September 18, 2024 • 17 mins
Don't miss the cutoff for a successful peak season! John Walsh and Nick Agnetti discuss Planning, Carrier selection, Communication, Surcharges, Capacity and Transit Expectations
Learn more about this topic:
- Asendia USA: International e-commerce and mail delivery solutions
- Preparing for 2023 Peak Season
- Preparing for Peak Holiday Shipping Season
- Asendia USA: E-commerce and mail delivery to and from North America
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome to Outside the Boxwith Asendia USA, a podcast educating
US based e tailers oninternational shipping topics and
how they can expand theirglobal e commerce footprint.
Hello everybody, this is NickAgnetti from Outside the Box with
Asendia USA podcast. I've gotmy co host here, John Walsh.
Hey buddy, how are you today?
I'm doing well, thank you. Howabout yourself?
(00:22):
Fantastic.
Okay, great. All right. Soguys, we're here today, episode 9
Woohoo, to talk about gettingready for peak shipping season. So
whether you like it or not,it's here and you gotta be ready
for it and we are here to helpyou with this. John, what's so funny?
Peak is a long time now. Usedto be four weeks, it's probably nine
(00:47):
weeks. Starts in October now.
Yeah, let's talk about that. Ithink a lot of it changed with the
pandemic.
Absolutely.
I think a ton of it changed.It used to be such a concentrated.
First of all, I'm just goingto make a proclamation here on this
podcast that whoever came upwith putting Black Friday and Cyber
Monday in between a weekend, Imean genius, but also horrible idea
when it comes to logistics.Genius for sales, horrible for logistics.
(01:10):
So I'm going to throw that out there.
All right, that is a validpoint because you can't catch up.
No, there's no hope for that.What? So you got a holiday, right?
So we got. Freight carriersjust aren't picking up. Then you
got Black Friday, they'reprobably still not picking up. Then
Monday, that's when they'regoing to start picking up that volume.
Then that's, then you've got,it's just, it's insane. Okay, so
(01:32):
we're buzzing ahead, but no,you've got a wealth of experience
in this industry and let'stalk about helping our listeners
be more sure prepared for thepeak shipping season.
Good segue. What, what hadhappened in the last probably five,
(01:52):
ten years, but even before thepandemic, to your point, if you notice,
there's a lot of years whereThanksgiving was very late in the
month, in December, inNovember, and it rolls right into
the first week.
Oh yeah.
But now what we're seeing is,and we talked about on a previous
podcast about returns, Januarynow has become the returns month.
It's like that month is allreturns. You can't, most clients
(02:16):
won't even talk to you thatwhole month. So they, they get like
one day, one week off and thenright away they're back in return.
So I think peak is reallystarts early October and ends In
January pandemic. To yourpoint, I think a lot of it had to
do with inventory. So peoplestart putting out these sales so
early because they were afraidthey're not going to get the sales.
So now they're pumping stuffout in October. You don't catch your
(02:38):
breath. You know you'll catchyour breath, right? I also know in
international you have. I knowcutoff dates are a little different.
National market, in domestic.But those cutoff dates had affected
people's performance. They'reworried they got to get it out because
they don't want to pay highercosts. There's so many factors with
(02:58):
peak. It's kind of crazy. Butjust to tell you I like the word
peak and we can talk about it.The peak stands for planning for
the P execution. Awake atnight. Because when you talk to customers
you about peak, every one ofthem has a different philosophy and
what's keeping awake at night.Okay, to your point, is a carrier
(03:20):
gonna show up? Are they gonnabe consistent? Are they gonna be
flexible? Are they gonna beable to handle my stuff every day?
Do I have to worry about them?We're a true partner.
That's. That one is crit. Wegotta talk about that.
And the last one is key datesand drops. Right. So drops, key dates
of peak are. To your point,you got, what is it? Black Friday,
(03:41):
Cyber Monday? Pick a day. Picka day. They got a name for it and
peak, right? Yeah, it's like Ithink the other day it was natural
National Pretzel Day. It wasawesome. I didn't get a pretzel.
I forgot. You remember that itwas the other way this week, so.
No, just kidding.
Philadelphia. Big on pretzels.
