Name: [Customer Panel] 3 Shippers Tell All: A Peak Season Survival Webinar
Uploaded: 2026-09-02T18:30:48.362Z
Duration: 1 h 16 s
Description: [Customer Panel] 3 Shippers Tell All: A Peak Season Survival Webinar

Transcript for "[Customer Panel] 3 Shippers Tell All: A Peak Season Survival Webinar": Hello, Hello? everyone. Every and welcome in. I'm Katie Schroedel from ProShip, and this is three shippers tell all, a peak season survival webinar. This is part of our pros who know 2026 webinar series. So I'm really glad everybody's here. And just to kind of preface this, this is not a pitch. There'll be no demos, and we are really light on slides today. This is just a conversation with three shippers being honest about what makes or breaks their years. So a few housekeeping things just before we get started. Please use the chat. We wanna hear from you. We want questions, reactions, just everything in there. There's a q and a tab over there, and then in the middle, there is a docs tab. We have a parcel shipping survey that we're working on. There'll be a report coming out on it later this year, and then you'll get an Amazon gift card if you do that survey. So with that, we'll meet our crew who's here with us today. So I'm Katie Schroedel. I'm in product marketing here at ProShip. I've been here for, just over five years, and I'm really excited about this conversation with these shippers today. So, Bill, tell us a little bit more about your background and where you're joining us from. Yeah. Sure. Good morning, everyone, or afternoon, depending on where you live. So I am with, a senior director at Hot Topic over, all supply chain applications and integrations on IT side of supply chain. I have, we actually just went live with ProShip in June. So we were a very recent, addition to the family. And then hot topic, if you're not familiar with it, you may be familiar with the store that's in the mall that I think a lot of us know as teenagers. There we actually have three brands. So Hot Topic, BoxLunch, which is a newer store, and then Her Universe, which is an online only, brand. And then before Hot Topic, I was actually at Under Armour for nine years. Awesome. Alright. Thanks, Bill. Frank, we'll go to you next. Yes. Good morning. Good afternoon, everybody. Frank Quint. I am with RH. A lot of people know us, formerly Restoration Hardware. And, I've been with the RH for, gosh, you know, a little over twenty years, in supply chain, logistics, transportation. I am responsible for parcel shipping, for RH. And, we've been using ProShip for, a number of years, but but more so over the last few years, we've we've, we we've continued to implement additional products from from ProShip. And, yeah, happy to be here. Awesome. Thanks, Frank. Alright, Tim. Let's hear from you. Hi, everyone. Tim Schrader, manager of the retail distribution center, for the Green Bay Packers and the Packers Pro Shop. Been with the organization, since I've been '19, 2001. It was a part time job in college, that turned into full time and then, bounced around to another department and then came back to the to the pro shop. We, we take care of all the inbound, for all of our brick and mortar stores, retail trailers, as well as our, ecommerce. We started with, ProShip. We it took about it was 2019, 2020 is when, the decision was made to make the switch. And, went live in December, which is, hard to believe, but, worked out great and, have been a success ever since. Awesome. Thanks, Tim. Alright. So to kick us off today, let's get a read of the room, and we'll start with a poll. So for everybody who is joining us, when is your peak? Is it a Q4? Is it spring summer? Is it kind of all over the place, don't know? Or is it pretty even year round? So we've got some votes starting to come in. We've got some q four folks. We have some pretty even. Couple spring summer. Looks like most of us are in the q four, typical peak season at the end of the year. Oh, couple more even year round. So looks like we've got a pretty even spread. So, it seems like everybody who's here will kinda match up with our speakers that we have. So let's hear from them. Let's hear when their peaks is peaks are, I should say. So, Bill, we'll start with you. What does your busiest stretch look like? When does it hit? So our busiest stretch, actually starts in October. So we do a pretty good Halloween business. So it starts in October for ISC. For retail, it actually back to school is bigger, and then, again, in October, they pick back up. So, and then, obviously, holiday is huge. The the Christmas, the typical, you know, Black Friday in stores and online. Actually, online starts, like, Thanksgiving Day now, and that whole weekend is our peak peak peak. So the nice thing is around holiday, our systems get kinda or or around Halloween, our systems get a little warmed up. We we get to see, you know, the peak before the big peak, which is really the that Thanksgiving day till about Wednesday, Thursday after Thanksgiving is the true peak from order placement to fulfillment. The DCs are pretty busy and stores. So Yeah. Nice little warm up there. Alright, Frank. I know that you guys have chosen kind of not to ride the holiday spike. So what does peak mean for you guys at our age? Yeah. For sure. So our peak, as you mentioned, is very different from many retailers. As our CEO likes to talk about, RH has been climbing the luxury mountain for the past twenty years. We've transitioned from being a mall based specialty retailer to a luxury brand. And as such, you know, marketing holiday really no longer fits the brand experience. And because of this, we don't really see the q four spike that traditional retailers do. However, we understand that parcel networks are heavily stressed during q four, and because of that, we pay close attention. Mhmm. Alright, Tim. Let's hear about yours. I know it can kinda show up with no warning. So what sets it off? How fast does it move? Yeah. Our fiscal year starts in April and, we spend more time processing goods to get ready for the season than the, than the overall time of the season itself. So for us, April is the start of inbound. So all the new products that's coming in that the buying staff had placed an order, six, seven months before, starts arriving. As we ramp up to July, that's really when the sideline and training camp apparel starts to show up. So that is probably one of our busier months of the year as far as the inbound goes. Getting it all to the retail locations, it really sets off when we have the shareholders meeting at the