Shifting Gears: Jonathan Briggs on Nimble’s Autonomous Supply Chain Revolution

welcome to the know your ship podcast presented by ehub I’m your
host Frank Dolce welcome back man you guys are in for a treat with our
special guest who had to make extensive travel plans to be here which we
really appreciate that was so thoughtful and I just feel like sitting down in
front of somebody makes for a much more meaningful conversation you can judge
that afterwards I guess I love it I’ve I mean I’ve done countless podcasts
and I think this is only the second time and it’s the first time in a studio
so I’m I’m pumped about this worth every minute of getting on a plane for oh
that’s awesome well we are honored to have Jonathan Briggs who is the head of
sales and solutions at Nimble AI well let me ask you about that because it
was we know you as Nimble Ai and we’ve worked together for a little bit now
and it’s been a really nice partnership but we know you as Nimble AI are you
still Nimble AI or are you switching over to kind of nimble robotics great
great question we’re actually just going to Nimble we just Nimble just Nimble
um and then it lets us get a little bit wider in what we’re doing in the
future so uh we are leaving the AI in the background but we are still very
much an AI company it’s very Nimble very Nimble that is exactly it we try to
live up to our name as much as possible absolutely well let’s talk about
Nimble just really quickly high level 30,000 foot tell us about Nimble what
you guys do a little bit of the history and then we’ll we’ll start moving on
in the podcast no it sounds good so been around since 2017 and we have had a
bunch of kind of road maps along the way or or roads stops however you want
to say that on the road map and began initially just trying to figure out
could we teach robots human-like skills so we started with somebody else’s
hardware and we we added Vision systems and and then all the tactile things
that we take for granted uh we applied to a robot so we could pick tens of
millions of units and without stopping without breaking down without people
having to be involved with it but we have uh a long a long-term Focus to be
an end to end autonomous supply chain company so that was the starting point
and as we morphed and created a uh a full-on hardware stack ourselves in a
category of automation called asrs or automated storage and retrieval systems
in in came another road map to to become a 3pl powered by all of our own
hardware and software and capabilities and as you can imagine you know when
you ask for hundreds of thousands of somebody’s square feet and tens of
millions of dollars nobody wants want to be your first customer and so we
also at the same time you look out there’s this kind of Forgotten middle of
uh the Middle Market of customers that don’t have the volume or the cash flow
to invest in this type of capabilities and so they kind of get stuck in a
very stagnant 3pl environment where it’s very manual very laborsome and it’s
really an industrial engineering play and so they kind of get left left to
the side because the ROI would never be there for them but they could benefit
gratefully from what we do so we’re in that next Journey or next phase of the
journey where we’ve built out the 3pl network and and we’re bringing Brands
into our warehouses and then slowly heading into into another phase where we
can then sell a robotic system to a brand or we can sell fulfillment to a
brand is kind of where we’re branching off gotcha okay and I noticed that you
do have this this startup functionality so a company that like you said may
not have the capital to invest may not have the resources available or don’t
think they have the resources available you give them an easy path into the
robotics fulfillment space oh absolutely because we’re we’re not asking for
upfront Capital we’ve already capitalized the business and we we have a very
Market competitive transactional based price for a system that uses about 1/8
of the people as a traditional 3pl and about a fourth of the size of the
building and so we’re very much in control of our cost long long term and and
so you come in and just like any other 3pl you have a fee for you know the
typical things of like receiving picking packing storing Etc and we do that
and instead of asking for a whole bunch of money up front we’re we’re not
we’re not doing that and that’s that’s always been the hurdle of somebody in
that middle middle segment wanting to do it because they’ have to invest tens
of millions up front and then how many years does that take to get an Roi and
what if it’s not the right automation so on and so forth so then they they
stay status quote yeah yeah okay so how many facilities do you have So
currently three we have an East West and Central so we’ve got California we
have Texas and we have New Jersey which gives us what we call our MVP of a
two-day Network so we’re living at about 96% right on the ground we can get
we can get to uh two days or less yeah that’s amazing and in those three
facilities how many packages are your robots touching on a daily basis well
in some form of fashion 100% right because at least on the pick side we are
100% doing automation to make the pick happen so I do not deploy any Pickers
in a in an Ecom Warehouse which is sounds crazy to say that but but zero
Pickers live in in my warehouse so at least um in in some instances we’re