Yeah. But I don't know. Whatare your thoughts? Because you know,
your planning is a big. Thosefour things are really, if you talk
(04:05):
to a, a decision maker, asupply chain, they're the things
they're worried about.
Okay, so we're. I'm not goingto mention any other companies names.
No, I'm not, I'm just. Butthese are realities. If you're in
the industry, these are thingsthat you have either experienced
or at some point you mayexperience or somebody, you know,
probably experienced them. Butthere are certain organizations where
we've seen especially I thinkit was coming out of 2022, maybe
(04:27):
even 2023. But like they justsaid, hey, we're not picking up anymore.
You know what I mean? We'rejust, we're done taking volume and.
Or they would tack on, youknow, significant surcharges to be
able to handle that volume.So, you know, if you will. Now, we
mentioned this, I thinkprobably in the very first podcast
or maybe in the second one,we're in a, we're in a much softer
market now. So things havechanged there in terms of the tide
(04:49):
has turned a little bit interms of a shipper's market versus
a, versus a seller's market.That's, that's fair and all that.
But these things still happenthough, out there, folks. I mean,
these are things where we'restill getting, we're still seeing
notification in the industrythat, hey, you know, certain carriers
are not accepting any morevolume or if you don't give us volume
commitments, we just, we can'ttake a chance on you type of thing.
(05:09):
Which is, which is kind ofwild, right? Because again, we've
got this, let's call it a sixweek period of absolute insanity.
And that, man, that just firedme up thinking about that. Just because
I feel, you know, you hearabout it and it's kind of, I've never
once ever told a client like,hey, you can't ship me any material.
Disclaimer for anybody outthere. If you want to send me some
(05:31):
stuff to process, I'm going toprocess it. Okay. So I'm just throwing
that.
Right.
But anyway, just a couple of observations.
Planning used to startOctober. Now you get customers want
to start talking in Augustbecause they got to be ready for
October. So, you know, justwork with our clients and anybody
(05:51):
listening out there, you know,really got to start thinking about
a late summer, about peak for sure.
And I. And well, let's add alayer of complexity to that.
Yep.
We've seen in the last. Andagain we're going to talk about.
We've all experienced thispandemic. One thing that's become
really scarce is developerresources. So if you're thinking
about diversifying yourshipping carrier, you know, portfolio,
(06:14):
you had better have that doneby the beginning of August, especially
if you're a major volumecarrier, whether it's international,
domestic, because it'sprobably not a great idea to go into
testing at the end ofSeptember. So it's very important
to make sure that you have allthe integrations done, API things,
whatever it might be. Excuseme, producer Charvan, what are you
(06:38):
doing with my volume? I'm justturning it. Okay. All right, sorry
it got weird there. You cancut that out. But it's weird, right?
It was a little different.
It was weird. Okay, so wegotta roll with it then. We're rolling.
You take over for a second.Where was I? That messed me up.
(06:59):
No worries. You were on a hotstreak. The other thing was customers
need to be. I think we weretalking about transparency last time,
last call. You gotta haveweekly or bi weekly touch points
with clients as they move intopeak because if you don't, their
plans change dramatically. Thepeople that we deal with traditionally
(07:20):
are what transportation,supply chain, they don't, they don't
manage the marketing budget,they don't manage the sales budget
or whatever they're, they'repromoting. They. We have to be up
on that to make sure we'redoing the best we can for them to
handle surges. Like I knowyou, you know the sub box box industry
very well. That's an example.When you get into peak season, they're
(07:41):
not their custom, that volumeis heavy, but you also got other
people's heavy volume. So yougot to make sure that you're communicating
with that type of client tomake sure that they're, they're being
covered. Did they changeanything? Because in my experience
they had maybe a. Change theircadence a little bit. Maybe they
moved it back a week. Maybethey did this flexibility so they
get the best experience toothat they deserve. Right. Because
(08:03):
it's a good point.
Instead of, let's say if yourfulfillment date is typically the
last week of a month. Yeah,November, you might want to make
that the second week of amonth. You know what I mean? Or something
like that. Just to try and getahead of the, you know, the upcoming
craziness. Now going backthough to you had just mentioned,
you know, the weekly calls.
And checking and such. Yeah.
