Luminous vs Everyone Else (Let's talk about the competition)

Transcript:

Jared Ward: 0:10

Everybody. Welcome to Ops UnFiltered. Today we have a special episode. I'm joined by our very own CTO and our head of implementation. This is Josh and Brendan. Welcome, guys. Thanks for having us.

Josh Sanders: 0:43

Good to be here. It's good to be here.

Jared Ward: 0:45

Today we have a super special episode we're going to go through. So at Luminous we pride ourselves in being very curious about the market of supply chain tools. We've kind of ran into I want to say we ran into it all, but I mean honestly, it's so vast there's no way anybody has ran into everything. But we have ran into a lot of different systems and we feel like we can bring a really valuable conversation to any operator who's looking to implement a system. So I think, to set the stage, the first topic of discussion is when is a brand actually looking for an inventory tool like Skiuvault, like Odoo, like NetSuite, like Linworks, all of these tools that we're going to talk about? What have we seen that triggers a brand to start looking for a tool like that?

Josh Sanders: 1:42

I'll jump in. I think one of the biggest triggers is once a brand starts experiencing some sort of traction with wholesale. That's one of the clear cut examples of like hey, I'm managing my inventory in a Google Sheet. It's so hard to track allocated inventory, it's so hard to manage all these outstanding invoices, all these back orders. I'd say that's one of the clear times when a brand becomes more complicated and they typically need some sort of back end system that's stronger than just an Excel spreadsheet or Google Sheet.

Jared Ward: 2:21

Well, we see that I think let's call it specific use cases. So Kailani Kailani is one of our clients. They're an e-commerce company between like three. We'll get ranges like between three and $10 million a year. They sold strictly direct to consumer, also wholesale on the side but, like Josh said, they wholesale volume when your volume of sales and wholesale goes up all of a sudden.

Jared Ward: 2:44

You need a system. So, Kailani, there's a lot of brands like that. If you're just, they had a 3PL, they sold on Shopify and they sold wholesale, Honestly, like till $2 million, $3 million, whatever. Just a couple wholesale invoices. They didn't need anything. They used Google Sheets and ShipStation. That was it, those ones. That volume got to a certain point where it's like, wow, we actually have, we're replenishing the Amazon a couple times a month. We are purchasing, like strategically purchasing a couple times a month and there's actual stakes for like a big wholesale order or us not being able to get our five invoices to the 3PL, or the sales rose to the 3PL. I think that's.

Brendon Beebe: 3:32

Who do you think the person is at the company? Who's kind of prompts the search for a system? Is it the accountant or is it the owner or like? What triggers that?

Jared Ward: 3:42

I think there's been a couple scenarios. So the decision makers that we've seen are it's a head of ops guy or girl the founder.

Josh Sanders: 3:53

Do it all. Do it all ops person. Yeah, there's like a customer service, noticing all the they're in the daily grind, the grind of the business, where they're noticing all those issues.

Jared Ward: 4:05

Yeah, especially brands who outsource to 3PL, there's always that guy or girl that's doing everything and they're normally the decision maker and they're normally like raising the red flag, like hey, I need something. I would say that's if a brand has a 3PL, there's a do it all ops guy or girl. If they don't use 3PL, then it's normally the COO slash warehouse manager.

Josh Sanders: 4:32

Instead of.

Jared Ward: 4:32

COO. You could call them director of ops. It's like it's the same idea of like this do it everything, ops person, but they're more focused on the warehouse.

Brendon Beebe: 4:43

And are they getting a system? Because they're overselling a bunch and they're, or just the owners hounding them because inventory is not accurate? Or is it inventory valuations too hard to figure out?

Jared Ward: 4:55

So, and the third one would be accountant. Like an accountant is raising the flag like hey guys. I literally outsourced at this point fractional, fractional bookkeeper or fractional CFO, Like hey guys, it's actually too hard to close the books. Like the downstream data that I'm getting is worthless and I'm having to manually do everything make my life easier, so implement a system.

Jared Ward: 5:22

Yeah, and then sometimes you get a founder. The founder is the one saying like hey, I, they just are. Ops is a mess, like I can't pull a report of. I think a aha moment for like a lot of the founders, is if you're a company that sells a bunch of kits or bundles or subscriptions, when you and you sell across like a couple of different channels. If you can't go into your system and search for a specific time stamp or like a timeframe and see how many units that I move was the revenue attributed to that, then it's you probably need a.

Josh Sanders: 6:00

Well, when you're dealing with, like subscriptions, like before implementing a system, you're going to have to pull a report from FBA, from Etsy, from if you're doing any sort of EDI. You're going to have to dig through documentation there and then you have to compile some sort of forecast and I like I think it takes, could take you a day, two days to do that, where I think the operator then goes to the owner, where it's like hey, like forecasting is an absolute chore, like I don't even know if I can trust our inventory numbers. I don't see any of the sales data. So we need to make a change.

Jared Ward: 6:38

I would say it's the tasks that require referencing a bunch of data sets where, when it's not, and there's not a lot of volume so, for example, forecasting, like you said, how many units should I purchase for Q4? When you're young, it's like you have five SKUs and you have two channels. So you just go to Shopify export, run a couple formulas like I'll purchase 2000. But once, once it gets to the point where it's like you have six channels and you have wholesale, and like you have, you have a bunch of customers like, okay, how much are they going to order? And you don't know your inventory levels and you have two incoming PO's. It's like, once, once it becomes so overwhelming where it's like, okay, like we, we were surviving on Google Sheets and ShipStation, but we need something. It's like taking too long to get a free forecast and the data is not automated.

Josh Sanders: 7:30

So if you get started on it, say on a Monday, and you're pulling all these reports, this inventory data, and then something comes up and you have to revisit that you got to export all those reports again because your data is out of yeah it's out of date now. So now you have to go through and run those same reports, because nothing's automated about what you're doing.

Brendon Beebe: 7:50

So at this point. You export inventory out of FBA, you export inventory out of your 3PL, you export inventory out of your Excel spreadsheet in your garage, and then you have to get sales data from Shopify, etsy, fba.

Jared Ward: 8:05

And then that's if you do kits and bundles too or if you purchase as well. Subscriptions, planning for, for what's actually going to hit.

Brendon Beebe: 8:14

So you have to pair that with incoming POs, where me you're doing POs on QuickBooks right now and you're like, oh, we actually already ordered these, and so you have an Excel spreadsheet of incoming POs, but that's also not being updated.

Jared Ward: 8:26

And then an added layer would be if you purchase raw material, so say I'm a brand that says sell golf gear and I sell, I sell a bundle like this golf kit with a ball and a and a whatever, whatever in the golf club and two other things. If like say okay, I have to take this bundle, forecast how much I'm going to sell and then put that in a like, break it down by product, like those individual components, that's a totally different system too.

Josh Sanders: 8:54

Oh well, another example too, like going back to the wholesale piece getting complicated. You start working with bigger retailers like Shields, target. They will give you a forecast for the next six months or for the next year. So, like how are you taking into account that allocated inventory? Like we were doing forecasting with a client a couple of months ago during Q4, that was like one. We have to keep track of the seasonality of all these other channels, but then we also had a big wholesale account come in and say, hey, I need 600 units of all these different SKUs by January 1st. And if we wouldn't have had a system like Luminous, we would have been all over the place. Like pulling from 20 different places. It would have been a freaking chore.

Jared Ward: 9:40

So to put a bow on this real fast, we talk a lot about complexity markers. These complexity markers are what creates an urgency to implement a system, the I would say, wholesale, like getting a certain volume wholesale. You brought up a big box retail account so needing, like this need for EDI, so by office, and I start selling the shields with bigger volume or Cabela's or Bass Pro or Target or Walmart. That causes complexity. Subscription I start a subscription model or that really starts scaling. I would say just getting to. If you're already selling on Shopify and Amazon, maybe you add on two more channels, like something is going up in volume and it's causing complexity. Or I decide I want to save money by purchasing raw materials and having a copacker manufacture it. There's a lot of times you make those decisions and those types of decisions are what lead people to implement a system, or at least they make those decisions with their same tech stack, like Google Sheets and ShipStation, and then they find out later like whoa, this is like way too manual. So well, with all that being said, I wanted to dive in today. I want to give everybody any of these operators or the accountant or the founder who are looking for a new piece of tech. I wanted to just put our experience out there, our experience for their systems. We are in no way like, for example, when we talk about skew vault. I'm not an expert in skew vault, meaning like I don't know every square inch of it. I've I've implemented that system, I've used it significantly, but there's always parts of systems that we don't know. So you know, if we misspeak on something, forgive us. We're just going to give us, give you guys, our raw experience of these systems what worked, what didn't, who it's a good fit for. This is just our opinion and hopefully it helps in some way.

