09: Global e-Commerce Shipping: Preparing for Peak Season
Don't miss the cutoff for a successful peak season! John Walsh and Nick Agnetti discuss Planning, Carrier selection, Communication, Surcharges, Capacity and Transit Expectations
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Transcript
Welcome to Outside the Box with Asendia USA, a podcast educating US based e tailers on international shipping topics and how they can expand their global e commerce footprint.
Nick Agnetti:Hello everybody, this is Nick Agnetti from Outside the Box with Asendia USA podcast. I've got my co host here, John Walsh.
John Walsh:Hey buddy, how are you today?
Nick Agnetti:I'm doing well, thank you. How about yourself?
John Walsh:Fantastic.
Nick Agnetti:Okay, great. All right. So guys, we're here today, episode 9 Woohoo, to talk about getting ready for peak shipping season.
So whether you like it or not, it's here and you gotta be ready for it and we are here to help you with this. John, what's so funny?
John Walsh:Peak is a long time now. Used to be four weeks, it's probably nine weeks. Starts in October now.
Nick Agnetti:Yeah, let's talk about that. I think a lot of it changed with the pandemic.
John Walsh:Absolutely.
Nick Agnetti:I think a ton of it changed. It used to be such a concentrated.
First of all, I'm just going to make a proclamation here on this podcast that whoever came up with putting Black Friday and Cyber Monday in between a weekend, I mean genius, but also horrible idea when it comes to logistics. Genius for sales, horrible for logistics. So I'm going to throw that out there.
John Walsh:All right, that is a valid point because you can't catch up.
Nick Agnetti:No, there's no hope for that. What? So you got a holiday, right? So we got. Freight carriers just aren't picking up. Then you got Black Friday, they're probably still not picking up.
Then Monday, that's when they're going to start picking up that volume. Then that's, then you've got, it's just, it's insane.
Okay, so we're buzzing ahead, but no, you've got a wealth of experience in this industry and let's talk about helping our listeners be more sure prepared for the peak shipping season.
John Walsh:Good segue.
What, what had happened in the last probably five, ten years, but even before the pandemic, to your point, if you notice, there's a lot of years where Thanksgiving was very late in the month, in December, in November, and it rolls right into the first week.
Nick Agnetti:Oh yeah.
John Walsh:But now what we're seeing is, and we talked about on a previous podcast about returns, January now has become the returns month. It's like that month is all returns. You can't, most clients won't even talk to you that whole month.
So they, they get like one day, one week off and then right away they're back in return. So I think peak is really starts early October and ends In January pandemic. To your point, I think a lot of it had to do with inventory.
So people start putting out these sales so early because they were afraid they're not going to get the sales. So now they're pumping stuff out in October. You don't catch your breath. You know you'll catch your breath, right?
I also know in international you have. I know cutoff dates are a little different. National market, in domestic. But those cutoff dates had affected people's performance.
They're worried they got to get it out because they don't want to pay higher costs. There's so many factors with peak. It's kind of crazy. But just to tell you I like the word peak and we can talk about it.
The peak stands for planning for the P execution. Awake at night. Because when you talk to customers you about peak, every one of them has a different philosophy and what's keeping awake at night.
Okay, to your point, is a carrier gonna show up? Are they gonna be consistent? Are they gonna be flexible? Are they gonna be able to handle my stuff every day? Do I have to worry about them?
We're a true partner.
Nick Agnetti:That's. That one is crit. We gotta talk about that.
John Walsh:And the last one is key dates and drops. Right. So drops, key dates of peak are. To your point, you got, what is it? Black Friday, Cyber Monday? Pick a day. Pick a day.
They got a name for it and peak, right? Yeah, it's like I think the other day it was natural National Pretzel Day. It was awesome. I didn't get a pretzel. I forgot.
You remember that it was the other way this week, so. No, just kidding.
Nick Agnetti:Philadelphia. Big on pretzels.
John Walsh:Yeah. But I don't know. What are your thoughts? Because you know, your planning is a big.
Those four things are really, if you talk to a, a decision maker, a supply chain, they're the things they're worried about.