end of July, and and then we get into family night and preseason. Orders tend to double customer outbound orders, from June to July and July to August, and then again, it doubles to September. So, when the fans start seeing, the the product on the field and on the news, we tend to see those spikes come in. Really, our our our peak obviously starts when the football season kicks off. Actually, for us, it was yesterday. We had a clothing drop, that really, really kicked off the year, to get everybody excited. And then it's really on fan sentiment. So from, week to week based on team performance really does impact our outbound shipping. We know where the, the baseline is, but depending on how, it's going on the field, really does change how our peak season is adjusted. From November through holiday, through Christmas, it stays pretty steady, that we can forecast out, but throw a division championship or something in the mix there, you really, it's a different type of, a season. So, we're kind of, after the after the season's over, go dormant only for a couple months before April's back. Yeah. Alright. So just to kinda recap here, we've got one that you can kinda see coming, one that has been engineered away, and then one that can come in a whirlwind. So for the obvious next question, so how do you get ready for all of these different kinds of peak depending on who you are? So let's talk about prep. Frank, we'll start with you. How far out does your planning start, and how do you guys kinda forecast to keep that kind of steady throughout the year? Yeah. So, so so our planning, for peak, really, you know, kinda begins in the, around summertime. We're, you know, we're we're receiving updated forecast throughout the year. And, we're meeting with our carriers regularly, and we make sure that they know what, our forecasted volume will be, and we work with them to gain alignment on capacity. You know, also, you know, in terms of planning for prep, you know, there's a window, in which we commit to delivering by Christmas. Even, you know, even though we're not a holiday, we're you know, we still see some holiday sales. So there's a there's a window that we commit to delivering by Christmas, and and so we'll advance packages. And that, that takes some additional planning that that begins, you know, prior to going into q four, and it involves, you know, planning and systems updates. And then, you know, lastly, we've we've built some really good tools for monitoring performance. They do a good job of telling us where they're stressing the network. And so as we're going into, you know, our peak season, we'll make sure that those tools are fine tuned and working as as we would expect them to. And, Bill, I know when we were prepping for this, you talked about I mean, you guys, it sounds like, have almost like a bible that you go by, your checklist. So talk a little bit about that. Yeah. So, I mean, the big thing, right, for us and we build a checklist over the years to just go back. In fact, the team yesterday just mentioned it's time to dust it off and go back through it. But it's really a checklist on, you know, all of the things we need to make sure is in place. You know, do we understand the peaks? Do we understand when the promos may be turned on, may be turned off? You know, when is the peak? It's just line by line. You know, we actually for some of our still on prem applications, we will do a a purge and then, reboot them before the big peak. So we literally go through that, make sure everything lines up, put new dates in it because, you know, like this year, Labor Day is so late, which has been throwing me off for, like, two weeks personally. But, you know, the dates are a little different and they shift. We really make sure that we have everything in place. And, again, I have the order management system and the WMS and the shipping solution, so I need to make sure everything, we're ready for, which also in there, I have this later in, is you gotta make sure your shipping calendar is up to date with the dates that freight does not move. Otherwise, like, rate shopping won't be very good for you, especially when you get close to that cutoff for holiday or for Christmas deliveries. So Yeah. And, Tim, we'll go to you. How do you guys forecast when there's some spikes that you don't even see coming? Well, we, the ones we don't see coming are, big splash acquisitions and players and jerseys. But, the planning, that goes on well before that is through our promotional calendar. It's, it's important for us to know in distribution exactly when, the promotions are happening. So our ecommerce team, that handles all the social, emails, website, along with the buying staff who is working alongside the NFL to know, which drops we have coming up this next year. For example, yesterday, we went live with the Rivalries. It's a New Jersey the team's gonna be wearing this year. And along with that comes a lot of products, and, we need to know exactly, what day that's going live, when the product's arriving. And then, once that passes the very next week, there's generally another promotion. It could be a site wide sale. It could be a buy one get one. It could be a gift with purchase. So my team back here, we just need to know what's up next, and that promotional calendar really, tells us, like, the volume and the staffing that we'll need, to get through it. So between that and the on hand reports, once all that product comes in since we're all under basically one roof here at the Packers Pro Shop, if we see something selling really well on ecom, we'll consistently move product around from the store locations back to us, to get it back up online. So the on hand reports are really telling us, which direction. Customers like seeing this, live instead of on the website. It doesn't present itself maybe as well on the website, but in the store, it's doing really well. So we'll transfer those goods, and that's happening on a daily daily basis where we're checking those on hand reports. Yeah. And, Tim, you mentioned staffing in there. I wanna pull on that thread a little bit. So what does like, are you guys flexing labor, cross training, overtime? Like, how do you guys kinda prep around peak for that? Sure. Well, we're primarily, part time staff here at the distribution center. Due to, the the season, there is three months where it goes to more quiet, pace where we have permanent part time staff that are year round, but the the large majority of who we have are seasonal staff and, most of them have been with us for five