A Father-Son Business Built From the Warehouse Floor Up

That was a good stepping ground, not just for my relationship with uh my dad, but the other founders and owners where it’s like I’m not just a son that works Yeah. within the company. I’m a son that works on the company. Welcome to the Know Your Ship podcast presented by E-Hub. I’m your host, Frank Dolce. We’d like to welcome Brendan King to the podcast with FFE Solutions Group 3PL in Salt Lake City, Utah. Director of sales, VP of business development. That’s your job, right? You got to fill up the space. I think this is the first time this has h happened on the history of the know your ship podcast is we have a father

Jeremy who was a guest on this podcast and now you the son y as a guest on the podcast and you both work at FF uh your dad is it fair to call your dad a founder? Yeah, he he is. Yeah. Co-founder. Him and Trent Best are the Yeah. two co-founders. Yes. And uh if correct me if I’m wrong, there’s three partners. Yeah. With FFE currently. And And you jumped into that about 8 months into the founding of the of the company. Correct. Yep. Correct. Okay. If you want to know more about the beginning of FF, you should go back and watch the episode with Jeremy King because we talk about that, right, quite a

bit and how he got his start and how the partnership began and then opening up FF FF. So, we won’t we don’t need to go through that. Okay, we don’t need to go through that again. But I guess one of the first things I’d like to to ask you about since we’ll get into the business side, but I think it’s always interesting in business situations when there’s a family dynamic and this one seems unique and I know you have a younger brother who is also working at FFE. So talk to me about that relationship with your father, co-founder of the company and still very active, daily active in the in the business, right? And uh

uh the relationship that kind of thought made you think, yeah, I’d like to work with my dad and how you manage that dynamic on a daily basis. That’s got to be Yeah. challenging in in ways and maybe or maybe not. I mean, at the start it was a little bit more challenging just kind of figuring out like our working relationship and kind of how it was cuz I mean I moved out pretty early. I moved out when I was like 18, 19. Mhm. So I wasn’t really at home and I couldn’t like carpole now like how he works with my little brother. He would always get carpull and have that kind of that time. But

for us, I saw it as the opportunity of this industry can be pretty big if you really wanted to. I mean, we’re in league of like the Amazon of the world. So it’s like okay this has tremendous opportunity to be something big and this is an opportunity for me as far as like if this is going to be a legacy brand or kind of what eventually it’ll become then I already have 9 years in the business and grown and really played a major part of the growth of it that it’s kind of helped out our relationship now cuz now we’re kind at two like we’re we’re on the same page and we’re looking at each

other not just as like a father son but like a team of how are we going to do this? I think that that finding that balance is really important. I’m sure I I don’t know you probably played sports and stuff growing up and did did your dad ever coach coach you or anything like Yeah, he I mean he coached uh my basketball team. Mhm. That can be a challenging thing as well for the for the parent and for the kid because the parent has, you know, super high expectations typically and then the kid feels like, well, I’m going to have to perform, you know, above and beyond to find my way onto the right competitive

competitive floor. So that you know taking those experiences as a kid and then transferring them over into a work relationship. I think that can be challenging. It doesn’t always work out but you guys have found a balance. Oh yeah. I mean probably about the first 3 or 4 years our relationship wasn’t necessarily great because I mean still at that time he was working at the printing company. So it was like he was there half a day and he was with us a half a day. And it was like, okay, as we continued to grow, like how is this going to evolve? Cuz I mean, we had a bunch of really we had a really solid

core team at the very beginning, but as we were growing, we just really didn’t have the capital to put them in higher positions and that sort of thing. And so when we were growing, I was like, “Hey, like I got to look at this as not just a job and like this is a company that I’m building because it’s also my inheritance at the end of the day. So, if I can build it even bigger than great and have all this uh knowledge and history and really experience of being hands-on throughout the whole process like I started out driving the forklift, doing inventory, stacking boxes, unloading containers, wrapping pallets, just kind of that whole standard.

I don’t know if you just went to him was like, “Hey, this isn’t going to be for me if I’m an employee. like I at least got to be a manager and start moving up. Like I like I’m in this to in this. And that was probably our biggest disconnect at the very beginning was like, okay, you’re just doing this for a job. You need a place to work. I’m like, no, this is this is an industry I’ve always loved. It’s kind of like a year round Santa Claus almost. You’re behind the scenes. You want something, boom, you order it, it shows up in a box on your doorstep. I don’t go to the down

the chimney, but maybe right there on your doorstep, right? So, I’ve always loved that backend work of the business of connecting, working with a bunch of other brands and being the solution uh to their problem, which is the fulfillment and logistics side of pretty much any brand marketing agency around right now. So do you think the tra this transition or the evolution of your relationship in the workspace started when you started to prioritize your role in the business and and start to demonstrate what you were willing to do to help the business grow? Absolutely. I mean, as it was more solid, as I kept performing, obviously it’s always a metric of performance and how are

we doing on these kits at the start, where are we at, which ones are we profitable, which ones we’re not, what projects that we can bring on that no one can do and make it profitable and that sort of thing. So, as I, you know, continued to prove myself, that was a good stepping ground, not just for my relationship with, uh, my dad, but the other founders and owners where it’s like, I’m not just a son that works Yeah. within the company. I’m a son that works on the company. Yeah. And FF didn’t start out necessarily as a as a 3PL fulfilling fulfilling orders for clients, but started more on on the hand assembly or

maybe exclusively on the hand assembly kitting side of the business. Yep. So it it was pretty much hand assembly from or the first four almost five years. Almost exclusively. Almost exclusively. Were you also fulfilling for those customers or some of those customers? Some of those. Yes. Um most of those during that time uh was a lot of like uh we did a lot of like doera kits. Yeah. So the essential oils putting those together built that out like when I started so after driving the forklift doing inventory just kind of the basic warehousing jobs. They’re like okay you’re going to be in charge of our hand assembly department. So that’s when we had three shifts

