Supply Chain Therapy with Flexport and goodr

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Greg Bicksler
They came up with a concept that I'll probably talk about a few times that we now refer to as the four FS which are the design pillars for all of our products. So they need to be functional. So they're built for activity. They need to work well, they need to be fashionable. They got to look good. They need to be fun. And if you're familiar with the brand, we do a lot of fun things. And the last thing is they need to be fordable, which is not the right way to spell that. But gooder is not a word. So what does it matter?

Ted Boeglin
Hello, everybody. I'm Ted Boeglin, and it is my absolute pleasure to be joined by Greg Bicksler, who's the Vice President of Operations at one of my absolute favorite brands. goodr been a long time customer of goodr, Greg. Thank you so much for joining me.

Greg Bicksler
Yeah, thank you, Ted. It's nice to be here.

Ted Boeglin
And Greg, we have to start. I think with the goodr story, the brand, what it's known for. So maybe you can just quickly tell us about goodr's background and sort of the inception story of the brand?

Greg Bicksler
Yeah, for sure. It's a fun story. So, our founder and CEO Steven Lease is a very big runner. He still is to this day. And the more he got into running like a lot of us that get into active sports, the more he got into the gear. And he had one day he refers to it as the awakening where he looked into the mirror and realized in his words that he looked like an absolute tool. And so very quickly he threw out all of this ridiculous garbage that he had bought for himself and got a super slim kit that he started running in. A couple years later, he was training for the LA marathon, huge crew of people and realized he was looking around at all the different runners in the group. And it was everyone from people running super fast times to people running their first marathon. And one of the consistent things he noticed was, or one of the things he started noticing was the different eyewear the sunglasses that people had. And there was everything from the sunglasses that you would pick up at a gas station all the way up to these crazy super expensive pairs of sunglasses and everything in between Ray-Bans, all different types of products. And he realized that there was not a pair of sunglasses that was tailored specifically to runners. So that's what he went out and did the problems that they identified were that most running sunglasses were ugly, they were over engineered and they were really expensive. So as a result of those three problems, I guess you could say that he was trying to fix. They came up with a concept that I'll probably talk about a few times that we now refer to as the four F's which are the design pillars for all of our products. So they need to be functional. So they're built for activity. They need to work well, they need to be fashionable. They got to look good. They need to be fun. And if you're familiar with the brand, we do a lot of fun things. And the last thing is they need to be fordable, which is not the right way to spell that. But gooder is not a word. So what does it matter?

Ted Boeglin
So, I love, first of all, I love it, I think that shame is a great motivator like looking yourself in the mirror and realizing you don't like you don't like how you look. But I've been that person, I was a runner and I had the ridiculous sunglasses like the, you know, that like an elite runner would wear when I was not. So I totally understand that story. I actually want to start with one of those episodes. The one is fun because I feel like if anything the brand has been known so much for being fun. And we actually have some of the goodr sunglasses here that you can see. And the flamingo is very prominent, you know. And I think that you have these elements of fun all through throughout the brand and what you've created, maybe you can highlight a couple ways that you feel like you have made this a fun experience to work at goodr and also to be a customer.

Greg Bicksler
Oh my gosh there are so many, countless ways I think so I'll start as an employee and then I'll move into the customer side. So for employees, it's a very unique place to work. I think it's unlike anywhere else I've really worked before. There's a lot that goes into our culture. We have heavy focuses on autonomy, giving people the space to work and execute all of those kind of buzzy fun things that most startups and small companies talk about. But I think the things that really catch people's eyes. We have, our office is unlike any office I've ever been to. If you ever get invited, you should definitely come. We have what we call tropaganda all over the place. The flamingo is super prominent. Everywhere you go. His name is Carl. We do have a tiki bar in our office as well as you would expect all of our meeting rooms have really fun names. My favorite one is called hell. So you can say I'll see you in hell when you have a meeting there later on in the day. But overall, you know, the other thing for operations nerds is our racking is pink and teal. And yes, it was a custom paint job, but it creates a really fun vibe for everyone to work in on the customer side. I think what we do exceptionally well and what we identified pretty early on. But we've really leaned into, in recent years. I think in that origin story, talking about Steven, one of the things he was trying to do was serve a community, serve a community of runners, bring a product to a community of runners. And I think what we have realized is our brand is such a lightning rod for people looking for a community. And you see that in where we put our energy, you see it with, if you ever go down to Abbot Kinney, we do run clubs there all the time. We're constantly doing events out in public spaces and we do fun stunts all the time. So, I think getting out and engaging with our customers, having fun products, doing things that sound crazy and you would never even think were possible. And doing it anyways, it gets people's attention and it draws them in and it creates that community.

