EP287 - Amazon Supply Chain Deep Dive with Marc Wulfraat http://jasonandscot.com Marc Wulfraat is President of MWPVL, a global supply chain and logistics consulting firm, and one of the foremost experts outside of Amazon, into Amazons supply chain. In this episode to do a deep dive into all the elements of Amazon's supply chain, how it compares to other third party logistics providers, and most importantly if and how other retailers should think about competing against the enormous advantage that Amazon's logistics infrastructure provides Episode 287 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Thursday February 17, 2022. Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing. Transcript Jason: [0:23] Welcome to the Jason and Scot show this is episode 287 being recorded on Thursday February 17th 2022 I'm your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and as usual I'm here with your co-host Scot Wingo. Scot: [0:39] Hey Jason and welcome back Jason Scott show listeners Jason were about 300 episodes into what I would like to call our podcasting journey and sometimes our timing has been terrible over that 300 episodes sometimes we roll the dice and it comes up the right way tonight's episode is probably the best timing episode we've ever had I mention this because yesterday Shopify announced their Q4 earnings that were pretty strong but then they dropped a bit of a bombshell on Wall Street they announced that they're going to spend over a billion dollars on the next 3 years on what they call sfm Shopify fulfillment Network and they're going to compete with Amazon's FBA capabilities and they also kind of said and we're going to essentially get to 2-day delivery across 90% of the United States you and I were skeptical about that on on social media I said that's nice but Amazon has spent over 80 billion to get there and then you said. Jason: [1:37] Yeah that there are also targeting a service level that's kind of antiquated like like to day is Amazon 2010 here in 2022 you know it's at worst next day and increasingly at same day for millions of skews so I was a little surprised that they their big splash was that they were going to invest a billion dollars to get Amazon service level from 10 years ago. Scot: [2:00] Yeah that's where our timing gets interesting because you and I have long wanted to do an Amazon Logistics fulfillment Deep dive and the person that knows more about this than anyone except for the folks inside of Amazon is Mark Wolfe rat he is the president of mwp DL and we are really excited to have him on the show talk about all things Logistics. Marc: [2:23] Well thank you kindly for having just gone through some really appreciate it before this. Jason: [2:27] Oh my gosh Mark were thrilled to have you Scott's too shy to mention it but but this is a rare circumstance where Scott is a fanboy of you because, every time there's there's new data about Amazon's investment in their various elements of the fulfillment Network he's forwarding stuff to me and he's like hey did you see what Mark and cover this week so I'm probably not gonna be able to get a word in edgewise but before Scott jumps in with the questions we do always like to get a brief background of our guests and I'm super curious understand how you got into the supply chain space and and sort of what led you to found em W PV l. Marc: [3:12] Oh gosh well did I was a mathematician in my University days and, I just accidentally got a job as a consultant you know what I got out of school and it was we didn't know what the word supply chain was back then it just didn't exist so I started a Consulting and distribution and then, eventually went out and founded my own company and you know today we called Supply chains for 35 years I've been, what the cost supply chain