Nick Agnetti:Okay, so we're. I'm not going to mention any other companies names. No, I'm not, I'm just. But these are realities.
I think it was coming out of:But like they just said, hey, we're not picking up anymore. You know what I mean? We're just, we're done taking volume and.
Or they would tack on, you know, significant surcharges to be able to handle that volume. So, you know, if you will.
Now, we mentioned this, I think probably in the very first podcast or maybe in the second one, we're in a, we're in a much softer market now. So things have changed there in terms of the tide has turned a little bit in terms of a shipper's market versus a, versus a seller's market.
That's, that's fair and all that. But these things still happen though, out there, folks.
I mean, these are things where we're still getting, we're still seeing notification in the industry that, hey, you know, certain carriers are not accepting any more volume or if you don't give us volume commitments, we just, we can't take a chance on you type of thing. Which is, which is kind of wild, right? Because again, we've got this, let's call it a six week period of absolute insanity.
And that, man, that just fired me up thinking about that. Just because I feel, you know, you hear about it and it's kind of, I've never once ever told a client like, hey, you can't ship me any material.
Disclaimer for anybody out there. If you want to send me some stuff to process, I'm going to process it. Okay. So I'm just throwing that.
John Walsh:Right.
Nick Agnetti:But anyway, just a couple of observations.
John Walsh:Planning used to start October. Now you get customers want to start talking in August because they got to be ready for October.
So, you know, just work with our clients and anybody listening out there, you know, really got to start thinking about a late summer, about peak for sure.
Nick Agnetti:And I. And well, let's add a layer of complexity to that.
John Walsh:Yep.
Nick Agnetti:We've seen in the last. And again we're going to talk about. We've all experienced this pandemic. One thing that's become really scarce is developer resources.
So if you're thinking about diversifying your shipping carrier, you know, portfolio, you had better have that done by the beginning of August, especially if you're a major volume carrier, whether it's international, domestic, because it's probably not a great idea to go into testing at the end of September. So it's very important to make sure that you have all the integrations done, API things, whatever it might be.
Excuse me, producer Charvan, what are you doing with my volume? I'm just turning it. Okay. All right, sorry it got weird there. You can cut that out. But it's weird, right?
John Walsh:It was a little different.
Nick Agnetti:It was weird. Okay, so we gotta roll with it then. We're rolling. You take over for a second. Where was I? That messed me up.
John Walsh:No worries. You were on a hot streak. The other thing was customers need to be. I think we were talking about transparency last time, last call.
You gotta have weekly or bi weekly touch points with clients as they move into peak because if you don't, their plans change dramatically.
The people that we deal with traditionally are what transportation, supply chain, they don't, they don't manage the marketing budget, they don't manage the sales budget or whatever they're, they're promoting. They. We have to be up on that to make sure we're doing the best we can for them to handle surges.
Like I know you, you know the sub box box industry very well. That's an example. When you get into peak season, they're not their custom, that volume is heavy, but you also got other people's heavy volume.
So you got to make sure that you're communicating with that type of client to make sure that they're, they're being covered. Did they change anything? Because in my experience they had maybe a. Change their cadence a little bit. Maybe they moved it back a week.
Maybe they did this flexibility so they get the best experience too that they deserve. Right. Because it's a good point.
Nick Agnetti:Instead of, let's say if your fulfillment date is typically the last week of a month. Yeah, November, you might want to make that the second week of a month. You know what I mean? Or something like that.
Just to try and get ahead of the, you know, the upcoming craziness. Now going back though to you had just mentioned, you know, the weekly calls.
John Walsh:And checking and such. Yeah.
Nick Agnetti:I think it's probably important to put a distinction between looking at, let's say if you're working with a 3 PL, an E commerce fulfillment company for the listeners and let's say a brand itself too because you know, what's the biggest difference there is one, you've got a company that's doing the pick pack fulfillment kitting whatever it might be for multiple brands versus a single brand.
And so even dialing it back even further to the integration challenges, it's, let's make, you know, we have, they have to make sure that all integrations are done. Especially if you have a bonafide like a concrete peak season.
