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Peer-To-Peer Fulfillment: A Game Changer for Brands and Retailers

Manish Chowdhary is the Founder and CEO of Cahoot, a peer-to-peer order fulfillment network of e-commerce merchants working together to expedite shipping at a lower cost. He is also the Founder and CEO of Pulse Commerce, the leading enterprise cloud platform for order and inventory management.

Manish is an innovator, thought leader, and highly sought-after speaker for all facets of e-commerce, business methods innovation, and omnichannel supply chain and logistics optimization. Insights Success magazine recognized him as one of the 30 Most Innovative Business Leaders and has been featured in The New York Times, Forbes, Internet Retailer, and other leading publications.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

[02:14] Manish Chowdhary shares his professional background in the e-commerce space
[03:34] How Cahoot helps e-commerce business
[07:32] Placing inventory strategically in Cahoot’s warehouses
[09:50] Navigating Amazon Seller Fulfilled Prime
[13:04] Manish talks about the process of working with Cahoot and taking advantage of economy shipping
[19:24] How Cahoot helps brands with larger or seasonal products
[23:45] How Cahoot chooses the shipping method?
[25:41] Manish talks about Pulse Commerce and how it integrates with Cahoot

In this episode…

Are you an e-commerce brand struggling to distribute your products to your customers quickly? Where can you find the most cost-efficient method to deliver customer orders as promised?

Shipping products to customers fast and efficiently directly impacts your conversion rate and bottom line. Most e-commerce brands have suffered at the hands of traditional 3PLs because they’re expensive and don’t offer quality service. Manish Chowdhary recommends partnering with an ultrafast order fulfillment company to get an edge on other 3PLs. He shares his journey of building a full-service order fulfillment platform that enables merchants to fulfill orders for other sellers faster and at a lower cost.

In this episode of the Quiet Light Podcast, Pat Yates sits down with Manish Chowdhary, Founder and CEO of Cahoot, to discuss how e-commerce brands can fulfill orders faster, cheaper, and more reliably. Manish also talks about navigating the Amazon Seller Fulfilled Prime site and Pulse Commerce’s role in integrating with Cahoot.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

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Episode Transcript

Intro 0:08

Hey folks, it’s the Quiet Light Podcast where we share relentlessly honest insights, actionable tips and entrepreneurial stories that will help founders identify and reach their goals.

Pat Yates 0:32

Hello, and welcome to the Quiet Light Podcast. Again, my name is Pat Yates sitting in for Joe Valley. Today we have a great episode I’m really fascinated by a distribution, shipping fulfillment. And we have Manish Chowdhary with Cahoot and Pulse Commerce. Probably one of the more fascinating conversations I’ve had about distribution in a long time and Cahoot is the world’s first peer-to-peer e-commerce order fulfillment network powered by a patented business methods and innovative technology that allows e-commerce merchants to sell more offering superfast nationwide shipping to their customers nationwide. What they try to do is get your product in positions like Amazon FBA to have hopefully a little less storage and maybe a little more control on how you make the delivery. And then Pulse Commerce crosses over as an inventory management and full system that works interactively with it’s really incredible to hear some of the things he did and if you have a brand out there where you’re trying to look to work with seller fulfilled prime and he talks about something really interesting on a judgement in Europe that could change people’s ability to do seller fulfilled prime in the United States. Hopefully getting you to get your lead times down a little bit make sure things are arriving on time. But hopefully in a more economical standpoint. I think Manish is such a great resource to hear information from I enjoy this conversation very much. So I’m anxious to get to it. And here we go. Manish it’s great to have you in the Quiet Light Podcast. How you doing today?

Manish Chowdhary 1:54

I’m doing awesome, Pat. Thanks for having me.

Pat Yates 1:56

Hey, man, I appreciate you joining us today. I’m really excited about this conversation. I know you have a lot of things especially me, as an e-commerce entrepreneur, I love some of the things you’re doing your shopping cart, you got all kinds of things going on, which is great, but we’d love to hear about you tell us all about you where you’re from and a little bit about your background.

