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Instagram- @jeffdavis_bridgestone
YouTube- JeffDavis_Bridgestone
Twitter- @bridgestonecap
https://www.youtube.com/@ChainReaction-vh7rm
www.bridgestoneinvest.com
Hi everybody. Jeff Davis here with Chain Reaction. Thanks for joining us on another episode. Today we have just super. Bright and awesome guest Ms. Courtney Folk with renewal Logistics, but not just renewal logistics. She has had like a phenomenal sales career and we're gonna dive into that. But first, I will let Ms. Courtney introduce herself. Courtney, what's going on today? Hi Jeff, so glad to be here. Thank you. Awesome. Yes. My name's Courtney Fog. I I own Renewal Logistics, which. and apparel focus three pl. So we do fulfillment for apparel brands, large and small. And then we also have a, a business that's called Renew, which is the largest independent restoration, dry cleaning business in the us. And we help homeowners who've had house fires get their lives back together by cleaning all of their apparel items. So yeah, that's what I do. That's who I. That's fantastic. And we were, you know, I'm a sales guy, so I'm always interested in the sales background and, and logistics is an interesting business because everybody's a salesperson, right. I was taught when I got in, whoever picks up the phone is selling. Right. and, and you're an owner, you're an operator, you're a salesperson. So what, you know, tell us a little bit about your background. I mean, you were doing. Cell phone sales and and advertising sales. Go back, take us back. Yeah. That's so funny. Yeah. You brought up and when we were doing our pre-call Citadel broadcasting, I can't tell you the last time I thought about working there. It's been a year since I've LinkedIn tracks everything. Courtney, LinkedIn tracks. Yeah. That was my, like I was saying, that was my very first job outta college and the only, you know, like it was selling. A radio advertising for a large syndicate. And it was great. Picked up some customers, had a good, you know, good time there. It was one of those businesses where you don't make a ton of money though, so I ultimately moved, but I loved concert tickets. They were some, I saw some amazing shows from Yeah, being able to see everything free there. And then I left there and went to Tel, which is now Verizon and that was fun. It was that was a kind of a hard corporate sales job for a kid, straight outta college. And but I was successful and I was really just successful because I found an angle with a certain vertical. So like at the time, Nextel was the big thing, the chirping and talking and so I figured out how to kind of make the system yes. Yeah, exactly. I was telling somebody the other day, I was trying to, to explain to them what the, the commercials for the next sale handhelds were with the firemen. Oh yeah. Yeah. And that sound was it, wasn't it? Yeah. Yeah. You couldn't go in a restaurant without hearing that sound. Right. It was always happening. Yeah. But, so I sold I sold all the mechanical contractors in Columbia, South Carolina Alltel by kind of figuring out an angle and then just kind of reselling that to, to everybody that kind of probably had the same problem. And I mean, that, isn't that the secret? That's the secret to sales right there. You listen really well to your customers. You figure out what they need and you give it to'em, and then you Yeah. It's the solution, right? I mean, we, and, and you've entered into a transactional business or what could be a transactional business and understanding the true needs of somebody of a business and creating a solution is, is the secret sauce. A hundred percent. Yeah. And. and like, you know, in that solution, you know, someone told me one time I'll give you two pieces of advice I heard that have just changed my world, but someone said one time it doesn't cost anything to be significant. Wow. And I thought about that and I was like, you know, that's so true. Like back then the big thing was every time that you would sell a fleet program, you'd have to actually sit there and program in every single person's phone number, in every single phone. Like there was no really good software for that. And so, That was one of my biggest selling points was that I would do that. So I sat there at night drinking a glass of wine programming, people's phones, watching tv. But you know, it can, it can really, it can be as simple as that, and I think that's a great reminder. I love that. Yeah. It's like parenting, right? What do you mean doesn't cost anything to be significant? You just gotta be. Yes. A hundred percent. A hundred percent. And what was the other thing? Oh so working at Alltel, I had this opportunity one time to sell this customer a very high profit rate plan. And it was like, Back then, you have these national plans and or you have regional or local plans. And if you have national plans, you're paying a ton of money for the national coverage. And I had this customer and they, I, I could save them a lot of money without having to bring them down. You know, I could keep them on a, on national plan. but they'd be paying like three times what they should have had to. So I called my mom and I was like, mom, I'm in this moral dilemma here. This customer really doesn't need this extra service, but I, and I can make a lot of money off of it if I sell'em. And they never know the difference. And I was like, so I really don't know what to do. And she said, Courtney, I'm gonna tell you something and I want you to hear this for the rest of your life. I want you to use this. And I was like, all right. And