eCommerce Shipping & the 2025 Economy: UPS, Amazon, USPS

Jamin Dick [00:00:02]:

I’ve learned things that I didn’t know from my partners where they’re like, hey, you’re shipping things in cartons that are with 2% larger than the volumetric threshold. If you had a slightly smaller carton, you’d save a lot of money. I was like, man, we should have thought of that. I remember that from my early years and I never let that go after that. I was like, we’re gonna always check for that, make sure that that’s part of our internal audit. So that’s another thing too. Almost everywhere I’ve been we go to standardized cartons and we have our partners certify them so that there’s a over billing. We know to a certainty because we know which carton it was, that hey, that’s not oversized.

Jamin Dick [00:00:43]:

We know how much that’s supposed to cost. Don’t charge me more for it.

Glenn Gooding [00:00:51]:

Welcome to Parcel Perspectives, the podcast dedicated to small parcel shippers. I’m Glenn Gooding and each episode we dive into insights, best practices and strategies to help you navigate this complex, costly market. Join me as we explore ways to strengthen your long term partnerships with your chosen carriers and stay competitively aligned.

Glenn Gooding [00:01:18]:

Hello everyone. Welcome to another edition of Parcel Perspectives. I’m Glenn Gooding. Today we’re joined by Jamin Dick, CEO and founder of J.Dick Advisory and former chief Supply Chain Officer for Lands’ End. He really brings a wealth of knowledge and supply chain and logistics experience. Today we’re going to explore how recent changes by key players like UPS, Amazon and USPS are reshaping the landscape of e commerce shipping. 2025 is really proving to be a very dynamic environment. Dive into strategic adaptations that businesses can employ to not just survive, but thrive in these fundamental and turbulent times.

Glenn Gooding [00:01:56]:

Jamin, welcome to Parcel Perspectives.

Jamin Dick [00:01:59]:

Thanks Glenn. It’s great to be here.

Glenn Gooding [00:02:00]:

Great, thanks for being here. You mind telling us just a little bit more about your background?

Jamin Dick [00:02:05]:

Certainly, yeah. I have been in the E commerce retail space really for the last 25 years, which I guess puts me back to kind of the beginning of when E commerce was starting to happen. I joined IBM in the late 90s and started to work with a lot of brands in retail retailers that were launching their first E commerce platforms, Target being one of them. Eventually I went to Target and helped them grow the target.com business and then Alibaba for a while, also helping them grow their business and then most recently Lands’ End. So really kind of an E commerce retailer since the beginning.

Glenn Gooding [00:02:43]:

So you’ve been in the thick of it, I think with 25 years. I think we both qualify as being in the old guys club, I think officially.

Jamin Dick [00:02:48]:

Yeah, that happened a little while ago for me.

Glenn Gooding [00:02:51]:

Yeah, yeah, me too. I hate to seed that ground, but I think it’s time, so let’s dive in. I mentioned 2025 has been turbulent and dynamic. You know, lay it out there for you. I think ups, if you look at their latest shareholder report, they’re struggling, they’re losing market share, they’ve hit some headwinds. We have Amazon Logistics making great strides in the small parcel final mile sector. We have USPS doing some things too with delivering for America. What kind of perspective do you have on these recent changes in the marketplace?

Jamin Dick [00:03:22]:

I think it’s a really interesting time, especially if you’re on the retail side or just on the buyer side of the small parcel space. I will say that most of my career it’s been a bit of a seller’s market when it comes to small parcel services. I think that’s really shifting and a couple of things driving that. Number one is just generally the small parcel growth is going to be a lot slower than it was in the past. So I think the projections that we’ve seen are something around 5% over the next eight to nine years CAGR and that’s pretty modest. So the pie isn’t growing as fast as it was before. And you combine that with people like Amazon jumping in now in a short amount of time, built a network that rivals UPS’s and actually they’re moving more boxes than UPS or FedEx now end to end. And so now you’ve got pretty competitive market.

Jamin Dick [00:04:19]:

It really feels like we’re looking at a prolonged buyer’s market. I hate to be too optimistic about it, but if I was a brand or retailer right now I’d be thinking this is an area for me to really see if I can get my prices down.