Ted Boeglin
One of the other F's that you highlighted which is not a word, but I love it is affordable. I think we've all noticed just an unbelievably affordable pair of sunglasses at a very good quality point, right? Which is hard to do. And I'm sure it is challenging as an operations professional to deliver that. Can you talk a little bit about how you've managed to create such a good product at that price point and be able to deliver it to customers at the scale that you are now?

Greg Bicksler
Absolutely. I think so. First and foremost, it's a testament to the strength of our product development team, the strategies that we have, the level of detail and the care that we put into our design to make sure to your point that we're not just making a high quality product but we're also keeping it within that fourth F of affordability, creating accessibility for our customers so that you can have a bright pink pair of sunglasses and not have to pay an insane amount of money for something that you may hate in three months. I think that is where it starts is really with product design and product development. But beyond that… the other F, I think a lot of people think is fun of just being silly, unprofessional things like that, it actually means the opposite with goodr. So being fun is being prepared, being focused, being under control of what you're doing. And a huge part of that is financial diligence, right? Being irresponsible with your cash flow, not paying attention to your air freight rates, these kinds of things add up. And if you pass that through to your customer, that's obviously a pretty terrible customer experience from the unintended consequences. So, I think being super dialed on our fundamentals and looking for efficiencies tackling them as we go. Has been a huge part of delivering value to our customers.

Ted Boeglin
And maybe you can help everybody understand sort of the scale that you're operating at now, the channels that you're selling through and sort of how that journey has gone for the company. And then also you as a leader of that operation as it's grown so substantially over the past few years, help us walk through that journey that you've gone through both on the channel side and also on the operations side.

Greg Bicksler
Happy to dig into that. So we are now sold in over 40 countries which is super exciting. We have warehouses in the US and in Canada as of recent, which is very exciting for us. We are also in over 4,000 retail stores around the US at this point. So everything from, you know, your single door mom and pop run shop all the way up to REI, Target places like that. So a pretty wide scale of customers on our B to B side as well. We also operate Amazon has exploded for us recently. It's been a really big growth partner for us which has been exciting. And we've also entered into some emerging channels like TikTok shop and prescription. So there are a lot of exciting things that we're working on global and a lot of geographies as well. So the second half of your question was, can you remind?

Ted Boeglin
Me, and how have you had to evolve as an operations leader and operations team as that complexity has started to multiply?

Greg Bicksler
So absolutely. So one of the things I think I was actually reflecting on this morning when honestly when Michael was talking about this is our complexity has grown significantly in the last few years and we actually have not added headcount as well, which I think is really a testament not just to, you know, control and some of the things I was talking about, but my team as well. I have a great team but I think a huge part of it is our partner set and finding the right people to work with who can help you proactively solve problems. So you don't have to throw bodies at a situation and higher, that is not what scaling means, right? So I think as a leader, what I have learned in the past several years is bringing the right people and the right partners is crucial in order to divide your attention over more and more space that's and systems as well. Obviously. But I think those are some of the keys to really multiplying and scaling your ability to grow.

Ted Boeglin
Our team has described you and your team as data obsessed. And I think the team you work with is similarly data obsessive for them to use that to describe you. You must truly be. So, I really want to know like what is that actual like operating system look like for you when you're trying to stay in control of a supply chain that's grown so much and diversified so much? So walk maybe everybody through what that looks like on a daily or weekly basis?

Greg Bicksler
For sure. And, I love the term system and because the system to me is not inherently technology, right? It is a full spread of the people tools and partners that we use to get this done. And I think I a long time ago when I did more technology focused work, one of the things that I learned that stuck with me is, if you systematize a broken process, you just have a faster broken process. So I think the keys to us, our system I will say are really understanding our processes, breaking that down and then collaborating really effectively within our team and across our functions. We have a number of systems that we use to support that. But the key part of that is discussion collaboration and I think that's actually where the data elements become really important when you're starting to have a discussion around. Okay, I think this is our planner thinks this is super important. In this element of our lead time is super important. What are the data that we need to either prove or disprove the theories that we have around that? And how can we collaborate, to identify if that's a problem and then ultimately track the performance of the efforts we're putting into improving?