she said you take care of your customer first and the money will come. Mm. And I think that's also very true. You know, like we have 20 year relationships and, and, and it's because of that, you know, like Yeah. I think the alternative is you're, you have a lot of one hit wonder relationships, you know? Yes, yes. And pigs get fat and hogs get slaughter. Oh yes. I love that. Exactly. That's exactly it. So it sounds like you learned solution-based selling a long time ago in an, in a kind of challenging environment. And then you, you, you took it to this other completely different industry. How did, how did you translate that? Yeah, so we've actually jumped now three industries, and I guess in my career I've jumped a total of five. I think, like I said, sales is very simple. It's very, very simple. It's, it's who's listening best to the customer and who's structuring a solution that's gonna most closely fit their needs. And so it really doesn't matter what the business is, as long as you're doing that really, really well. And you know, the asset stack, the tech stack, the people, the training, all of those things really are all formed in order to accomplish that one goal. And so, like with us changing industries, I think I think the big thing for us was we wanted to find, you know, more units per costume. So we started retail, dry cleaning was like four units a customer. And then getting into insurance that was more like 400 units a customer. And then now with apparel companies, I mean, you know, we're dealing with millions of units per customer. And so that was kind of like our real, that was kind of the thing that I was always looking for was how, how are we going to 10 x this every time? Right? So that's kind of what we've. Twice. And, and I think the thing with it is leveraging what you learned from the past, right? Like, so it's all about structuring solutions, but usually the solutions really come down to who's gonna operate and execute the most cleanly, right? Like we're in the three PL space. I got, I got a customer right now. you know, we're solving three problems for them that other people could solve. Just no one was solving it. Like they, they were paying a lot more. I looked at their shipping and we analyzed their, their dimensional weight versus the real weight. There was a huge delta there. It was gonna save'em$700,000. Their systems weren't syncing up, which was causing all of these canceled orders, which was another two and a half million dollars. And then, they were having the super high rate of returns and that that was, those goods weren't getting back into stock fast enough for them to be able to resell them during the same season, so they were becoming obsolete. So, you know, we're looking at all this money for this one customer, and there's 1,000,003 pls that are out there, right? There's a million of'em, but there's no one committed to see through the process fully to make sure that that customer is getting support. as perfectly as possible. And then so we're, we're super careful about listening and understanding our customers. But then the other thing is just really, I mean, we don't keep people around who aren't really gonna be good in their job. You know, like it's it's super important to execute for a customer so you can, you can establish trust all day long, but you're not gonna keep it if you're not executing properly. And I think we just spent a lot of time working on. on those two things, listening to customers, figuring out what their needs are and how do you, how do you support them? And then the second thing is, how do you ensure that once it's not in your hands anymore and it's in the next person's hands that's in your company, that they're, that they're gonna, they're gonna treat that customer the same way you would. And there's, you know, that's a lot of work right there. There's micromanagement, there's developing systems and processes. inspection behind that. There's reporting, there's KPIs, there's there, there's a lot. So I'd say probably 25% of the time is figuring out how to sell someone. And then 75% of the time is figuring out how to execute so that you're really supporting them the way you promised you were going to. Yeah. Yeah. Because we all wear a sales hat. So percent, you know, talking about what you're selling and, and some of the solutions. What are you. What are you putting in place and, and what are you seeing in the marketplace? So what is your niche? What is your business? So our business is so Renewal Logistics is a, a third party fulfillment company. So we do warehousing shipping orders for So if you buy something on Amazon, that's a fulfillment. They're, they're handling the fulfillment. If you bought something on belt.com or dillards.com there's a distribution company that's, that's handling that fulfillment, that's shipping that item to you. So storing it properly picking the orders as they come in, packing them, shipping them out to u p s, and then making sure that all the tracking information and everything is updated constantly. And Our company works with some super big brands, like some of the large, like top three brands. And we started working with them because they found us online after I was telling you we were in the restoration dry cleaning business. Well, they had this big project where they had 300,000 units that had to be cleaned before they were shipped out to a number one. Literally the number one wholesale company in the us That's you, you're in there all the time, I'm sure. And they've got the pallets of products everywhere. And these goods were supposed to ship in two weeks and