Before founding New Engen, Inc., Justin Hayashi helped e-commerce giant Zulily achieve remarkable success through his mastery of performance marketing. By leveraging creativity and data, Zulily reached $1 billion in revenue under his leadership. Justin then ventured out on his own after Zulily's acquisition, offering his services pro bono to various CEOs. His expertise proved valuable, and within six months several clients had signed on, giving birth to New Engen, Inc.New Engen, Inc. practices what is now called performance marketing, which emphasizes agility, data analysis, and real-time adjustments. Two case studies demonstrate their approach:- A small cosmetics company saw gains through optimized media management and a viral eye makeup gif ad.- 1-800-Flowers.com doubled revenue in four years working with New Engen, Inc., outperforming other agencies.Justin reflects on how marketing has evolved since Zulily. Modern tools automate tasks like content formatting, while AI and data provide insights into reaching audiences like Gen Z. Building trust through reliability and having partners' interests in mind is also vital. At New Engen, Inc., human capital ensures quality client services through an ethos of authenticity. Justin explains their long-term focus contrasts a short-sighted transactional approach. Prioritizing relationships over quick wins has proven sustainable through word-of-mouth and exceeding expectations. In summary, Justin's journey displays how performance-driven creativity and putting clients first can achieve growth, even as digital marketing undergoes constant change.

The balance between supply and demand has a significant impact on pricing and behavior in the trucking industry. During periods of excess capacity, known as soft markets, prices tend to fall as carriers are willing to honor existing contracts, as evidenced by high acceptance rates. However, in tight markets where demand outweighs supply, prices rise and carriers may prioritize more lucrative spot freight opportunities over contracted loads. These market dynamics and the incentives that drive carrier and shipper actions were the focus of recent research conducted through a partnership between academia and industry. Angi Acocella, who has studied trucking procurement through her research at MIT, explored how carriers respond to shippers under different conditions. Her findings indicate that while maintaining relationships is important, carriers are primarily motivated by current market conditions when deciding which loads to prioritize.While optimization models have proven useful in procurement, the assumptions made in early approaches underestimated the dynamics of real-world transportation. Deterministic frameworks that ignore variability did not translate effectively to practical applications. Newer techniques have emerged to instead impose constraints that reflect industry complexities. This enhances the strategic value of optimization beyond traditional deterministic, cost-focused objectives. Network segmentation also deserves further study, as not all freight lanes are uniform. Factors like volume consistency, carrier types, and opportunity costs must be considered to tailor solutions. Dynamic contracts that fluctuate with market conditions could provide more flexibility than annual fixed-rate agreements.To address the trucking industry’s many complexities, practitioners and academics should continue close collaboration. Analytics from such collaborations can provide insights for industry players ready to adapt to the constant changes they face. Maintaining perspective across networks while focusing on execution, not just planning, will be key to future success.

Eric's Journey into Transportation and Logistics InvestingEric enjoys the privilege of a highly engaging career. His primary responsibility involves exploring the breadth of the investment landscape to identify attractive strategies that have the potential to enhance his clients' portfolios. As a generalist, his search extends globally.His interest in transportation and logistics stemmed from networking and engaging in discussions with individuals who possess specialized knowledge in various sectors. He discovered that transportation and logistics represent a sector characterized by fragmentation and untapped potential for innovation. The global nature of this field, along with its connections to geopolitics and climate issues, sparked his intellectual curiosity.To deepen his understanding of various industries, Eric actively networks with operators and sector specialists, and consults with those who have already invested within the sector, including venture capital and private equity groups. These activities support the development of a well-considered investment thesis within his firm, in collaboration with his team.The appeal of transportation and logistics for Eric and his team lies in its fragmented and regional characteristics, the opportunity for disruption, and the vast potential for innovation. They also appreciate the sector for its potential for downside protection (depending on the specific strategy), a key consideration in their evaluation process. Some Key Points from our conversation include: Balancing Risk and Returns in Logistics Investment StrategiesThe Crucial Role of Logistics in Shaping HistoryTargeted Investment Sourcing: Balancing In-Depth Research with Strategic NetworkingEric's Strategic Approach to Investment Management and Time PrioritizationAnticipating Investment Risks with Pre-Mortem AnalysisEric's Method for Market SuccessAt its core, Eric's approach involves an ongoing cycle of knowledge-building. Through deep research, insightful conversations, and strategic analysis, he aims to develop well-informed theses on promising sectors. This allows his team to confidently identify investments with attractive risk-return profiles that can generate strong performance for clients over the long run.Most importantly, Eric stresses the importance of understanding potential downsides and preparing for unpredictable outcomes. By prioritizing intellectual honesty around risks, conducting thorough due diligence, and focusing on the asymmetry of returns, he believes his firm is well-positioned to navigate the uncertainties inherent in markets. Overall, Eric is enthusiastic about the opportunities that exist for patient investors willing to do the work required to analyze complex industries like transportation and logistics. He finds such sectors rich with opportunities for those ambitious enough to uncover them.