I think it's probablyimportant to put a distinction between
(08:25):
looking at, let's say ifyou're working with a 3 PL, an E
commerce fulfillment companyfor the listeners and let's say a
brand itself too because youknow, what's the biggest difference
there is one, you've got acompany that's doing the pick pack
fulfillment kitting whateverit might be for multiple brands versus
a single brand. And so evendialing it back even further to the
(08:47):
integration challenges, it's,let's make, you know, we have, they
have to make sure that allintegrations are done. Especially
if you have a bonafide like aconcrete peak season. Not all shippers
do and we're probably seeingthat even a little bit more too where
it's not so significant of apeak as it may have used to been
for certain customers, butpeak is still there. You have to
just pay attention to, youknow, when you start having these
(09:10):
meetings yeah. What'simportant? Why is it so important?
Again, distinct, you know, butbetween the three PL and the. The
E Commerce brand itself. Yeah,you know.
Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah.The last thing to touch on and get
your thoughts on for planningis years ago there was no surcharges
at peak. Okay. Then Covid camealong and there was a ton of surcharges.
(09:31):
They haven't really got away.Okay. They, you know, you have fuel,
but you also have minimums. Iknow my former employer has a lot
of. Lot of surcharges.
Right, they do.
So an example, we're a greatresource to help you evaluate and
keep up on that in theinternational arena. Because there's
certain countries that getcertain surcharges. There's certain
(09:53):
windows of time that change.Now the USPS doesn't look like international
too much, but they also havesurcharges. You would have never
thought that they would havestuck after to your point earlier
that the demand would go down.You know, they're not projecting
growth to be the same or flatnext peak. It's not going to be explosive.
So the question is, where canhelp? We can help you as a resource
(10:16):
to manage that because that'simportant to look at because you're
going to. You may not thinkabout it.
I agree completely. Adding tothat, which is a great point, especially
at, you know, if you'rerunning two things. I'm going to
make a note too. So just.
Right. Nick draws a lot on hisnotebook here.
Big note taker guy. Big notetaker guy here.
So that's not the pen theygave you though, is it?
(10:39):
Absolutely not.
So they try to give us new penstay. Our producers, they did not
work. So we had to resort to what.
We don't ever give me a wobblypen. Okay, I will, I will, I will
take it because I'm kind, butI will throw it away behind your
back. Okay.
So never lift the kiss horse.
So here we go. Okay, so twothings I want to touch on. So if
(11:01):
you, you're out there, you'rea shipper. Okay. So and I'm going
to just say this is probablymore focused on, let's say mid market
and enterprise level shippers.When you're working with a partner
that does both, quote unquote,domestic and international shipping,
what's going to happen duringpeak? I've seen it year after year
after year. What takespriority, the domestic parcels or
the international parcels?
(11:22):
Yep, domestic.
The domestic parcels takepriority. So if you're using a combined
carrier, that's Combining, youknow, you've got a bundle or something
like that, okay? Thosedomestic parcels are going to get
the priority over theinternational partners part. Parcels
without hesitation. Youreally, I want you to keep that in
mind too. Okay. And so interms of going back to, we talked
(11:43):
about diversification. We wantto be prepped, you know, look at,
look at alternative carriers,you know, and yes, this is Ascending
podcast. I'm allowed to saylook at ascending, but I'm also saying
look at alternative carriersto avoid some of these crazy peak
surcharges that are out there.They're going to happen again. You
know, you've got peak seasoncoming up right around the corner.
It's going to be here beforeyou know it. And guess what's going
(12:03):
to happen once you're onceyour hook, line and sinker, you're
going to get those surcharges.It's going to happen. So just a couple
of pieces with that is again,if you've got a bundled agreement
or something with a carrierthat, you know, really, their focus
is truly domestic. But hey,they're taking the international
because it's convenient. Maybeit's not so convenient come November
and December when you reallywant something to be, you know, if
(12:23):
you want Aunt Mildred to gether stuff by Christmas might not
happen.
Okay.