Manish Chowdhary 2:14

Awesome. Well, thanks for having me again. My name is Manish Chowdhary. I’m the founder and CEO of Cahoot. Cahoot is the world’s first peer-to-peer order fulfillment network. Happy to go into the details of that what that means and how that benefits merchants brands retailers. I also run a leading order and inventory management platform called Pulse Commerce. I’ve been involved in e-commerce since the very early days, built one of the first e-commerce platforms before the whole e-commerce platform was invented. This is going back to Yahoo day start you might recall. So deep experience and dealing with SMB retailers, Omni channel retailers have dealt with Fortune 500 brands all the way to startups. So happy to dive into anything and everything.

Pat Yates 3:04

That’s amazing. What’s funny, the listeners out there, Manish and I had a great conversation before we got on the podcast, he recognized my e-comm brand. And we had talked before in the past about doing some business funny how it comes full circle after 13 or 14 years. It’s really amazing. So yeah, he noticed we did a license with the lady from Jersey Shore, but I’m anxious to hear all about this. So cahoot.ai you’re sort of revolutionizing distribution in a way and I don’t want to be predetermined about it. So tell us all about that and how it can change someone’s e-commerce business.

Manish Chowdhary 3:34

Awesome. So let’s start from the top. What is the problem or Amazon like a delivery experience is absolutely essential. You are an e-commerce entrepreneur, you know what it can do for your conversion. One day, two-day free shipping is now expected from a consumer is expected because Amazon has trained everyone, no matter what kind of brand you are small, medium, large, the expectation from the consumer is the same because that’s what consumers have been trained. So now, if you are selling on your own website, you’re selling on other channels and you’re not utilizing Amazon FBA. And there are many reasons why you cannot and should not use FBA because the fees keep going up. And obviously there are many, many limitations. How do you come to parity? How do you get more sales directly from your channels as opposed to Amazon FBA? So we’ve done the analysis, Cahoot operates very similarly as Amazon FBA. We have dozens and dozens of warehouse locations we distribute the inventory we strategically placed the inventory closer to where the customer is so that we can afford or the brand or the retailer can afford to ship using economy ground shipping and still get the product in one or two days. In order to do that, you need four to five strategic warehouse locations. And strategic locations are different for every brand. I’ll explain why. So if you have a warehouse, let’s say in Wisconsin Madison, or Seattle, Washington up in Pacific, northwest, those are not strategic locations, because that’s not one of the population lives. I want to take a pause. I can keep going, Pat, if you want to chime in.

Pat Yates 5:23

No, that’s great. I mean, I think that what you’re saying in my mind’s eye, so if someone’s in the center of the country, let’s say they’re located in Oklahoma, and they have three or four days each direction in some situations, so what the plan is, is to mirror what FDA is doing some product into you guys, you spread across the country, and you find ways to make that shipping even more efficient. So here’s one question, do you take everything into one location and spread it out like FBA does, or does the client send to each location individually?

Manish Chowdhary 5:50

Generally it’s more cost efficient and more time-efficient to send directly to those locations. Of course, we have clients that bring in containers of inventory from overseas or elsewhere. So it’s better, obviously, the container comes in one location like Long Beach, California, or New Jersey, New York or one of those. And then in that case, we will distribute that to multiple locations. And it can be done packed. And this is something that a lot of brands and retailers think that it’s not possible, or it’s exorbitant, or it’s out of reach. I mean, think of this as marketing, because this directly impacts your conversion, this directly impacts your sales. So rather than paying tons of money on advertising, that may or may not work out, you’re better off giving the customers what they want. And if they get what they want, for a small additional cost to you, it is totally worth it. So I would like to dispel the myth that this cannot be done for SMBs. Because if Amazon is doing it Cahoot is doing it, it can be done.