Jared Ward: 11:44

Okay, so let's start with the. Okay, so I have this in different buckets. So first I have I call it the SMB backend suite, so it's just like it's really really cheap inventory and backend tools for e-commerce companies. Then I have mid-market systems, so it's like just a step up in complexity and functionality, and then we'll dive a little bit into enterprise. So, yeah, let's start with the SMB backend. Let's start with QuickBooks commerce, formerly trade gecko. So we've run into this with one of our actually a couple of our customers have had this. So let's start out with with the customers that we've had that that we ran into, that have been using QuickBooks commerce and let's let's go through a couple of things. Number one let's rate the UI. Why did these customers use them, or why would anybody use use them?

Brendon Beebe: 12:45

Because trade gecko, the one we we've ran to a bunch overseas.

Jared Ward: 12:49

Okay, there's a lot of people overseas that use them.

Josh Sanders: 12:52

They're good. We've always heard like B2B functionality has been pretty good. Okay. Trade gecko, but it's changed, like the transition to QuickBooks commerce.

Brendon Beebe: 13:01

they've lost when did the acquisition happen?

Josh Sanders: 13:05

Let me see, let's look it up. We have heard from a couple of people that they love like trade geckos, b2b, but then something happened with the acquisition, where 2012. Yeah.

Brendon Beebe: 13:18

It's been for a while, it's been a minute then.

Jared Ward: 13:20

See all of those acquisitions and a lot of these tools that we're about to bring up. That from like 2008 to 2015,. That was like the golden era for, like, rebuilding net suite in the cloud. Yeah, like there's so many companies that came out of the woodwork but okay, so trade, gecko, what. What do we rate its UI? I think it's. I think the UI for for QuickBooks and QuickBooks commerce is it's actually excellent. Like it's just clean, it's pretty good I don't have much of a complaint.

Jared Ward: 13:49

I would rate it as like I'm in it and it looks like I'm in a 2020 software. Looks good, it's not as conky.

Josh Sanders: 13:56

You don't need a PhD to navigate QuickBooks commerce, yeah.

Brendon Beebe: 14:02

It's it's fairly straightforward. I've never seen it before, to be honest. Really no.

Jared Ward: 14:07

It's, it's nice, it looks very similar to QuickBooks. All right, okay, so why would somebody use them? I'll start there. Why would somebody use QuickBooks commerce? Well, cause it's cheap, like it's. I think they start around like $50 per user and they have honestly, they have tons of functionality. So that's why somebody would use them If they. If you find yourself in a small business that has tons of operational complexity like I sell wholesale, I have to do some assembly orders in my garage when you have that broad functionality at an early age and you need a system that can do a lot.

Brendon Beebe: 14:44

That's why people use it. Are they using QuickBooks commerce for the accounting and this is like? This just makes it easier to keep their books in line? Or is QuickBooks commerce separate from QuickBooks?

Jared Ward: 14:54

It's separate, okay, it's separate, but, but it works together, yeah.

Josh Sanders: 14:59

So if they're already on, if they're already on QuickBooks, that would be another reason Like, oh, let's just go ahead and use.

Jared Ward: 15:05

Just be in the ecosystem, yeah.

Brendon Beebe: 15:05

Let's just stay in the ecosystem. Is integration seamless where it's in shares. No, oh, it's not, it's two separate systems.

Jared Ward: 15:12

It's. I mean a lot of the functionality is one in the same. It's like under one roof, but it doesn't talk together. Not everything Like. And then there's even like QuickBooks desktop, the QuickBooks ecosystem. It's actually it's super confusing. Very interesting, there's not all of it is. It doesn't all seamlessly blend together.

Brendon Beebe: 15:32

Is it more seamless than like dear to QuickBooks, or is it the same?

Jared Ward: 15:38

I'm not sure, I don't know. So, okay, what? What does QuickBooks commerce do? Well, I think they have a broad array of features that are super cheap and if you're an operator that's young, can figure it out, you'll probably scale to a certain point and then turn off of them. So where, where have we seen breakdowns with QuickBooks Commerce? I think number number one. We've had a couple clients now that come to us because they stop servicing integrations. So, basically, as a modern e-commerce company, when you start scaling your wholesale, if you past basic writing of an invoice, when you start getting into EDI, Mmm when you start.

Josh Sanders: 16:28

Probably multi warehouse inventory as well.

Jared Ward: 16:31

Yes, that's so. We've had somebody come on Specifically just for the reason they stopped servicing their wookon. Basically, you can't. You can't push inventory to two separate WooCommerce stores. It's like little things like that little missing Functionalities that a modern e-commerce company will run into all the time. Like you can't have to Shopify integrations, well, a lot of people have to shop by stores.

Brendon Beebe: 16:55

I think a key thing to note. First them, and especially anyone that got acquired around that time, like they were required long enough to go that and they're still working as a company. But innovation happens while the original founders are there, as soon as they're acquired and kind of shipped off to into it and that's in this respect and innovation stops and it's just more of kind of like maintenance phase and so I think you saw a lot of great things come out of trade get go and everybody loved trade get go, never anything bad.

Jared Ward: 17:20

And that's why QuickBooks acquired them exactly.

Brendon Beebe: 17:23

But as soon as acquisition happens and all of the founders leave, you're left with just kind of the shell of a corporation and it just continues working as is and for exit, like a good example is the it's.

Jared Ward: 17:33

It's now so common for a company to have two Shopify stores or two WooCommerce stores Mm-hmm like they'll use one for wholesale one for this, and so it like these new things that e-commerce companies are doing all the time. Or, for example, just how usable is your system if you have a 3pl?

Brendon Beebe: 17:51

things like Ever since 2012 it's all the trends of the last four to six years where we're seeing lots of people using 3pls, we're seeing lots of people where, where I store their product in multiple warehouses All these recent trends weren't something that was built into trade. Get go and QuickBooks commerce isn't gonna be able to catch up.

Jared Ward: 18:09

Multi warehouse. So like the rise of FBA being a, but like a quick replenishment flow for that Forecasting for a brand that has FBA, your own warehouse, a 3pl and wholesale mm-hmm like it's become more integration heavy.

Josh Sanders: 18:24

So if you're not able to integrate seamlessly with an, an OMS and 3pls, wms and also like to your point, sales channels kind of, you're losing out on customers.

Jared Ward: 18:37

Okay, so what would you rate quick book commerce scale from one to ten?

Brendon Beebe: 18:41

I Don't know enough to give a rating, I skip.

Jared Ward: 18:46

I'd give it a six. I was gonna say six or seven for the price, if If bought, here's bottom line, if you're a brand that's complicated, doing from hundred thousand to about three million dollars a year, great system, you'll have to Jerry rig it and as you start growing and get more volume, it's not, it won't work for you. But if you, if you fall in that, it's a DC starting point. It's really good. Okay, all right. Next one we have let's do Zoho inventory. Who here has interacted with Zoho inventory?

Josh Sanders: 19:20

I have you probably know more than.

Brendon Beebe: 19:23

Myself. I just know it's kind of a Zoho's more. Pick your module right.

Jared Ward: 19:28

Yeah, so they actually remind me a lot of odoo.

Jared Ward: 19:33

I don't know if people have drawn parallels like that before, but there's so like Zoho is very modular, mm-hmm, I think they're most known for their CRM, but they have inventory, they have accounting, they have they kind of have everything and it's it's for the down market companies that don't need support and implementation. And you have Zoho specific developers who can just Jerry rig it to work. So very similar to like the problems of odoo, I would say Zoho is, it's really modular. It feels clunky for a small company because it's there's like very there's very rigid rule sets but you can pay a developer to Kind of morph it to your needs.

Brendon Beebe: 20:18

Yeah, I was gonna say the same thing. I'm more familiar with audio, but it's the same idea of it's more of a very generic software, I think. Where it falls apart is it's not built for. When you, excel is a very generic product, net sweets very generic, and when you have these generic products, they tend not to work really well. For your specific use case it works Okay and so when you compare it to a system that's built for an e-commerce company, it's just gonna be easier to implement, easier to use, built around your specific use cases.