6:00 a.m. 7:00 a.m. and then a a night shift at 3. when you start this this is kind of would you call this your first major role within the more of a kind of a executive role management role in the company correct I’m over kidding and at that time how many customers how many clients were you were you servicing so we were servicing about three maybe four but that doer account took up the maj how many how many kits were you doing I mean what was your measure measurement daily or weekly or monthly. I mean, you could look at it on a weekly basis. I mean, we were producing anywhere between 50 to 100,000 kits

a week just depending on the size. Yeah. It got crazy sometimes. Wow. That obviously the need for three shifts. Exactly. Right. I mean, we started at 6:00 a.m. I would get phone calls at like 6:20 just saying, “Hey, we’re started. This is what we’re going on.” And then my night shift supervisor at 11:30 when he’s locking up the warehouse, he would call me and just be like, “Hey, is there anything last little stuff I need to drop for next morning shift?” He’s also scared of the dark. So at 11:30, he turned off all the lights. I’m like, “I am with you. It is okay.” I mean, the warehouse got the lights and calling you just

uh turning off the light. How did you discover he was afraid of the dark the first night? He was like, “Dude, I’m happy to do this, but dude, I don’t think you realize how dark it gets.” I’m like, “Dude, I know how dark it gets.” I used to lock up like this is like a warehouse is scary when it’s empty 70,000 square ft of just nothing but darkness. It’s like, yeah, you got your phone, flashlights, but you’re one scary movie away from I don’t think I’ve ever heard that before. So, is that is a circumstance? Cuz so I would talk to him for like 20 30 minutes every night for like four years because you

have to drive him all the way home. No, I didn’t have to drive him home. He was as soon as he got to the front office and he was in the lit area and he was locking up that front door, that’s kind of when the conversation ended. Is this still occurring? No, the new space has motions sensored lights. Okay. They’re on a All because of that employee. That’s just a plus, right? That’s That’s such a great story. Oh yeah. I mean Yeah. The first time I mean when I was locking up I mean it does 11:30 at night. It does get scary. You’re the only one in the warehouse. In the warehouse there’s just one

person. Turn off all the lights and then you hear every sound every sound the warehouse makes. It was an older building so there was a lot of creeks and Yeah. Did you What did you What were your thoughts when you’d hear those creeks? Were you like there’s someone hiding in the corner? No, I mean the first little bit I mean what I would do I would take just a scooter and just kind of hit all the doors first and kind of do a lap of the building before I actually close out to make sure no one else was in there. So like I said, it only gets scary after you watch like a scary movie

and then you’re just like, “Okay, this is actually pretty scary.” You just kind of speed speed walk into the front where you’re like there’s only one light that’s coming from the front office and I’m that beelining to that light. You never run into anything. Did you run into a big rack or something on your way over there? One time I did run over cuz I was on like a little scooter. I ran over like one of those pallet bandings. Yeah. Totally flipped me over. I mean uh that’s another thing working with your dad. Like I I don’t get any comp for that. But except for a lunch, right? I came in the next morning. I’m

like, “Hey, look at the camera.” 9:05 this angle. I’m doing a cartwheel across the warehouse floor. It was. Yeah. It was one of those ones. It was It was It was funny. But it was one of those you get there the next morning like, “Guys, I need you to sweep extra and check for this.” Oh, that’s so funny. But yeah, totally flipped over the handlebars. That’s a that’s a great story. I love that. Okay. So, you’re running you’re running three shifts now. You’re involved with you’re involved on the kidding side. Are you also in charge of expanding the kidding opportunity opportunity in terms of doing sales or business development or are you strictly working on

like process trying to maximize capability and capacity in that area? uh a little it was kind of a hybrid of the two because it’s one of those things where you can trust us to do it and we’re going to give you a project run of the first say 10,000 units that we’re going to do. We’ll do the project run and if it goes good then we’ll get more work from it and then they’ll give us more product line. So it was a little bit of both. I mean, we weren’t I wasn’t personally out out looking for new kidding work, but when kitting work did come in, it was more managing of the growth side of

it and having the abilities and the timelines of hitting the SLAs’s on really expanding out that portfolio because if you don’t perform, then they’re not going to send you any more work. So, that was kind of my main area. How many customers did you start with? Um, I mean we had some often uh like storage people that were just kind of filling space in the warehouse, but it was mainly about four main uh fulfill not fulfillment uh Candace’s hand assembly. Okay. And then and then how how long did you spend managing that that area that function? I probably did that for 5 years. A little over five years now. And what kind of growth did

you experience over that time period? Yeah. So I built it out when I took over the hand assembly world. It was starting at like eight different SKs and ending it around like 80s something SKS. So I really built out that portfolio. Eight SKs to 80. So eight SKs with four companies essentially in the beginning and 80 SKs with how many businesses at that point? Uh about seven. But I mean with the volume we were doing it was the matter of yeah we can do it but it just kind of clogs up Yeah. our current customers and doesn’t quite fit. So, we just kind of mainly found our niche in kind of that small parcel stick

packs. Gotcha. Okay. So, as you’re building out that area and and going from eight SKs to 80 and what was the volume change over that time period? Were you still kind of 100,000 a week or is that where you maxed out? That’s probably where we maxed out at. Gotcha. Is the 100,000 per week kits per week. What was what were some of the things that you determined as you were building this that made the most significant difference in being able to handle and manage significantly more volume? Yeah. Um the main thing for me that made the biggest difference was kind of teaming them up against each other. So the eight you got the 6 a.m.