Pat Yates 6:55

Yeah, I think a lot of people may have a little predetermined notion that it’s difficult because the infrastructure that Amazon has is so big, but again, you shouldn’t fear that it’s about getting the right locations for your product. So do you look at the client, let’s say that you sell beach equipment, you probably want that more towards the Florida and California areas. But if you’re looking at maybe winter socks, it might be more gauge to the northeast, you look at the product and look at the locations or is it just a we have the strategically located no matter where the population is? Is it population driven or, or popularity driven? I guess good way to put it.

Manish Chowdhary 7:32

That’s a great point, Pat. And that’s what I said those strategic locations are different for every brand, every retailer. So we have to overlay the population on top of your customer demand the brand’s order history. So we lead with data. And exactly as you said, so we typically what we do is we request the brand, the retailer to give us last 12 months of data. And that helps us determine, where are the orders coming from, where your customers located, and where’s the opportunity because you may be missing out. So sometimes it’s not obvious is where you have been is not a determinant of where you are to be. So obviously, if you’re selling beach gear, if you’re selling swimsuits, you will have more orders and more customers in Florida and Southern California. So, those are, of course, if you’re selling mountaineering gear, or if you’re selling ski equipment, and Colorado, and some of them, Vermont, and so on. So I think it is difficult. If you go and try to make this work with a traditional 3PL, a traditional 3 PL does not unfortunately, have the ability, the skill set, or the resources to help you with that level of analysis to figure out where should you place the inventory, what SKU should go where and how much? And how often should you replenish that. So Cahoot is doing something very similar to Amazon, but it puts the merchant in control as opposed to Amazon control. And second, it works for all channels. So we don’t have a partial approach that if I fulfill an order for that came from amazon.com I charge you x and if I get an order from say Shopify Bigcommerce I charge you 2x. That is not what Cahoot good does.

Pat Yates 9:22

That makes total sense. So here’s one thing that I thought about very first thing when you’re trying to let’s say that someone’s goal is it’s too expensive to ship with Amazon in the store, whatever the reason is, maybe they limit their storage too much whatever that reason is, how do they get over the idea of the prime badge, which can become a problem for some people? I know some can sign up for SFP Seller Fulfilled Prime which gets you that checkmark and you can still do it with you. But is that a big concern of people’s and if so how have you mitigated that concern?

Manish Chowdhary 9:50

So this is a great, great question. Some recent developments that have just happened in the last three to four weeks Pat, Amazon I had put a hold. They were not approving any sellers for Seller Fulfilled Prime for the last three to four years. Ever since the pandemic hit, Amazon had stopped. But more recently, about four weeks ago, three weeks ago, Amazon announced that they are reopening the application for Seller Fulfilled Prime. And it’s not from the goodness of Amazon’s heart. Amazon does not do anything. That benefits Amazon. So let’s be clear on that. So why is Amazon doing it? Right, Amazon has been sued in the European Union, they entered into a settlement and an antitrust case in the EU and they settled last December when Europe, they have to give sellers the option that if seller can get the products to the customer with the same level of promise that Amazon makes by prime using FBA, they have to allow the sellers a choice to do it either themselves using seller fulfilled prime or to utilize Amazon FBA services. Because Amazon has long been bundling these services that if you want to get prime, you have to use FBA, that’s the only way. And then we’re going to give you we’re going to put all kinds of restrictions, and it makes it overly cumbersome. And number two, that same European Union settlement is now coming to America. So they know that they will have to enter into similar settlement in the US and therefore they are preparing for that. And they have agreed to open this enrollment process. So once you get Seller Fulfilled Prime, then you come to Cahoot and Cahoot can then distribute your inventory. Cahoot is one of the only services one of the very few services in America that can help you meet those Seller Fulfilled Prime metrics confidently, it requires incredible amount of technology, absolute excellent operations, and some very high demanding standards that are not available even from the biggest 3 PLs in the country, let alone from the traditional 3PLs. Happy to dive in further. But seller fulfilled prime is for Amazon, but the merchants the brands that retailers need to think about Seller Fulfilled Prime for every channel, including their website, even if nobody’s policing them. It’s important that customers are policing you if you don’t deliver that same experience on your Shopify store. How do you expect the consumer to shop from you directly and not go to Amazon?