Jared Ward: 20:46

You know, and I would say the who who is Zoho good for well? Zoho is most known for their CRM, so I like what I would say is, if you're a small wholesale company who's on Zoho CRM, in their accounting You'd probably use Zoho's inventory tool. Mm-hmm.

Jared Ward: 21:03

It can do most everything you need it to do. It's gonna be really rigid and you're gonna reach a certain point where either you're gonna have to churn off of it and go to a totally different. That's the risk when you churn off of Zoho, like you're adopting a totally different ecosystem.

Brendon Beebe: 21:19

So yeah, cuz you could even be on Zoho website, zoho email, zoho I don't know, has everything it has everything and it's a and that, for better or worse, like it doesn't do everything.

Jared Ward: 21:29

The best, mm-hmm I would say, especially for modern e-commerce. What do I mean by that? Like well brand that does that sells on Shopify and WooCommerce and they do a little bit of wholesale. So user interface I would give Zoho. I'd give them a solid, like eight out of ten. It's pretty good and they and their mobile view is actually really good. It's really well developed. Why would somebody use them? I would say if you're a wholesale brand in the Zoho ecosystem between 100k and 3 million, similar to QuickBooks Commerce, super good tool, really cheap, not gonna onboard you like you'll get Every you'll. You'll be able to call them to their call center or email them. Email, get a support ticket going and they'll just refer you to an FAQ. So if you're somebody who needs implementation, like I want to go so mm-hmm.

Jared Ward: 22:21

So where we'll see we were people see breakdowns, I think, like Brendan said, in the rigidity of the system, in when you need help with implementation, some of the things that we've already said before. Now, what would what we, what would we rate as a lot of 10?.

Josh Sanders: 22:46

Josh, probably five or six. From my point of view, I Think it depends. Depends what kind of company you're.

Brendon Beebe: 22:53

A hundred thousand dollar company. It's probably Exactly what you need. And if you're just not happy with Excel and you just want something a little bit more, you know it's probably an eight out of ten for you.

Josh Sanders: 23:04

If I'm a million dollar wholesale for like specialty if you're already in their ecosystem, it's a decent fit.

Jared Ward: 23:11

If I'm a million dollar wholesale brand that just needs a cheap tool. Eight out of ten. Yeah. It's really good. If I'm like a ten million dollar multi-channel e-commerce company that sells direct consumer and wholesale and I sell the big box retail, oh, that's like a. It's like a four out of ten.

Josh Sanders: 23:30

Oh right, you don't want to get off quick, so you could get into the Different ecosystem odd dollar.

Brendon Beebe: 23:35

If you're using Zoho at that size, you're mostly an XL, I bet.

Jared Ward: 23:39

Yep, yeah, okay, next our favorite sin seven oh, since. Bren has a lot of opinions on this.

Brendon Beebe: 23:49

Yeah, I think I most. I know them incredibly well and it's because I think they're very much in our ecosystem. They have a really decent tool and their specialty, built for e-commerce. So I feel like this is the first one where it's built for kind of a bigger brand. They want to start doing things correctly and it was built for that specific use case. I'm I mean, I haven't and If are we talking about since seven, or we talking about deer? So both so since seven.

Jared Ward: 24:17

Omni and since seven, core Okay, which that was formerly deer systems.

Brendon Beebe: 24:21

So I think this kind of leads into. The biggest downfall right now is and here's some background for those that maybe want it but you have since seven and you have deer systems, both form, I think, one's New Zealand, one's Swedish, it doesn't matter but both foreign companies since seven purchase deer and now has turned deer into kind of the main system. So that's what they're pushing heavily really right now, I think in both scenarios in seven core, yeah, since seven core, I think.

Brendon Beebe: 24:48

In both scenarios Developments died. I don't know if they're rolling out anything new. It's mostly pushing the kind of this freemium, self onboarding and so you buy. The first roadblock you run to is when you want support. You're you have to look up deer. All the support is in seven and you're kind of in this like when I'm looking at a support Article, my reading since seven or I read reading deer Is this an old article or a new article? Yeah, like understanding what am I supposed to do is really confusing, and I think that's the most customers I see that are on that platform. That's one of their biggest complaints.

Jared Ward: 25:21

So, first off, user interface, for since heaven I would give it a solid eight out of ten, I think. Just as far as modern UI go, especially since seven core, yeah, I think. Same it's like same as QuickBooks commerce, like clean white it's 20 it's.

Brendon Beebe: 25:39

It's a very typical web 2.0 2010 UI like it looks like every other bootstrap app that came out around that same time. Yep and they it was kind of that first generation spa Applications where they were rebuilding enterprise apps like net suite in the cloud, and that's very much what you have.

Jared Ward: 26:02

Yeah, so why would somebody use them? I think that the the use case for since heaven Omni or since heaven core, it's the same thing. It's I'm a brand. I'm a small brand running into inventory issues. I Google in like best inventory systems. They dominate mid-market PPC, for sure, and in their system is very much their system. They're marketing the brand. It's meant to capture you as a self onboarding customer and they tried. They just flink. The way I describe it. It's like onboarding since heaven core is like okay, I need some, I need an inventory system, I just want something to like solve my problems. You go into since heaven's funnel.

Jared Ward: 26:46

You you sign up for an account and it's like they just fling you this massive system Plunk right in front of you.

Jared Ward: 26:53

You're like what is this thing? And you just try to figure it out and maybe you implement like 10% of it, but it's like it's kind of working and it's cheap. That's how I would I describe. That's how I would describe most of the experience of since I'm a core since heaven. Nobody, like nobody loves it and it. The people that do love it are really savvy operators that know how to like make it work for them.

Josh Sanders: 27:15

Mm-hmm, that was gonna be my point. It's kind of a system. Most of the people I've run into that are honest is something like that, are pretty well-versed operators, like Usually not their first rodeo running an e-com brand, so they can either Figure the system out or maybe they've even used it before in a prior, prior company. But that's what I ran into with them is like you have to be pretty well-versed In e-com ops to like get it up and go well.

Brendon Beebe: 27:42

Well. So I think that thing with dear systems is it, if I remember correctly is built by accountants. It was kind of this idea of hey, let's take the ERP to the cloud, it can replace our quick books. But what they failed at is the accountant isn't the operator, the accountant isn't the one fulfilling orders or receive an inventory, and so a lot of the processes and steps in there are like they make a lot of sense when you're an accountant and you're like going through the steps, like okay, that makes sense, but then when you're the operator, it's just unnecessary work and you're kind of stuck in this. I think, and what I see a lot of people do, is they sign up for it, it's a free trial. They get in and then like crap, I'm completely lost and you hire out a consultant to come in and help set it up.

Josh Sanders: 28:23

Why would that be, you think? Do you think like operators are more reactive than like an accountant? We're like what do you think like the biggest, why it wouldn't work very well for an operator versus like Someone with an accounting brain per se?

Jared Ward: 28:36

Look, I'll give an example doing a transfer order. If I do a transfer order, if I'm receiving a PO, how we do it in luminous, where we prioritize the operational flow. Is you just want to be reactive? Do it quick.

Josh Sanders: 28:48

Whereas theirs is like you gotta take the line out of the steps.

Jared Ward: 28:51

Yeah, well, dear dear, is gonna prioritize the stuff that you fill out in the form.

Josh Sanders: 28:56

It's going to require whatever steps needed for a clean Like the downstream accounting data, so kind of like like an in an extensive for example or I mean we're kind of Probably something similar in there if you do like an inventory adjustment, like if you want to just change something quick, it gives you like four or five required fields to just like change inventory. So that could be a good example of like maybe too many steps for an operator, whereas an accountant Focused person might want those specific things.

Jared Ward: 29:32

Yeah, Okay. So what would we rate our competitors in seven core and since of an omni?

Brendon Beebe: 29:41

Brendan. Um, I think it. I think it can do everything you want, and if you're an expert in the system, you do really well.

Jared Ward: 29:51

I Give it a five out of ten and it's because we've ran it, I've earned, there's so many people in since seven and the reason why it's five out of ten is Support. So it's great that you rebuilt net suite in the cloud, but if you can't actually implement your customers and get them to full usage, See, yeah, I give since seven.