And I know that I can bringsome humor to that, but I also can
say without hesitation howmany times I've heard that story
over and over and over againtoo. And I mean that seriously. The
other thing going back tocutoff dates, so I know what we do,
we provide cutoff datesprobably in like the second week
(12:47):
of November, maybe third weekof November for the holiday cutoff
dates. We try and get it asearly as possible. And so those cutoff
dates for us in terms of ourmetrics is here's the based on the
service, APAC plus Apex selectselect ddp, here's the last day you
can, you know, we can processthat material to have it delivered
by Christmas time, you know,and then outside of that, you know,
no guarantee type of thing. Soyou need some visibility from your
(13:09):
partner, your carrier partnersin terms of, hey, there are some
expectations in terms of, youknow, when, when is something going
to get delivered to meet yourexpectations, to get there by the
holidays, whatever that maylook like.
That was very good. A couplethings I want to ask you on execution.
To your point about domesticvolume availability during peak is
(13:33):
different than it is the restof the year, right? So to your point
is they're probably runningmore promos or whatever to certain
countries and things like thatas a partner, we can help with that.
We don't have capacity issuesat Asendia. No, that's number one.
I'm telling you. Your stuff. Okay.
Yeah, please, we're going toprocess. Please. You have to pay
for the podcast.
(13:55):
Hey, we send us your parcels.We need a studio.
Yeah, right.
That's true.
That is true. Yeah. Yeah,we're worried about it. We're working
on Siobhan's basement over here.
It's a beautiful basement,very well lit, but go ahead. Sorry.
But it also helps, I think inthe last podcast, which is something
(14:16):
you brought up, it was reallykey was Wismo calls.
Right.
So to your point, if you'reusing say an ascending and you're
diversifying a volume andsplitting it, giving domestic maybe
to one, maybe ascending isblessed to get the international.
Your transits and your SLAsare going to be pretty good. We can
work with you on that. Tomeasure that a lot of times, what
(14:37):
we noticed that peak customerswould never change their websites,
they would Never update theirSLAs on Peak. And then they get a
lot of Wismo calls becausemaybe they felt it was going to be.
That's a great point.
Yeah. And we would see that alot. We go, listen, guys, you know,
you got an extra. You can geta little bandwidth you can work with,
but if you don't manage thatpart of your business, you're getting
(15:00):
a lot of calls because they'restill going to expect the same transit
times. They're not gettingthem. So that's something else to
think about. On execution.
No, managing expectations is.I mean, in every area of life is
key.
Right.
But we're here to talk aboutthis. That's an absolutely key thing.
So that's a great point.
Our last thing I want to askyou, what keeps you up at night?
Dorm peak, Trucks picking upon time, making sure that materials
(15:25):
processed quickly andefficiently and that we don't have
any significant customs issues.
There you go. So I would, Iwould think that's what most people
out here in the audience wouldprobably say the same thing. Right.
I don't think they're missinganything. I guess getting hold of
rep would be. Would be theother one because that a lot of times
(15:45):
the communication is. Thepeople are a little bit more busy,
don't get back right away. ButI don't see that a problem in ascending
it. But in my past life,people may have had thousand accounts,
can't get back to them, andthey don't get the attention they
need during peak. And theproblem is, at peak, customers need
more help than they probablydo in most of the year because they're
a little more stressed outabout what's going on and things
(16:08):
like that. But. But just as ahelp to be a good partner.
So I want to give one fun factbefore we depart today. Fun facts
brought on a new client.They're located in northern Michigan,
and they started during peak.Well, Q4 of 23.
Same thing.
Yeah. So with our Canadadirect access service, our Canadian
(16:28):
delivery network, we processedit, you know, maybe 2,000 parcels.
Good. And average deliverytime to Ontario, from process to
delivery, 1.8 business days.
That's funny.
You said Q4.
I had a customer started thelast week of the year, same thing.
Wow. They started last week ofthe year. Yeah.
That's pretty. They. All right.
(16:50):
And they were very happy witheverything to your point, into that
province. They were getting1.8 days even during peak season.
That's amazing.
Yeah.
All right, well, thank you allvery much for listening to episode
nine, getting ready for peakshipping season. Any questions, concerns,
please email our producersdirectly and just help. Keep hitting
(17:10):
that subscribe button.Download, because we need a new studio.
All right, go fund me.
Go fund me.
All right. If you want tosupport our podcast, the number one
thing you can do is share iton your social media and tag Asendia.
That helps us get the wordout, and we really appreciate it.