if they didn't ship, this customer was gonna lose this account with this wholesaler. And so not only was, you know, 20 million worth of product on the line at this point, but their relationship, which is probably hundreds of million dollars, was on the line. and they couldn't find anyone else to help handle this issue. We actually came to their facility, figured out a way to process and clean these items and get them re, you know, we had to do everything. We had to take'em out of all these case packs, these pre-packs that you get, and put'em all back in, you know, 12 or 14 different sizes per case and different colors, and it had to be perfect. All of the stickers that show the sizes on the clothes and the, the hang tags that all had to go back on the right item. And it, it was all, there was a lot to it. And but we did it, we did it in two weeks. We went from zero to 27,000 units in two days. We had a staff of 200 workers for two shifts for, for 14 days straight and finished two days early. And then that wholesaler was completely happy. They had zero problems. And so that led us to working with this super large company. And then they were like, well, gosh, if you guys can execute like this, I wonder what else you can do for me. And so they started. basically handing off anything that they didn't want their facility to do, to do anything that they didn't wanna spend money on or anything. They didn't wanna spend the time to structure a process for, or they didn't have the management capacity or the actual laborers to do it. They would just send it to us and, and we actually became their dedicated return center. So we handled about a million units a year for them that are returns and then, and sometimes that number's higher. And then they also use us for all of their F B A prep and their wholesale prep. So like with apparel, you have clothing that comes from the factory and it's usually split. So you have inventory that's probably gonna go to a store that's gonna come over on a hangar, and then you have inventory that's, that's probably gonna go and sell online. That's gonna come in a poly bag with a sticker on it. And for companies to really. Have an omnichannel solution, you have to have a, a system to change those back and forth quickly, like immediately. So a lot of what we do is repackaging, we will repackage a hundred thousand units a week of goods that are gonna go to be drop shipped to about 140 different retailers. And we just, you know, we help companies move product really fast. So, That's what we do for the giant brands, the medium sized businesses and small businesses. We actually will also hand handle all of their fulfillment. So we'll, we'll do all the warehousing ourselves instead of them having their own distribution centers. And so we'll do a full receiving process where we keep up with all of their inventory, tell them if their PO of what they purchased was different than what was received. Put it all into our warehouse management software. And then from there we're connected with their Shopify and all of their other platforms where they're selling product. And as those orders come into their system, it falls into our system, into our warehouse management software. We will go pick and pack those orders, put'em in the bags, and ship'em out to customers, and then handle returns and everything else that goes along with that. So that's kind of the l the short, long story of, of what we do. And, and the reason we specialize in apparel is obviously we've been trained by some of the best companies in the world because it's like, you know, as soon as they have something they don't want, some of our larger customers, as soon as they have something they don't wanna handle, they're, they're walking us through exactly how they would've handled it if it was in our facility. So we can kind of really share that information with a lot of other companies. And then also, you know, like returns is a huge thing right now, right? Like that's, you're asking like kind of what do you see in the industry? The big thing with the fact that we've had all these supply chain problems is that, you know returns are are insane and extra product is insane. So, We, since we have such a large dry cleaning facility, it's really helpful for companies that have higher value apparel items to be able to have a return center that can kind of move those back into stock really quickly. So that may not be cleaning anything, it may just be repackaging or, but it may be, you know, getting a, a, a makeup stain off of an item and it's certainly refolding everything so that it looks factory fresh again, which is really kind of hard to do if you're not trained in that. I feel like I just talked a lot. You did take a breath. I have lots of, I have lots of questions. Like I'm, I'm blown away by this. I, I think it's awesome. Okay. Oh cool. Thank you. So, I, I wrote down lots of pieces of what you just said and, and cuz I have questions for each of it. Okay, sure. So it's high value, like this is not cheap stuff, so does. you know, does that affect, like, are, are you having to ensure that is a client self-insured? How does, how does that work? Man, that's a great question. I can't believe you asked that question. Like really, because people never think about insurance on this stuff, but yeah, that's so Exactly. Most of these really large companies are self. And that's a big part of it. But also if you think about their time to market, so like we've had customers who, the product that was on the front of their catalog, they receive it. And then five days from now it's supposed to be shipping