Brendon Beebe: 30:15

I think it's an eight honestly. But that's purely from a Tech point of view. I've never used it personally to run an e-commerce brand and so I've never had to call the support team and I'm more tech savvy so I can like figure things out. And for me, if I were running my own company of luminous didn't exist, I think I would just use in seven because it's cheap, it's easy to get in. I tried a call tree.

Jared Ward: 30:36

So when I was CEO of call tree and we were implementing a system, I I tried since seven for free really but I the way it handled bundles and the ship station integration. It just like I needed somebody to show me how it worked and Back then also the support. Our calls weren't super great Mm-hmm at least on the use case that I was looking for. It was really difficult to get somebody on the phone.

Brendon Beebe: 31:00

And it's because they were purchased.

Jared Ward: 31:02

Well it's, it's big, it's their business model. Like there, I just don't. I don't like their business model, which is it's like Shoved a thousand people into a platform, churn 80% of them 20% stay, spend more money on PPC. Yeah, I Don't know. We're like we're the complete opposite of that. Yeah it's like no money on PPC. We don't say we're self onboarding, but we make sure you have a freaking great experience.

Josh Sanders: 31:31

So tech wise pretty good, but like overall with implementation and onboarding, if you expect any sort of questions to be answered in a timely fashion or like any sort of hand-holding, if you need any help set up, you're like good luck.

Jared Ward: 31:46

So who's a good fit for, since seven, I'd say, savvy operators of medium-sized e-commerce businesses? So if you're not too complicated Like say you just use ship station couple skews, you filled a Amazon.

Josh Sanders: 32:00

I don't own warehouse like that's probably, and if you used a similar system in the past. Definitely not a good fit, though, if you're going from like Google Sheets directly to it.

Brendon Beebe: 32:11

If you want to figure out, I think probably helps if you have an accounting background or an alice, yeah, that's. And. How accountants work on the back end. Yeah, you understand then how, since seven works. Yeah.

Jared Ward: 32:22

Okay, next let's do. Let's talk about Odoo. Who here has that experience with Odoo?

Brendon Beebe: 32:32

I Ran to anybody using Odoo before.

Jared Ward: 32:36

I've I've ran to one person using I've heard a lot about it really. So Odoo, I think they were founded like in the early 2000s Mm-hmm, they fundraise way back then. Their whole thing is like they're a open source, open source, buffet style ERP modular, really cheap. You can just pick and choose the modules that you use. Open source so you can build on top of it. Honestly, the only thing I can say is it's really cheap and All the reviews and the one review that I have heard about it is that it's again support.

Jared Ward: 33:11

Mm-hmm support is very lacking. It's you have to pay for somebody to help on board it and you have to have a custom developer.

Josh Sanders: 33:17

Yeah, that's my eyes, I'm eyes it otherwise. It's it will not work. That's what's scary about the really general systems is You're gonna probably have to plan to get an in-house developer, pay someone to do custom work, which is Can get pricey quick.

Brendon Beebe: 33:34

I like their checkout screen when you go pay for Odoo. Yeah they have the list of 200 modules and you get a pick up.

Jared Ward: 33:40

I love their pricing.

Josh Sanders: 33:42

I like billboards too.

Brendon Beebe: 33:43

I Want fulfillment and I want inventory and I want quick books and I want and I'm a cool fried wonton.

Josh Sanders: 33:52

This is my favorite.

Jared Ward: 33:55

So, uh what? We can make this pretty quick since we don't have a lot of experience with it. What would I raid Odoo out of 10? I don't know if, probably like a seven out of ten if you have custom developer. Yeah, I have no idea.

Josh Sanders: 34:11

I don't, I can't, I don't know if I could give a good rate. I think it speaks.

Brendon Beebe: 34:14

I think it says a lot that we've never ran into somebody who is using Odoo. I don't means you're probably using Odoo and your sub 100,000.

Jared Ward: 34:22

That's so. That's what I've always thought was like. Isn't that so odd? We run into people all the time. Prospects that's the first question. What are you using? Mm-hmm? One prospect who's using Odoo?

Brendon Beebe: 34:32

Wow, that's it yeah like. I think that says it's probably incredibly hard to start using. It's probably disconnected enough for it's not super friendly. You're probably leaning more towards Zoho, which is a little better.

Jared Ward: 34:45

Yes, that okay, so that's a good point. I would rather use Zoho. Yeah it's a trusted ecosystem that's been built out over time. Really good CRM and you you'll be able to figure out the inventory tools. So yeah. Okay, let's move on to our mid-market systems. So Number one, which we have actually a lot of experience with. This one, this will be a good one skew vault.

Josh Sanders: 35:12

Skew vault. Skew vault again, best friend quick background.

Jared Ward: 35:15

They, they were. We always talk about this. 2008 to 2015, renaissance of like inventory tools were. What if we rebuild that sweet in the cloud? And then everybody rebuilt that sweet in the cloud? They were. They were part of that. I think they quickly started. I think they Skew vault has a big chunk of mid-market e-commerce and I think they were just one of the first to market that, marketed their product effectively. But just for reference, skew vault pricing is anywhere from like $100 a month to like $3,000 a month. They serve mid-market. They're like a multi-channel inventory tool for e-commerce. We've ran into tons of clients with them. I've implemented skew vault. Let's rate the UI first. I'll rate the UI Solid four out of ten.

Brendon Beebe: 36:10

It's not like a dynamic 365 UI, but I mean we're talking. Skew vault is like a 2004 company like this was dot-com. Bubble bust Come thing has been around for 20.

Jared Ward: 36:21

I just remember navigating their skew page, and then they're like though I was just trying to find inventory in a bin.

Brendon Beebe: 36:30

It was like well, yeah, and you have to think this was a company like kiss was built before Amazon existed.

Josh Sanders: 36:36

Oh, that oh, that explains, it explains a couple of things I ran into.

Jared Ward: 36:43

Yeah, well, that skew vault breaks down with all of the modern problems of it. So, for example, when I implemented skew vault, the biggest issues I would say we're with the user interface. Like it was just clunky to find my way around, but it was actually bundles. So, qualtree, we were heavy in bundles and kits and Setting them up was just a absolute nightmare. And then the way it's inventory synced with kits. You will run into issues if you use skew vaults and you and you sell through a lot of bundles.

Brendon Beebe: 37:25

Is that just because they came out before, I in Shopify feels like the one that populized bundles. They came out before, that was a big thing.

Jared Ward: 37:33

I'm not sure. I just know that our inventory sync was always incorrect. Because what? What is the time from a tech perspective? What is the time that it takes to sync, to get the virtual stock of a kit or a bundle?

Brendon Beebe: 37:46

that was the issue we would. So you'd take an order in of a bundle, it would have to deduct from all the other bundles and then push up those updates.

Jared Ward: 37:55

Yes, and that round trip time and for Qualtree one product could be across like no joke. Hundreds of bundles.

Brendon Beebe: 38:01

Hundreds, and so how long was it taking for you guys?

Jared Ward: 38:04

At least 15 minutes, sometimes more. That's what it, because we were having issues with selling through it and selling out.

Jared Ward: 38:11

We were constantly having to like, like, oh my god, because we had thousands of skews pushing to different channels and I remember we were having a Jerry rig like all these buffers, and then like the buffer was too much and then we'd have to go and change the buffers and turn them off, and then I Was just I should remember a nightmare and like constantly on the phone with support and they just didn't really know what to tell us. Then, on top of I would say, the, the ship station integration. So we use ship station at the time. They don't sync up very well with OMS.

Jared Ward: 38:44

Is so something that luminous is really well? First off, we can play with any order management system on the market. That's how we were architected skew vault. It just it's so Rigid, it's really no, it's just your, your OMS is over here doing what it's doing and then your inventory system is here. There's like no connect. I can't see what's going on in in ship station If the label is generated, any of the data there, whereas with luminous, like we basically like weird ship station sales order, you can see.

Jared Ward: 39:19

But we push like all the data back to luminous, even like address verifications, and it's it's just difficult to see.

Brendon Beebe: 39:28

So is it built more like your fulfillment over here and you have our warehouse over here.

Jared Ward: 39:32

Yes, we're sending the orders to fulfillment and then it just happens like and that was to the day, because what? What would fall apart for us is we were just constantly auditing inventory.