Glenn Gooding [00:04:33]:

So seller’s market to a buyer’s market. I tend to agree. However that’s quite a ball of yarn to unwind as well, wouldn’t you think?

Jamin Dick [00:04:41]:

Absolutely, yeah. And to capture the value of that, you’re going to have to negotiate carefully. I think, you know, you’ll have to have a network that of your own that supports capturing savings. And then I think there’s a technology component as well and many people are in longer term contracts. You just can’t jump out of that. Although I do have a perspective on, on that how to deal with being in a long term contract you’re not happy with. But I do think you just can’t instantly get the value of the market shift. But I think getting in formation to do that is really important for sure.

Glenn Gooding [00:05:18]:

So you’d mentioned technology. I don’t want too deep a dive down that rabbit hole with you, but I think it’s an important thing to call out. I’m assuming you’re meaning you kind of, you need to be able to execute in this environment. Is that a fair assumption?

Jamin Dick [00:05:33]:

Yeah, that’s right. And nobody just depends on the carrier alone. Right. Obviously you’re in an e commerce world especially how well can you convey the value of your shipping to your customer? If you have a great carrier with great pricing, do you also have the ability to let your customer know that and to give them visibility to their their parcel? Communicate? Well, if you don’t do all of that, it’s sort of doesn’t help you out just to have a great carrier. And I’ve been at a lot of places where you just have to invest in that technology for a while in order to really reap the benefits of a buyer’s market.

Glenn Gooding [00:06:08]:

Great. Now if we just roll kind of another of the national carriers in the mix, we should say I don’t want to just pick on UPS here by any means. It’s UPS and FedEx where they’re kind of the traditional duopoly in the national small personal space. And what one did the other likely followed suit with shortly thereafter. And you mentioned kind of unwinding yourself from a existing commitment, a carrier contract if you will. What were you seeing from your seat as you’re kind of going through the evolution of E commerce?

Jamin Dick [00:06:38]:

Well, yeah, so the experience, I’m sure this is something everyone in my seat has experienced. You get the, the two big guys in there, maybe you bring USPS as well. You do a three way RFP and you land on FedEx or UPS and then they sign you up for a five year contract or something or four years. And so people get locked into these things and they sort of are like oh, I guess I can’t do anything. And the reality is there are things you can do and one thing that’s important is to let them know, hey, the market’s changing. I care about giving my customers the best service and I’m going to do that. Let’s say you have a minimum commitment rate shop down to one parcel above that minimum commitment. Right.

Jamin Dick [00:07:23]:

And if that volume goes away, they’ll, people will start to see, oh they’re serious about this. And most of these guys will, will come back especially in a deflationary Market from a volume perspective where they’re fighting for market share, they’re going to come back to the table and I think that’s a very important thing. So two year contract, three year, five year, whatever the market is still the boss here. And you need to as a retailer or a brand, you need to have a continual sort of ongoing dialogue with your partners and say look, I expect you to bring me market competitive rates and great service all the time with our. We may need to rethink this contract and give them a shot at it.

Glenn Gooding [00:08:05]:

You bet. Is it fair to also assume with kind of some of the changes, let’s say USPS delivering for America kind of their position with the Workshare program. So the, if we’re thinking E commerce, we’re talking about subcound type of environment. My goodness, where do you go with that in today’s environment? What are your options?

Jamin Dick [00:08:22]:

Yeah, I mean it is going to. That’s probably the area that’s changing maybe the most because with the USPS reform that’s underway now, a couple of interesting things there, right. They’re redoing their network so they’re pulling consolidation further up in the network. There’s a slow breakup happening as well between UPS, FedEx and USPS. Right. So they’re starting to pull apart on that. And then there’s a mandate for the USPS to not lose as much money and so they gotta bring their pricing up and be a little more competitive. That’s very interesting.

Jamin Dick [00:08:58]:

So you know, if I was running usps, that’s a tall order, right? I mean that’s a lot for them to figure out.

Glenn Gooding [00:09:04]:

Certainly is.