shift and you got the 7 a.m. shift. I would only send certain kits to the AM shift because just their capabilities output and then other kits to the 7 a.m. shift and have it be like, “Okay, your two sets of tables is your own team.” And they would set it out as, “All right, this is the 6 a.m. You have 15 to 20 tables. There’s your teams.” And then say, “All right, here’s the number you got to hit.” You can either hit it as a single or hit it as a team, which is either two to three people just depending on what that kit is. And you just find what groups of people are good

at certain things. Like I had a guy on like as far as like sealing cartons goes, no one was faster than him. And I was like, “Okay, dude. The only thing you’re doing is sealing cartons all day.” He would just doop and just seal them as they’re coming down. So, it’s like, okay, you guys are really good at this. You guys are really good at putting the oils in the cartons. You guys are really good at the shrink wrapper. And I wouldn’t mix the teams like that. It’s like, okay, you’re going to be standing on your feet for 6 [snorts] 8 hours a day, depending on when you show up, leave, that sort of thing.

So, team them up with someone they’re friends with. I mean, Latin women, they they can talk just as fast as their hands move. And they can just be in their own little team and and that you found that social aspect, right, helped with with the productivity. Yep. Absolutely. Yeah. Well, that makes sense. I mean, having that kind of interaction and and maybe taking your mind off of repetitive kind of work and Right. Sure. It’s always it’s it’s it’s always that way. I mean, I like to go biking. There’s times when I like to go by myself, but if you have a couple people with you, it’s, you know, you get through the course and it’s

like, what happened? It’s gone. You know, it’s it it makes the experience just that much more fulfilling. So, that’s an interesting that’s an interesting insight to incorporate the social aspect in that type of work. Yeah, it’s fun because I mean you had 14s going and you’re like, “All right, after the hour you do your your counts and like, “All right, you’re good. You’re good. You’re good. You’re down. You’re short 20.” You’re holding up your whole team’s numbers now. Cuz then it would be, “All right, uh 6:00 a.m. shift, you guys did this many kits. 7 a.m. shift you guys did this many kits.” And then they kind of battled against each other. And then you’d

also have the battles in between where it’s like, okay, table one are are high producers. Table two, they’re also hybrid users. Table three are kind of a lower producer, but they can feed off each other where it’s like, hey, you’re ruining my number now. Like a funny story is like whenever my dad Jeremy would come in and he’s like, “Okay, I just want to do a couple just to get a few.” I’d have three line women right behind me just dead stare on the back of my head. It’s like BT, how do you want me to hit my numbers when you have this slow old man trying to build out these kits? You you cost

me 12 kits right now. How am I going to hit my numbers when you have this guy slowing us down? But he’s such a nice guy. It’s like he’s such a good guy. Yeah. Yeah. He just wants to build a couple. It’s like, all right, I’m glad you you feel good. All right. No, get out of the way. I I’m going to get yelled at just as much as I just as much as anyone else right now. So, I bet your dad did that. Okay. So, you built out the you built out the kidding area. And at that at what point did did somebody did you determine or did somebody say, “Hey, I think you’re

ready for this responsibility or we have some opportunity over here. Would you be interested?” How did that transition work? Yeah. So that transition kind of happened where Doerra built out their own facility in Lynen and we’re going to bring everything in in house and it was like okay you can either stay on the the hand assembly side where it’s not going to be as big as what it was like you’re kind of capped at just this area but if you want to do more with the business you you’re going to have to start selling and move into the business development side and I was like okay yeah I want to do that not necess necessarily

for like the growth of it, but I mean for myself I mean that was 5 years of 7 days a week almost on the Kenning hand assembly. It was a lot of that head space of taking up of just quotes counts this product short. It’s it’s a never stops. They’re like, “Do you can switch to the sales side and flip and the the business development side?” And I was like, “Yeah, I you you’re ready for that. I will happily take that position.” So, yeah. Well, it’s interesting about the hand assembly side. It is it’s non-stop and you you you know, you can’t miss your numbers, right? It’s constant. So, that would be I mean, I