Pat Yates 12:26

Yeah, that’s a very good point. It’s interesting because I think a lot of people fear the prime badge a lot not having it. But again, sometimes it’s going to be okay, especially if you’re getting it to people quicker and cheaper, your bottom line is going to get better. So let’s move on. Let me ask you a little bit about what happens when a transaction happens, I guess the best way to put it. So let’s say you get an order. And I know that when I was reviewing all your information, there’s a way to rate shop, there’s a way to make sure that you can determine the shipper and then be able to easily generate packing slip. So tell the listeners a little bit about what they’re going to see from an order standpoint and workflows working with cahoot.ai.

Manish Chowdhary 13:04

Cahoot has the most flexible, fulfillment solution on the market. And I’ll explain why. Let’s say you have a warehouse of your own one or two warehouses, you obviously have sunk costs into those operations, you have reason to continue operating those, so Cahoot does not tell you to shut those warehouses down. In fact, if anything Cahoot can augment what you have, it can complement and supplement our technology can include your warehouse locations with Cahoot network to create the strategic locations map such that you can continue operating or other shipping orders that are best suited to ship from you. And then orders that are to ship from the Cahoot locations were shipped from Cahoot locations. So we have the patented technology. So as the orders come in in real-time, we have all the popular integrations, native integrations with all the popular channels within a few minutes orders come in then we automatically rate shop orders from every location where the inventory is located against what promise was made to the customer. When should this order get to the customer? Our goal is to make sure to deliver that order by that date in the cheapest way possible and that’s what the Cahoot technology does. So it’s very easy very simple for the merchant. Think of it like FBA in a box but even better because it can include your warehouse locations along with the Cahoot Network. And if you don’t have warehouses that’s perfectly fine. You don’t want to operate on Saturdays which is a requirement for seller-fulfilled prime you have to operate you have to do 2pm late cut off which means orders coming in until 2pm must be shipped the same day. No if then are but that’s the level of compliance is expected but seller fulfill prime and that’s the rigor and that is how you deliver awesome customer experience because you cannot falter, the minute you falter. Amazon’s got you.

Pat Yates 15:05

Yeah. So let me ask this, when you look at your rate shopping, one of the things, especially like, even in my product, I have some things that are less than a pound, which, you try to take advantage of that first class shipping. If it’s not a two-day thing, do you get the opportunity in these to take advantage of first-class shipping and still get it there in two days in some of your locations? Or I’m not certain of the timing of whether that’s still an option? Or if you have to upgrade to priority or something UPS or FedEx has to use? What’s the lion’s share for you guys?

Manish Chowdhary 15:33

Yeah, yeah. So that’s a great question, Pat. So there’s been incredible changes in the carrier oil, including USPS. As you know, USPS just rebranded or rather, is transitioning first class and parcel select into what they call ground advantage. So USPS is making some sweeping changes, the short answer is yes, we can will, and do take advantage of economies shipping, where possible, we have our own heuristics, we have our own algorithms, we have our own data, in addition to what we get from the carriers. So if we have confidence that this order can get there, with a reasonable amount of confidence to the customer, using the economy shipping, we will, of course, always pick the economy shipping, because at the end of the day, it’s all about profitability for the brand and retailer growth at all cost, or growth with negative margins, or low margins is not a sustainable affair. So we recognize that and Cahoot, because we come from technology background, we come from e-commerce background, we’re not the traditional tech pack people in the warehouse, we understand that, we understand conversion, we understand the customer mindset. And all of that is taken into account into our platform to ensure that we’re picking the most cost-efficient method to get the order to the customer. And also measuring whether it was indeed delivered by the promise state or not.