Jamin Dick [00:09:05]:

And some of their services are running at 83% on time which is not competitive. That is not enough to in an E Commerce they’re going to have to substantially improve that. And so all of that to say you have to think through if I’m going to just go for price here, I’m going to end up in a network that’s very much under an evolution USPS and I may have to think about depending on how important it is to have on time delivery, I may have to pay a little bit more. And you know, with my partners at UPS, FedEx, whatever and some of the other workshare companies out there, I just think there’s a lot of change because of the change that’s happening in that sector specifically. I’m sort of taking a wait and see on that. I want to see can they actually pull this off?

Glenn Gooding [00:09:55]:

Yeah, that’s a fair point. I just My reason for bringing that, that wrinkle up Jamin is as I think about this, when you think about UPS or FedEx, traditionally from a legacy perspective, they go in and they negotiate with you, they want everything and they’re happy to give you what they think are the market leading rates for everything. Well, today, given some of the challenges they have this breakup with USPS and the final mile solution, whether it be through consolidators or through UPS surepost or some of these other things, I guess the fundamental question becomes in 2025, does it make sense? Does UPS or does FedEx truly want everything?

Jamin Dick [00:10:36]:

I don’t think they do actually anymore. I think UPS in particular has been very clear, Carol Tome has been very clear about this, that they’re still leading in revenue even though they don’t have the most volume anymore. And they’re deliberately selecting more high profit business. And so they’re clearly willing to compete for the piece they want and leave some of the rest of it on the table, which is a shift that’s different. It used to be, oh, I’m only going to give you the best UPS ground rate if you’re also using Mail Innovations and like those are very different businesses. So it didn’t make a lot of sense. And plus the discount wasn’t really that impressive for doing that. And what I’ve always said is how do you know if I give everything to, let’s just say ups, I give them everything and I have sub 1 pound all the way up to, let’s say 10 pounds.

Jamin Dick [00:11:31]:

How do I know that I’m getting the best deal? The only way to know that is if I’m rate shopping actively. And so why would I commit to that in a contract? Let them compete for the piece that they’re good at and then have some flexibility. You don’t know what tomorrow’s gonna bring. I think none of us do. And I like the idea of being able to give them the part they’re good at. Somebody else is better at the small stuff or the big stuff. And they get that. That’s my personal preference.

Jamin Dick [00:11:59]:

And I think that aligns with what UPS is doing as well, where they’re saying we’re better at this range here, we’re gonna not compete too hard on the really small stuff.

Glenn Gooding [00:12:10]:

Interesting. So we need technology obviously to be able to effectively rate shot in an environment we then need a knowledge of. Okay, what if we’re looking to modify those existing long term legacy agreements with one of the national carriers? We need to be armed with some intelligence and really collaborate with the carrier at this point and say what makes sense in your world today, what do you want? Right. And then aligning accordingly.

Jamin Dick [00:12:33]:

Yeah, exactly. That’s right.

Glenn Gooding [00:12:35]:

What do you think? You know, you go through that exercise in today’s market. You said it’s kind of a buyer’s market, but we’re dealing with a lot of headwinds as well. As far as costs, what are the immediate long term impacts of some of these maneuvers on shipping costs and logistics? And I know your crystal ball is no better than my crystal ball. We don’t have a way of looking, but yeah, right.

Jamin Dick [00:12:56]:

I’m happy to guess with you. And so I tend to be a bit of an optimist on some of this stuff because I do think competition is good for buyers. And what we’re seeing is more competition. We’re seeing the market become less distorted than I think it was at one point. USPS was a distortion because they’re losing money. They’ve been losing money for a long time and now they’ve been told don’t lose money anymore. And so there’s a huge portion of US parcel volume that needs to get in line with competitive rates. And so in the short term, I think it’s going to take a little bit of time for people like me and you, people who buy shipping to feel the effects of this.

Jamin Dick [00:13:42]:

But I think longer term it’s going to mean we pay less for shipping and we’re going to start shifting away from a price only game to a price plus service plus innovation game where the winner is going to be not just about the lowest price. It’s can I not just have fast service, but can I have it really reliably?

Glenn Gooding [00:14:04]:

Yes. Not 83% on time.