going to at least pick it there are some scenarios where we’re getting more
and more automation rolled out as we live on this uh end end autonomous
journey and so we figured out some profiles that we can pack with robotics so
I’ve got some some of our volume actually goes from pick through put a
shipping label on it and goes to shipping without any person intervening with
that order whatsoever so very very exciting stuff it kind of makes me feel
bad because I I grew up in this indust industry going into warehouses and
watching all the pickers do the job and it was fascinating to watch that and
now we’re going to all Robotics and and but but let me ask you this because
there you know with with human picker there is some error that occurs have
you been able to calculate or analyze the difference instituting a robotic
platform versus human Pickers and the error percentage that you create or or
manage well the industry is all over the map we see anywhere from you know
half a percent to 5% error rate the the challenge that comes if you can
execute very well with people but it it’s very costly to do it well with
people because they in a whole bunch of quality controls and quality audits
of somebody else checking it a second time somebody else weighing it a third
time and so on and so forth so you could be close to 100% without any
automation but it you’re going to pay a lot to get it so it’s a balancing act
of doing it very effectively and efficiently as well as doing it very cost
effectively that’s that’s where we at so we live kind of 988 98 9% from a
efficiency from well from a an order accuracy standpoint and inventory
accuracy gotcha okay well we’ll dig into a little bit more of that as we go
along but I want to I want to start with your background a little if feels
like you have reached this place of kind of alignment in your career
obviously you’re very excited about you the company and what you’re doing and
your particular role and I think that’s important to talk about actually
before we get to that is it true that the founder of nimble is a Stanford
Dropout that is true don’t look down upon them it’s no all all good startups
have that start with that story I was you know I was an NBA school I was a
College Dropout I you know that that’s how it seems to go and he was on to
something and is I’m wasting my time in the classroom I’m going to go do this
well here’s what’s even I think even greater about the story is it’s his
adviser that advised him to drop out at Stanford at Stanford who’s also on
our board oh so she saw the greatness and the genius and said hey you don’t
need the the letters after your name uh let’s let’s get after it right it’s
that time and and it’s a good thing we did right because if you look then
what came next in 2020 2021 with covid and you now are several years in the
making and you’re ahead of that that’s really what helped us you know get to
the next level from that perspective so you know you know not that you want
to wish everybody to drop out of school and I don’t think any of the
Educators want to hear that but I think it the the most important part of
that is the adviser gave the right advisement and and put together what you
know on track or on course this this company that has no stop in it really
yeah and and and the pandemic certainly was an interesting time for the
shipping world as as lots of as lots of IND industries were suffering the
world of shipping took a pretty significant increase and so Nimble being
positioned in the industry at the beginning of the pandemic I’m I’m assuming
that also helped the growth of the company oh for sure it helped the whole
growth of the industry at least from automated robotics I think it moved it
up 10 if not 15 years yes yeah no question okay let’s get into your
background now you are you a Midwest kid you grew up in the midwest well no
but I’ve lived there since 05 and I’m teetering on that edge of living there
longer than anywhere else oh yeah but I still have yet to like really embrace
it as being home I think at some point in time I’ve got to lean into this
like I’ve got three kids that are going to graduate in a handful of years
like I I do need to own it but really grew up in northeast Pennsylvania
outside of Scranton so home of the office um nice long before obviously the
office was was around but uh some of those clips are real and you know so
there is actual footage of the town so grew up there went lived in been a
handful of years down in South Carolina Clemson University um and actually
all while this was happening I was I started in in high school loading and
unloading trucks at UPS and in high school in high school worked my way up in
into operations with them so while I was you know even when in high school
working nights at UPS you know day job Day School night job uh then stayed
around for a couple years to go to a community college just to stay on where
I was at transferred to go to to Clemson University so I was working in
logistics all while I was going to school to to pay for it so I think it was
funny when you said you’re you know old school you walked into warehouses and
there’s well I started loading and unloading truck yeah I was I was in there
yeah yeah wearing the brown uniform did you have to wear the brown uniform
only they they were smart enough not to have me go down that pathway only
during Peak Seasons when it was like the bot like the last guy uh we’re down