Pat Yates 17:03

That’s incredible. So even when I’m thinking about this, some people may have an opportunity that like in my situation, I’ve cut everything off about two o’clock Eastern time. If you had the ability that you had some stuff, say in California, you may be able to do it at five o’clock Eastern time to still serve as a customer better, is it nice to have that flow across time zones? Is that really an advantage for someone? Or does it not matter as much based on the timing?

Manish Chowdhary 17:29

Massive advantage, and it’s a requirement for Amazon seller fulfilled prime. Imagine, in fact, not only that, what if you could have your order shipped on Saturdays, in addition to 2pm cut off in that respective timezone? So our technology follows the sun. So an order comes in, let’s say at 4pm. And it’s coming from a West Coast location 4pm Eastern Time, which is still 1pm Pacific Time, that order will ship the same day, an order comes in on Saturday or Friday night. So to deliver I think, in my opinion brands and retailers, because they have been potentially impacted by Amazon FBA negatively or they’ve been dealing with the traditional 3PL they are not familiar with the opportunity that solutions like Cahoot provides. And those things can do wonders, you know Pat, that cost of advertising is going up significantly, you know what the conversion drivers are. So if you give the customer what they’re looking for, in checkout, in the cart, date certain shipping combined with this certainty of when your products will get there, it has direct impact on the top and bottom line.

Pat Yates 18:45

It’s really incredible. Like I think of, like, as I said before, my Shark Tank company, which I’ve talked on here many times Happy Feet Slippers is a large house slipper, it can’t go into retail, which also means it you get in a 23 18 13 box, you get about 12 units. And if you have 1000s of skews, it becomes very, very challenging to store this and be able to do it redundantly across say five or six warehouses, how do you address people that have wider skews, maybe larger products, because the fear might be the amount of storage costs it’s going to take, the amount of infrastructure space it will take to do your pick back area? How do you address items like that? And what is a perfect kind of product, let’s say for you?

Manish Chowdhary 19:24

Yeah, that’s a great question again, Pat. So the way to look at it is an 80-20 rule. 80% of your orders probably come from 20% of your skews. And when you do that analysis, what you recognize is, even if you have a very large catalog, there’s many popular skews, those are the ones that are placed more widely and distribute them. Number two, look at the impact on conversion and sales because brands often look at the cost but they don’t look at the upside off shipping and having fast shipping. So if you are thinking strictly in terms of operations and logistics, I’m afraid you’re looking at half the picture, because half your shopping experience now is the shipping experience, they are so closely related. And that’s why I keep coming back to this is marketing. This is not just operations and logistics. It’s not just supply chain. So generally speaking, that is what we do. And then combine that with awesome technology. So those are the traditional 3PLs that cannot handle large amounts of skews, because they use traditional storage methods or traditional way of putting things where each item has to belong to its own bin, but modern technology, how is Amazon doing it, at the end of the day, Amazon has superior technology, they have the same exact building as you do, Pat, I don’t think that building is made up of anything unique. They use the same concrete, they use the same steel. And so the way so I think that the cat is out of the bag, people like Cahoot have figured it out. So don’t let the larger catalog be a deterrent in making this happen. But of course, keep an open mind. But think about get your marketing and sales people and the ownership involved because this is not a back-office fulfillment logistics conversation alone.

Pat Yates 21:20

So let me ask another question. So I keep thinking in terms of my business. So I don’t mean to always go to that. But what if someone is heavily seasonal? What if they say, I really think that I can make impact from October to January, but because I’m slower in June, July, August, spinning extra distribution money may not be the smartest. How do you address people that may go in and out of ebbs and flows of their businesses? Does it need to be consistent 12 months a year?