I guess that could lead to some sleepless sleepless nights getting making sure all those things. I’m sure you had some issues with who knows maybe there wasn’t enough product available or it wasn’t being shipped on time or you found yourself behind for some other reason and you’re trying to catch up. So lot lots of different challenges. At what point did the company determine hey I think that there might be an opportunity in the fulfillment business that came pretty much at the very start. So we always knew we wanted to do fulfillment. We gota but we’re bootstrapped. So everything has been just in-house built. We didn’t take any outside money to any capital to raise or

anything like that. So it’s just been bootstrapping. We as a start we just didn’t have the warehouse capabilities. We didn’t have the technology in place. We didn’t have the proper infrastructure for order picking. So once at that point we were ready to start taking that on. We had our our WMS uh integrated so that we can Mhm. do the picking side of it. We we had the racking. We had the conveyor now. We had the systems in place to really start pushing towards that. So the hand hand assembly side was mainly just kind of our way of getting to the fulfillment side of the business. But which is great for us in the sense that

we do a lot of like beauty school kits now. Mhm. So shipping into beauty schools, it’s you’re going to put 30 30 items together and ship it out to this beauty school, that other beauty school. So we have that experience in the hand assembly world, but it’s just not our main major, I guess you would say, that we focus on now. We mainly focus on the fulfillment side, but it was always set in stone that we’re going to be a fulfillment company. just going to take but this is six years to get there to through through the where you’re an expert through the kitting and and hand assembly. How long have it has it been

now since the fulfillment side has taken over the business? I know you still do kitting and you still take on some hand assembly kitting stuff as long as they’re also doing the fulfillment for that for that company. But the main focus now is 3PL fulfillment. Mhm. Gotcha. How long has that been? Probably about 3 or 4 years cuz we towards the the tail end of knowing that hey we’re building out a facility. we’re taking it over, which was nice for us where it gave us like nine months of leeway of saying, “Okay, this is time. Let’s start getting some accounts in and then just kind of slowly move that over with what we already had

doing for storage and not necessarily the doer projects would still pay our bills, pay all employees, just kind of keep us scaling at that 3x growth.” So now it was all right now as as we brought on these new fulfillment clients, it was okay, now we won’t necessarily like do all the kitting for this account. So it just kind of slowly backed it away. And what we did was that was really smart on our side was that we took all of our main uh kitters that were doing all of our hand assembly and brought them over to the fulfillment side. So, we kept all of our our top employees that were doing the hand assembly

side and just switched them over to the fulfillment side. So, that way now in our morning shift, we’ll do that they’ll get there at 7:00 and then the first 2 hours they’re doing nothing but handis assembly at our place now. And then once all the waves are are processed and that sort of thing, then they go into their designated uh fulfillment clients. Gotcha. What was the most challenging thing about transitioning from primarily kidding to a hybrid and now mostly fulfilling? I would say probably just the the company shift as far as the mindset goes of like most projects we’d have a week, maybe we’d have four or five days to complete, maybe we have two

weeks. Now it’s like, okay, you got to finish everything today. like, “Sorry, there’s no we get orders, you got to ship them out today.” So, has that been the right move for FFE to to move into the fulfillment space? Is there do do you ever look back and think, “Oh, man, maybe we should go back to kidding full-time.” No, I haven’t looked at that once yet. Fulfillment has been good for us. Uh, we’re really good at it. We found a really good system in place. We do a lot of front end work on the order processing side. So, we try to make the fulfillment side as fun, fast, and easy as it can be. Like

as many steps that we can take out the front, we’re going to do it just so when they get their order, they just scan it, put it in the box, tape it up, ship it out. Yeah. Fun, fast, and easy. You mentioned that. That’s FFE. Yep. So, I want to make sure we get it in there at least once or twice. Yeah. We make make sure that we make sure that we mention that. What makes for a really good client experience? Like what is what is the client relationship like you’re both on the same team working together and being productive? Um the main thing is it’s got to be a partnership. Like it’s got to

be we’re an extension of you. We’re a team. Like the communication’s got to be open. Like we want to succeed as just as much as we want you to succeed. And the main thing is just having that partnership relationship of hey, it’s not a good or a bad problem. It’s just a problem. And we’re just going to have to figure it out. Either if it’s on their side or our side. It’s like the end of the day, it’s a problem. Big problem, small problem, good problem, bad problem, just a problem. So, we just got to find a solution, move fast, and get it done. So you got to have that very open, transparent communication and

just view it as a partnership and a team. Yeah. What makes for a challenging customer relationship? Not paying on time. I mean that makes it standby and not getting paid. It’s like, hey, you paid us. We fulfilled 100,000 orders. We need you. We need to run the card. Send a wire. put something down. No. Are there any particular products or or customer um I guess yeah just just products that your customers are shipping that are difficult to manage for any particular reason. Um, we we kind of ska stayed away from some of those like we there was a glass company that did like small little figurines and it was like just the warehouse handling side

of it like we’re never we’re never going to be 100% perfect and I’m not saying we are there a box is going to fall. Someone’s going to kick a box and break a unit and with the glass is just not our wheelhouse. I mean, we mainly stay in like the beauty and supplement space, but anytime where there’s glass, uh, like hazard materials, that’s always a tough one, just depending on if it’s like a battery or like a a chemical or spray or just something like that where it’s going to have the little extra detail on it for the box. And if they don’t have their like products skewed correctly, if they don’t have a full

master skew list of the product dimensions, do they have barcodes on them? That makes it tough for anyone where you don’t have a clearcut skew system. That’s kind of like, oh, I did it this skew because it’s my brother’s birthday and I did this one cuz it’s my mom’s birthday. It’s like, no, have the skew correlation to your project. uh not as much but earlier days I did see a lot of that cuz I mean that it’s not like a systemized approach that seems like that would be the logical thing to do is kind of a systemized approach it’s like but the creative way would be to do like this is my child’s birthday or