to Jonathan brgs send him in like that’s like that’s how bad it was so they
never never gave me a day job of driving thank thank goodness yeah um they
could see they knew early on it’s a re there’s a reason they’re so successful
exactly they they knew how to like pivot people around so they put me in
sales they saw that I was not much of an operations uh person and after I
graduated they immediately put me into sales and got me out of the operations
so I couldn’t screw anything up after that gotcha is there any family
background parents brothers sisters anyone who was in the logistics industry
no no uh you know parents you know grew up in farms and and then construction
second generation so and Logistics you know I my I thought I was going to go
to school for engineering and kind of stumbled in in this thing I was an
exchange student to Mexico and I did an extra year of studying abroad so I
did my true senior year of high school in Mexico was advised to take a fifth
year of high school and so the reason I got into UPS is I went to to the job
uh Center down in Scranton said hey I’d like to be a translator and they’re
like well we don’t have any jobs no body speak Spanish here so that’s not
going to do anything UPS is in the back would you want to go interview are
you 18 years old and I’m like well I am so I thought it was going to be a summer
job and then yeah next thing you know I work seven years there I’ve been in
this industry now since 98 um yeah so completely you know that whole go to
Mexico for a year changed my whole trajectory wow okay so did you grow up on
a on a were you a farmer no construction adjacent to farming I my first job
as as a Elementary student was the QA guy well they didn’t call it QA guy but
the guy that foued the planting machine of tomatoes to make sure that either
it didn’t miss a spot or that it was put upside down you had to flip it over
and put the roots down in the ground so I walked behind following a tractor
up and down rows fixing the mistakes of people that were feeding a machine so
as very early on was doing that but that was not a family farm that was a
neighbor Farm but the machine was planting machine was planting so that’s
your first that that is your exposure to robotics pretty much would you say
that I mean when you look back and think about it yes that is and and the
only thing is you had people like driving that process so like they’d have to
insert it and they’d want to see if you were awake so they would purposfully
put them upside down so you’d be like so if they got mad at you or whatever
then next thing you got a whole row upside down and you’re just like bending
over every two seconds trying to fix all their mistakes but yeah like so yeah
don’t don’t make the guy in the seat mad that’s feeding the thing or you’re
going to be a lot of work do you incorporate that with Nimble today do you
have the robots make mistakes every once in a while to see if the quality
control people are on it well we definitely do I I personally don’t other
than when I do tours like I I always make sure our Ops you know we always
focused on quality Quality quality make sure we never make mistakes and so I
purposefully make our when we do our demos say hey can you show us what
happens if we put this in the wrong location we scan this wrong because I
want our you know our wouldbe customers to know that like there’s a lot of
foolproof stuff that stops IT alarms go off it it like FL sends flags up like
fix this so we purposely do that in the tours oh that’s great yeah love it
okay so you you went through high school and college kind of working with UPS
is that accurate yeah so seven years with 98 to 05 six six or six of the
seven years in operations um what I did then does not exist there anymore we
we manually developed driver routes uh with paper and colorcoded them oh man
with a uh to load chart with a highlighter so nostalgic yes and there’s not
even a like and we’d put paper up on the back of a truck and it would be a
load chart it would take us like three to six months to get somebody to to
learn how to load a truck properly oh my gosh they’re up and running like
minutes now it’s so automated it’s crazy isn’t it yeah and then did you go
into sales at that point I did so uh when I was I thought I was going to be
an operator my whole life I really did love operations and I joked about it
that was bad I actually was a pretty good operator and I thought I was going
to run routes and run driver teams and you know work my way up to all the
different levels of operations but thank goodness uh a lady that was over our
security team she and I really connected and she was very influential and
she’s like look I know you have all these jobs lined up when you graduate
because UPS was very serious back then about you could only get to a certain
level until you had a four-year degree and and so you know so I was planning
on so when I I was going to return back to Scranton area I had jobs lined up
with people I used to work with there and she’s like look give me a year go
into sales you will if you hate it I’ll give you whatever job you thought you
were going to miss out on like I’ll take care of you and and so they held a
job for me for several months because I officially hadn’t graduated I’m in my
senior last year senior last semester senior year and so I graduate on a
Friday Monday I’m promoted into sales that’s how legitimately serious they
were about you having to have a degree wow yeah so anyway so I got into there