plus years, retirees. You know, we have evening shifts where we have high school and college age students and teachers that come and work for us. So specifically for the DC, everybody is, for the most part, part time besides six of us. But the and the positive there is, there's not a lot of turnover. So people enjoy, working and picking and packing orders. We know what we're selling, you know, isn't make it or break it for folks, but it's a it's an exciting thing to purchase. and get it to them in a quick pace. So, really, that starts in April, Mhmm. and we build staffing up until the end of the season, and then there's a little bit of a break for most of them. Frank, how about you guys? What does staffing look like for you? Yeah. So staffing, Them. staffing for us I mean, you know, our our distribution centers, are able to, you know again, since our volume is pretty steady, we're, you know, staffing is not an issue for us. Mhmm. What becomes a bigger issue for us is really sort of outside the control of what we do. So, you know, the things that worry us are, you know, the, you know, unforeseen things that are impacting our parcel carriers. Like, if, you know, everything could be going smooth, and, if the packers go out and have a big acquisition and all of a sudden they start pumping a bunch of New Jerseys into the parcel network, you know, that's the kind of stress that tends to impact us. Yeah. The carrier related ones there. Bill, we'll switch gears a little bit, but what is the one system or process that you guys lean hardest on when you're doing your prep? So our our biggest systems really are order management I mean, our web front order management and certainly our WMS and then, of course, our shipping solution because without shipping label, the product's going nowhere. So those really in tandem as well as about three or four reports that are reviewed many, many, many times a day, by many people. And, you know, I would say the report you know, the other systems, they run all year long, and they handle it. Peaks aren't so bad. ProShip will be new this year, so we we had a little mini mini peak when we went live because we couldn't ship for a weekend, with that conversion. But the reports are big. So the one thing that we're really looking for, because we do rate shop, we have two distribution centers. So our order management system figures out which is the best one to ship it from and all that good stuff. But the reports are watching the mix from the two distribution centers as well as the mix amongst the carrier services that we're selecting to kind of balance the load between the carriers as well as maintain what we believe cost should be for, shipping holiday packages. So those are watched. If anything starts to get off plan, Mhmm. we can tweak either which DC we ship from, or and or, really. From the carrier mix, we'll we'll actually go in and add, like, a surcharge to certain carriers to make that carrier service look more expensive to the rate shopping. So the team is watching that. And the other thing, the last, you know, last week or two, we're really keeping an eye on those packages that we guarantee, I think, the five days or something before, actually, Christmas day, we say if you buy it by midnight or whatever, we'll make sure it gets there by Christmas. So we're really making sure that the DC stays on top of those older orders so that we don't have to necessarily pay for the upgrade to make sure it gets to the customer. So, it's almost like the reports are more important than the systems, but, obviously, without the systems working as well as they do, the reports are no good anyway. So. that's kinda how, it works for us. Yeah. I need that data to feed into it. Frank, how about you guys? I feel like when we talked about this the last time, you talked about carrier partners, but correct me if there's another system or process or something that you guys lean on. Yeah. Sure. So, you know, this is something that I'm always excited to talk about. You know, our you know, most of our parcel ships from an area that's dense with parcel shippers, and so we anticipate cap capacity challenges, you know, in spite of, you know, good planning. And so we've spent a a good amount of time building out some really good parcel BI tools, that are receiving updated tracking data from all of our carriers. And the tools that we've built, they normalize the carrier data and the scan codes. So even though all the different parcel carriers have different, you know, reason codes and scan codes, we've we've gone through the process of normalizing those. We've identified we've normalized controllability versus noncontrollability across the carriers, and we've created visibility, around where late deliveries are occurring. You know, most importantly during peak, we can see packages that are not getting origin scans. So, you know, if we have a swath of packages that ship and we're not seeing origin scans, we know that there are trailers somewhere that are not getting unloaded. And that allows us to, you know, really I mean, it's it's still reactionary, but it's it's reactionary in almost real time. And so we're able to, get in, you know, sort of, escalate those issues as soon as we start to see them. We make sure that our, you know, our customer delight teams are aware of any of those issues. And in most cases, we're able to work through those, you know, without having to divert volume to other carriers. And, and I'd say another thing that's really been a game changer this this year through the summertime, we've been taking all of that visibility data, the tracking data, and training our, you know, our AI tools, And that we're seeing is really becoming a game changer. And, you know, we're just getting better information quicker, and, really, it's about being able to see where there are delivery issues and stress in the network and then and then, you know, sort of quickly working with our partners to address those issues. Yeah. Yeah. Progression, the evolution of of using the tools and expanding them, totally see that. Tim, how about you? Is there any systems or processes you guys are focusing on? Yeah. Well, I mean, once we made the conversion over to ProShip, from a single carrier, software, The the little things that you that you knew were coming but you didn't know how impactful would be would be, for us, about 40% of all of our shipments stay within Wisconsin. Mhmm. And then in the Midwest, you know, that percentage just increases. And most of our carriers, if if a customer does pay for