Josh Jewett discusses several significant advancements in retail supply chain transparency and digital customer engagement. Supply chain transparency has been enabled by telemetry data from containers, cartons and pallets, allowing retailers to track purchase orders from origin to store. This facilitates timely delivery of merchandise and optimized operations for key sales periods like holidays. Retailers are also enhancing digital customer engagement by gathering transaction data to understand customer preferences. This enhanced insight drives changes to product assortment management and supporting supply chains. One example is Smart Sense, a division of Digi that offers monitoring devices for perishable products. The devices track temperature, impacts and humidity throughout the supply chain, providing transparency and mitigating risks.Another example is a company that has an innovative direct-to-consumer model that involves promoting products online and fulfilling orders directly from factories with minimal shipping costs. This approach reduces inventory risk by allowing rapid adaptation to consumer demand without over-investing in inventory.Josh discusses the CIO's role in strategic alignment and portfolio management during mergers. Setting corporate priorities each year involves both art and science from the board. Executives must align departmental roadmaps to high-level themes. As an executive working across departments, the CIO plays a key role in strategic alignment and resolving conflicts. The CIO advises the CEO and works with a capital committee to manage a portfolio of departmental initiatives based on criteria like revenue growth, profitability, efficiency and risk mitigation. This portfolio approach is important given limited IT resources. Josh advocates prioritizing initiatives that align most closely with corporate strategy. In retail specifically, digitizing supply chains and understanding demand have become crucial with COVID-19 and tariff disruptions. Retailers are diversifying supply chains and using technology to reduce inventory capital tied up and lower markdowns. Exciting developments include retailers monetizing first-party customer data by selling it to brands and auctioning digital ad space. Once exclusive to large brands, this practice is becoming more widespread and allows mid-tier brands to leverage data for both operations and revenue.Josh then discusses the Dollar Tree acquisition of Family Dollar, noting initial tendencies to select the best applications from each company were misguided. The decision should be driven by organizational strategy and post-merger leadership structure. Integration focused on aligning IT to the rationalization of core functions like finance and HR before moving outward. Systems were consolidated for back-office operations while maintaining separate platforms for stores to avoid disruption costs. The importance of business liaisons and managing existing technology efficiently to enable new adoption within budget is also highlighted.In conclusion, the evolving role of the CIO involves not only managing technology, but actively contributing to products, services and revenue through digital innovation and monetization of first-party data.

Clete Brewer is the founder and managing partner of New Road Capital Partners, a private equity firm focused on investing in and scaling companies in the supply chain logistics and retail technology sectors. He has over 30 years of experience leading and advising high-growth companies, previously serving as CEO of staffing company Staffmark and President of Sport Clips. In the interview, Brewer provides his perspective on trends in private equity investing and shares insights on how New Road identifies and partners with promising companies to help them scale.Key Takeaways:- New Road looks for companies at the "tipping point" stage, where they have an established product and early traction but need help accelerating growth. The firm leverages its operating expertise and networks to provide strategic guidance and operational support.  (Listen to the podcast to gain a full understanding of this idea.)- When evaluating management teams, New Road looks for humble leaders who surround themselves with strong talent and have a focused solution that solves a real pain point for enterprise customers. - The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated adoption of supply chain technologies like track and trace, final mile delivery, and reverse logistics. New Road sees continued opportunities in modernizing legacy systems through cloud-based, specialized solutions.- Strategic corporate venture investing is on the rise, allowing large companies to support innovation and gain insights into emerging technologies in their sector. New Road partners with corporations looking to invest alongside their fund.Brewer emphasizes the importance of focus, and chemistry in building the New Road team. His passion for unleashing entrepreneurial spirit shines through. For supply chain and retail tech companies looking to scale, partnering with an operationally-focused firm like New Road can provide invaluable guidance on growth.