Be sure to subscribe anddownload our podcast. If you want
to learn more about today'stopic, email us at ecommerce USA@asendia.com
(17:36):
and check back frequently fornew discussions on ecommerce shipping
to Canada and worldwide.
Welcome to Outside the Boxwith Asendia USA, a podcast educating
US based e tailers oninternational shipping topics and
how they can expand theirglobal e commerce footprint.
Hello everybody, this is NickAgnetti from Outside the Box with
Asendia USA podcast. I've gotmy co host here, John Walsh.
Hey buddy, how are you today?
I'm doing well, thank you. Howabout yourself?
(00:22):
Fantastic.
Okay, great. All right. Soguys, we're here today, episode 9
Woohoo, to talk about gettingready for peak shipping season. So
whether you like it or not,it's here and you gotta be ready
for it and we are here to helpyou with this. John, what's so funny?
Peak is a long time now. Usedto be four weeks, it's probably nine
(00:47):
weeks. Starts in October now.
Yeah, let's talk about that. Ithink a lot of it changed with the
pandemic.
Absolutely.
I think a ton of it changed.It used to be such a concentrated.
First of all, I'm just goingto make a proclamation here on this
podcast that whoever came upwith putting Black Friday and Cyber
Monday in between a weekend, Imean genius, but also horrible idea
when it comes to logistics.Genius for sales, horrible for logistics.
(01:10):
So I'm going to throw that out there.
All right, that is a validpoint because you can't catch up.
No, there's no hope for that.What? So you got a holiday, right?
So we got. Freight carriersjust aren't picking up. Then you
got Black Friday, they'reprobably still not picking up. Then
Monday, that's when they'regoing to start picking up that volume.
Then that's, then you've got,it's just, it's insane. Okay, so
(01:32):
we're buzzing ahead, but no,you've got a wealth of experience
in this industry and let'stalk about helping our listeners
be more sure prepared for thepeak shipping season.
Good segue. What, what hadhappened in the last probably five,
(01:52):
ten years, but even before thepandemic, to your point, if you notice,
there's a lot of years whereThanksgiving was very late in the
month, in December, inNovember, and it rolls right into
the first week.
Oh yeah.
But now what we're seeing is,and we talked about on a previous
podcast about returns, Januarynow has become the returns month.
It's like that month is allreturns. You can't, most clients
(02:16):
won't even talk to you thatwhole month. So they, they get like
one day, one week off and thenright away they're back in return.
So I think peak is reallystarts early October and ends In
January pandemic. To yourpoint, I think a lot of it had to
do with inventory. So peoplestart putting out these sales so
early because they were afraidthey're not going to get the sales.
So now they're pumping stuffout in October. You don't catch your
(02:38):
breath. You know you'll catchyour breath, right? I also know in
international you have. I knowcutoff dates are a little different.
National market, in domestic.But those cutoff dates had affected
people's performance. They'reworried they got to get it out because
they don't want to pay highercosts. There's so many factors with
(02:58):
peak. It's kind of crazy. Butjust to tell you I like the word
peak and we can talk about it.The peak stands for planning for
the P execution. Awake atnight. Because when you talk to customers
you about peak, every one ofthem has a different philosophy and
what's keeping awake at night.Okay, to your point, is a carrier
(03:20):
gonna show up? Are they gonnabe consistent? Are they gonna be
flexible? Are they gonna beable to handle my stuff every day?
Do I have to worry about them?We're a true partner.
That's. That one is crit. Wegotta talk about that.
And the last one is key datesand drops. Right. So drops, key dates
of peak are. To your point,you got, what is it? Black Friday,
(03:41):
Cyber Monday? Pick a day. Picka day. They got a name for it and
peak, right? Yeah, it's like Ithink the other day it was natural
National Pretzel Day. It wasawesome. I didn't get a pretzel.
I forgot. You remember that itwas the other way this week, so.
No, just kidding.
Philadelphia. Big on pretzels.
Yeah. But I don't know. Whatare your thoughts? Because you know,
your planning is a big. Thosefour things are really, if you talk
(04:05):
to a, a decision maker, asupply chain, they're the things
they're worried about.
Okay, so we're. I'm not goingto mention any other companies names.