Manish Chowdhary 21:48

No, not really. I mean, the beauty of Cahoot is, it’s a very flexible network like Amazon FBA, so you don’t have to maintain the same level of inventory at all times. So plan your inventory, meaning just like, you’re making purchasing decisions based on your sales cycles. So you don’t want to send 12 months of inventory or even two years of inventory, just because you got a great deal on it from your supplier. That doesn’t mean that you load up your 3PL with all your excess inventory. So it’s just being smart decision-making. So think of it as a collaborative process. 3PL is not, you cannot expect them to, you know, offer the cheapest rate and the highest service because, you know, they’re both mutually exclusive. In order to operate six days a week, it costs more in order to operate later in the day it costs more, in order to have the amazing, awesome technology when no order is missed, no questions asked cost more, because you’re putting better people better technology better process. It has direct impact on the retailers, the brand’s top and bottom line. So it’s a collaborative affair. And what I would encourage brands and retailers to have an open mind, think of it as a collaborative problem solving, as opposed to if they’re coming from traditional, the challenge that we find is when people are coming from traditional 3PL they’re conditioned to think in a certain way. So we need to migrate their thinking to the new way of thinking.

Pat Yates 23:18

There you go, you got to change up their entire mentality and approach to it. But another question I had, obviously, if you have a Shopify store, and let’s say you get an order, and it’s four to six days shipping, someone don’t care about it, you can still obviously run that through your system, but maybe does it allow you to give different parameters on the delivery. So you guys, I’m not sure how you end up choosing the actual method of shipping or if the user does, but tell me how you would do that. If it’s not say a two-day order?

Manish Chowdhary 23:45

And that’s a great question again, Pat. So Cahoot network is designed to meet whatever promise you wish to set for your customers, Cahoot does not dictate that you need to do a two-day shipping, Cahoot does not compel you, or require that you do one-day shipping that’s up to you. We can give you the data, we can encourage you and show you what the upside might be. However, it’s your business and you make the decision. So most brands, most retailers may have different levels of services that they would offer in the checkout, they would have an economy shipping, that could be three to five days, potentially, then there’s a two-day shipping and then there could be an expedited shipping next day. Because if you’re selling something that has an urgent need, maybe it’s health-related items where you need to have that immediately. So Cahoot has the awesome five-star integration with Shopify, it is the highest-rated fulfillment solution on the Shopify app store. You’ll feel free to check us out. And so Cahoot automatically when we ingest the order from Shopify, we can map that to what service levels that order needs to go too, and then arrange shopping, take that into account. So we will not spend extra money at your expense to expedite the order when the promise was to get the order in five days, we need to meet or beat the customer promise, but at the lowest cost possible.

Pat Yates 25:20

That’s really amazing. So again, we’re talking to Manish Chowdhary with Cahoot and Pulse Commerce, I’d like to maybe shift gears a little bit. Clearly Pulse Commerce came from, it appears to me to be a need that you had to fill or some other way that you’re obviously running Cahoot. So it’s a great way to put things together. But why don’t you tell our listeners about how Pulse Commerce works and how it could integrate?

Manish Chowdhary 25:41

Yeah, Pulse Commerce is the leading order and inventory management platform. It also has an e-commerce solution module, if you will. But it also integrates with all the leading channels or front ends, if you will, like Shopify, Bigcommerce, Magento, all of those popular ones. So what you display in your shopping cart, and how you manage your orders and inventory, order fulfillment services are now very closely related to order management, how do you manage an order, right? In order to manage an order efficiently, you need to fulfill the order efficiently. And that’s how, when we were working with merchants, hundreds of brands and retailers, that what we’re really migrating to Amazon, because Amazon migration was not as strong 10 15 years ago, obviously, there were tons of sellers that were hundreds of 1000s of sellers, not 2 million sellers, as we have in the US today. And so we saw the need, and therefore, this is just an extension of the order customer journey, if you will, because so ensuring that we have proper inventory control, because what you don’t want to do is fulfill an order or send the order to a location that does not have the inventory, because by the time they figure it out, it might be too late. And you may end up missing the SLA from that location, or you need to now recover from that and move that order to a different location and still meet the customer promise, which means you’re going to pay more expensive shipping. So they’re very, very closely related. And the two products are integrated. They’re two separate entities. However, the products are very closely integrated, so if a customer wants a full suite of solutions to manage the order, manage the payment, manage fulfillment, and manage their own warehouse, they can do that in Pulse Commerce, and Cahoot as the shipping and fulfillment services software.