the, overnight shipment or second day, having ProShip being able to recognize that it can change that, change that shipping method to ground to get it there in that same amount of time. Prior to that, we were, you know, using that priority shipping, when it probably was on the same package truck as if as if it was shipped ground. So right there, that was the immediate impact, where most of our priority shipping was flipping, flipping to ground shipments and still getting it there by the customer's expectations. Part two is, like, in the growing world and the cost increase of goods, you know, especially, you know, fan gear, you know, everyone's hitting the free shipping threshold. So to have, three different carriers for us to be able to rate shop, so if they get the free shipping, we enjoy the cost benefits in the back end, by selecting the carrier, that's, the least expensive for us. Mhmm. There's not much time change in transit, and, the customer gets instant visibility, within twenty four hours of shipment, to start tracking. So, that is that's been big for us. Yeah. Awesome. Alright. So with that, we will go into our next poll. So let's see how the room is feeling. What breaks first when your volume spikes? So is it carry capacity? Are we seeing staffing, systems and tech, cutoffs and SLAs? What really hits the chopping block first? Let's wait for some votes to come in. Alright. We're seeing carry capacity, some cutoffs and SLAs breaking there. We're still seeing couple more votes come in. Looks like cutoffs and SLAs are running away with it. Evening out a little bit. So the top two, yeah, are carry capacity, cutoffs and SLAs. Yeah. Couple more votes coming in here. But, yeah, looks like it's kind of even. I mean, staffing and systems and tech are also getting some votes there. So everyone's feeling it kind of, it looks like, across the board. Cutoffs and SLAs leading there, though. So thanks for participating in the poll. So that's kind of the plan that we have on paper. But we all know that peak can take what you have planned and throw it out the window. So let's get honest about what happens when change hits. So, Bill, we'll start with you. Where does carrier capacity break down for you first? Oh, I think you're on mute still. We've been pretty fortunate. We haven't had a carrier breakdown, but I think we do a few things ahead of time to make sure that we don't get in that situation. So like Frank said a few about ten, twenty minutes ago, we meet with the carriers. We give them here here's what our plan is for this holiday. You know, here's our stretch. Here's our normal. What do you guys think? So they understand the volume coming their way. We do employ one carrier, who will remain nameless, but we do know that when we get close to holiday, we have to remove them from the rate shop as they're SLA and making SLA on the delivery side. You know, they're the one of the cheaper they're probably the cheapest solution, but their SLA, they don't make it a lot. So we kinda remove them about ten days before holiday. So that's one thing. And then, again, I mentioned that report that, you know, we're making sure our mix is staying within our parameters or where we thought. And if we see it going one way or another, we kinda look we never actually had to do it, but we could look at it. We could look at the rate shop results, see why it's going more to one service versus the other. We would talk to our carriers to to let that know. And then, you know, of course, if we really see it going out of mix from a not only our cost perspective, but maybe the carrier, we think we would overload them. We add that surcharge to make that service look less favorable in the rate shop. Yeah. So it's a daily, it's a daily thing that we actually meet on. We have a holiday meeting with our VP VP of ecom, and it's even on the weekends. It's on Thanksgiving, which is awesome. Love it on Thanksgivings. And then since I work for a West Coast company but live on the East Coast, it's at a really great time for me, 01:00 in the afternoon. Right? Right. As you're sitting down about to cut the turkey, you say, oh, hold on. I gotta take the call. Luckily, I usually about that time, turkey's in the oven, and I'm starting to watch the NFL, you I'll be honest with. you. Starting to watch Tim. You're seeing Tim's team out there. But alright. Tim, we'll go to you next. Where does carrier capacity breakdown for you guys? Yeah. We don't we don't really experience a lot of, like, I would say, breakdowns. Certain carriers, will pick up on weekends when we're running seven days a week during holidays. So, just like Bill was saying, we'll adjust to, certain carriers will win rates. We'll we'll turn off certain shipping methods, to get things out to the door, especially when we push closer to later December. But probably, like, the biggest splash impact is, like, the unforeseen. I talk. about the promotional calendar and what we know what's coming. We knew what was happening yesterday, and we knew the volume that was gonna come through with that latest drop. But what we don't foresee is, big changes within the the football operation side, that we know that are gonna immediately impact us, and it's gonna excite the fan base and clear you know, I'm talking about Micah Parsons and and coming in last year. The excitement just went through the roof, something like we've never seen before. So, in the background immediately, we are, putting ourselves to the test by setting back order dates, working with the vendors to try and get the jerseys here, sooner than our competitors, and then, putting a little bit of stress on ourselves that, I'd knowing our fans want it before that next game, when you set those back order dates. So that was an example of 4,000 jerseys coming through in a day and them all having to be turned within forty eight hours. Yes. And, in in in the meantime, the the contact center is getting calls and emails, just looking for status updates. So, we do update the, carriers when that type of impact happens. It's rare, that we see that type of splash, but, they they're ready for it. So our partnership with our three carriers has been great. So there hadn't been any issues with getting anything outbound. Yeah. And, Tim, I remember when we were talking about this, you had a great story too about, the numbers changing, like, players changing their numbers ahead of time. If. you can go into that too. I thought that was really interesting. Sure. Yeah. I years ago, it wasn't the players some of them got to pick their numbers, most