MFour Mobile Research provides valuable data and insights to help brands understand omnichannel shopper behavior. In this podcast interview, MFour CEO Chris St. Hilaire shares how the company captures consumer data across in-store, online, and mobile channels to paint a holistic picture of the shopper journey.Chris explains that today's shoppers engage in a constant cycle of online and offline research before making purchases. They check prices on their phones while browsing stores, compare options across retailers, and are more likely to switch brands or stores based on poor experiences. With lower loyalty to any single option, it is critical for brands to understand where shoppers are in their journey in order to effectively influence purchase decisions.MFour collects data from a large opt-in panel of consumers across the US to observe actual shopping behaviors. By tracking in-app, website, and location data with permission, they can assess key metrics like dwell time in stores and time spent in online shopping carts. Pairing this behavioral data with survey responses right after shopping experiences captures consumer sentiment while emotions are still fresh.Chris notes the importance of questions that get straight to the point using intuitive mobile survey formats with short completion times. With attention spans decreasing, brands must simplify consumer touchpoints. Artificial intelligence can also help further democratize market research by contextualizing complex data.The podcast discusses specific case studies where a bad in-store experience led shoppers to increase spending elsewhere by 22%. With inflation squeezing budgets, understanding financial pressures on consumers is paramount for retailers. MFour's insights can help CPG and retail clients better target messaging and allocate marketing budgets across the growing landscape of retail media networks. As the smartphone increasingly serves as the primary consumer interface, optimized mobile data holds the key to guiding shoppers throughout their omnichannel journeys.

Brands want to get closer to customers to understand how spending drives outcomes. Retailers have rich customer data from transactions that can help target brands' most valuable audiences. As retailers build out their media capabilities, they can sell audience access to brands across various channels like digital displays and audio. This offers brands new opportunities to reach customers beyond traditional in-store allowances. However, precisely measuring return on investment for retail media spending remains a challenge. Agencies help plan brand budgets across fragmented channels, including retail media. Brands want retailers to demonstrate that retail media spending generates incremental returns above traditional channels and in the context of overall marketing budgets.Marketing is increasingly adopting strategies based on specific audiences and using identity data and artificial intelligence. The advantage of this approach is that it facilitates optimized messaging in real-time and allows for measuring actual business outcomes instead of simply assessing reach and frequency. Retail media embodies this evolving trend. Although it's an expanding channel for brands, its incremental value over traditional channels still needs to be demonstrated.Brands want to see data showing that investing in retail media provides better or additional results compared to what they could achieve through other channels. Retailers are building out their media ecosystems to better track data and demonstrate the week-to-week results and incrementality of retail media spending to advertisers. Aggregating and integrating data from various fragmented channels presents a big challenge given the complexity. Platforms like Tracer help by seamlessly ingesting all this data at scale across markets and consumer segments to enable analytics, reporting and measuring effectiveness across channels in real-time. Tracer developed their data ingestion capabilities out of their parent company VaynerMedia, where they proved the concept. As a company singularly focused on data ingestion, Tracer is able to use ingested data for advanced analytics. Few other companies in the space specialize in data ingestion to this degree. This is why Tracer has been expanding with large enterprise clients—they have mastered the challenging area of data ingestion through automation and AI.Relevance of messaging is also key, especially when endorsed by influencers who are aware of and interested in a product. Retailers are getting better at serving more relevant ads. In this dynamic environment, marketers need tools to engage audiences through targeted, relevant messaging in real-time across different formats and channels to prove return on investment and drive business outcomes.The fundamentals of marketing remain audience insights, activation/engagement, and measurement/optimization. But new technologies now enable more granular audience data and activation across digital and streaming channels. Measurement can be tied to real business outcomes beyond just reach and frequency. A quantum shift is taking place in how marketing must think and operate to own the customer experience.Links: https://corporate.walmart.com/news/2023/09/19/exploring-the-potential-of-virtual-commerce