Jamin Dick [00:14:07]:

Yeah, something better than that. You know, I think it’s truly in the high 90s. It needs to be in the high 90s for most E commerce people. And customers just don’t tolerate that anymore. They don’t tolerate, you know, well, I did my best to get it to you in four to seven days. And sometimes you win some, you lose some. Customers do not care about that and they’re used to better service than that. And I think carriers are going to need to provide more certainty in the delivery window.

Glenn Gooding [00:14:33]:

And that’s interesting because incomes, and I say incomes, but a third national reputable carrier and the reason I qualify that as income they come is Amazon. We all, you know, Amazon is one of the best known brands in the world at this point. But I think what’s unique now is Much. The vast majority of that average daily volume that we’re touting as number two in the market share right now is based off the Prime Channel. It’s the growth of Amazon Prime. But what I’m seeing is that they’re making forays now outside of the Prime Channel to compete with an Amazon, to compete with a ups or a FedEx or USPS for that matter. So I find that interesting and probably healthy. But how does one bring Amazon into the mix? And are there any potential concerns to consider on bringing Amazon in?

Jamin Dick [00:15:27]:

Yeah, as a person putting on my logistics only hat for a minute, yes, I’m thrilled with having another option. I think about Amazon’s been looking at the end to end customer experience from day one. That’s been a big part of their strategy all along. Not that the others haven’t, but that seems to be a strength for them. And they’re carrying their parcels end to end in most cases. So they’re responsible for the whole journey. Whereas UPS, FedEx, they’ve got the work share programs and there’s other subcontracting. But with Amazon as a logistics buyer, I think, hey, this could be a really good option for me.

Jamin Dick [00:16:06]:

And they have so many classes of service now. If I take my logistics hat off and I put my brand hat on now, I’ve got a few concerns. Right. So anything that touches Amazon you got to worry about. Is this going to become part of the Amazon basics? Let’s say I’m doing some apparel, am I going to see exactly what I’m doing today showing up on Amazon? I think my logistics guy would come in and say, don’t worry about that because unless you’re on the marketplace or something on Amazon’s marketplace, that’s where you worry about that. I do think there’s enough separation between church and state at Amazon, where you’ve got the logistics service versus the merchant services, where you can use the Amazon logistics without too much fear of that. Maybe I’m being naive, but I kind of think that there is enough separation there that I would use their services, I would bring them in the mix. And so I’m kind of excited about what they’re doing because we needed a third player in the industry for a long time.

Glenn Gooding [00:17:12]:

Yes, we have. I’m old enough to remember when there was a failed attempt at a third.

Jamin Dick [00:17:16]:

Yes.

Glenn Gooding [00:17:17]:

It’s not an easy endeavor. And I think, I think there’s a brand out there now that can pull it off. Is pulling it off right?

Jamin Dick [00:17:23]:

Already have in some ways. Right.

Glenn Gooding [00:17:25]:

So yeah, they have in many ways, for sure.

Jamin Dick [00:17:28]:

It’s hard to bet against Amazon at this point. Right. Because they haven’t had a lot of notable failures. They’ve been right. They’re dominating and pretty much every. Everywhere they try. And so, you know, my money’s on they’re here to stay in the carrier business. They’re going to, I think, provide a very valuable service for brands and retailers.

Glenn Gooding [00:17:47]:

You bet, I agree. You know, given that, is there anything specific you have top of mind to think about? Some strategies for collaborating with Amazon and this kind of new market landscape on the retailer side?

Jamin Dick [00:18:01]:

Yeah, it’s early days kind of because. So I’d like to see how they engage. I’m very familiar with how UPS and FedEx engage with their customers. And what’s interesting is will Amazon treat competitors in the e commerce space, but customers in the logistics space as if they have a voice in the product? Because if I’m a logistics buyer or a retailer and I want to use their services, I’m going to want to be able to give them some input. Is the product going to evolve towards an Amazon e commerce perspective or sort of a broad merchandise, broad retailer perspective? So that’s one thing that I’m kind of curious about. How much will they bring retailer input into the mix, their e commerce retailer into the mix?