No, I'm not, I'm just. Butthese are realities. If you're in
the industry, these are thingsthat you have either experienced
or at some point you mayexperience or somebody, you know,
probably experienced them. Butthere are certain organizations where
we've seen especially I thinkit was coming out of 2022, maybe
(04:27):
even 2023. But like they justsaid, hey, we're not picking up anymore.
You know what I mean? We'rejust, we're done taking volume and.
Or they would tack on, youknow, significant surcharges to be
able to handle that volume.So, you know, if you will. Now, we
mentioned this, I thinkprobably in the very first podcast
or maybe in the second one,we're in a, we're in a much softer
market now. So things havechanged there in terms of the tide
(04:49):
has turned a little bit interms of a shipper's market versus
a, versus a seller's market.That's, that's fair and all that.
But these things still happenthough, out there, folks. I mean,
these are things where we'restill getting, we're still seeing
notification in the industrythat, hey, you know, certain carriers
are not accepting any morevolume or if you don't give us volume
commitments, we just, we can'ttake a chance on you type of thing.
(05:09):
Which is, which is kind ofwild, right? Because again, we've
got this, let's call it a sixweek period of absolute insanity.
And that, man, that just firedme up thinking about that. Just because
I feel, you know, you hearabout it and it's kind of, I've never
once ever told a client like,hey, you can't ship me any material.
Disclaimer for anybody outthere. If you want to send me some
(05:31):
stuff to process, I'm going toprocess it. Okay. So I'm just throwing
that.
Right.
But anyway, just a couple of observations.
Planning used to startOctober. Now you get customers want
to start talking in Augustbecause they got to be ready for
October. So, you know, justwork with our clients and anybody
(05:51):
listening out there, you know,really got to start thinking about
a late summer, about peak for sure.
And I. And well, let's add alayer of complexity to that.
Yep.
We've seen in the last. Andagain we're going to talk about.
We've all experienced thispandemic. One thing that's become
really scarce is developerresources. So if you're thinking
about diversifying yourshipping carrier, you know, portfolio,
(06:14):
you had better have that doneby the beginning of August, especially
if you're a major volumecarrier, whether it's international,
domestic, because it'sprobably not a great idea to go into
testing at the end ofSeptember. So it's very important
to make sure that you have allthe integrations done, API things,
whatever it might be. Excuseme, producer Charvan, what are you
(06:38):
doing with my volume? I'm justturning it. Okay. All right, sorry
it got weird there. You cancut that out. But it's weird, right?
It was a little different.
It was weird. Okay, so wegotta roll with it then. We're rolling.
You take over for a second.Where was I? That messed me up.
(06:59):
No worries. You were on a hotstreak. The other thing was customers
need to be. I think we weretalking about transparency last time,
last call. You gotta haveweekly or bi weekly touch points
with clients as they move intopeak because if you don't, their
plans change dramatically. Thepeople that we deal with traditionally
(07:20):
are what transportation,supply chain, they don't, they don't
manage the marketing budget,they don't manage the sales budget
or whatever they're, they'repromoting. They. We have to be up
on that to make sure we'redoing the best we can for them to
handle surges. Like I knowyou, you know the sub box box industry
very well. That's an example.When you get into peak season, they're
(07:41):
not their custom, that volumeis heavy, but you also got other
people's heavy volume. So yougot to make sure that you're communicating
with that type of client tomake sure that they're, they're being
covered. Did they changeanything? Because in my experience
they had maybe a. Change theircadence a little bit. Maybe they
moved it back a week. Maybethey did this flexibility so they
get the best experience toothat they deserve. Right. Because
(08:03):
it's a good point.
Instead of, let's say if yourfulfillment date is typically the
last week of a month. Yeah,November, you might want to make
that the second week of amonth. You know what I mean? Or something
like that. Just to try and getahead of the, you know, the upcoming
craziness. Now going backthough to you had just mentioned,
you know, the weekly calls.
And checking and such. Yeah.