Ted Boeglin
It? Prior to goodr, you were in management consulting, you were doing a lot of work, to step in, help other brands sort of do this for themselves. If you had to recommend that operations leaders take on some aspect of what you've implemented at goodr, or something that, you saw work really successfully as a management consultant. Is there any specific practice or rhythm or routine that you think has been the biggest unlock for you as you've scaled the company up?

Greg Bicksler
Absolutely. So that's a great question. I think one of the I've been thinking about this a lot recently and because I think I have members or I have people within our company that come and ask me similar questions like how can I start thinking about this? Better? Think about this more holistically and I'm sorry, solve the problem more comprehensively. I think a huge step that we pass over so often especially in this day and age where everything is moving so fast is we don't slow down to actually think about the problem we're trying to solve. So as the training that I got as a management consultant was start with the problem you're trying to solve, develop hypotheses around what the fix for that is. And then you can go start looking for data to prove or disprove those hypotheses there's a whole view around like deductive and inductive reasoning that I'll spare you, the lecture on. But I think spending the breaking it down. So spending the time to really think about what you're trying to do and then breaking it down into components is key. If you're trying to solve everything at once and you're looking at a sea of data and don't know what to do with it. You're not going to make any progress. So you have to simplify things before you get moving.

Ted Boeglin
How have you been able to teach your team, these practices? You know, because, I think at some point everybody reaches sort of a personal boundary. You know, you can only handle so many things. You need to, at some point teach people to operate as you do or within a certain principle set. So, have you been effective hiring the right people and then teaching them to operate in the way, that you just described?

Greg Bicksler
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think it's first. The first part of it for me was when I started leading people was really understanding the shift in my role, right? Like my job was no longer to be the player on the field scoring. I was now the coach, right? So taking leaning into that role, and accepting the fact that my role is now to challenge people and to teach them skills to make them a better person or not better person necessarily better, a better working worker, maybe a better person. But that's the first step I think into moving towards that. The second is accepting that they're not gonna do it the way that you probably would do it and that is fine. And they're probably not gonna get an A plus on it the first time, the second, the third, the fourth time, but creating really intentional space for them to practice the skills you're trying to teach to fail small to learn from that and then challenge them to apply what they're learning in that environment at a bigger and bigger scale. I've found that to be one of the most fun parts of leading a team, and getting to see people grow. I.

Ted Boeglin
Am I want to take this in a slightly different direction and talk a little bit about customer experience and especially the interaction between operations, and customer experience? So, I think we actually had the same, one of the same stories about how we first understood sort of goodr's brand promise in that sure, you know, I accidentally had some pair goodr's on my head and jumped into a lake and lost them. And then was upset for a second until I realized that they were affordable and I could go, you know, to a local shop and get some more. And I think you had a similar story and had an amazing customer experience moment before you were even an employee. Yeah.

Greg Bicksler
This was great. Actually. So I was water skiing at a lake and I'm not good at water skiing and I totally face planted and, this was probably seven or eight years ago. I want to say, so I, this was, you know, long before I worked for the company, sunglasses were gone, I was bummed because I had to squint for the rest of the day, but to be honest, I was not stressed about it just like you said, and beyond that, even I knew this was a different brand, and that really cared about their customers. So I reached out to our customer service team and just told them what had happened. They said, no sweat. We got you and they shipped me a new pair within a few days. It was actually very funny when I started working, I pulled up that email thread and the customer service agent that I had been talking to and was super grateful for was still with the company, you know, all these years later. So that was actually a really great kind of full circle experience to see early on how much the brand really cared about making their customers happy, engaging with customers and seeing how far we've carried that forward to where we are today.

Ted Boeglin
And there have been other, I think amazing moments over time or funny and fun moments. Can you share a little bit about some of those other moments you've been able to create for customers?