Pat Yates 27:41

That’s really amazing. So you basically have a start-to-finish opportunity for someone to come in and basically manage their entire business. So what kind of clients? I mean, obviously, you have clients that are super successful with this, do they see a lift in sales because of this? Do they see just organically dealing with you guys? Obviously Amazon does a good job in distribution too. But do they have any issue with any problems, reviews or things like that you guys clean up problems for everyone? What happens when you know things go a little sideways in this? How do you support those people?

Manish Chowdhary 28:12

So our job is to help brands and retailers with excellent fulfillment strategies. And that has direct impact on the top and bottom line. We’ve measured it many, many times. So for example, if you were to use our shipping software, which so we basically took all this awesome technology. And we recognize that many brands or retailers may want to do everything within their own warehouse. So they’re using a shipping software like ShipStation, Shipping ez, ship works, one of those tools. So we took all this innovation that we did, and we are giving it to them in a box. So you can utilize the same awesome technology, you’re not required to outsource your fulfillment. So it is all human-less, it uses machine learning AI that’s like cahoot.ai. So we can dramatically reduce the manpower and the errors in the warehouse. I’ll give you a very simple example. What box to you. So if you have a very large diversity of products that like you do, somebody orders, five pairs of slippers, how do you decide what box to use? And what would be the most cost-efficient way?

Pat Yates 29:20

Great point. It’s amazing, because there’s so many things that go into that having a professional that does this, a lot of people may want to save money on 3PLs by just getting someone local, or whatever it is, which I’m sure can be successful. But it is important to think bigger about where you want your business to be. Because starting out with you guys can help scale across the country and even probably internationally very, very quickly. It’s amazing. So in any order fulfillment side, so everything from polls will flow in to Cahoot. And then you have the ability just right in simple clicks inside your system to be able to do your orders. What kind of timeline has it taken a day to operate this kind of a system? Is it easy for operators?

Manish Chowdhary 29:58

Yeah, so let’s take an example where you, you look, you’re looking to outsource 100% of your fulfillment, you know, in that case, Cahoot connects directly with your sales channels. And you have to do almost nothing. We have clients, believe it or not Pat, this is a reality. This is not fiction. And this is not a myth. We have clients that maybe, they have migrated during COVID. They originally, let’s say, from the UK, they are now living in Bali, Indonesia. And they are manufacturing in China having a delivered to Long Beach, California, and then Cahoot takes over from that point on, and they are in a timezone that’s 12 hours away, and they have virtual assistants in Philippines, and then they’ve got some people in the US if at all, and they are living the life, because Cahoot is fanatically focus on ensuring that every order is shipped on time, as long as we have the inventory. So they have to do very little. Of course, if you have larger operations, you have many more channels, wholesale, retail, b2b, it’s all digital. So we are not living in the dark ages, where you have to send an email, and you have to do things the hard way. It is all modern, we have patented technology that makes it very easy for people to collaborate, and multiple users and multiple time zones, not through an email chain or phone trees. So that’s the power of technology is sort of like, what is Tesla self-driving car? How does that compare to your fuel-combustion GM vehicle? You know, there are two different things, they both get you from point A to point B. But one requires far less friction, one can drive itself. So you’re free to dream, whereas the other one requires you to focus 100% of the time.