were assigned. And whatever number you were assigned, that's the number you wore in season if you made the team after training camp. That is adjusted across the league. So, individual last year, wide receiver went from 81 to 22 to zero. So that all happened within three three months. We can't start promoting an 81 jersey and then, make them or have our or have our vendors make them, ship them in, and then it adjusts again. So even if you go to our website today, we are waiting for official, official confirmation that the the rookies have been aside their current number. But, that was it, like, the golden instance last year. No big deal. Change the number. But because of that and the climate of that happening every year, we have to wait until that official comes through, and then the orders come through. So what we could have been fulfilling probably since April, now it hits in season, but we certainly don't wanna be in a situation where we're sending, the wrong number player to, a customer who player changes the number. If it happens after the start of the season, then the player's on the hook for a lot of those expenses. But prior to that, that's, that's been a change over the last few years. Yeah. Frank, we'll go to you. Since you guys have engineered kind of around this bike, where does capacity still bite for you guys, and what are you kinda monitoring for? Yeah. Sure. So, I mean, it's it still impacts us. You know, the majority of our parcel ships out of, the Columbus market, for, you know, anyone shipping, you know, supply chain in The US. You know, it's known that Columbus is a pretty big hub for, you know, for logistics and shipping, warehousing. And that you know, we're shipping from there all over The US and Canada. We're actually now fulfilling orders in Europe and The UK out of Columbus. And, you know, so we anticipate, you know, going into fourth quarter, there's gonna be shippers again that are that are stressing the capacity. And that's typically where we'll see it. Right? It'll show up in, delays in cartons moving through the network. We also in in sorry. In I'm not gonna say it. Thank you. We'll see you know, we'll get hit with winter storms in the Columbus market in, Mhmm. you know, in that, you know, December, January time frame, and that's always those are always fun events. So most of the issues happen at the, what I would call, the origin induction point. But then we also are monitoring, you know, where lates are occurring, you know, throughout the country. And, you know, there there are certain metropolitan markets that, you know, are repeat offenders, and, you know, we're paying, you know, close attention to those and working with our carriers to address issues as they come up. Awesome. Alright. So we've covered kind of what breaks. Let's turn all that pain into something useful. So every one of you might have a scar from a peak that went wrong or a moment in time that that hit hard. So let's go to the takeaways from that. Bill, we'll start with you. What is one thing that you would never do again during peak? So I've been fortunate enough that even with the two big retailer retailers I've been with, I haven't had any issues. Now, before I was at Under Armour, I was a consultant for a long time. So, I kinda saw others' pain. So the checklist, all of that kinda came from those learnings, but, I think that's the biggest thing is making sure my teams have that checklist, and we run through it well before holiday comes. You know, we might need help from our systems. Unix team like to do some purging for us, and we wanna make sure we get it out there, And everybody knows it's coming, well in advance, and it we actually have calendar reminders on when it should happen. So that's been the biggest thing. I have heard of a situation where I came on board after this happened, but they did not update the shipping calendar correctly. And what happened is they didn't realize until about two days before the shipping cutoff or, like, a delivery cutoff for Christmas, and they had to ship everything overnight. So that would have been a, you know, a very expensive thing. So I'm hypersensitive on, having my teams double check that holiday calendar. I've gotten better at not I used to actually request access and go check it myself, Mhmm. because that's not a call I want from the head of the VP of logistics. Like, hey. Why why is this not working? Why did we we do this? So that's. probably my big thing is I just yeah. I can only imagine how much that would cost. So I I'm pretty particular about that specific, you know, configuration that you you have to do. Like, even with ProShip, we have to log in and make sure it's it's all set. Rightfully so. An expensive mistake. How about you, Frank? What's one thing you'd never do Yeah. You know, so I've learned in my career, again? logistics, is a small world. And I like to say, I like to say I would never say never. Yeah. You know, but having said that, you know, I think there are some things that are, you know, add, you know, risk. And so I can't imagine a scenario where I would go back to having a single parcel carrier. Mhmm. You know, it impacts your negotiating leverage, and it puts you at greater risk during stress capacity. And, you know, kind of along the same lines, I I can't imagine a scenario where I'd ever go back to, integrating my operating systems directly to a a carrier. You know, having the flexibility to manage your parcel network and be nimble and react when you need to be able to react is, I think, critical in today's shipping environment. Alright, Tim. How about you? What's one thing you guys would never do again? Yeah. First, I'd like to echo what Frank said. There is many times where, you know, whether it's a a potential driver strike or they can't pick up on weekends, different carriers, where we were locked into one at the time, and we just abided by those rules, where we can kinda create and manipulate now, how we want things out the door. And if there is an issue or, something's wrong, with the API, we can move to the other carriers, and, that has been number one. So I I would agree with Frank on that. For the Pro Shop, just specifically, when it when a team wins a division, now it's been a been a while. Hopefully, we can go through this again this year. But, when that happens, you're it's usually happening in December or late December, early January now. When fans place their orders, they may want the division hat, t shirt, and sweatshirt. Our previous software would ship those three those three individual