out a customers and it's covered in mold and it smells like mildew really strong. What do you do? Right? Like even if it was an insurance claim, which a lot of times those are you still don't wanna just throw that stuff away. You have to get it clean because it's gotta be sold. And up until we came up with a solution, there really wasn't a solution on the market to be able to do that. So all this stuff was just getting destroyed and they were having all these, the lost business dollars. But when it comes to like in a warehouse there's usually two policies. There's, there's the warehouse men's policy, which is gonna cover general liability. and it's gonna cover accidents, theft, and damage and things like that. And then there's also the customer also has to carry an insurance policy on their goods. So, so they're covering the goods, right. I mean, I understand in general. I understand that it is just when you get to such a high value, you as a provider of warehouse services, it. You know, how are you managing that? Are you, are you saying, Hey, I'm only liable for X, and then you know, everything else? Because this is such a high value that you were talking, I think you said 20 million, like all of a sudden overnight they park 20 million worth of product in your warehouse. Like, Hey man, you know, I'm not liable for 20 million for X amount of a hundred thousand dollars of services. Like, it just doesn't make financial sense if the thing burns down. Yep. So they have coverage for that. And we also have coverage. We actually we're one of the few companies that are out there that have unlimited Bailey's coverage. So we do have coverage for, for them if that happened at replacement value, which is insane. And that's it's getting harder and harder to get that coverage every year. But what's it called? Baileys. Baileys, B a i L E e, apostrophe. Interesting. Okay. So that's insurance. And I'll have an insurance guy on probably in a few weeks when Oh, cool. Yeah. Well, my family's from the insurance property, casualty insurance side. So I'll tag, my smart questions are coming from Yeah. I'll tag my mom on this one. Like, Hey mom, I asked, oh, that's awesome, So let's talk about the warehousing, right? That, that. Do you have one facility? Are you guys all over the place? So we're not as large as lots of companies that are in the space. We're kind of considered like a boutique, but we are, I mean we have three facilities two in Atlanta, one in South Carolina. We're currently right under 200,000 square feet, but we actually have two projects that are 90% closed that would probably add another two or 300,000 square feet to. It's our book. So we've really, up until last year, Everything was word of mouth and we were completely fine with our customer, our company size and everything, but our customer concentration is just too high with a couple different companies. And so we felt like with Covid it was obvious there's a lot of risk that you have with just having a few customers. So we've really started getting aggressive about sales, so I would imagine. And the next, you know, two, our three year plan is to have three more facilities after, after these two that I'm talking about. So like a California location a New York, New Jersey location. So we'll see if that happens. It should. I don't see why it wouldn't from, red to blue, huh? Yes. Good luck, I, you know what? Georgia's not that red. George is pretty blue especially with the Atlanta. Yeah. Yeah. I'm working with, but I digress. I digress. So, so that leads into a couple more questions, which are kind of tied, right? I, I've had a couple of guys on here and, and they're in the, they're in the technology sector for logistics and supply chain. Is, are you guys implementing technology and, and obviously you are from an inventory manage. Perspective, right? And, and probably tying into their E R P or whatever, but is there technology that you have or that you foresee down the line that's going to assist on the labor front? Because this seems like a hugely, you just said 220 employees and a 200,000 square foot warehouse where I'm from could run a 200,000 square foot warehouse. 20 guys. So it's, it seems very labor intense. Is there like a machine learning or some sort of robotics solution for this type of so how you add service? Yeah, that's a great question. Okay. So. Two things with that. So technology, we built a so we have a bench of about 2,500 workers. So our, our norm number of workers is around an average of 200 a day. So we'll have, like, we've got a hundred full-time workers and then we have anywhere from a hundred to 300 temp workers every single day, just depending on the volumes have to, right. Cause yeah, out of call offs and stuff. Well, and, and also, you know, our, some days we may need 25 people. So like our, our vo our volumes are very, you know, peak season driven, pro, project driven. And so like a lot of so a lot of times there's not a need to have like a tr a truly full-time worker, but a lot of our workers, those 300 people that are kind of like our bench, like our, our top workers within the. They're basically like full-time employees. Like they've been with us for years and years and years and they know the system and they train new people and some their supervisors and things like that. So we have a whole like, hierarchy of of those temporary workers underneath there. But like we build a tech service to go to cuz like, you know temp service companies are just the worst to work with. Like, they will tell you they're gonna give you a hundred people and 15 will show up the next day. So we build