Jared Ward: 39:45

I just didn't know was they. They had quantity logs but like I could go back and see what depleted at what time. But because those tech pieces were so they weren't integrated very well. We could never like actually QC was going on.

Jared Ward: 40:01

Another issue with skew vault was data auditing. That's this is literally why I came up with purgatory and luminous. So when you have a lot of channels and you have a different skew for all these different channels, skew vault did not have a good way To have an alternate skew and on top of that, if there was no, there's no barrier for the data coming in. So let's say I have like seven different channels and I have thousands of orders coming in a day. It's really common to for a. An order comes in and the skew is not mapped to the inventory skew or the skew that you're using for your inventory items. With skew vault, you just like it's just a shot in the dark. You're like closing your eyes for a month and then you open them at the end. You're like, okay, let's see how bad inventory is off and then you're like why?

Jared Ward: 40:58

is it off? What's going on? And I would have to manually audit data every single month like okay, well, it's because this channel manager didn't have the skew. Okay, we set up an SOP. This one is missed right here on this. The integration didn't pull in that skew. Okay, they can't do alternate skews for a bundle, like all those things together, and it was just like wow.

Jared Ward: 41:19

Mmm so a skew vaults because of the data auditing, bundling, sba fulfillment or a replenishment flow, like all of the modern things that have popped up in the last, the integrations with an OMS Linking up with another 3PL, like all those things it was. It was really good, like if it was 2010 and you had an e-commerce store on Shopify, you ship station like Freakin awesome solid, but nowadays I would I would rate skew vault like a four out of ten. Mmm, that's really harsh.

Josh Sanders: 42:03

I'd second that, though, because I spent some time. We just took someone off and I spent a little bit of time in skew vault and it was tough to find things like even people on that team were like, oh, you'd have to ask the warehouse manager how to do that. Like it was very a Lot of people within the same company, like you had to go to a specific person to know how to do something. It was very like Not very well connected, so like they did a lot of lot tracking and it was so difficult to like find. Just show me like a dashboard of my inventory across different lots. It was like you had to go and search the specific skew. So data visibility it was. It was tough. That's, that was my experience.

Brendon Beebe: 42:45

Okay. Well, if we're going, our skills might be different. If we're going, like one is, I have no idea why you would ever use the system. I would give it a one. Why would you use skew vault? It's a. What scenario would you ever be like?

Josh Sanders: 43:02

Maybe there's so many better tools yeah just using ship station or not ship station, just using Shopify to sell, and Then your fulfillment is very, very straightforward.

Jared Ward: 43:13

Well then, why not just use shop? Yeah, why not?

Josh Sanders: 43:17

You got me there Shopify in an OMS. Sorry, Actually it doesn't even matter.

Jared Ward: 43:23

Skew vault was bought by lin works, so it's actually, and lin works is a far superior tool, so has it have they gone through a similar thing?

Josh Sanders: 43:28

Do you know what the other ones we've talked about? It seems like when people get acquired, they're interested in customer support and on oh yeah, it goes away.

Jared Ward: 43:37

They don't care the eventually I'm sure they're just gonna merge. They're gonna try to get all the clients off of skew vault on the lin works.

Josh Sanders: 43:45

I bet I might be wrong and then probably same thing is like a deer or a sin seven, where it's like hey, we're just gonna get, we're just gonna pump money into PPC and we don't care about churn all that much.

Jared Ward: 43:57

That's for sure how skew vault was.

Josh Sanders: 43:59

Yeah, that was their model Yep.

Jared Ward: 44:01

Okay, next. Oh well, what time is it? Two thirty, holy crap. We might have to do a part two. How, how much longer can we go, abby, oh?

Josh Sanders: 44:17

Really just Divide up.

Jared Ward: 44:19

Podcasting is yes, okay, so next let's do this. We make this really fast. Finale inventory Is anybody have any experience with?

Brendon Beebe: 44:30

yeah, I actually know quite a bit. I think it's a fine software. It's definitely like 20 I in 2000s vibes Even their app and everything is very it's confusing, to say the least. They have a lot of Function. They're very specific to inventory, though they they know where they're like their specialty is, and outside of it I don't think they go much. So as far as like a good example is they're picking pack fulfillment. It's actually fairly nice if you just want to do inventory in there and you just want to fulfill them in there. But the app is like a 2010 app, like it's kind of weird. There's like the configuration settings you have to like go into and it's this long list of about a hundred values. You have to go through the documentation to figure out what means what. But at least for my point again, I've never used it, but from what? Just a pure text standpoint, like okay, it does the job well.

Jared Ward: 45:25

What about cogs? Like how I can't? I remember there was. I didn't say specifically wrong with the way finale tracks cogs. I remember some of our accounting partners talking about that. I'm not sure it's so I remember with. I Might be wrong, but with since seven core. Since seven core was rigid, like if, if you receive something after the books were closed or after, like cogs, was recognized at the cell, then, dear, you had to like unlock it and Mm-hmm and they.

Jared Ward: 46:05

I think that what they were saying with finale was it was super flexible, like it would go back and Backdate the cogs.

Brendon Beebe: 46:12

Oh yeah, yeah, I In my mind I can see there was a.

Jared Ward: 46:16

I just know that there was a debate among accountants like which one's better Like the most boring debate of all time. What's better since I've been core finale? On how they track cogs.

Josh Sanders: 46:26

Yeah, but I don't my latest interaction with them was Very difficult to Specify a skew that's like a kit, like a virtual stock unit, versus something that's more like build materials, assembly order Kind of item. And then when this person reached out to the support like, hey, help me set this up, it was kind of like Good luck kind of thing. So their inventory was getting all out of whack with what's the difference between something that's just a kit versus something that, like we actually need to go in and assemble?

Brendon Beebe: 47:00

Before we sell, that goes towards like then that's where I said they're very specific to Inventory. And if it goes into assembly orders or like manufacturing, no, no, they are purely. Here's my inventory. Here's how I pick it from the warehouse. Um, here's my very specific flow that I go through.

Josh Sanders: 47:18

So good, good option if you have like a very specific set of products. That's kind of straightforward to fulfill and get out the door.

Brendon Beebe: 47:25

Yeah, if you don't want a system of record or if you don't want to, it's not going to be like your reporting back end. It's not going to be your forecasting back end. It's going to be your warehouse management system. That's all it's going to do.

Jared Ward: 47:37

Yeah, okay, next um I have katana. Okay, so katana, katana is a. I would they call themselves in the rp? I would classify them as an rp.

Brendon Beebe: 47:54

I think katana is a beautiful system. It looks really cool. Some super neat flows related to manufacturing and I like a lot of their concepts around uh, manufacturer to stock, manufacturer to order, uh, you know, build to order a lot of like these more niche Sh things related to manufacturing. I really like their flows.

Jared Ward: 48:16

I remember finding katana and researching in depth with you over the years. It made me realize that, um, when you're sort of like a niche Ecommerce merchant kind of like Qaltree was the company that I was at it was like oh man.

Jared Ward: 48:34

I wish we would have used katana like. That would have been a great system for us. And that's what I would say anybody who does any type of manufacturing in house Um, I would 100 look at them and go look at them, demo them. They probably have a really cool flow Like made to order, made to stock. Just how they do it is is really cool.

Brendon Beebe: 48:55

Yeah, like their order. You. You'll see all your orders, kind of like a ship station, and I'll say, hey, you actually have to manufacture 15 of these, it'll you? One button clicks it creates the assembly order. Push it off to your manufacturer. Like a lot of really neat flow. I think concept it tends not to work a lot of times in like practice, like I think we run to a lot of people that try to and it's like I didn't really work. Yeah, in theory it all works great.

Jared Ward: 49:20

Yeah, so I, katanas, I would say first, I love their user interface, um, especially I love it when software color codes things to make it even more simple, and I feel like they do that really well in their flows. Um.

Jared Ward: 49:36

I would say, katanas, an excellent system if you're medium-sized Manufacturing e-commerce company. So if you, if you buy raw materials, you manufacture them in house and have full, full fill in flow, um, then it's probably a great system, or it could be a great system for you. Um, they've really thought out a lot of the flows, um, that make a reactive E-commerce company like that really easy to operate.

Brendon Beebe: 50:06

Why don't they end up being a good? I feel like we've recommended them to a few people and nobody's ever been able to implement them. Well, why does it fail?