Glenn Gooding [00:18:51]:

So you’d mentioned earlier on in our conversation here, we’re talking about other auctions. We’re talking about going from potentially single sourcing to some sort of a multi sourcing environment. Right. Unwinding that ball of yarn, if you will, or you know, you want to talk about golden handcuffs or whatever you want to call them with regard to some of the terms and conditions that exist in those legacy things you’d mentioned, rate shopping down to the last package. Right. To meet those thresholds to get their attention. Any other tactics or strategies that you would recommend to consider when Talking with a UPS or a FedEx and weaving in an Amazon Logistics or a USPS where you normally weren’t.

Jamin Dick [00:19:34]:

Right. Nothing speaks quite as loudly as moving volume or the threat of moving volume. And so I think actually having the ability to do that even if you don’t move it is super important. So I think my first stop on my journey is always, do we have the technical flexibility to do that if we need to? Right, Step one, Yep.

Glenn Gooding [00:19:57]:

Foundation of the house for sure.

Jamin Dick [00:19:59]:

Yeah. But that’s no good if you don’t also have the ability to sort of plan the supply chain a little bit. And so that means do I have a network that can get me close to my customer and do I know how to wield that network? Right. And that means do I have a technology stack that enables for effective network planning? And so I think in terms of how do I engage with the carriers, you know, they’re going to want to know do I have the flexibility for, to manipulate my network to provide a good value to my customers on the website, or am I sort of locked into yesterday’s technology? And I don’t really, it’s, I’m, I’m playing a, a bluff basically. And so carriers know that they figure that stuff out. And so I think if you’re not keeping up with the technology side, you just won’t be able to have a strong conversation on that.

Glenn Gooding [00:20:56]:

I agree, I agree. That’s a tough one. I know of some clients, even today through acquisition, everything else, where they may be operating on five different EMS platforms. And that’s, if you’re the supply chain guy, that’s a tough one to overcome. Right.

Jamin Dick [00:21:10]:

And then that’s sort of the adversarial view, but there’s also a collaborative view and I don’t want to miss out on that because it’s just as important to me that we’re pushing our partners in the carrier space to be a partner at the table and to talk about planning our business together. I’ve had many huge moments with carriers where it wasn’t a rate conversation, it was just a joint collaboration about how I’ve said, hey, why don’t you guys tell me what your suggestions are, you know, what my goals are. I want to buck off my parcels and I want to deliver faster and I want better tracking and all the things. Right. And once you guys come in and talk to us about that, they will do that. They’re really good at this. Sometimes there’s untapped opportunities there where they’ll say, yeah, we don’t know why you’re line hauling it out to the edge when you could just, you could use our trucks or, you know, we already have a truck going there, why don’t you just, we’ll come pick it up. Or we have programs that can help with cost reduction or returns reduction or whatever.

Jamin Dick [00:22:16]:

And so I found that to be the first thing to do with my partners, like get their input. What would they recommend? And sometimes you get half of what you want just from that first conversation.

Glenn Gooding [00:22:28]:

Yeah, I think there’s a lot to be gained to not take an adversarial approach. I’m a big proponent of trying to pull the carrier into the Collaborative, consultative type of partnership role wherever possible. I think some of the challenges that we sometimes have though too is the counter to that might be a view or a comment like, hey, aren’t you letting the fox kind of guard the henhouse now? You know, how reliant are you on their analytics and their guidance?

Jamin Dick [00:22:56]:

Absolutely, yeah. And I think that’s a valid concern. How deep do you let them come in? But it doesn’t cost much to get their ideas and I think they already know what your parcels look like and they know where they’re going. So If I’m using UPS for 50% of my business, they know a lot about me already. And so just hearing from them I think is a kind of a low cost way to make a lot of immediate progress. And sometimes I’ve learned things that I didn’t know from my partners where they’re like, hey, you’re shipping things in cartons that are if 2% larger than the volumetric threshold. If you had a slightly smaller carton you’d save a lot of money. And I was like, man, we should have thought of that.

Jamin Dick [00:23:41]:

I remember that from my early years and I never let that go after that. I was like, we’re going to always check for that, make sure that that’s part of internal audit. So that’s another thing too. Almost everywhere I’ve been we go to standardized cartons and we have our partners certify them so that there’s a over billing. We know to a certainty because we know which carton it was that hey, that’s not oversized. We know how much that’s supposed to cost. Don’t charge me more for it.