this was my the day that I got my driver’s license and and like that makes sense if it’s like you’re doing your own fulfillment it’s your own product but as soon as you give them like it’s that uh that that knowledge like yeah you may know that’s your skew that’s your son’s birthday but it’s a red like it’s a it’s a red t-shirt like have it correlate to the red t-shirt not just my son’s favorite color is red so I’m going to do his birthday for the skew it’s like have some correlation that that tribal knowledge can get passed down to everyone that makes sense it’s like do a S small red whatever. So you

do SR 001 and that’s your skew. It’s a small red, it’s the one. If you do different variants, just change that last number. Make it super easy for everyone on the inventory side, the tracking side, just the in and out of it. cuz if that’s I mean if your SKs are out of whack and it it it’s going to cause problems no matter where you go, no matter what 3PL you go to, it’s it’s going to be a problem. I had never heard that before. Do So do you help with your clients who have unique skew metrics? I guess do you help them clean those up or do you ever make suggestions about that? Yeah,

we we do make suggestions like on like the SKs that they have if they’re [clears throat] going to introduce a new variation of the product. So, you had the V1, just the version one, now it’s a V2. It’s like we want to keep it the same. It’s like, okay, well, you made some changes to it, have a completely different skew. That just gives you your your lot history, your tracking where you can say, hey, this this lot shipped of 700 shipped to these 700 people. But when you become it’s it’s it’s a new product. It’s a different but you’re using the same skew. It’s just easier just to create a new skew that’s in line

to that. So we just give them guidance on like okay here’s your SKs. Your SKs look fine. We’re going to introduce this skew. Yes, that makes sense. So we’re going to that’s fine with us. They just give us a news skew alert and say, “Hey, cuz once they’re in, we kind of give them that parameter of like, hey, this is how SKs have to come in. If you’re getting new ones, you got to let us know at least a week before so we can set it up. You can do the product dimensions or that sort of side on the front end from your manufacturer saying, “Hey, this is what the actual product is going to

be.” So that way when we ship it, we got the right shipping dimensions inside the box and you’re not shipping a 2 lb object in a box that’s rated for 10 lb. And now you’re hitting the dim factor. And I’m glad you mentioned that. I want to talk to you about that quality control piece. I don’t want to leave the skues. Is there is there some skew standard that you have to follow or is it literally just up to the company? Yeah, I mean we would like to stay between like a fivedigit skew to like a 12 digit digit skew. That usually encompasses a good amount of everything for the products you have. Sure. Yeah.

So that’s kind of ours standard. I mean we don’t try to get too fancy with it. I mean if it’s like a a product run where it’s like all right if it starts with five it’s a blow dryer. And so that that way we just kind of have that knowledge of all right fives are blow dryers, fours are curling iron or whatever that make case may be and but it’s like as long as you stick with the themes and don’t change the themes as you go then you’re you’re good. What are the most difficult clients to fulfill for? And the by difficult I mean in terms of like number of products and product variations versus

you know there’s five items in this category and then that’s all you have to fulfill for. Does that pro does that add complexity when you add a bunch of variations within the product line? Yeah, I mean the variation is just how you’re going to monitor those step counts. So if you have a brand that has 2,000 SKUs, you’re like, “Okay, your bin is going to be at least 6 in by 12 in tall.” And you know, okay, two 2,000 * 6 in, you’re now looking at 1,200. Mhm. In that you’re going to have to cover. And it’s like, okay, now knowing the tribal knowledge of what which ones are usually paired together. So, at the

start, you may say, hey, I got to get one of these. It’s only a two item order, but the items there across the warehouse, there’s the other item that you need to get. So that’s where the larger skew uh clients makes it tough where it’s like okay just the planning of it your SLAs’s it’s like if you can limit that get good data on the front end of saying hey put this section these are all of our high movers these are the ones always go together if they’re buying this one they typically buy these these three so try to keep these together as much as possible so if you can do that on the front

end I mean it or if you have a client that has six SKs. You guys are right there. It’s all in one. It’s all right there in that one little section. So, you can manage the larger skew count, but it takes more thoughtfulness, strategy, organization upfront, correct? To get that managed appropriately, right? Gotcha. What is your customer with the largest skew count in your in your warehouse currently? They have I think they’re trying to uh cut some of the old ones out right now, but they have I think it’s like 1,600 1,600 SKUs. SKs. Yeah. What type of business is that? They’re eyelash extensions. So, they all come in the same little little box, but

you got to the length, the width, color, the curl size of it, and they just bunch of different little black boxes. Just 1,600 skew. That’s a lot. Yeah. Wow. I’m trying to see if you had if you put yours on today and I’m not noticing. I did not. I mean, I knew I was going to be on camera. I thought about it. I was going to bring it. I was going to bring I was going to curl my hair, too. But, okay, let’s let’s let’s go back to the to the warehouse and running the warehouse and your your particular role in sales business development. I know there’s a lot of automations that are occurring in

in the warehouse and that’s growing rapidly, but still there’s there’s a heavy component of people that you have to have running the warehouse. Do you have a chance to manage any of that? And what are the challenges associated with having people on the floor and and making sure that your orders are fulfilled correctly and getting out the door? Yeah, I mean the balance between the automation side of getting the new robotic system, new picking system. Right now we are profitable with a lot of the manpower and a lot of our automation is done on the front end of the work. So once you print the label, you know exactly what box it’s going on or