items three separate times to the customer. So while we're on the peak of shipping during holiday, the hats would show up. It would generate what was on back order and kick out an order, and then the t shirt and then the sweatshirt. So we were manually trying to receive all those goods at the exact same time so that all the order items would drop into the order. We're now where our software basically collects them all. It won't allow us to, you know, send those orders to the devices until it's in full. And there's, there's opportunities to turn that on and off, make it winning a division's a number one. But even the rivalries we had yesterday, if, if a customer ordered, an item that wasn't here yet that's due to arrive this week or next, but an item. was here, or two items that aren't here, instead of us receiving those into inventory and generating another order, it'll just hold it. So it's critical for us to present the right preorder dates on our website, that. can account for multiple different vendors shipping in on the same drop or or a division championship or better. Yeah. Alright, Bill. What do you know now that you wish you'd known before your biggest peak? Anything. It's a good question. I think, you know, the biggest thing and it's changed now with technology. Right? A lot of the carriers have moved to API. But, I mean, there was a time where the when I was with FedEx and you had to have the server, and it would only rate return so much so fast and wasn't fast enough. You know, I I think that I think that's the biggest thing, right, is knowing your technology and knowing your technology limits. You know, the the beautiful thing in today's world, right, we've we've Hot Topic has moved mostly to the cloud for everything. So now we rely on the Googles and, you know, the, protected harbors of the world to make sure that we have enough capacity. So the other the big thing, though, for me is always, are we the largest ones using this application during peak? And I never wanna be that person. I want somebody who else to be bigger so that they've tested it and it worked, at that peak. So I think that's the biggest the best thing to ask whenever you are FP or you're talking to your carriers or your vendors in preparation for holiday is like, hey. Who's the largest shipper you your or largest customer you have? What are. their volumes compared to ours? And if you're the largest, it probably would be who view to, try doing a stress test, and seeing how it reacts. You know, ask you know, we have a lot of print and apply app machines and auto baggers and stuff like that, and it is doing a lot of API requests to get shipping labels, along with everything else. So really making sure, that things are operating smoothly because we do we our workforce probably goes four to five x during holiday. So Yeah. you got a lot more users on these, app using these applications. So that to me would be the biggest thing I'd like to know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. A great call out. A question maybe not everybody's asking. How about you guys, Tim? What do you wish you'd known now? What do you wish you knew now before your biggest peak? You mean what do I wish I would. know right think I still said it wrong. this comes up? I wish I knew what a record was gonna be. That's. things. But it's, it it really is the, the that's what it is. It's what what is this what is it looking like? The fan sentiment here is we know if we lose a game, we're losing 35% of our orders on the day of a game. So to to plan not only just for staffing, but for getting the customer that tracking. We we know that we can't get beyond two to three days out from when the customer places the order to when they receive the tracking. So for us to really, be prepared for that, we had a software change this year, so we're working through some of that right now. It's a daily discussion of, how we're gonna still meet those expectations. Mhmm. I'd like us I'd like to know that we did hit those those marks because in the world right now, you know, when everyone was receiving two day shipping from Amazon, it just accelerated all of us, all the retailers to make sure we're trying to hit that mark. Not easy to get them in two days, but to at least get the tracking to the customer within twenty four to forty eight hours. So, for us, it would definitely be, if we know how the team is performing, we know that, once the season ends, that pretty much goes dark for a while. Fans shift gears to other sports and the product sits. So it's us generating excitement even in the off season, by having, 10 sales and clearance sales and and that type of thing. But the goal is always not to have that. So, I hope we're in a position where we're emptying the shelves out and filling it full of division and NFC championship and Super Bowl merch. Yeah. All Stacker fans are wishing for that too. How about you, Frank? I know you guys have kinda leveled it out, so you don't have necessarily the biggest peak. But what do you wish you'd done? Yeah. I mean, for sure. It's, you know, for as you mentioned, for us, our internal systems don't you know, they're not put under the same stress, as others experience during peak. So things are more or less business as usual, during peak. And so the you know? But but our customers are, you know, they're they're a finicky bunch, and we wanna make sure you know, we work really hard to make sure that we delight them. And the best thing that the best tools that we have, to achieve that is really external visibility, to, you know, what's happening in the parcel network. And that's a that's a tough thing to to get, but, you know, it's it's you know, we're we're able to do it now, and and it's critical for us to have success. Yeah. Alright. So with that, thank you guys. Here's our last poll coming up, and then we'll talk about some final thoughts and q and a. So let's just get a read on the room. How do we feel how ready do we feel for this year's peak? Are we dialed in? Are we getting there? Are we so behind? Are we just please don't ask me about this year's peak. So let's see how the folks that told us it's mostly q four, how ready they actually feel. People are getting there. We've got oh, someone's please don't ask, so I'm sorry about that. But, most people, it seems like, are dialed in. So that's good. We're getting there. We're dialed in. We're feeling somewhat ready. So, oh, people are a little behind. So I would say less people are behind, and please don't ask. But seems like most of us are dialed in or getting