I think it's probablyimportant to put a distinction between
(08:25):
looking at, let's say ifyou're working with a 3 PL, an E
commerce fulfillment companyfor the listeners and let's say a
brand itself too because youknow, what's the biggest difference
there is one, you've got acompany that's doing the pick pack
fulfillment kitting whateverit might be for multiple brands versus
a single brand. And so evendialing it back even further to the
(08:47):
integration challenges, it's,let's make, you know, we have, they
have to make sure that allintegrations are done. Especially
if you have a bonafide like aconcrete peak season. Not all shippers
do and we're probably seeingthat even a little bit more too where
it's not so significant of apeak as it may have used to been
for certain customers, butpeak is still there. You have to
just pay attention to, youknow, when you start having these
(09:10):
meetings yeah. What'simportant? Why is it so important?
Again, distinct, you know, butbetween the three PL and the. The
E Commerce brand itself. Yeah,you know.
Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah.The last thing to touch on and get
your thoughts on for planningis years ago there was no surcharges
at peak. Okay. Then Covid camealong and there was a ton of surcharges.
(09:31):
They haven't really got away.Okay. They, you know, you have fuel,
but you also have minimums. Iknow my former employer has a lot
of. Lot of surcharges.
Right, they do.
So an example, we're a greatresource to help you evaluate and
keep up on that in theinternational arena. Because there's
certain countries that getcertain surcharges. There's certain
(09:53):
windows of time that change.Now the USPS doesn't look like international
too much, but they also havesurcharges. You would have never
thought that they would havestuck after to your point earlier
that the demand would go down.You know, they're not projecting
growth to be the same or flatnext peak. It's not going to be explosive.
So the question is, where canhelp? We can help you as a resource
(10:16):
to manage that because that'simportant to look at because you're
going to. You may not thinkabout it.
I agree completely. Adding tothat, which is a great point, especially
at, you know, if you'rerunning two things. I'm going to
make a note too. So just.
Right. Nick draws a lot on hisnotebook here.
Big note taker guy. Big notetaker guy here.
So that's not the pen theygave you though, is it?
(10:39):
Absolutely not.
So they try to give us new penstay. Our producers, they did not
work. So we had to resort to what.
We don't ever give me a wobblypen. Okay, I will, I will, I will
take it because I'm kind, butI will throw it away behind your
back. Okay.
So never lift the kiss horse.
So here we go. Okay, so twothings I want to touch on. So if
(11:01):
you, you're out there, you'rea shipper. Okay. So and I'm going
to just say this is probablymore focused on, let's say mid market
and enterprise level shippers.When you're working with a partner
that does both, quote unquote,domestic and international shipping,
what's going to happen duringpeak? I've seen it year after year
after year. What takespriority, the domestic parcels or
the international parcels?
(11:22):
Yep, domestic.
The domestic parcels takepriority. So if you're using a combined
carrier, that's Combining, youknow, you've got a bundle or something
like that, okay? Thosedomestic parcels are going to get
the priority over theinternational partners part. Parcels
without hesitation. Youreally, I want you to keep that in
mind too. Okay. And so interms of going back to, we talked
(11:43):
about diversification. We wantto be prepped, you know, look at,
look at alternative carriers,you know, and yes, this is Ascending
podcast. I'm allowed to saylook at ascending, but I'm also saying
look at alternative carriersto avoid some of these crazy peak
surcharges that are out there.They're going to happen again. You
know, you've got peak seasoncoming up right around the corner.
It's going to be here beforeyou know it. And guess what's going
(12:03):
to happen once you're onceyour hook, line and sinker, you're
going to get those surcharges.It's going to happen. So just a couple
of pieces with that is again,if you've got a bundled agreement
or something with a carrierthat, you know, really, their focus
is truly domestic. But hey,they're taking the international
because it's convenient. Maybeit's not so convenient come November
and December when you reallywant something to be, you know, if
(12:23):
you want Aunt Mildred to gether stuff by Christmas might not
happen.
Okay.
And I know that I can bringsome humor to that, but I also can
say without hesitation howmany times I've heard that story
over and over and over againtoo. And I mean that seriously. The
other thing going back tocutoff dates, so I know what we do,
we provide cutoff datesprobably in like the second week
(12:47):
of November, maybe third weekof November for the holiday cutoff
dates. We try and get it asearly as possible. And so those cutoff
dates for us in terms of ourmetrics is here's the based on the
service, APAC plus Apex selectselect ddp, here's the last day you
can, you know, we can processthat material to have it delivered
by Christmas time, you know,and then outside of that, you know,
no guarantee type of thing. Soyou need some visibility from your
(13:09):
partner, your carrier partnersin terms of, hey, there are some
expectations in terms of, youknow, when, when is something going
to get delivered to meet yourexpectations, to get there by the
holidays, whatever that maylook like.