if it’s an envelope and just kind of have that all separated out and do a bunch of that on the front end work. So for us adding in the automation is how can we enhance our employees that we currently have. Mhm. So that way in the future it’s only a supplement to it and not the whole thing cuz we don’t want to invest a couple hundred thousand bucks or even a million bucks on some new automation that now that’s our whole piece that if it works out it’s great but if it if there’s some nuances that doesn’t really work for us in the future and it’s so evolving in this industry that the stuff that

came out last year are almost already out of date. So it’s like you can start something but if so for us it’s just how can we use that new automation on the robotic side to improve our crew now cuz like I said we’re profitable now we’re doing a really good job at what we do as far as the upfront automation. So, it’s just a managing of how can I use the new automation to improve what we’re already doing and not necessarily branch out into something totally new. Just adding more benefits to that working environment to make it easier for the crew. Yeah, it sounds a little bit like you guys are trying to find that

that perfect mix of the two cuz I mean humans can be more efficient and when we’re going into like batch picks and just kind of basic like the smaller skew brands where it’s just like okay just go you’re you’re going to be a lot quicker than our robotic arm that’s going suction grab the product put it in a bag. It’s just it it just takes too long. So we’re mainly looking on the robotic side on like the replenishment side, K’s pick side, looking at it on the sense of how is it going to like improve just the daily function of it and have it be like I mean you look at Starbucks, they turned off

their AI like they totally shut it down and it ended up costing them more like it it quoted out to like it was almost two times what they were paying for just an average human just doing that job and it’s like okay well some of that stuff. Yeah. Like that’s what you’re going to pay for. So would you rather have one robot doing it or would you have two people doing that job and can you make the two people doing that job profitable? And if you can then that’s great. And if it they keep improving cuz that’s the one thing about the robotic side is it hits its cap and that’s kind of all you’re

going to get at it. But you can add another person. You can add just say, “Hey, give them.” And instead of it’s like, “Hey, I got a 100 bucks for you guys if you finish this project today.” Mhm. Guess what? The humans are going to figure it out. The robot doesn’t like, “No, I’m on my schedule.” Doesn’t care about the 100 bucks. So, it’s that sort of thing of like how do you just improve what you already have and not take away or have it replace people or jobs? It’s like, okay, you’re still you’re always going to have to have a forklift driver. You’re always going to have to have someone replenishing. You’re always going

to have to have something picking. How can I help improve those guys’ positions? So that way it keeps our our headcount low as we scale. So it’s like, okay, sure. Instead of having to bring in to 20 people, we bring in five and a new picking system or five and a new operator or it’s just something along the lines of that where it’s like you can get it done. The the human intelligence side is still outperforms the AI side when it comes on the feet, adaptive change on the fly, move, make stuff happen. Yeah. Yeah. I like that. finding trying to find the balance the balance of enhancing or maximizing human performance with with some

of the automations and robotics. That’s great. Okay. So, now you’re on the business development side, you’re on the sales side, you have to fill up that warehouse. Yep. So, tell us tell us what it is. Why what is it that FF does really well? Why would people why do people want to come and and have you fulfill their items and take care of their the product? It really is them entrusting us with their baby like it goes from your business A is your baby. That’s your brand, your products, all that kind of stuff. Your business B is turns into your fulfillment side. It’s still part of the business, but it’s a totally separate business in

itself. So, it’s like, okay, this is part of my baby. It’s almost like taking your kid to school. It’s like, okay, you’re going to be with us for the next seven years, whether it’s going to be bad, going to be really good, or how we’re going to scale and all that kind of stuff. But for us, we’re really transparent and we have a really good partnership as far as like we see it as a partnership. Like I said before, it’s not a big problem, small problem, good, bad. It’s just a problem and we’re on the same page of making it work for you. And just being able to be flexible, talk, our response time is

pretty great. and we don’t really go outside of what we’re really good at. So, that’s another big plus to us. It’s like we kind of stay in our lane. We’re in this game of 3PL fulfillment. So, our cards, you bring your own deck to the game. So, it’s like, okay, let’s build out our deck to what we’re really strong at and we kind of stay in that lane. kind of makes it so when people that are in kind of our lane of the business, the 3P world of the supplements beauty industry where it’s like, hey, you are our guys for this. So, you guys specialize in this. We have a brand new space that’s nice,

big, clean, room to grow. And that’s what it it really is. It’s just a partnership and transparency and kind of staying in your lane of what you’re really good at. And if it is something that’s outside of our lane where it’s like, hey, this is fulfillment that we don’t normally do, it’s it’s an odd brand, it’s like we’re going to make sure that we get paid for it instead of trying to be the cheapest for it cuz it it’s out it’s outside of our up our our wheelhouse. So it’s like if we’re going to do it, we’re going to get paid on it. Cuz if we try to be the cheapest option for you to

win that account, then the relationship’s not going to be very good. Why? because the end of the day, we’re not getting paid a whole lot for doing your project, but we’re also not thriving with handling your your project. So, that’s been our greatest uh strength is just kind of staying in our lane in the supplement beauty space. Do really good at that. Hand disassembly, the odd end, being extremely transparent and open with our clients. Like, we don’t we don’t dodge phone calls, we don’t push them off, we don’t do that sort of thing. So, it’s just that open communication, transparency, and partnership. That’s a critical piece, the partnership, relationship, open communication, customer support. I mean,

