: Will Walker, Senior Marketing Manager, Roadie

For Atlanta-based Roadie, an on-the-way delivery service with the nation’s largest local same-day footprint, and subsidiary of UPS, there is always a heightened focus on final-, or last-, mile logistics. That is especially true at this time of the year, to be sure. LM Group News Editor Jeff Berman recently caught up with Roadie Senior Marketing Manager Will Walker to learn about how the company approaches the busiest time of the year. Their conversation follows below.

LM: How are you seeing things evolve, at this point, for this time of the year, as it relates to the pre-holidays’ buildup, if you will? Are things shaping up in a normal or traditional way, given the many headwinds out there, like inflation and excess inventories, and shifts in demand, and moving from goods to services?

Will Walker: In some ways, you start to think there may never be a typical year again. Peak Season always has its challenges, and as we've learned the last several years, there are unique challenges that come every single year. There are many things you mentioned that are top of mind with our customers and prospects, particularly is it relates to inventory management, as we were working with folks back in the summer, and even back in the spring and really thinking about how to get inventory right, was the big question.

LM: In what ways?

Walker: It has to do with things like balancing just-in-time versus just-in-case, that it's in the right geographies, and having the right mix across all of your locations to meet demand, depending on where your customers are. And then also, as it relates to what we do specifically and having it pretty close to customers. With a lot of stores coming back online and people getting back to shopping centers and back in bricks and mortar stores, we knew that the mix between e-commerce and in person was going to be a little different. So, trying to manage where you had that inventory located to meet both groups as that kind of changed a little bit more again for the third year in a row was going to be important. And I think all of that has played out for lots of different reasons. You're seeing now a lot of inventory challenges that people are having, with too much inventory for some retailers that they're trying to move forward and inventory coming in early, as people were planning around any potential delays like what happened 2021. And the strategies that they're taking are some of the ones that we recommend, and that we've seen customers have success with for the last few years.

LM: Can you please provide some examples of those strategies?

Walker: The most obvious one is pulling the retail season, or Peak Season promotional period forward. You started to see that a few years ago, with some retailers offering sales before Black Friday earlier in November. We were suggesting that people even take a look at October, and because of some of those inventory challenges that's exactly what's happening. Peak Season is no longer just December. It's no longer just Black Friday. It's now truly becoming an entire actual season over a two-to-three-month period, just like an actual weather season would be.

LM: What are some differences you are seeing in working with large retailers compared to a year ago at this time? For example, what impact are you seeing with a return to the services-based economy?

Walker: What we are seeing is that retailers and other companies are continuing to really right-size the mix of how they are getting customers connected with their brands, particularly when it comes to the last mile. Retailers are getting smarter about what solution or what tool they use for each and every delivery, because every customer is a little bit different, and their needs are a little bit different, and even though a lot more folks are going back into stores, those folks who um who are shopping on e-commerce really like it, and really prefer it. So, I think the biggest thing that we're seeing is that people are really starting to figure out for what customers do I need to offer something like same-day or next-day, or expedited delivery? For what customers do I need to have a delayed option that's maybe a little bit less expensive and how can I use that to make their experience exactly what they need it to be so that they have a better experience, increase their loyalty and continue to come back to us. I think retailers are getting more solutions into their tool bell and finding how to deploy the right solution for the right customer at the right time.

LM: Some retailers, in advance of Peak Season aren't, really doing a good enough job in adding last mile capacity. Or if they are, perhaps they're adding it too late and bumping up against high volume peak activity. How do you see that? What do you think maybe are the reasons that they're not initially adding enough of the needed like final miles last mile capacity?

Walker: It's not revolutionary, but they have lots of competing priorities. As you're getting ready for Peak Season, there's no one challenge that you have to deal with, so I think, for most retailers they just get focused on other things. They get focused on right-sizing that inventory. They could focus on having it in the right places. But what we try to tell people is that, especially from the Roadie perspective, is that we're really an easy solution to deploy, and it doesn't take a lot of time, just a couple of weeks, sometimes, depending on the technology resources that somebody has in-house. So, why wouldn't you go ahead and get that in place, so that when you see a spike in demand or when something had expected happens, or when you meet your limits with other traditional carriers, you have that resource ready to go…and your customer doesn't experience any interruption.

LM: With Roadie having independent drivers, does that make it easier to flex up capacity as needed?