so this is this is 04 and and I did about a year in sales and great great
because they trained you so well like I went to months of sales training
right and and so learned like things like spin method I don’t know if that’s
a thing anymore sure Neil rakman spin selling still still my gospel uh I know
they’ve added so many different for you know types there but that’s at that
time UPS was all about it so I I learned with all the s and the P’s and the
eyes and the ends how how to do that and wrote all the scripts for sales and
so did that for for a year and then DHL Express had taken over and acquired
Airborne Express so an international company bought a domestic only company
and they were going to take on ups and and my thought was hey they’re like
doing this in 219 countries they’re number one surely they could be number
one in the 220th right and so a lot of UPS people were recruited to go over
there all the people that were kind of my mentors and sales recruited uh then
recruited me said hey you got to come over here you’ll you’ll never regret it
so I moved from South Carolina to Ohio because they were going to be opening
uh their version of like Memphis and Louisville in in Ohio in a small little
town called Willington they owned the airport it was a it was an old Air
Force Base so only so here I am we’re going to Take On The World right the
only carrier that owns their own airport like surely we’ve got this thing
right so this is ‘ 05 08 happens you know the economy just crashes by the end
of 08 they’ve shut the whole domestic Network down rolled that thing back up
92% of the company laid off and I’m going oh now what yeah so I ended up at
FedEx and spent spent three years there left there said I’m never going to do
Logistics again I am done I went for about a year year and a half with a
customer mine in a in a startup um and a good year and a half of working the
startup land realized I really like Logistics and um I want to get back into
it and was fortunate enough around 13 to get back in in a company called DHL
Global Mail that is now DHL Ecommerce I know they’re big partner of you guys
and uh so a guy by name of Rob Glover took a flyer on me invested in me and
it was you know really changed my my life and that they was really all things
e-commerce direct a consumer at that point tail end of that time they were
playing around with a guy by name of Craig Morris who’s now the COO of DHL
e-commerce um was was head of product at the time and he was seeing that like
hey work share is kind of like in in Jeopardy right everybody’s heading
towards two day one day y Amazon and all the prime was going on and he goes
we’ve got this 3 to 5 day and we’ve got a 3 to8 Day product we’re kind of on
borrowed time here so they rolled out three products in around 16 17 18 time
frame uh one was a same day delivery service way ahead of its time called
parcel Metro best same day service I’ve ever seen just nobody wanted to buy
it in 16 and 17 everybody wanted it but nobody way too early so that got
sunsetted they rolled out which you guys know and love expedited Max and
that’s same time frame and then they also said you know what we are
struggling with first mile we should do regionalized e-commerce fulfillment
and so they started a network uh with three nodes East West Central very very
similar sounding in my story and and so they went a couple years invested a
lot of money and weren’t weren’t going very well got tapped on the shoulder
by our CEO to say Hey you you’ve had a good good success really like it would
you come over here thought I went over with 18 months then they get a new
Global CEO like 5 months into this thing and they’re like we’re shutting this
thing down like this is terrible like we’re we’re not doing this thing so I
was then fortunate enough uh uh didn’t have to leave DHL but I decided that
with transition like this I’d fallen in love with in a canful of months with
what was going on with fulfillment thought that was the next phase sure uh
was was introduced to a little company called quiet Logistics uh yeah you
know recently got bought by American Eagle and so uh was there right after
they got acquired by the by the PE firms and so they were small at the time
you know two two uh two markets three nodes and and we had a phenomenal
growth story during that time and then left there and got into Robotics and
and so now at Nimble is exactly what you’re saying my whole life’s work has
come together in what I do with the transportation with the operations with
the Fulfillment with the automation uh with the products all this stuff so
they entrust me to do a lot of different things one be the first go to market
person to of this fulfillment piece and the strategy uh the customer facing
product I I have the a lot of the strategy around what our customers need and
want with things like order management transportation management and
warehouse management and then I own the parcel strategy for the Ecom business
so it sounds bizarre that a guy that’s head of sales is also had of these
things but when you hear that 20 some year Journey it really has every every
single job that I’ve done Has Come Together in this role starting with following
the Tomato machine and I forgot the Tomato was really a big part of this
absolutely well that’s an amazing story and amazing because we we have a lot
of themes that resonate on this podcast and one of those is successful people