those are the things I’m hearing a little bit. It’s one of the things that is really important here is especially the customer support side being as a software company, you know, there’s just problems. there’s issues and customers have concerns, they need to call somebody and we’re always we’re always available. That’s one of the differentiators for us and sounds like it’s a it’s a high touch point for you as well, right? Yeah. How thoughtful are you about as much in is in as much as you can control it, the customer experience, in other words, the end customer experience, the person individual who’s receiving the package. We’re as as thoughtful as we need to be, right? Because

at the end of the day, they’re going to throw out that first box. It’s everyone’s going to toss in the trash whether how it comes or not. So, I mean, we just set it up. It’s like, hey, it’s you’re either going to get air pillows or you’re going to get packing paper. We don’t do peanuts just cuz peanuts is a mess. You It It’s No one likes it. So, when I open up a box and you got a whole bunch of peanuts in there, you’re like, “Thanks for keeping my product safe.” But now I got 15,000 peanuts just floating around my apartment all over the place. You can’t avoid it. Can’t avoid it. Yeah. So,

we we just set it up. It’s like, “Hey, like, how do you want this to be presented?” And we’ll we’ll we’ll follow suit. If you don’t want a packing material and you’re good with just sending a bottle inside a box or a bottle inside an envelope, that’s that’s great cuz I mean a lot of the times if you get into like a supplement brand that you really like and you’re continuing ordering them, having a big nice presentation box isn’t great because why? They’re going to end up throwing it away. Yeah. Anyways, so just having that communication of all right, how do you want it to arrive there? We’ll we’ll make it happen. Just know no

peanuts, packing paper or pillows. That’s what you get. If you want them to be addressed a certain way where you have all your labels sticking up, we will do that. But just know it’s in a box and sometimes the labels aren’t going to be facing up. So, we we just monitor that. We do like drop tests and stuff like that for new products. like if it’s if it’s going in an envelope, we’ll we’ll drop it 50 or 100 times just to see all right, you’re going to be fine. So that way when you throw it in a tote and it’s going to be sitting on you, you you’re going to be fine. So we we

look out on that side of just what do you want and what’s your expectation cuz there’s always going to be a time where UPS or FedEx see you get a worker that’s like, you know what, bop, I’m going to kick this box. Why? Because it’s 50 pounds and I got to lift it up. Mhm. So, that’s just kind of the the going rule for us is just how do you want it to arrive? We we’ll do our best to hit your expectations. Yeah. And and then you you know, you lose control because you have to put it on a truck at some point and then, you know, you’ve done your part, but but that is

another interesting thing is we we were just talking about it. People have been shipping products for a long time, right? I mean, and obviously the explosion over the last several years in in the e-commerce space, you would think that like the concept of putting [snorts] a product in a package that fits the product well would be standard, right? But even today, we’ll get stuff from Amazon or from well-known brands that it’s like the packaging is not appropriately sized for the product inside of it. And so I’m just curious, is that something that you guys manage? Is that something you’re aware of? Is that something you you plan for? And why do I keep getting this

stuff? Yeah, I mean we’re very thoughtful of that just in the fact of you you’ll do hit that dimensional weight where I’m shipping a two-lb product, but the size of box I’ve shipped it on now it’s it’s a 7 lb box, right? So for us on that it’s um we look up at at the front end just saying hey uh this is going to go into a box 13. This is going to be the size weight that it’s going to be perfect for it. And we just kind of give it a good thorough first when we onboard them. Just say, “Okay, get a really good product dimensions where it’s like, okay, we can actually this

product will actually fit with another product in this box. So, we’re going to ship them have them completed together, have it be its own single product.” So, the way you’re getting like a small box into a huge box is the pick stations. So that you just have a guy at the end. Hey, this guy ordered a USB cable. Here’s a box right here. I’m just going to throw it in there. And not much thought about it. Not much thought about it. And that’s where that uh automation on the front end of us is really crucial. So, like I said, as soon as they print the label, they know exactly what box it’s going to go

in. There’s no guesswork on, oh, hey, this box is over. Uh, I don’t care. I’m just going to use it. It’s like, no, cuz then like you said, it it gets flagged and the customer is like, “Hey, why did I I get a a picture email that says, “Why was this shipped?” I’m like, “Dude, I don’t know why it shipped like that. It shouldn’t have.” I’ll ask them, but it shouldn’t have shipped in that size of box. So then we’ll just go through and just say, okay, this item, make a few adjustments on the on the on the DIMS side of it for the internal product. So that way we can say, okay, it’s going

to go in this box now. Yeah. So, well, I I also mentioned that because I know that, you know, we our companies have been talking back and forth and one of the one of our features in in e-hub ship is is called e-hub pack and that is essentially cartonization. So, it’s telling you based on the, you know, what we know about the product dimensions and how many of those particular products and SKs are going in the box, we can help determine the right box. So, when it gets to the pack station, it’s it’s already there. There’s not much thinking that has to has to go into that. But, I think you’re exactly right in situations

where that is not occurring, you know, it’s maybe it’s a long shift, maybe you’re low on box inventory, who knows? But it’s like you’ve been handing the guy for the 5×5 by5s. He’s he’s taking forever and you’re like, “You know what? Screw this. I I I got these 15 orders. I’m just going to put them in this box. Cool. I’m done, guys. I’m I’m heading off to lunch.” Right. Exactly. You get your orders done. Yep. There you go. I did it. All right. Okay. There you go. Yeah. So, yeah, we we definitely very cautious of that cuz Yeah. I mean, no one wants to pay a a 7 lb box when the products is barely