there. So that is good news all around, that most of us are ready, somewhat ready at least, for peak season to hit. So with that, we'll go to some final advice from our crew here. Frank, we'll start with you. What what's one piece of advice you would give most people if they're feeling like they're getting there? They're pretty much ready here. Yeah. I think, you know, just planning, understanding your business, you know, making sure that you understand what you know, to the best of your ability, you know, working with your internal planners to get good forecast, taking the time to share that with your your carriers, you know, to make sure that they're completely in the know and and and what to expect. And, and and, you know, just make sure that you stay close with your carriers and you're continuing to, you know, have open lines of communication and partnership with them. Alright. Bill, how about you? What's your, one piece of advice you'd give or final advice? Again, for me, it's it's that checklist. Dust if you don't have one, create one. If you have one, dust it off. Like, we just, we're starting to get the forecast from our planners. We wanna start understanding the promos, the cutoff dates. And so we're we're gonna we're updating that now. Again because we also our peak starts a little bit in thanks at Halloween. So we we. prep in September, which is probably a little ahead of most people, but that is the the number one thing and what makes me feel confident every year that I'm not worried about it. I don't my team is gonna execute and do everything we need to do to have another successful holiday, which they last year, we had a much bigger holiday than we thought we would have, thanks to some great movie content that came out right around Christmas. But, it wasn't a big deal. It was 15% higher than we expected, and systems handled it. Team handled it. So that checklist to me just I know it works, and it makes things smooth, and I'm not gonna have a like, basically, after couple days. Alright. Let's start talking about our projects that we need to finish in January, February. Meanwhile, you know, operations teams are quite busy. So Yeah. Yeah. And double check those shipping calendars. Right? mhmm. Yes. Alright, Tim. How about you? What's your final piece of advice for these folks? You mean, maybe there's others that are in the boat as the pro shop where, there are much bigger bigger competitors than the Packers Pro Shop, and we gotta maintain those fans that we have that keep coming back to our website. After all, if you buy from the Pro Shop, it stays with the Packers, other retailers. It goes to their, it goes to their pockets. So what we need to do is make sure that, when we set back order dates, it's a little bit better than the competitors. It's gonna get quicker to the customer. We don't just secure the money from the fan for an item that's not here yet, but we're getting it to them a little bit faster, than if they went through a if any of fans that are shopping other locations. So, there's only three of us in the NFL that run our own ecommerce, and, we stay tight with them. So it's important for us to have open lines of communications with the Steelers and the Raiders, sharing information to make sure that, we can hopefully encourage other teams to take the path of running an ecommerce in house. So for us, it's it's being so transparent with our customers, making sure that they're happy with the results of what they get from the pro shop and that, even their fan experience on game days in, you know, in brick and mortar, is is what they is what they hope for because a lot of our fans on game days aren't from the area. And, we just wanna set ourselves apart, in presentation and timeliness of of the shipments. Yeah. And I I love what you said about calling out those similar teams that have similar markets, similar businesses as you. That's a a really good call out to find find those companies that are similar and compare notes. So, with that, we will hand it over to the people who have been loading up the q and a this whole time because I know you have questions for these three people. So keep continuing to do those in q and a. We'll get to as many as we can. We'll start with our first one here. Frank, this one is specifically for you. So how do you negotiate around peak surcharges when your business doesn't impact, peak season volume? Yeah. I love that question. I can tell you that when we have our partners, you know, when we're meeting with our partners, and, you know, we, you know, we wrapped up a a rather, you know, sizable RFP not that long ago. This was instrumental in our negotiations. We continually reminded our partners, our parcel partners that, look, we're not the problem. We are, you know, we are year round steady volume, and we make sure they, you know, they hear that, because we know that that you know, we're the type of shipper that they want. Right? If you if you have a a client that's shipping steady volume year round, what more could you ask for? And so we talk about that, and, and we, you know, we make a point of bringing that up in our pricing negotiations. Mhmm. And, and I would say, you know, the tide has turned over the last couple years from, you know, from from a parcel, capacity standpoint. We all know what it was like. Well, those of us that were sort of involved with parcel shipping during COVID or in the years leading up to COVID before, you know, Amazon, you know, created all of their capacity, you know, before USPS went out and and, and launched Ground Advantage. You know, prior to that, the carriers had all of the negotiating leverage, for the most part. But because we are now entered into a phase where there's more capacity and there's, you know, in some cases, too much capacity in the network. It's allowed us to leverage that with our partners and and negotiate much better discounts for, for peak season surcharges. Yeah. Bill, Tim, anything you guys wanna add there around, like, peak surcharges, during peak? Now for for us, we know when they're coming. They're discussions that we have internally with our reps. Yeah. A big part of it is how when does it end after, the New Year, because that's potentially when we see surges in playoffs. So for us, we keep up the lines of communication. See, same thing, as Frank was saying, you know, we we let ProShip do a lot of our negotiation, contract negotiations. We've had two with one carrier already this year, because, the results weren't showing in their favor, because there were certain surcharges