Not all shippers do and we're probably seeing that even a little bit more too where it's not so significant of a peak as it may have used to been for certain customers, but peak is still there. You have to just pay attention to, you know, when you start having these meetings yeah. What's important? Why is it so important?
Again, distinct, you know, but between the three PL and the. The E Commerce brand itself. Yeah, you know.
John Walsh:Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. The last thing to touch on and get your thoughts on for planning is years ago there was no surcharges at peak. Okay.
Then Covid came along and there was a ton of surcharges. They haven't really got away. Okay. They, you know, you have fuel, but you also have minimums. I know my former employer has a lot of. Lot of surcharges.
Nick Agnetti:Right, they do.
John Walsh:So an example, we're a great resource to help you evaluate and keep up on that in the international arena. Because there's certain countries that get certain surcharges. There's certain windows of time that change.
Now the USPS doesn't look like international too much, but they also have surcharges. You would have never thought that they would have stuck after to your point earlier that the demand would go down.
You know, they're not projecting growth to be the same or flat next peak. It's not going to be explosive. So the question is, where can help?
We can help you as a resource to manage that because that's important to look at because you're going to. You may not think about it.
Nick Agnetti:I agree completely. Adding to that, which is a great point, especially at, you know, if you're running two things. I'm going to make a note too. So just.
John Walsh:Right. Nick draws a lot on his notebook here.
Nick Agnetti:Big note taker guy. Big note taker guy here.
John Walsh:So that's not the pen they gave you though, is it?
Nick Agnetti:Absolutely not.
John Walsh:So they try to give us new pen stay. Our producers, they did not work. So we had to resort to what.
Nick Agnetti:We don't ever give me a wobbly pen. Okay, I will, I will, I will take it because I'm kind, but I will throw it away behind your back. Okay.
John Walsh:So never lift the kiss horse.
Nick Agnetti:So here we go. Okay, so two things I want to touch on. So if you, you're out there, you're a shipper. Okay.
So and I'm going to just say this is probably more focused on, let's say mid market and enterprise level shippers. When you're working with a partner that does both, quote unquote, domestic and international shipping, what's going to happen during peak?
I've seen it year after year after year. What takes priority, the domestic parcels or the international parcels?
John Walsh:Yep, domestic.
Nick Agnetti:The domestic parcels take priority. So if you're using a combined carrier, that's Combining, you know, you've got a bundle or something like that, okay?
Those domestic parcels are going to get the priority over the international partners part. Parcels without hesitation. You really, I want you to keep that in mind too. Okay. And so in terms of going back to, we talked about diversification.
We want to be prepped, you know, look at, look at alternative carriers, you know, and yes, this is Ascending podcast.
I'm allowed to say look at ascending, but I'm also saying look at alternative carriers to avoid some of these crazy peak surcharges that are out there. They're going to happen again. You know, you've got peak season coming up right around the corner. It's going to be here before you know it.
And guess what's going to happen once you're once your hook, line and sinker, you're going to get those surcharges. It's going to happen.
So just a couple of pieces with that is again, if you've got a bundled agreement or something with a carrier that, you know, really, their focus is truly domestic. But hey, they're taking the international because it's convenient.
Maybe it's not so convenient come November and December when you really want something to be, you know, if you want Aunt Mildred to get her stuff by Christmas might not happen.
John Walsh:Okay.
Nick Agnetti:And I know that I can bring some humor to that, but I also can say without hesitation how many times I've heard that story over and over and over again too. And I mean that seriously.
The other thing going back to cutoff dates, so I know what we do, we provide cutoff dates probably in like the second week of November, maybe third week of November for the holiday cutoff dates. We try and get it as early as possible.
And so those cutoff dates for us in terms of our metrics is here's the based on the service, APAC plus Apex select select ddp, here's the last day you can, you know, we can process that material to have it delivered by Christmas time, you know, and then outside of that, you know, no guarantee type of thing.
So you need some visibility from your partner, your carrier partners in terms of, hey, there are some expectations in terms of, you know, when, when is something going to get delivered to meet your expectations, to get there by the holidays, whatever that may look like.