either naturally or are forced into alignment in their life and career and it
feels like that has naturally happened with you from high school when you
started with you s and you’re winding your way through this Logistics
industry and gaining all of this unbelievable experience where you are an
expert today and have significant responsibility today in the in in the part
of the industry that is really taking off on the robotic side it’s a
fascinating story I loved how you put that I don’t know that I could say that
for myself but I I really appreciated hearing you say it how you just said it
absolutely well it very clear it comes out that way two other interesting
things about that story that you were telling me one is it sounds like you’re
telling me that your founder the founder of nimble could not have gotten a
job at UPS because he doesn’t have a college degree well he does he has two
degrees so he at least has undergrad and he has a master’s maybe we’ll edit
this part because it sounds better when it says yeah our CEO couldn’t get a
job at UPS well there’s physical labor involved so he probably wouldn’t have
signed up for that so love it that’s great the other interesting part of the
story is you probably don’t know this but the DHL story that you’re telling
and DHL so so DHL if correct me if I’m wrong DHL still is larger than FedEx
and UPS combined in terms of a global footprint logistics company especially
as a global Express provider yes when you go into other parts of the world
there’s like nine DHL trucks to to one you know nine out of 10 are going to
be a DHL vehicle they have such Market penetration in Latin America Europe
Asia you know they just have struggled really in in US and Canada have been
the two markets that really and it’s I think again this is talking way out of
term but it’s the Acquisitions right like in Canada they bought themselves in
through Lumis they shut that down yeah us they bought themselves in through
Airborne Express shut that down and so I think it’s you know the other areas
were mostly from the groundup builds and it’s when they tried to PEC meal
things together that it seems like it backfired on them a little bit well the
interesting thing about that is that DHL program in the United States was
very successful for a period of time nobody thought and you made a good
choice thinking I’m going to go work with DHL this how did this can’t fail
and then it and then it did or or they decided to to pull out of the market
well definitely when you you know when you’re a publicly traded organization
which they are on you know European Stock Exchange when you’re losing two
billion US dollar a year even though they turned $2 billion in profit they
still lost two billion in the US market so that’s not acceptable when when
you’re competing in a you know in the capital markets and so they had to shut
down uh you know in terms of now me personally thinks it was kind of a cut
off your nose despite your face type of thing and it was a shortterm yes they
solved two two billion doar but if you look what e-commerce had done just a
handful of years later you know the big the biggest thing happened 0809 you
know we had a again election year very similar to this kind of election year
right and and we had gas prior is hitting the highest they’d ever been right
around $5 and people are speculation they might get up to 10 right and so
that was one of the biggest cost drivers there it was a matter of months
after they decided to shut down gas down in the twoos again yeah and and so
yes they they solved you know two years they they you know they them getting
to a bucket profit in the US was basically doubled their ebit great you know
let’s let’s you know obviously Ken Allen has been well rewarded for that but
I think he cut the valuation of the business exponentially by getting out of
the US marketplace with with Commerce and and everything that’s going on
right now to limit themselves to the largest market in the world to just time
definite imports and exports I think really was a shortsighted view view for
them yeah well another interesting part of that story is when DHL shut down
UPS picked up I think it was the top three DHL resellers at the time and and
made agreements with them the USPS developed their reseller program at that
same time and also went after high quality DHL resellers three of which two
of which happen to be in the state of Utah that is the Genesis of ehub
getting aligned with one of those USPS reseller contracts way back when when
DHL left the market so that that’s where we have our footprint is right from
the beginning of the USPS reseller program as a result of DHL going no it’s
crazy and you know it obviously awesome for you guys that you were able to
capitalize on Amazing absolutely you know because I I think it would been a
different trajectory for a lot of lot of industry but what what’s also
interesting is how much rate increase happened the next year when you lost
the fourth the fourth competitor in here nobody wanted to do business with
DHL back then you know there was is saying like nobody gets fired for making
FedEx and UPS decisions but they’ll get fired for making a DHL decision so
nobody wanted to use them but after they left they sure wish they had because
the the buying the buying control changed exponentially AB absolutely that
was an interesting result of all of that that that came down in fact in our