2 lb. Yeah. What is happening? What what are some interesting things happening or trends happening or what does the future look like in the fulfillment industry? In the fulfillment side, the trends I see is going to be a lot more 3PL’s and manufacturer team up. So, you’ll see a lot more of the manufacturing doing the 3PLs side of it. I see that being a big trend for a lot of these uh these supplement brands kind of going back to we were a marketing brand and we were doing marketing for all these guys why don’t we do the fulfillment side of it too right so I’m I’m seeing a lot of that on the 3PL world

there’s a lot of shift of kind of like the standard overall pricing of how everything gets picked and packed I mean Utah’s really good as far as like affordability goes, like you can go I mean you can go east and most averages are like $3 to 250 in order cost where Utah you can have those costs way down. So the that’s another trend I can see Utah cost going up a little bit on that side of it but in a reasonable rate. It’s not like your fulfillment partner is going to go to you and say, “All right, you were at $1.25. You’re at $3 now.” And I don’t see that stuff happening. And if it

does, you’re going to be looking for a different 3PL partner at that point. Yeah. But, uh, that’s a big trend. I see a lot more side of it going utilizing Uni Union and DHL. That’s another big trend. I’m starting to see more more freight getting pushed to those accounts. Mhm. So, yeah, there’s you there’s been some interesting trends on the carrier side in the market. I I kind of look back at some of the decision decisions that the postal service has made and how that has affected the entire industry with the emergence of some of these final mile carriers and delivery services which is which is really interesting and you know I we’ll we’ll see

how that we’ll see how that shakes out. I don’t know that all of the lowcost providers will survive or can survive. There will be probably be, you know, two or three winners. But yeah, you’ll have also like a couple breakout carriers as far as like I don’t like I I can see Door Dash being like a huge carrier option or Uber Eats where it’s like, hey, we’re just going to send it to our distribution. We already have runners and carriers going out. What’s the difference between putting box of a bunch of food in those red totes or your package in one of those red totes and you’re going to drop it off? You’re going to

pay the the driver, the dasher five bucks or whatever their charge is going to be and they just have so much carrier profiles in that sector that it they could really disrupt that industry pretty quickly if they wanted to. Well, yeah. And now you’re talking, you know, real opportunity for same day, next day outside of the Amazon exclusive Amazon, right model. So I I could see that I could see that trend happening as well. Okay. What uh what’s the future of FFE? Where where are we headed filling up the warehouse? Yeah. So, we’re right now I have the building at probably about 65% occupancy, but I mean we took on a bunch of other like

smaller or storage project to kind of pay rent and that sort of thing. But I can us with in the flow of it, we’ll have another facility in the next 12 to 16 months on the east coast. That’ll be the next thing. We got a new W system that we’re we’re rolling out. Yeah. going to be very exciting, very good for the customer end as far as like the portal. The portal’s great. Got some AI uh integrated in that makes it super streamlined, super easy. Uh yeah, just keep growing out the space and then probably in the next 3 to 4 years we’ll have another space either in Texas or somewhere, I don’t know, Ohio

or somewhere around there on the norther side. But yeah, that’s kind of the next two or three years, just filling this place out, bringing on some new clients and continue integrating more technology. And how much longer before you have that conversation with Pop and just say, “Hey, Dad, it’s time for you to retire. I’m taking over.” I that conversation’s had he either going to retire in the next 5 years or the next 10 years. And then you I’ll either Oh, the plan is to Well, you’ll find your way in there somewhere. Take it over at that point. Yeah. Well, he I mean I could see he’s passionate, right? He’s super fit, active. I mean, that

might be a guy who doesn’t really want to retire. Do you think he wants to retire? He says he does, but I really don’t think so. I don’t think so either. He like it’s kind of like he’s got his second win now, right? like he’s been in printing for 30 years now. He’s kind of got his own like he’s got his own company now. So it’s like I can like for him to do another 20 years. I mean that would be what he’d be 75 and there’s a lot of old-timers out there that are I don’t think he’d want to. I mean he would kind of do like a hybrid retirement. Yeah. Maybe he could

be like, you know, chairman of the board or something, right? He’ll do something like that if we and then move somewhere somewhere down south or head over to the east coast, get something in Florida or I could see that guy just spending his golden years out on the beach. Yeah. Playing volleyball or something. Who knows? Yeah, I think that’s that’s kind of his plan. What a crew. Anyway, man, it’s been great to talk to you. Great talking to you. It’s a really interesting business. You guys are doing a great job over there. wishing you continued success and growth and expansion and and all the stuff. And you know, good luck. Good luck keeping Jeremy in

line. I do my best. That’s my guy. I do my best. Brendan King BT. Woo. Thanks for coming in. We’ll see you soon. Okay. Thank you. Thank you for listening to the Know Your Ship podcast presented by E-Hub. Don’t forget to subscribe and leave a review.