Greg Bicksler
For sure. So, we were talking about one of them. So there is, a program at goodr that exists. We've had and I'll share, a couple thoughts on this. So there's a program there that our customer service team has run off and on at times that's called Carl's booty chest or something like that where basically they get to do something really fun, surprising and delightful, to, for some of our customers. We've had people write in saying things like my dog ate my pairs of sunglasses and they were crushed by it. So our team, our product team went out and designed a bunch of flamingo dog toys, which we ordered a ton of and mailed a bunch of these out to our customer and asked them to have the dog play with those instead of the sunglasses along with some replacements as well, you know, it's a fun. It's a, it's a fun interaction with customers. And as a result, we get a lot of fan mail from our customers. That is very interesting. As you might imagine. We got a, one of the ones I remember the most, we got a… certificate of divorce for one of our customers who said they were officially breaking up with another sunglass brand that I'm not going to name that they have been devoted to for years. And they drafted a full legal representation to commemorate the moment and mailed it to us. So we still have that kicking around the office.

Ted Boeglin
That is a powerful brand loyalty, making it official. Exactly. Yeah. So those are sort of, the fun moments or moments to express the brand's values or personality. But there's also the like core operational aspects of customer experience which I'm sure you spend a lot of time thinking about. Help me understand how do you measure this? How do you instrument it? And how do you make sure that when someone goes to your website or, you know, other places to interact that you're gonna deliver against the promise, right?

Greg Bicksler
It's a great question is honestly, it's something we've been thinking about a lot the last two or three years. And one of the things we've talked a lot about kind of the fun the community aspect of it. And I think that's where, we really grew up as a company and where we focused heavily. I think one of the realizations that we've had in the last several years is there are other customers out there that are not just focused on community. There are segments that are interested in the other apps as well, right? So we have high end athletes that are, that just want the best gear that you can get. We have people that are really fashion forward and want to complete their fit and want the right pair of sunglasses for that. So, I think that has challenged us to expand how we think about operationalizing this and engaging with our customer. And at the end of the day, I guess to bring it back to the question, I know this sounds like a tangent, but the way that we have been thinking about this is it sounds easy to get the right product in front of the right customer, right? But I think when your channels continue to grow and your customer base continues to grow, it is a bigger and bigger challenge. You have the right product to serve the right segments that you're going after. That's been definitely a heavy focus for us in the last few years is really leveling up our ability to get the product that our customers are looking for to them at the right time, at the right price in the right place. So that is where our retail partnerships and other channels come into play where?

Ted Boeglin
Did you feel like you and your team had to level up the most to be able to meet that challenge? Was it, was it a technical challenge? Was it a coordination challenge? Like how did you have to improve?

Greg Bicksler
Yeah. So, I think the biggest one we were talking about data is always a heavy focus for us and we have to constantly level our up our game when it comes to cleaning and maintaining our data. That is the foundation that enables us to do anything within operations. If we don't understand where we are, we cannot make decisions to get to where we need to go. So, I think that has been a major level up for us in the last several years. The other major level up that we've had in the last several years is as we've worked with more and more retail partners. Almost a running joke with us has been that we need to re forecast for them because we have just seen some consistent maybe… outperformance, I guess is a good way to say it when we launch with the new retailer, they have expectations, we have higher expectations. So we have been up leveling kind of end and how we get enough inventory and buffer for the sales and the growth that we think is possible even if others may not agree with us.

Ted Boeglin
One of the one of the topics that everybody's talking about, but yet people are at very different points of their adoption curve is AI as it applies to operations. It's been at some that we've talked about already at the conference, where would you categorize goodr, are you sort of in the curiosity phase? Are you in the application phase or are you in the, what you consider to be like leading the way on how this is implemented for ops teams?

Greg Bicksler
You know, I thought this was such an interesting question when I saw it, on your list, out of the gate, I don't know how to benchmark this to be completely honest. So I am going to my very uninformed answer is I think we're doing a great job. My guess is we're in the middle of the bell curve. We're doing a lot of things. I can share some of the stuff that we're doing as a company and as a team that I'm really excited about. So I can tell you this trimester we do, our cycles and trimesters, every single employee at goodr has an AI related goal to identify how they can incorporate AI into their role. And then we'll present those out at our performance reviews at the end of the year. So the accountability around that is huge. So I think that is something that's going to put us further up the bell curve in and of itself. Sorry, were you gonna?