a, we build a software to kind of automate that process and take them out of the middle of it. So we do text blasts every day saying we need a hundred, you know, a hundred people tomorrow, or 200 people or whatever. And we have. in our system, we keep, we keep information on those laborers so we know who our best people are, what accounts they work best on. And so we kind of have an a team, a B team, a C team, and a D team. And, and our software that texts these people out kind of is also set up so that we can utilize those, that hierarchy in terms of like who are the better people for the better accounts. So that's one thing. Second thing is, the big thing that most companies struggle with is figuring out the labor management piece, right? So how do you, how do you make sure that every worker on a temporary project is actually hitting their numbers? And a lot of that's usually in most, most facilities, it's very manual. And we built a system. To where on any project, even if we're only gonna have that customer in our building for one day, we can kind of pull data out of their e r p, figure out what's what, what format it needs to be in to be plugged right back into their e r p, manage those, those employees that day to those metrics, and then turn around and put it right back in their system. So it feels almost like a dialysis machine where. you know, your blood's being pulled outta your body and clean and then it goes back in and it recirculates. It's the same thing with data. So those are our two big things from a tech standpoint. But I would say just speaking generally about the industry the place where robots right now really has the most impact in a facility is in conveyance. So taking over what the large conveyors used to do. And and it's great because those conveyors take up so much room and a lot of times you just lose a lot. capacity in your building because you've got these massive conveyors that aren't always being used. And so the robots are nice because they can kind of like carry things from point A to point B, and that's really the value of robots right now in the warehouse. Wow. So they're replacing conveyors? Yeah. Oh, wow. I didn't know more than people. More than people. Well, and, and so, and they're more, they're more you can fine tune them to certain location. So like picking, right? So you get an order at the pick, at the pick station, and then someone has to travel to the rack to pull that item out of the rack, and then someone has to travel back to the pick station to pack it or to the pack station to pack it and then have it shipped out to the customer. So, The way that robots are kind of working in a warehouse right now is that order comes in, the robot gets the order, it travels to the racks, and then there are people who are standing in the racks who all they're doing all day is just feeding robots, and then those robots are then traveling to the pack station with those orders so that the packers can be there doing the work to actually pack it. Does that make sense? Yeah. I just had not thought about that. It makes total sense now that you said that. Yeah. Yeah. So that's awesome. You guys have a, a super sticky solution for the big retailers. That's awesome. Thank you. I wish I was a better, you say I'm a great salesperson. I don't feel like I'm a good salesperson at really knowing how to kind of like get that out. It's one thing to tell someone we can do all these things for you. It's another thing for them to feel, to really wrap their heads around how to utilize you. You know? So like I spend a lot of my time just thinking about that, like how do I get people to understand more? Yeah, the opportunity. Why don't you listen to me? That's what I, you don't understand. I'm right That's what I do. Like, you don't get it. so I'm kidding. Sort of sort of. I do, I do Chinese water drip, you know, eventually. Eventually, after like 10 years of me calling on you, you're gonna gimme some business. Oh, okay. So you're a farmer? No, I'm a hunter. Oh, you're a hunter. What's your patient, hunter? Eventually I wear you down because you're dehydrated and tired. I love that. Actually, that's a, I've never heard anyone call it that before, but. I might start thinking about it like that. Cause I think of myself like a ninja and I think that kind of fits with the whole ninja mentality, That's funny. That's great. Awesome. Courtney, where can these guys find you the, the retailers and, and anybody needing warehousing services, reverse logistics or just maybe, maybe a consultation on what some challenges that they're having. Yeah, so lots of places, but the one I'll plug today is just renewal logistics.com. Awesome. So renewal logistics.com. I'll be sure to put all that information in the show notes. Courtney, it's been a blast. I had a lot of, lot of fun talking with you. I feel like I learned a ton today. I'm sure everybody else will and alwa. As always, we are sponsored by. Bridgestone Capital. You guys heard it here. Warehousing is not going away. You know, we, we like to put our, our commissions to earn commissions. So if you're interested in, in passive investing, in, in industrial warehouse space or apartment buildings and some of these different markets that is what Bridgestone Capital does. You can go to Chain investor.pro. Feel free to reach out. We have deals in the pipeline coming through. All you gotta do is collect a paycheck and become an owner. So that's chain investor.pro. Courtney, thanks so much and look forward to seeing you on the other side. Let's stay in touch. That sounds great. Thank you, Jeff. It was great to meet you.