that weren't being identified at the time of the signed agreement. You know, it takes six weeks for us to process for that to determine, we need to get a little more deeper in discounts and and get better with those, additional surcharges, And then we'll start seeing the needle move between carriers. So we use ProShip to kinda negotiate our agreements. Yeah. Awesome. Alright. Well, let's go to another question here. So the returns wave right after the volume wave is what kills us. How do you handle that part? Bill, you got something you wanna add here? I mean, I think the big thing we do is, obviously, you're not shipping as much after Christmas. So a lot of those temps that did come in for shipping, while they won't do the returns, like logging into the system, they do a lot of the visual inspection and, you know, categorizing, you know, is this a a return that you're gonna get your money back or you're not gonna get your money back on? You know, kind of pre ticketing them, and then and then preparing them for restocking. So some one of our DCs has a sorter, so they have to be put back in a bag with a label on it like a UPC so the scanner can put it on the tray. So they're doing a lot of that prep work so that when it does get to the official, the people that do the returns, it's already ready, and they're just basically doing the systematic piece of it. So that that's the big the big one we do. We also get a lot of our, customers will do a return in store. So they may have Mhmm. audit shipped to home from the DC, but they're gonna return it in store. So the stores will hold, you know, on their side, the staffing as well, their seasonal staffing for, you know, the first week or so in January, and then it really it kinda falls off after about January 15 ish. So that's, that's how we handle it. Yeah. How about you guys, Tim? Yeah. For, for we've we've noticed that the sweet spot is we don't hear from the customer, with me too, of when they realize that the tracking just return backs for the distribution center. We don't have the size staffing that we do that we have closing orders. It's, a very specific team that works returns. But that way, it hits pretty hard, the second week of January, And then extends for about two weeks after that or or towards the end of January. So, the customers, generate the return label. We exclusively work with FedEx on the returns. And, they generate the return label. We get all that information through their portal of what's coming, and then they they can follow that tracking to see that it hit our dock. So, we've got about two days to get that processed. We do have free returns, but we do charge a restocking fee. It's basically to charge back for the the shipping of the return. But, yeah, about about forty eight hours, and then that's when they'll start calling to see where their where their finances are at. Yeah. How about you, Frank? Anything you wanna add here in returns? Yeah. I mean, returns are pretty steady state for us. We're, yeah, again, you know, because of the market that we, that we're in, with luxury brand, you know, we make, returns, you know, pretty seamless for our clients. And, again, and, again, because we're not peaking, the returns during peak are, you know, sort of flowing back at the same rate as, they would normal. So nothing really, you know, new to offer there. Yeah. Okay. The next one here is kind of a fun one. If you could add one thing to your operation before this peak, money is no object. What is it? Anybody have anything off the top of their head, Tim? How about you? Definitely more staffing and paying more. So. we're kinda limited there. So we, if we could open the floodgates there and get more folks and especially, when we're right now, we're about the last five weeks of our receiving, season. And then, Mhmm. we are also amped up at our shipping time. So, we are stretched a little thin. We always focus on outbounds customer orders, but this is the, this is the grind, right now. Everything seems to relax a little bit when we get to October, but definitely more folks would be great. Yeah. How about you, Bill? For us, if I was in the DC, they would tell me more auto baggers, or a different style that actually is faster. So, you know, we do have some hard goods, but we'll ship a lot in bags. And and we do get a lot of single unit orders, or even multi unit orders that we can bag. And, Mhmm. so the baggers stay extremely busy and get backed up. So I I know they would and then in California, we don't. In our California DC, we do not have an auto bagger. So I know they would that's what they would ask for. Yeah. And they do make a heat I mean, you can you can go real fast with those. So Yeah. How about you, Frank? Yeah. This is gonna sound a little bit like a cheap answer, but, you know, a a lot of our focus, because of our business model is it's, you know, the the operations and execution side, the fulfillment, getting the packages out the door, that's all, you know, again, sort of steady state for us. And so a lot of our focus, time and attention is on monitoring things like cost. Right? So is there you know, are there drivers in our network that, are driving up cost? Do we have a a drop ship vendor who, you know, maybe maybe there's some new SKUs that were added, and all of a sudden we're getting hit with, over max or or unauthorized charges. Or, you know, if we see if we see cost creeping up, a lot of times, it's a shift in weight or zone or something along that lines. And then there's on time performance. So there's all of this monitoring that's going on. And what we have seen that's just really been, you know, a game changer in terms of doing that more efficiently as AI. So taking and feeding your data into AI and having that tell you, where the outliers are, I think I mean, we we've just begun using it over the last few months, and we're seeing remarkable results. And so I would say more of that. Yeah. Alright. Well, we are almost at the top of the hour. So with that, I will close it out. Huge thanks to Bill, Tim, Frank for joining us today and telling us, about everything within their operations. I know it's definitely harder than it looks. So thank you all for spending time with us. This one is recorded. So please send it to all of your teammates who you know need it most. Good luck out there. If you're coming up on your peak, We had a survey pop up if you can give us a rating, and then don't forget to fill out our survey in the docs tab. So thank you so much, everybody. See you next time. Thank you. Thank you.