Ted Boeglin
I was just wondering what are some of the most promising ideas or what are some areas that really excite you because of the potential even if it hasn't been fully realized yet?

Greg Bicksler
For sure. So, it kind of runs the gamut some of the basic blocking and tackling ones. As anybody that gets an insane amount of inbound. I will say I am a heavy user of the summarize and annotate functions that exist within a lot of our communication tools. If you're not using them, highly recommend it. What I see quite frankly is as some of the biggest opportunities, and this is where my team is really starting to lean into. Some things are some of the stuff I've seen talked about today specifically around workflow automation, workflow redesign. I think there is tremendous power, in just cutting out a lot of the error prone and repetitive data manipulation processing tasks. And one of the things that I have been challenging my team to do and we talk about a lot is what are you spending the most of your time on? And what are you most worried about? And how do we start using these tools and the set of tools that, we either have bought for our team or are publicly available to just get faster, get smarter, get more reliable at what we're doing?

Ted Boeglin
I think that's such a fantastic question to ask because it really is different than the question. A lot of people ask. A lot of people would say, you know, what's most repetitive or monotonous, or what do I like doing the least and look to those use cases. But what you were asking about is like actual time investment or risk or opportunity and looking at those use cases first, which I actually think is a very… optimistic way, to apply AI's to your hardest problems, not, the menial tasks that happen to be very repetitive. If you were, if you were to think about sort of like you or your company five years from now in the future and you had to make a prediction about size of your team scale of business, and what would be the most influential aspects of AI and in helping you to bridge from, you know, where, that hopeful future and where you are today. What would you think it is?

Greg Bicksler
Yeah. I mean, I, to be honest, I, as we grow and I will not commit to anything in stone because I'm sure we'll think of something crazy that's gonna require a ton of manpower, but, I don't anticipate just talking about, our supply chain operations team growing exponentially in any way, you know, one of the, and tying this back to your earlier comment like I, when people are focusing on like the mundane monotonous things and yet they're so over everyone says they're overwhelmed, they're too busy. Almost every technology that humans have created has not led to a widespread unemployment reduction in the long run. It just enables us to do more and more stuff. So through that lens that's kind of what I'm hoping our team is able to do is to start leveraging these tools to just be able to pick up and carry more without having to add a ton of time, a ton of effort to our plates. I think that's very doable. And the way that we're planning to grow, I think my team, is up for the task of hitting that in stride. So I think, the next layer of that, what I am really hoping that some of these technologies unlock for us is to get even more proactive. And I think one of the things I've heard a lot about today quite frankly is stitching all of these different pieces of the bigger picture together to understand where are we going? What is happening? How can we get better at predicting when a product is going to go viral? When, you know, there's going to be a sudden massive geographic shift in what our customers want in one region versus another. The more that we can understand that in advance, the more we can react to it. And, I heard an awesome quote from someone at one point it was, if you tell supply chain operators that the apocalypse is in six months, we'll be ready for it. And, I think that's true. What I am hoping AI will do is help us get better at predicting the apocalypse. Yeah.

Ted Boeglin
That is a fantastic note, to end on. But just one last thing we are heading towards the holidays. I think everybody needs the right pair of goodrs for, you know, for the holidays, very giftable. What pair would you recommend that everybody goes out and buys for that loved one, or friend, or family member?

Greg Bicksler
For sure. So I can't spill all the beans around our holiday launches. Yet. We have some really fun pairs coming out this year. I will say last year, I think our Thanksgiving pair was actually served in served, it came in a packaging that looked like a jar of canned jelly. So, yes, we had cranberry jelly themed sunglasses. So keep an eye for the holiday pairs. Those are awesome. I will say some of the ones that we launched this year that are my favorite, you know, talking about the fun names we launched floating sunglasses this year. The title G's buoys, don't cry is one of my favorite pairs from this summer, so you can get them for next year. And then our, I've been really liking our Avant G's right now. They're a pretty stylish pair that, are a little new on the market. So check those out too, if.

Ted Boeglin
Only you had the floating sunglasses before we jumped into those lakes.

Greg Bicksler
Exactly. I, well, I would have prevented me from coming back as a customer, but I would have been pretty happy about it. Well.

Ted Boeglin
Greg, thank you so much for spending the time, real pleasure. Yeah.

Greg Bicksler
Thanks, Ted. Likewise.