John Walsh:That was very good. A couple things I want to ask you on execution.
To your point about domestic volume availability during peak is different than it is the rest of the year, right? So to your point is they're probably running more promos or whatever to certain countries and things like that as a partner, we can help with that.
We don't have capacity issues at Asendia. No, that's number one.
Nick Agnetti:I'm telling you. Your stuff. Okay.
John Walsh:Yeah, please, we're going to process. Please. You have to pay for the podcast.
Nick Agnetti:Hey, we send us your parcels. We need a studio.
John Walsh:Yeah, right.
Nick Agnetti:That's true.
John Walsh:That is true. Yeah. Yeah, we're worried about it. We're working on Siobhan's basement over here.
Nick Agnetti:It's a beautiful basement, very well lit, but go ahead. Sorry.
John Walsh:But it also helps, I think in the last podcast, which is something you brought up, it was really key was Wismo calls.
Nick Agnetti:Right.
John Walsh:So to your point, if you're using say an ascending and you're diversifying a volume and splitting it, giving domestic maybe to one, maybe ascending is blessed to get the international. Your transits and your SLAs are going to be pretty good. We can work with you on that.
To measure that a lot of times, what we noticed that peak customers would never change their websites, they would Never update their SLAs on Peak. And then they get a lot of Wismo calls because maybe they felt it was going to be.
Nick Agnetti:That's a great point.
John Walsh:Yeah. And we would see that a lot. We go, listen, guys, you know, you got an extra.
You can get a little bandwidth you can work with, but if you don't manage that part of your business, you're getting a lot of calls because they're still going to expect the same transit times. They're not getting them. So that's something else to think about. On execution.
Nick Agnetti:No, managing expectations is. I mean, in every area of life is key.
John Walsh:Right.
Nick Agnetti:But we're here to talk about this. That's an absolutely key thing. So that's a great point.
John Walsh:Our last thing I want to ask you, what keeps you up at night?
Nick Agnetti:Dorm peak, Trucks picking up on time, making sure that materials processed quickly and efficiently and that we don't have any significant customs issues.
John Walsh:There you go. So I would, I would think that's what most people out here in the audience would probably say the same thing. Right.
I don't think they're missing anything. I guess getting hold of rep would be. Would be the other one because that a lot of times the communication is.
The people are a little bit more busy, don't get back right away. But I don't see that a problem in ascending it.
But in my past life, people may have had thousand accounts, can't get back to them, and they don't get the attention they need during peak.
And the problem is, at peak, customers need more help than they probably do in most of the year because they're a little more stressed out about what's going on and things like that. But. But just as a help to be a good partner.
Nick Agnetti:So I want to give one fun fact before we depart today. Fun facts brought on a new client. They're located in northern Michigan, and they started during peak. Well, Q4 of 23.
John Walsh:Same thing.
Nick Agnetti:Yeah. So with our Canada direct access service, our Canadian delivery network, we processed it, you know, maybe 2,000 parcels. Good.
And average delivery time to Ontario, from process to delivery, 1.8 business days.
John Walsh:That's funny.
Nick Agnetti:You said Q4.
John Walsh:I had a customer started the last week of the year, same thing. Wow. They started last week of the year. Yeah.
Nick Agnetti:That's pretty. They. All right.
John Walsh:And they were very happy with everything to your point, into that province. They were getting 1.8 days even during peak season.
Nick Agnetti:That's amazing.
John Walsh:Yeah.
Nick Agnetti:All right, well, thank you all very much for listening to episode nine, getting ready for peak shipping season. Any questions, concerns, please email our producers directly and just help. Keep hitting that subscribe button. Download, because we need a new studio.
All right, go fund me.
John Walsh:Go fund me.
Nick Agnetti:All right. If you want to support our podcast, the number one thing you can do is share it on your social media and tag Asendia.
John Walsh:That helps us get the word out, and we really appreciate it.
Voiceover:Be sure to subscribe and download our podcast.
If you want to learn more about today's topic, email us at ecommerce USA@asendia.com and check back frequently for new discussions on ecommerce shipping to Canada and worldwide.