Jared Ward: 50:16

So I think, where it's failed before because I've recommended it to a lot of people before it fails in because they do Once you have the raw materials. Once you have the raw materials in the warehouse and, for example, you're a brand who's You're, you're made to order, you're 100% made to order. So you, you sell products online, you purchase raw materials, you receive them. Katana nails the flow from receiving through shipment, but it was everything else. So it was like man. We just couldn't get their forecasting or demand planning to to actually work or, um, the same culprit. It's like wholesale.

Jared Ward: 50:57

Um it was really difficult to allocate wholesale inventory to this or, like have it run through a separate flow. Um, edi. Yeah, a lot of the same culprits.

Brendon Beebe: 51:09

Hmm, interesting. So it's all the the manufacturing, but everything else is kind of you have to pick and choose what you want.

Jared Ward: 51:16

Yep, I'm trying to think there's.

Josh Sanders: 51:20

What's there onboarding like? Do you know?

Jared Ward: 51:23

I'm not sure. I guess it's probably the same everybody else is kind of self onboarding cost a couple thousand dollars, you get an account manager that comes on the phone every once in a while. Hmm but you more or less have to figure it out. Okay, next let's do Extensive.

Josh Sanders: 51:48

Josh, you just spend a lot of time in extensive also some background or fast extensive Um.

Jared Ward: 51:52

They acquire skewbana and 3 pl central. So probably what people are thinking of if we say extensive is probably skewbana skewbana 3 pl central um.

Josh Sanders: 52:05

First, I'd say it's a decent option for like medium sized 3 pl's that need to deal with like Clients logging into some sort of portal be able to see like order information, things like that. So For like 3 pl's I think pretty good option. Um, what I've run into is it doesn't speak very well to like an order management system In terms of just that data interchange is kind of non-existent. Um, like I've worked with a lot of clients that they do like a manual push Of orders from like extensive when I say extensive skewbana To like a ship station.

Josh Sanders: 52:40

So notice a lot of that where the oms and extensive are kind of siloed in two different places which makes it difficult for fulfillment and even inventory status getting updated back and forth. Um, so that'd be the biggest thing. And I've also ran into even just like Something pretty simple, like I've heard complaints of not being able to edit like a po, for example, where it's not as reactive and extensive. A lot of it seems as if if you do something it's it's there for good. It doesn't seem like there's a lot of give and take on what you can edit and what you can't.

Jared Ward: 53:14

Yeah, we've had some companies where the the breakdown with extensive was. For example, if your subscription company that constantly Would would prefer to automatically merge or automatically split orders. So some logic there would be like, if I have a subscription order that's supposed to hit and I'm upsold, something like I buy this thing In addition to the order that's going to hit, okay, well, that's going to come.

Jared Ward: 53:43

Now, that's going to come down into extensive as two separate orders and there's no logic where we can automatically merge those together, um or automatically split. Say Again, my subscription order is hitting and I'm at a stock of one of the Products in that subscription bundle. Well, like what most people would want to do is just okay, well, automatically just split the one that's out of stock Into into a different order. So that's in a lot of instances like that, where we we literally have seen companies because of skewbond is inability to Handle certain use cases like that, people have been spending 10, sometimes 20 hours a week of manual Splitting and merging and just play with your order data, which I would say that you can pretty confidently say that doesn't work.

Josh Sanders: 54:39

Yeah, you can do better things with your time, for sure, yep. So what would we give extensive out of?

Jared Ward: 54:44

10? I'd give extensive probably.

Josh Sanders: 54:48

Five or six, I think, for like inventory management purposes, like there's some decent functionality there as well as like the fulfillment piece, but the way it talks with other systems isn't great. I'd also say that I don't think like the user interface is fantastic either. So like finding what you're looking for Is kind of a chore as well. So it's not super clear cut on what actions you're supposed to take and all that kind of stuff.

Jared Ward: 55:16

Okay, um, all right, well, we can go pretty fast on this one. Anybody heard of DePasco? Yes, I've heard of it. Yeah, I've just I've ran into.

Jared Ward: 55:29

DePasco a couple times. So DePasco is really interesting. So apparently it's like this. They also have like a net suite esk offer, similar to us, where they'll come in and it's like a full-scale implementation and they'll also. They'll also customize the system. So they also. They too have a big, massive system, but what they do is in their implementations you pay a premium but you can basically customize the system to your operations and they'll implement it and it's going to be less expensive than that suite, but still very expensive. I've actually heard really good things about DePasco. It's like a less well-known system. Again, it's. You're still gonna have to pay a fat premium, hundreds of thousands of dollars to customize it.

Brendon Beebe: 56:24

So it's not a ERP, though it's more of a WMS. Right, it's a WMS, yeah, so it's like I think we tend to see three PLs using DePosco more than a brand wouldn't use DePosco probably.

Jared Ward: 56:35

Yeah, a brand probably wouldn't. And again, with all of these tools, the functionality is normally lacking. With a multi-channel e-commerce brand who does wholesale, and does EDI?

Brendon Beebe: 56:46

But yeah, like as a as a brand, you probably run into DePosco because there are three PLs using it and though IK you have to use it.

Jared Ward: 56:53

So I would say DePosco is a great fit for a, for a three PL or a fulfillment center. That's medium-sized and they have a bunch of custom flows.

Josh Sanders: 57:05

Pick and pack flows, fulfillment complicated.

Jared Ward: 57:09

But it's more like on the complex side. Yeah. And like you want a custom system and you looked into that. But I would go with DePosco. If you're looking to build a custom system, say like Ligeewa or Veracor is not gonna work for you and you're looking down the route of a custom system, I would say go with DePosco or at least get them quoted. Yeah.

Jared Ward: 57:30

It can customize a lot of their modules to your needs. Okay, next is I'm trying to save the best for last, so we're gonna do like the last two are gonna be fulfilledio and net suite, so save all your energy for that. We just gotta get through Fishbowl, so Fishbowl inventory planner, and then we'll get to fulfill and net suite. Okay, local Utah company Fishbowl.

Brendon Beebe: 58:01

Fishbowl, so I don't honestly know much about Fishbowl. I've met a lot of people that have purchased Fishbowl. I've never met anybody who has implemented Fishbowl, though.

Jared Ward: 58:10

So one of our clients, MF9.

Brendon Beebe: 58:14

Were they using Fishbowl Dude?

Jared Ward: 58:15

I've MF or not? Mf9.

Brendon Beebe: 58:18

Well, we can bleep out names.

Jared Ward: 58:19

Yeah, we'll bleep out names, but they put it as like we made a $60,000 donation to Fishbowl Because they, yeah, they paid $60,000 for an implementation $60,000. They came on site like a couple times trained. Yeah.

Jared Ward: 58:39

And then just left them. It was like, hey, it's not working like you said it would. They quoted them to go back on site. It was gonna be another $40,000. And they're just like, totally forgot, your system isn't working. Like the training you did does not fit our operations. Fishbowl, we've, josh and I have navigated this. Just ingredients was on it and we had to pull out data to. We had to export data to implement our inventory tool. So it was really really clunky, in fact, just like a basic report of give me the inventory, the on hand inventory numbers by bin and by product.

Jared Ward: 59:28

It was all over the place it was all over the place and then we finally found the export after, like, just poking around for a long time. And then you export it and the format is like I had to scrub it through chat, gbt, no way and to like the data entry of the Philippines, and it was still messed up.

Josh Sanders: 59:45

It's like they knew. It's like they knew, if you're doing that export they were switching systems, so they were gonna make it as hard as possible for you to do that, but I was at Fishbowl.

Jared Ward: 59:56

Fishbowl has a whole suite of products and so they have their own accounting tool, they have their own inventory tool, inventory fulfillment, and they have production. So who would use Fishbowl? I would say, like the people who I've seen using it effectively are the people who use its production or its manufacturing to its false capabilities. If you're just an e-commerce company that does light fulfillment, it's overkill and you're gonna make a $60,000 donation and have a horrible experience. Mark my words. I've only heard that experience.

Brendon Beebe: 1:00:31

Well, I think this is another 2001 company, likecom, bubble burst and bought out by a PE firm and it's just in maintenance mode. Maybe this podcast is a call out for anybody who actually uses Fishbowl. I'd be curious to hear how things are actually anybody who's implemented Fishbowl and is actively using it.