history we we we’re not going to talk about we we have a we have an
interesting portion of our history uh when in acquisition occurred in in our
business and how that affected the marketplace which was which was
fascinating I’ll just say it was the stamps acquiring inisha and that was
that was really meaningful in the in the history of our company and obviously
the industry it it sounds like you you had a little bit of background I was
listening to some of the stuff you were talking about and you were you you’ve
been kind of forced into coaching but maybe you’ve been you’ve had kind of an
Athletics background that growing up although you said it was not necessarily
team sport background yeah I’m glad you brought up coaching I love I love and
hate coaching and my wife’s going to laugh when she if she ever listens to
this because every time I come home after a game we lose or at the end of the
season like don’t ever let me sign this thing up but then I’m back at it
again but yet to your point so growing up you know my parents were really big
on us having an activity and a sport mhm they didn’t they didn’t care what
they didn’t care what level they just felt like we needed to do those things
because well they had three boys and they were bouncing off the walls and
they were going to kill each other and and back then a lot more you know it
was okay to like punch people and you know interactions were different I
think than than today yes I I don’t know I kind of long for the good old days
there was a lot of fist fights in my house to put it mildly um but you know
so you I always tell my kids like I never made a team that I ever had to try
out for like every time I out for a team was cut a lot that’s my own doing I
never put in effort ahead of it I just showed up and was like you know
thought like having some level of athletic ability you’d be able to muscle
your way in so I didn’t try out often as you can you know as a matter when
you only when you’re like every time you try out you don’t do it I kind of
quit early but I I was fortunate that we got in as an entire family very
young into BMX racing and that was my sport from middle from really Elementary
School like age seven all the way through college I I raced very competitive
ly BMX across the country really yes like like you dirt tracks not pedal
bikes not not motorized um uh not freestyle I wasn’t doing back flips or any
of that stuff but similar ties and and so we traveled all over the country as
a family and we you know all the you know a lot of our family memories are
tied to that so so definitely BMX racing and then my other sports that I
excelled in were cross trainining for BMX so things like cross country and
track and skiing and and things that I did very well in all individual sports
and you get as much out of it as you put into it so if you want to be the
best at it you you put in the work and nobody else to blame but you so when
you go out and you lose is on you you didn’t put the work in it’s sometimes
in team sports you could have the best athlete on the floor and a team not
pull their weight and you don’t and you don’t win right it takes a lot and so
I think some of it though as I was joking earlier I think there is some
component if I didn’t play well with others as as a kid I think that but now
I I do love team sports minus the parental politics it is brutal it’s
ridiculous absolutely brutal U but a good Shameless pug that I will throw out
there yesterday we happened to win the flag football championships in in our
age uh our age bracket for six sixth grade I’ve got triplets that are now in
sixth grade I have two boys and a girl all three on that team and so that
that was fun it’s it basically the way we treat flag football in our house is
think like what you do at the elementary school at recess time with two
exceptions you have a coach and you have referees outside of that it’s it is
lighthearted and fun great and if we win we win and if we lose we lose and we
we still despite that we still have our ups and we have our downs but for the
most part I got seven or eight really talented athletes that are their top
sport is like soccer or basketball or football or all of those and they’re
high pressure high stakes club soccer club club basketball all this stuff we
come out here we don’t practice we show up 15 minutes before the game we just
Loosely throw the ball around a little bit I make plays on a whiteboard this
is like my sixth or seventh season this is the first time almost all the same
athletes first time we won a championship and so kids you would have thought
I gave a million bucks they got a ring at the end of it you know sixish
Seasons with that almost the same group of kids we finally put a championship
on so probably one of the you know the the least the this the lowest level
sport that that any of my kids play in but the probably the most excitement
of an achievement that happened yesterday amazing so yeah yeah sounds like a
very dabos swinny type of win oh I’m so glad you snuck in that name too that
perfect yeah yeah we’re gonna talk about Dabo in a minute I have feelings
about davo I do too so I’m glad we hopefully they’re both positive well Pro
probably maybe on one side but we’ll we’ll get into that okay let me let me
go back because I think something you said about your BMX career and your
individual sport career is super meaningful and I wish people would
incorporate it more in their lives today I don’t