Glenn Gooding [00:24:09]:

Yeah, yeah, for sure. Do any tools or technologies come pop of mind in your mind as you’re thinking about this? You said you let out with technology that can really help ecommerce shippers stay agile, responsive kind of approach to market dynamically.

Jamin Dick [00:24:24]:

Yeah, I think there have been. Obviously it kind of all starts with a good order management platform. I wouldn’t even pick one particular one because it’s so different by kind of sub industry. So you might get a, a better product for beauty and health than you would for apparel, for instance, because the dynamics of those businesses are slightly different. But I think in days past sterling commerce with IBM was something that was really important. I think that’s a platform that’s pretty long in the tooth at this point. And there are other great platforms out there. Manhattan’s got one.

Jamin Dick [00:25:03]:

And so there are. I think that’s where I usually start in looking at the architectures, do we have an adequate order management platform? And if not, that’s what we got to do first. And then mentioned rate shopping. There’s a number of good providers there. And then I love a model where you sort of let a thousand flowers grow and you don’t commit to anything too deeply. There’s so much innovation obviously with AI right now that I wouldn’t think it’s a good idea to invest deeply in heavy platforms that try to do everything. And I like to see what’s going to happen tomorrow. And maybe we swap out our rate shopping for something different.

Jamin Dick [00:25:46]:

Maybe we have a new tracking solution. So I want technology that can easily connect to tomorrow’s tech as well as just what we’re using today because there’s just so much innovation happening right now.

Glenn Gooding [00:25:59]:

So let’s say for a minute before I get us to the final thoughts, I think another, if we move from a legacy perspective, single sourcing, or primarily single sourcing, so a more dynamic rate shopping environment where you have three or four options on the table that you’re actively leveraging based off of cost and service and geography and those things, how do you manage the customer experience effectively in that environment?

Jamin Dick [00:26:24]:

Yeah, there’s no silver bullet.

Glenn Gooding [00:26:26]:

Amen.

Jamin Dick [00:26:27]:

But the way that I think about that is you really need it to be designed. So I, I think about whether it’s upstream supply chain or, or the outbound supply chain, it needs to be designed customer back. So what’s the customer expect from me, from us? And then you force your systems and your processes to fit that, not the other way around. And so what that means is, let’s say I want to deliver a two to three day delivery experience to 97% reliability. I have decisions to make about technology, network design, how the work happens inside my buildings, how my three PLs behave, where product is located. Because I now I have to worry if I have a 5 DC network, am I going to split shipments and sync my P and L, or am I going to wait to consolidate shipments, you know, move things around? There’s a lot of questions like that. So. But the boss here is what’s my customer expect of me? And so then we go back and the problems are harder that way.

Jamin Dick [00:27:34]:

Candidly, it’s a lot easier to bring your problems to your customer and say can you still love me? Than it is to say customer wants three days reliably. And so, well, we got hard work to do then because we got to fix our tech, we got to fix our network, we got to change our work in the DCs. We gotta plan our inventory better. There’s a lot there. So there is no silver bullet. But having a clear picture for what’s the vision for your customer experience, that’s the starting point for it. And I think brands that do that and not the other way around are better off.

Glenn Gooding [00:28:10]:

Yeah, that’s a tough. I threw a tough one at you there. I know I did. That’s. There is a lot there. You got.

Jamin Dick [00:28:15]:

Great question though. It’s the right question. Absolutely.

Glenn Gooding [00:28:18]:

Yeah. It’s. It gets your head spinning when you think about multiple DCs and suddenly you have slow moving SKUs consolidated in one of those locations. The other four had the faster moving SKUs. My goodness. You could find yourself in a rate shopping environment where if you’re lucky enough to get all of the order on the doorstep on the same day, it might be delivered by two different carriers.

Jamin Dick [00:28:38]:

It could be right? It could be. And some customers actually don’t like that. They’re going to say, hey, why, why am I getting two boxes on two different days? But I’ve found what you tell your customer helps a lot with what they expect of you. Right. So if you’re able to. If you know that you’re going to ship it in two boxes, for instance, just tell your customer, you know, tell you. This might be. Amazon does that really well.

