really curious around every little thing that’s happening, and it makes it so you’re not just looking for the result just to get a result. That’s our that’s how our mind is trained. Like, how do you What’s the answer? Just give me the answer. And I think over here, and what I’ve seen with a lot of successful entrepreneurs, they’re really curious around all the little details to make something successful, and they understand the why behind it. So I’d say being rare, very curious, is one of the best tips I’d give. They’re
Ken 33:50
nice. I like that as
David 33:52
well, Michael, we really appreciate your time, this afternoon, where can people get a hold of you?
Michael 33:58
Yeah, you can go ahead and email me and S e n e at@deliver.com. You can add me on LinkedIn as well. So yeah, there’s multiple ways. If you go to deliver.com, and you talk to the live chat, just tell me you want to talk to me. I’ll hop on.
David 34:13
Awesome. Awesome. Thank you so much. And yeah, thank you so much.
Ken 34:20
Thanks, guys. I appreciate it. Thanks. You bet. All right.
David 34:24
Thank you everyone for tuning in to today’s Firing The Man Podcast. If you like this episode, head on over to www.firingtheman.com And check out our resource library for exclusive firing demand discounts on popular e commerce subscription services that is www.firingtheman.com/resource. You can also find a comprehensive library of over 50 books books that Ken and I have read in the last few years that have made a meaningful impact on our business, or that head on over to www.firingtheman.com/library. Lastly, check us out on social media at Firing The Man on YouTube at Firing The Man for exclusive content. This is David Schomer and Ken Wilson. We’re out
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