Jared Ward: 1:00:50

Well, we see a common thread with all of these systems, almost like 80% of them. What happens? So the founders are in it and they're building like a pretty cool tool, like Skuvaana in those days it was a really cool tool. Skuvault in those days was super cool. But they get bought out by some PE firm Roadmap Stalls. And then it just people are like oh man, this company sucks, it's so common.

Brendon Beebe: 1:01:14

Is that a sales pitch? At that point is the only answer net. Sweet then, why take the risk on a company that's gonna be bought out in five years?

Jared Ward: 1:01:22

See, I think that's why people go to the net sweet, and I think that's why we hear that all the time. It's like is this gonna be bought out? I mean, at the beginning I'd be like, of course not, of course the missus isn't gonna be bought out. But talking through all this it's like oh, it's a legitimate concern.

Brendon Beebe: 1:01:37

Every competitor at this point is bought out by PE firm and in maintenance mode.

Josh Sanders: 1:01:41

See, and it's not even just the functionality of, like the software itself, it's the integrations with other softwares that are being built, so like we've ran into Fishbowl not playing nicely.

Jared Ward: 1:01:51

You have to stay on your game. It was like ship station, right, you have to stay on your game.

Josh Sanders: 1:01:55

Like functionality of a system is one thing, but then if you are in maintenance mode and you aren't either deepening integrations or getting new ones, it's kind of like Like fair faircom, we can't use you.

Jared Ward: 1:02:05

That's a great example, like if you're Trade Gecko, or if you're QuickBooks Desktop or if, like just these products that have already been in quite Fishbowl, they probably don't have a fair integration.

Josh Sanders: 1:02:17

Well, and if they're onboarding strategy is like hey, good luck. Like self onboard. Where's the feedback?

Brendon Beebe: 1:02:24

Like truthfully where's the in the weeds feedback? Let's be feedback in your product team. To be fair, none of these companies have a product team problem. Okay, so there you go.

Josh Sanders: 1:02:31

There's two problems in one, so you're not getting feedback appropriately and you don't really care that much, so there you go.

Jared Ward: 1:02:40

Okay, let's dive into a this start, this fulfill in the word you're doing net, sweet net, sweet slash one. I want to spend some good time on that, okay. So fulfill, oh shit, sorry, fulfillio, they're an interesting one. They are most similar to us, I would say. So fulfill, honestly, they started out wholesale. They started out as like order management and fulfillment for a wholesale businesses and very, very similar to what's their name Order circle, and they came out around the same time as order circle, but they were able to expand and get a full ERP. So fulfill, they're building their own ecosystem. Super robust product, do a lot. Starts at $2,000 a month, very similar pricing.

Jared Ward: 1:03:39

I think the biggest difference is going to be that very similar to Sin7 core, sin7, omni. They're a foreign company, so fulfill was founded in India. I think Sin7 was founded in New Zealand. These foreign companies, they're just not as in touch with American operations and what it takes to actually implement a company. It's just a totally different vibe. Those systems and the way that, the way you interact with customer service for fulfill or Sin7 is not gonna be anywhere near like a net suite or luminous. I don't think any of you guys have had an experience with fill. We ran into a couple of companies on it.

Brendon Beebe: 1:04:28

I think the only feedback I've heard is on the surface they look sleek and modern. I mean, when you go to the website it's kind of impressive and they're still building new things and they still have a future, I believe. I don't think they've been bought out yet, right? Nope, nope, and so still rolling out really cool things. I think it gets more complicated when you actually jump into the software and they don't have an online public knowledge base. It's really difficult to find information. So you're very much on your own and if you've ever worked with a European country, a European company, kind of trying to figure things out, it's difficult. Just time zones, they're not working over time, they're nine to five. You're lucky to get them on email.

Jared Ward: 1:05:15

And then I would say the only companies that I've ran into on Fulfill. They're supplementing, they always churn to a bigger ERP. So it's supposed to be this robust tool, but every single person I've met on Fulfillio is also using NetSuite or some bigger ERP, which is weird because they also have their own financial suite.

Josh Sanders: 1:05:38

So they use Fulfillio for multi-warehouse inventory and forecasting typically.

Jared Ward: 1:05:44

Yep, well, not even forecasting.

Josh Sanders: 1:05:45

Not forecasting.

Jared Ward: 1:05:46

They're using Fulfill, it's Fulfill NetSuite and then some other tools.

Josh Sanders: 1:05:51

That's interesting. I'd be curious to see those companies specifically where they're doing their demand planning and forecasting. Are they truly using one of those tools or is it still Google Sheets, google Sheets the battle-tested Google Sheets to forecast?

Jared Ward: 1:06:10

OK, so last one, let's spend some good time on this one, I want to. Or just some good energy, all right, the bane of our existence. Netsuite. Influenting NetSuite would have killed my e-commerce.

Brendon Beebe: 1:06:26

No, so I have a lot to say. When I think we're coming into e-commerce in general, I would think I would surprise to even find small brands using NetSuite. They've done a really good job at going down market, because I would generally put NetSuite as it's Oracle NetSuite. Then you have JD Edwards and you have all these massive ERPs and it makes you ask why in the world are these $100 million brands using this massive enterprise software, and I think it says more to how they've been able to market themselves. When you go online, you've their e-commerce landing pages. It feels like, oh, these guys are built for me and since they can handle the big guys, they'll be able to handle me. No problem. But they miss the mark because even if you're a $100 million brand, you don't have 10,000 employees to run fulfillment and operations. You have a few people that are trying to just figure things out.

Jared Ward: 1:07:29

I'd say what people underestimate on a switch to NetSuite is you're moving. It's a step away from the e-commerce ecosystem. So we've ran into a lot of companies who are like $5 million $10 million a year not very big. They chose NetSuite and while they might have gotten a quote at $3,000, $3,500 a month OK, this is a good investment for my business. We'll get the bottom tier implementation like $50,000, $3,000 a month. That's actually not too bad.

Jared Ward: 1:07:58

The problem is you just implement NetSuite SuiteCommerce. You might have to actually have a database manager to train people how to do it. You might have to pay somebody $10,000 to train your employees SuiteCommerce. Now, you have to. If you use SuiteCommerce, for example, you have to pay an integrations company like $3,000, $5,000, $10,000 a year to make sure all of that data is integrating, is falling into Clavio correctly or into Shopify correctly or into whatever tool you're using in the e-commerce ecosystem. A lot of people underestimate yeah, you're buying this tool that should work, but it's going to cost whatever they quote. You just multiply that by three and that's how much it's actually going to cost you, and if you're willing to pay that price, then pay it, ok. So if you get a $50,000 quote, $3,000 a month. Multiply that by three and ask yourself OK, am I willing to pay $10,000 a month and $150,000 to get this up and going? Because that's what it's going to be, and it might even be more.

Brendon Beebe: 1:09:12

And you have to look at it. Netsuite is a generic product. Their specialties are like retail and manufacturing, and e-commerce is like a subset of a subset that they focus on, and so you're just this small fish in a massive ocean of products they service and so you have to get it to work. You have to bring in somebody and they have to customize it for you to get what you want. And it's not like a at least what's in 7, it's built for you, it's built for your type of company or NetSuite. It's massive ERP.

Jared Ward: 1:09:49

It's so interesting as we're talking about, as we just went through a list of all those competitors, as we're talking about NetSuite and big ERPs. Now it makes it like what Luminous is doing makes so much sense and the fact that somebody would choose NetSuite shows that nobody has emerged as the trusted go-to system of record for e-commerce. Nobody's emerged, so, yeah, I'd kind of use them for this. Quickbooks Commerce like well, the roadmap's stalling, they're not updating this. Or Odu, like no, I just probably wouldn't use them. It's like super cheap. Even Fulfill, it's like well, they're a foreign company, they don't really do this very well. It's so interesting I think that's so fascinating that out of all those competitors that we just listed, who would you actually if you had an e-commerce company today, multi-channel, wholesale, big box retail, so you're doing $10 million a year who would you choose?

Brendon Beebe: 1:10:48

Assuming Luminous didn't exist.

Jared Ward: 1:10:49

Yeah, assuming Luminous didn't exist.

Josh Sanders: 1:10:51

I think, I would sin seven.