Jamin Dick [00:29:00]:

They say if you ship it, you know, you can either have two boxes over three days or you can have one box in three days. And I don’t know how many select one versus the other. But then you set the expectation with the customer what’s going to happen. And it’s as simple as your systems need to know that so that you can tell your customer what your plan is, what the fulfillment plan is and message it clearly and then deliver against that. Sounds easy. And it’s not easy, of course, it’s very hard to do. But I don’t know how to do it other than articulate what my customer expects of me and bend everything around that. And obviously there’s a limit.

Jamin Dick [00:29:42]:

I’m not going to deliver in eight days. It needs to be probably three. Probably doesn’t need to be two. I don’t know for 90% of my customers, but depends on the business. But figure out what that is and then message it and deliver against it.

Glenn Gooding [00:29:58]:

Yeah, and I liked what you said to allow the customer to decide, Right?

Jamin Dick [00:30:01]:

Yeah. Right.

Glenn Gooding [00:30:02]:

It’s a novel concept.

Jamin Dick [00:30:03]:

Yeah, it’s a huge point. Because they can decide I want to go faster. So I’m Going to pay a little bit for that. I want it in one box or it’s okay if it’s in two boxes, whatever. And having their agency involved at the point of checkout takes a lot of the problems out of fulfillment.

Glenn Gooding [00:30:22]:

Yeah, I agree. Wow. You know, if we get to the final thoughts here, I’ve grabbed a bunch of your time and you’ve been very helpful and I think sharing your perspective been very valuable. If you were to offer final tips to the listener group out here, help them navigate these challenging, very dynamic times in E commerce shipping, what would you encapsulate that to?

Jamin Dick [00:30:46]:

Sure. What I think about most right now is the shifting market, which I do feel is in favor of buyers right now. And so first thing I’d be doing as a brand or retailer is getting my data together and figuring out what do I think the market can support here in terms of pricing and be aggressive about it. I would say if you haven’t negotiated your contracts in five plus years, start aggressive and think, is there a dollar per parcel? Is there more than a dollar per parcel I could save through relooking at everything. So I think that’s number one. There’s price out there to be had for brands and retailers. And I think don’t wait till your contract’s up. Start having that conversation today because the market’s already changing.

Jamin Dick [00:31:33]:

Second thing I would say is don’t let carriers win just on price because there’s going to be an explosion in innovation. There already is. And the routing of parcels is going to get better, which is going to lead to better tracking, better visibility, more reliable delivery. And I think you want to see that, make them show you that because they’re working on that. And if you can say to your customer, I’m going to give you a date certain for delivery instead of a range, for instance, that’s a pretty important thing. So those are the big things on my mind right now. It’s like, how do you as a brand or retailer make sure you’re getting the pricing that you need? Don’t wait till the contract’s up and then make sure you’re also making your carriers, your partners compete for the innovation that they provide to your customer as well.

Glenn Gooding [00:32:24]:

Great. I think great closing remarks, Jamin. How can our listeners contact you or connect with you if they’d like?

Jamin Dick [00:32:31]:

Well, you can reach me, my website, jd-advisory.com my name is Jamin and it’s jamin-advisory.com Excellent.

Glenn Gooding [00:32:42]:

Excellent. It’s been a lot of fun and look forward to future conversations with you. Jayna to our listeners, thank you again for listening to another episode and I look forward to bringing more, I think timely, relevant topics for your benefit in the future. Take care.

Jamin Dick [00:32:59]:

Thanks Glenn thank you Jay.

Glenn Gooding [00:33:06]:

Thanks for listening to Parcel Perspectives, hosted.

Glenn Gooding [00:33:08]:

By me, Glenn Gooding I’ve been in.

Glenn Gooding [00:33:10]:

The small parcel space for 37 years, starting with a deep and broad background working for one of the major carriers as an operator and industrial engineer, later managing pricing at the highest level for the largest, most complex shippers in the world. Since then, I’ve been a national thought leader and work to help drive strategy for clients from Fortune 50 companies to startup e commerce businesses, helping them more competitively align in this complex and expensive market. If you enjoyed the show, please subscribe and share with friends. Join us next time for more expert advice and strategies to stay ahead of the shipping game.