I recently had the pleasure of interviewing George Abernathy, a true legend in the transportation procurement business, for my podcast. George is a Board Member & Strategic Advisor and is the very recent past President of Emerge. Over the course of our conversation, George provided invaluable insights into this complex industry from someone with over three decades of experience. Here are a few of the many takeaways:Deregulation Revolutionized the IndustryWhen the trucking industry was deregulated in 1980, it opened the door for thousands of new carriers to enter the market. This dramatically increased competition and drove down average freight costs. Deregulation created growth and opportunities that are still being reaped.Procurement of Truckload Has Unique ChallengesThings like bid generation, carrier selection factors, and the "non-binding" nature of contracts make truckload procurement quite different from procuring other goods. George dove deep into these nuanced topics, providing helpful context for outsiders, those who are new to transportation procurement, and even seasoned professionals. Routing Guides & Waterfall Systems Carriers are assigned to lanes through a routing guide generated from the bid results. With thousands of carriers and uncertain demand, "waterfalls" allow loads to trickle down the guide if the top carriers can't accept. Spot Market VolatilityLanes with low and unpredictable volumes often fall out of routing guides, landing in the volatile spot market. George explained how platforms can better connect these loads directly with interested carriers.Technology is Enhancing ProcurementWhile challenges remain, technology has accelerated innovation in transportation procurement best practices. More nimble bidding, strategic carrier relationships, and connectivity are allowing shippers and carriers to achieve mutual success in new ways.If you listen to the podcast, you will come away with tremendous respect for the complexities of this industry and appreciation for visionaries like George Abernathy who are helping all participants optimize operations through knowledge and technology. It was a privilege to learn from such an esteemed expert.https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/jbl.12333

I recently had the pleasure of interviewing Jeffrey Nicholson, CEO and Co-Founder of Tracer, for my podcast. Tracer was originally incubated within VaynerMedia to automate reporting and analytics, and has grown into a leading data intelligence platform.Jeffrey has over 20 years of experience in digital marketing and data, previously holding leadership roles at VaynerMedia. He co-founded Tracer in 2018 to solve the challenge of bringing together fragmented data sources into a unified view.A few of the many insights from our discussion:E-commerce continues to see strong growth, with the global market projected to reach $6.3 trillion in 2023, up 10% from the prior year. China's e-commerce market is already twice the size of the US.Fashion, at $870 billion in 2022, makes up the largest segment of the booming e-commerce market. While many doubted online clothing sales early on, consumer behavior has clearly changed.Most companies deal with over 100 partners across marketing, requiring complex data processing just to understand results. Tracer aims to give independence and control over this data.Contextualization is where most "tech debt" lives - different definitions of terms like "social" between brands make reporting a challenge. Tracer provides flexibility here.Key brands have partnered with Tracer to gain independence, collaborate better across teams, and optimize investments based on unified data insights.It was fascinating to learn more about the rapidly evolving world of marketing data and analytics from an expert like Jeffrey. 

On a recent episode of my podcast I talked with Dan Johnston, CEO and co-founder of WorkStep, about using data and analytics to create a better work experience for frontline employees.WorkStep’s mission is to make the frontline a better place to work through the use of technology. Dan saw firsthand as a retail and supply chain worker the challenges faced by frontline employees, including lack of career growth opportunities, scheduling issues, and feeling disconnected from decision makers.WorkStep’s software platform aims to address these challenges by collecting feedback from employees, analyzing data, and giving insights to HR and operations leaders so they can collaborate on solutions. Some key ways they do this include:Gathering sentiment data on various work themes like benefits, job satisfaction over time and across different employee groups.Using predictive analytics to determine what factors like benefits, management, job expectations actually correlate to important metrics like turnover, not just what employees report as issues.Employing AI to surface deeper insights from large amounts of employee feedback data.Empowering individual loop closure where employees who report issues directly receive a response, lowering their likelihood of turnover by 28%.Bringing HR and operations teams together around a shared data source to find collaborative solutions.As the labor market remains strained, Dan sees WorkStep continuing to evolve by bringing the right insights to leaders more proactively and automating more of the process. Their goal is to make the employee experience more adaptive based on individual context like tenure. If they can deliver better understanding and faster actions, companies can create real change for their frontline workforces.