Jared Ward: 1:10:58

I would probably try to figure out sin seven, yeah, and then be disappointed and Pissed off perpetually until I implemented that sweet yeah.

Josh Sanders: 1:11:08

Well, we've talked about it, Nobody gets fired for choosing net suite. Like I mean, they might like if you start paying tons of money, you go, you go under. But like I think people just see as the safe choice and so it's like, oh, like, oracle's a massive company, so we can trust them. Yeah, but then under the surface, like I've ran into multiple cases where you're paying for integrations and you're paying for a database manager.

Josh Sanders: 1:11:37

I've worked with a company in particular that no one knew how to run a report except for their database manager, and we were in the middle of implementation and and this database manager was gonna be leaving weeks later and so it was like, hey, anything you need from them, like, get it right away, because no one else knows how to get any of the other data. No one knows how to make changes to our website except for them, so it becomes a bottleneck. If only one person in your organization knows how to make changes or edit things Becomes a bottleneck. So I told those guys that net suite is literally it's a Maserati, but you have a cap.

Josh Sanders: 1:12:14

You can only go 30 miles per hour, that's a good cause I've never heard anyone that like I Haven't talked to anyone at. Like the market we're going after, where they say I use all of net suite, I use all of it like.

Jared Ward: 1:12:27

I use the finance, I use Forecasting, like you're sold on all of it, but you end up using 10% of it.

Josh Sanders: 1:12:33

Yeah, you're sold on all of it, but like you use the sort in portion of it, and so then you're kind of sitting there twirling your thumbs of like Dang, we're paying for all this stuff that we don't use well and you can use the rest, but the problem is like you have to customize it to your flow and they're like oh, here's a quote for that another and is it 75,000 dollars? We'll do that.

Jared Ward: 1:12:52

That's kind of just like what I already spent, like.

Brendon Beebe: 1:12:57

It makes me realize you have two choices. I, from operate perspective. You see all the competitors we went through, every single one has been bought, sold in kind of this stale state. There's very little innovation happening. And then you have net suite, which has been around for 30 years and I'll be around for another 30 years and it's like, hey, this seems like you know, I, this is the company I can bet, will be around for another 10. You wouldn't. Skew Bonnet won't be around for another 10, since seven probably won't be around for another 10. So do you go with the safe bet of like, hey, this will be around forever, or do you sacrifice and take a risk on, do I do the pain and go with a brand new company?

Jared Ward: 1:13:40

Yeah, it makes sense Now. Inter luminous, the last company, so obviously.

Josh Sanders: 1:13:49

We're biased.

Jared Ward: 1:13:51

Go luminous but luminous, honestly, like as we've. We discussed this topic to death. A big part like there's two massive parts of this discussion of what is a good system and one of those big parts is how are they? What is their offering, with implementation and ongoing support? That's massive and I think right off the bat, that's that's where we beat most of our competitors is.

Jared Ward: 1:14:21

We're not trying to blow up like since seven. We're like you're not Customer one of a thousand that have come in just this month and like you're not gonna get any support or hand-holding. That's just not. We're trying to nail every single client experience and scale with them. So our customer support is gonna be way superior. Like I can confidently say, if you try since seven or fulfill or katana yeah well, they're cool systems and some of their flows are pretty good and confidently tell you You're you're going to have a horrible experience if you have any level of complication in your implementation, if there's some complexity in your implementation process, you're gonna hate your life and you're going to wish Somebody could be like you could actually call somebody with the e-commerce experience that could help you set up your back and flow. I Think that's that's the biggest spot where we come in and then on the tech side.

Brendon Beebe: 1:15:22

I am from a tech perspective. I think what we've learned is we focus on the operator first. So what is what's going to work, what's gonna be the easiest to start using? I think we're trying to address the problem from a very Empathetic point of view of here's, the workflows, here, the things an operator has to Accomplish, and how do we minimize the steps or how do we get out of the way and let them implement as they need. And that's the perspective in the philosophy we take when we build products here and then specifically with the we.

Jared Ward: 1:15:56

A theme in this podcast has been like the modern e-commerce Troubles, like starting specialty wholesale arm of your business selling to Target and Walmart. So you know needing EDI capabilities, a specific type of forecasting and replenishment for multiple warehouses FBA, your own warehouse, the 3PO. We're building the. Our system is architected around those. Just the simple fact that we started building in 2019 Puts us so we're just in a much better spot than any of these 2010 companies were, and it's just the benefit of being in the present.

Jared Ward: 1:16:38

Why are we not gonna get acquired in the next two years.

Brendon Beebe: 1:16:41

I Think this is actually a really good discussion we should have is like how do you, how do you beat that concern of a so we not become?

Josh Sanders: 1:16:57

sale stagnation after getting acquired. Yeah, it's a major problem because you can see we've talked about. They were a lot of these people were founded during the same time acquired, and then you kind of stagnate post the phrase we're not here for a good time. You should just have on the website like luminous.

Jared Ward: 1:17:15

We're not here for a good time, we're here for a was that big Sean. Because I mean that concern comes up all the time and what I've told people is like I'm not in this for a quick exit. Like I Want to become the go-to system. I think our entire team kind of has that same. I don't want to just get to five million in ARR and then get acquired for. You know eight, nine figures, and then See, but actually stay around, you know that's.

Brendon Beebe: 1:17:49

It's just becomes a matter of like. You have to just trust me on this.

Jared Ward: 1:17:53

It's like trust me bro, trust me bro, I'm not gonna take a 10 million.

Josh Sanders: 1:18:00

It's, I wonder we might take a hundred million. I.

Brendon Beebe: 1:18:05

Think part of it has to come down to the other philosophy that we have and we want to be this open platform. Buying into luminous doesn't mean you're stuck for forever. Well, we'll, we'll, why we will offer a broad set of tools and you can use all luminous for everything. We also let you plug in Specialty products. If you want a point solution for fulfillment or a point solution for your OMS, we're not, you're not gonna require you to use us and we're gonna guarantee that that integration. Like the ship stations a great example Keep using ship station, you don't. You don't have to replace it, you don't have to get rid of it. You like it, keep using it. And we're just gonna promise we're gonna plug in the best and so if it comes one day, we're hey, luminous is no more. You know, hopefully, that means you can Switch to a point solution you enjoy if you feel like our forecasting just becomes stale.

Brendon Beebe: 1:19:00

It doesn't really matter, because our API is open, our data is freely accessible and you have that capability to switch to a different forecasting tool if you'd like.

Jared Ward: 1:19:09

It's the platform approach where, yes, luminous is building our own ecosystem of tools. Mm-hmm like. We will have the luminous ecosystem similar to like a zoho, but we're taking the platform approach. We're gonna make it very easy. For example, like is zoho inventory really that easy to plug into quickbooks, right? I I've seen people do it, but not necessarily easily and that's the approach that lumis gonna take is like we we will have our own OMS, but we'll make it super easy to plug in the ship station or any other tool. Mm-hmm.

Jared Ward: 1:19:41

I think that's gonna be the biggest difference.

Brendon Beebe: 1:19:44

Yeah, I think. I think that's the promise. It's not hey, we trust me, bro, we won't sell like a but it's hey, ethically, philosophically, we're an open platform and we're gonna try to be that as much as possible. Now, platform Will always exist, different from open source, like, oh right, yeah, open source is the wrong way.

Jared Ward: 1:20:04

I open source is like yeah, just get a cheap developer and have him, jerry, rig your tools to ship station and this, and that like no, no, no, like we mean we're. We're going to stay at the forefront of what is hip in e-commerce and make sure we can connect to the hip tech so that you can run your business, so that you don't have to go to net suite as a 10 million dollar company.

Josh Sanders: 1:20:23

Yeah, I'd also hope to like implementation, onboarding and client success remains similar, because right now my philosophy, like client success and our philosophy alumnus is like Like hey, we're gonna get this where it's working for you, like we're gonna get there.

Josh Sanders: 1:20:42

It's never one of those things where it's like oh, like we're not a good fit for these guys, like, so we're just gonna give up, kind of thing, you know, like it's, we're in very frequently we're in the weeds with operators figuring out flows, figuring out SOPs, what's gonna work best in the new system, because I I also like that. We're up front with people where it's like, hey, implementing a new system, it it takes some work, like it takes some collaboration and we're here to help. Yeah, so I hope that Through the years remains the same hey, cool Go team, all right.