That was very good. A couplethings I want to ask you on execution.
To your point about domesticvolume availability during peak is
(13:33):
different than it is the restof the year, right? So to your point
is they're probably runningmore promos or whatever to certain
countries and things like thatas a partner, we can help with that.
We don't have capacity issuesat Asendia. No, that's number one.
I'm telling you. Your stuff. Okay.
Yeah, please, we're going toprocess. Please. You have to pay
for the podcast.
(13:55):
Hey, we send us your parcels.We need a studio.
Yeah, right.
That's true.
That is true. Yeah. Yeah,we're worried about it. We're working
on Siobhan's basement over here.
It's a beautiful basement,very well lit, but go ahead. Sorry.
But it also helps, I think inthe last podcast, which is something
(14:16):
you brought up, it was reallykey was Wismo calls.
Right.
So to your point, if you'reusing say an ascending and you're
diversifying a volume andsplitting it, giving domestic maybe
to one, maybe ascending isblessed to get the international.
Your transits and your SLAsare going to be pretty good. We can
work with you on that. Tomeasure that a lot of times, what
(14:37):
we noticed that peak customerswould never change their websites,
they would Never update theirSLAs on Peak. And then they get a
lot of Wismo calls becausemaybe they felt it was going to be.
That's a great point.
Yeah. And we would see that alot. We go, listen, guys, you know,
you got an extra. You can geta little bandwidth you can work with,
but if you don't manage thatpart of your business, you're getting
(15:00):
a lot of calls because they'restill going to expect the same transit
times. They're not gettingthem. So that's something else to
think about. On execution.
No, managing expectations is.I mean, in every area of life is
key.
Right.
But we're here to talk aboutthis. That's an absolutely key thing.
So that's a great point.
Our last thing I want to askyou, what keeps you up at night?
Dorm peak, Trucks picking upon time, making sure that materials
(15:25):
processed quickly andefficiently and that we don't have
any significant customs issues.
There you go. So I would, Iwould think that's what most people
out here in the audience wouldprobably say the same thing. Right.
I don't think they're missinganything. I guess getting hold of
rep would be. Would be theother one because that a lot of times
(15:45):
the communication is. Thepeople are a little bit more busy,
don't get back right away. ButI don't see that a problem in ascending
it. But in my past life,people may have had thousand accounts,
can't get back to them, andthey don't get the attention they
need during peak. And theproblem is, at peak, customers need
more help than they probablydo in most of the year because they're
a little more stressed outabout what's going on and things
(16:08):
like that. But. But just as ahelp to be a good partner.
So I want to give one fun factbefore we depart today. Fun facts
brought on a new client.They're located in northern Michigan,
and they started during peak.Well, Q4 of 23.
Same thing.
Yeah. So with our Canadadirect access service, our Canadian
(16:28):
delivery network, we processedit, you know, maybe 2,000 parcels.
Good. And average deliverytime to Ontario, from process to
delivery, 1.8 business days.
That's funny.
You said Q4.
I had a customer started thelast week of the year, same thing.
Wow. They started last week ofthe year. Yeah.
That's pretty. They. All right.
(16:50):
And they were very happy witheverything to your point, into that
province. They were getting1.8 days even during peak season.
That's amazing.
Yeah.
All right, well, thank you allvery much for listening to episode
nine, getting ready for peakshipping season. Any questions, concerns,
please email our producersdirectly and just help. Keep hitting
(17:10):
that subscribe button.Download, because we need a new studio.
All right, go fund me.
Go fund me.
All right. If you want tosupport our podcast, the number one
thing you can do is share iton your social media and tag Asendia.
That helps us get the wordout, and we really appreciate it.
Be sure to subscribe anddownload our podcast. If you want
to learn more about today'stopic, email us at ecommerce USA@asendia.com
(17:36):
and check back frequently fornew discussions on ecommerce shipping
to Canada and worldwide.
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