Will Walker: That network of independent drivers does exactly that. It allows our partners to handle unexpected volume, because the drivers are crowdsourced driver, because they're working part time, or are using Roadie episodically. They're just looking for ways to optimize their time. And, so, when they see more deliveries come into the system, they want to take them, because it's more opportunity for them to make money. And then, when there's less deliveries in the system, they do other things with their time.

The other great part about that is, is not only can you handle unexpected volume, but you can handle a lot of unexpected use cases. So, if for some reason, you start to see customers who live further away from your stores requesting delivery because gas is higher and they're uninterested in making more trips, a solution like ours allows you to reach those customers really easily with a high-quality delivery service.

It also helps if you're seeing unexpected mix of products that are that are getting uh ordered for a delivery. So, maybe you have uh TVs spike and delivery, because folks are driving smaller cars or interested in making fewer trips, you can handle those larger items with the roadie network, because our drivers use vehicles of all different sizes. There are lots of different unexpected things that you can handle with a crowdsource network like ours, because of the flexibility of the community and the flexibility and the vehicles and the flexibility of our geography.

LM: How do you view transit times as a company? In other words, is there a fair amount of variation?

Walker: The biggest factor is how far something has to go. You can't deliver something that has to go fifty miles in thirty minutes. It's a physics problem there. I think, for local deliveries, most things are delivered in under two hours and then going up the further the distance that needs to be traveled.

LM: In terms of Peak, is there anything different or unique about getting new drivers onboard?

Walker: We have a lot of tools to engage our driver network. There are more than 200,000 drivers using Roadie today, not all 200,000 drivers are making a delivery every single day. But as I mentioned earlier, they're just looking for opportunities to make money. So, for whatever reason that there is low engagement somewhere, which is rarely the problem, usually folks are clamoring for more opportunities to make deliveries. We have some tools that we can use to re-engage, just like app-based companies do. We can communicate with our drivers and let them know of upcoming expected volume. And we work with our partners to figure out when their big promotion days going to be, and we communicate with our drivers ahead of time about those types of things. And the driver community is super appreciative, because as independent contractors, they just want to make the most of their time, so the more that they can predict that, the more we can communicate with them the happier they are.

LM: What are the key challenges that the larger retail shippers you work with face relating to Peak Season and what are the things they need to do on order to plan for sustained success and making their customers happy?

Walker: Yeah, I think I think you have to remain simple and flexible, and be willing to keep an eye on the metrics and have a plan for pivoting and having a plan, A and a plan B. So, that means monitoring suppliers’ capacity and knowing what you are going to do if you, if you have an issue with forecasts. You also need to keep fine tuning the warehouse and your inventory efficiencies and find out and monitor what's the mix of SKUs that are going out and how far are they going and how fast that you need to get out and communicate that with warehouse employees, so that you can make changes there on the warehouse floor to continue creating efficiencies.

You also definitely need to make sure that you're not forgetting about post- Peak, which includes a lot of e-commerce activity and along with that comes a lot of returns, in addition to the returns that come along with holiday season. Don't forget about the returns that are going to come in and definitely start getting your plan together for that probably now or very soon. But I think the most important thing that we've seen through all the different ups and downs over the last few years is that customers are really what matters, and continuing to foster that trust with your customers is of utmost importance. People are willing to stick with you as long as they feel like they can trust you, so communicate with your customers. Don't leave them in the dark if there are delays; be upfront with folks so they can plan around it if there are shortages. Be upfront with them.

LM: There are a lot of ways for people to define and describe the final mile, or last mile segment. How do you view it, in terms of its progression over, say the last three-to-five years?

Walker: Five years ago, we were still in the throes of the “Amazonification” of the retail experience. Prime membership was growing like crazy, tons of folks who had never competed with an e-commerce player like Amazon had to start doing so because of the massive expansiveness of their inventory

And then through all the changes that we've seen when it seems that an e-commerce experience, and convenient e-commerce experiences, are the ones that allow you to get your products almost in real time, which has become table stakes for a lot of customers. There's this huge subset of consumers now who enjoy the e-commerce experience, enjoy the convenience, and want that high level of touch. They want to be able to find the exact right thing and get it to their house the next day or even the same day. So, if folks aren't thinking about how to serve that consumer, they're going to lose that consumer. Even more importantly, there's tons of people who have a couple of things that they want to have that experience for right, but probably not everything. Some folks still want to go get their groceries in person, and they still want to squeeze their vegetables, but for dog food they know exactly what brand they know exactly when they need it. Consumers all have different needs, sometimes for things like same-day and next-day delivery for certain things in our lives. And, again, if we're going to continue to have the relationships with the retailers, then we always have that have to meet those needs of our customers.