Pat Yates 31:44

Yeah, that’s a great point. So one of the last questions I had down I mean, I look where your locations are, it’s really amazing to me that the coverage is really, really strong, I can see how you’re able to pull off even one day, and I think there’ll be some wow factors to some customer, they’ve received it so fast, like I just ordered yesterday, I already have it. And I think that’s exciting. But I think the biggest question that I would have with relation to customers, what if they’re a little nervous going away from the traditional 3 PL, and they want to come in and work with Cahoot? Do you find that people say, I’m going to give you my top five skews only in three or four locations to try to test out how the systems work baby step in and understand or do you really need them to jump in and, and just commit? How does that work?

Manish Chowdhary 32:25

100%, I mean, no one should approve their operations. Because, you know, if I were in your shoes, I need to ensure that Cahoot or any other solution would work for you. Obviously, one, there are many, many use cases that we feel strongly about, we are super confident. And that’s why we have the highest number of positive reviews in the industry. So we you can look through that. Some use cases are very easy, very simple. In that case, you can go all in, if you have very massive operations, yes, you have the ability to come try something with a smaller number of skews to really but also think about that as it’s an experiment, you’re not going to see them the full potential, the full upside, but it is purely a micro experiment that you’re trying, so take your time, you know, I can lead with data, one of the things that brands and retailers I’ll encourage them to do, I think you brought up you know, finding a local 3PL. Yes, you can go visit them. But you know what, let’s say a lot of times, brands retailers have a notion in their head that that’s where they want to be because, like I have a story of a brand that sells awesome hats very successful. They’re based in Maryland, so they’re like, I want my warehouse to be next to where I am. But where are your customers, if your customers aren’t California, if your customers in Florida, it is not where you’re 3PL are to be its way of customers are located. And letting go of that control. Because I mean, when you outsource to Amazon FBA, even if the center was right next to you, you really can’t do anything. So you have to find, get comfortable with this new way of doing things and the people that adapt that move quickly, they’re going to beat and they’re going to succeed and they’re going to have an unfair advantage. So I think just keeping an open mind leading with data and having a little bit of trust and confidence and working collaboratively. It is a collaborative process and that’s why we call Cahoot Pat because you and I are in Cahoots. We are all in Cahoots. That’s what we do, is the power of many.

Pat Yates 34:43

I missed that question how the name came up? That’s like the mic drop of the whole day. That’s a great way to put it. You’re in Cahoots with everyone to change the shipping industry. It’s really amazing. Manish I really appreciate you being in the Quiet Light Podcast today. I know that a lot of our listeners out here gonna have interest in your businesses, Pulse Commerce and cahoot.ai, maybe you could tell the listeners how to get a hold of you.

Manish Chowdhary 35:06

Yeah, absolutely. One. If you want to get ahold of me directly, please come to linkedin.com or LinkedIn and just connect with me, follow me, I put a lot of content out there. And if you’re interested in Cahoot, come to cahoot.ai. And please fill out the Contact Us form. Even if you’re just curious, you just want to explore that’s okay. Come talk to us, because we believe that this is a long-term relationship, and we need to start somewhere. And Pulse Commerce is pulse-commerce.com If you’re in the market for a leading order inventory management platform, but once again, I just want to talk with smart, hardworking entrepreneurs that are growth-minded, so that I know connections happen and even if you’re not looking to change your 3PL you’re just curious. Come check us out, talk to us, because I think you’ll learn something.

Pat Yates 35:58

I definitely know I learned something. I’m gonna come in and see the demo to begin with. I think it’s fascinating. I think you’ve done an amazing job. Obviously if you need to get a hold of Manish please reach out to him and Manish again, we appreciate you joining us today on the Quiet Light Podcast.

Manish Chowdhary 36:12

Pat, thank you again. It was an honor to be here.

Outro 36:17

Today’s podcast was produced by Rise25 and the Quiet Light content team. If you have a suggestion for a future podcast, subject or guest, email us at [email protected] Be sure to follow us on YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram. And subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening. We’ll see you next week.