🏆 Mike Beckham reveals why you need to quit to be excellent
🤓 Sharoon Thomas provides his ops checklist for CPG brands
💸 Sean Frank explains how to escape ridiculous email billings
Plus, the top headlines in consumer.
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Sharoon Thomas
Founder, Fulfil
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Omnichannel CPG Operations Checklist
The best ERP is the one made to handle what makes omnichannel CPG operations hard.
After building Fulfil to be the backbone of brands like Grüns and Cora, I’ve learned there are nine things your system needs to handle …
☐ Inventory you own in someone else’s building
Your packaging sits at the co-man. They buy the ingredients and bill you per finished unit. Your real unit cost is packaging consumed + their invoice. Receiving finished goods has to consume the packaging off the BOM (bill of materials), so the cost lands on the inventory.
☐ Getting paid less than you invoiced
You invoice Target $10,000. They pay $9,400. The $600 is cartons they say never arrived, damaged units, labeling fines, an early-pay discount. The reasons come in a remittance file (EDI 820), one line per deduction.
Without an agent reading the 820 and matching each line, someone has to match each one to its invoice by hand.
☐ Shelf life that depends on who’s buying
A jar with three months left is fine for a DTC customer who’ll finish it this month. Amazon will reject it at receiving. Same batch: sellable on your site, unsellable on Amazon. In Fulfil, you set a minimum shelf life per channel, and every order gets the oldest stock that still clears it.
☐ Not knowing which customer got which batch
Every run gets a lot number printed on the pack. If a run goes bad, you need to know exactly who got it. Many 3PLs pick from several lots at once and never record which went in which box. So in a recall you email everyone who ordered in that date range and pull far more product than you need to.
☐ Missing components cause stockout
One spray bottle is a bottle, pump, cap, label and carton, each from a different supplier with its own lead time. If one part is short, the co-man can’t start the run. Your hero SKU goes out of stock over a cap that costs a few cents.
☐ Inventory you have but can’t sell
A lot of CPG goes on QA hold coming off the line and sits until a third-party lab clears it. If planning counts it as available, you stock out with full pallets in the building. It’s real inventory, but unavailable for purchase.
☐ Bundles that behave differently by channel
On Shopify, a 3-pack is picked as 3 singles at pack time. Amazon and Walmart need it built ahead as its own product with its own barcode, so it carries its own cost, including kitting labor and packaging. Planning has to account for both.
☐ Retailer purchase orders over EDI
Walmart sends weekly POs (850). Some ship to a DC and then on to a specific store, and the carton label has to show both. When you ship, you send an ASN with carton-level detail (856). Then an invoice (810). When they pay, net of deductions and chargebacks, you get a remittance (820).
Manually created ASNs is a huge source of chargebacks. Each retailer’s rules live in a long routing guide PDF. AI can read it and turn it into label rules in Fulfil, so you don’t learn them from chargebacks.
☐ One product, several barcodes
Every retailer has its own barcode and labeling rules. Separate packaging per channel multiplies your SKUs and your MOQs. Print for your strictest channel.
You can always cheaply relabel for the rest. And please get your UPCs from GS1 (not reseller). Every packaging level gets its own GTIN: the unit, the inner pack, the case.
If your ERP can’t do these natively, you’re doing them in spreadsheets.
That’s why I built Fulfil.
Shoutout to Will Nitze, founder of IQBAR, for inspiring this checklist on X (Twitter).
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Mike Beckham
CEO, Simple Modern
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The Counterintuitive Requirements of Excellence
If you want to get good at something, you must start by just doing it. What’s often called “bias to action.”
At first, you won’t be any good.
But that’s the point. You only build excellence by making your peace with a simple fact …
Excellence requires being willing to do things poorly at first.
But excellence requires a lot more than just a willingness to act. It has a few other counterintuitive ingredients that should always be mentioned alongside bias to action.
1. Excellence requires monotony
During the 2024 Paris Olympics, Mondo Duplantis won the gold medal in the pole vault, setting a new world record of 6.25 meters. It was an electric moment to watch.
Think about the training that preceded that glorious moment. How many pole vaults has Duplantis done in his life? 10,000? 100,000? More?
That one epic moment required countless hours of monotonous routine and practice — the same thing over and over and over and over again.
What separates the excellent from the rest is the willingness to hone their craft long after its novelty has worn off.
Can you commit? Can you grind? Are you willing to keep doing that one thing over and over again?
It’s easy when you see yourself getting 10% better each month. Can you do it when you only get 1% better monthly?
Malcolm Gladwell popularized the idea that 10,000 hours is what it takes to become an expert. While that number is debated, the concept is not.
Becoming great at something takes an inordinate amount of time. How much is 10,000 hours? That’s like devoting two solid hours a day to something … for 14 years.
2. Excellence requires judgment
Because excellence requires so much focused work, it is impossible to achieve in many areas of life.
The easiest way to avoid excellence is to devote a little bit of time to a bunch of disparate pursuits.
I like the analogy of light.
If you stand in the sun, you get warm. If you focus the sun with a magnifying glass, you can light something on fire. If you focus light enough to create a laser, you can cut through anything.
The same analogy applies to our time. Focusing our time on one pursuit … becomes a force multiplier.
But that leads to a critical question: What areas of your life are worthy of pursuing excellence?
I’ve learned through experience that I can easily get distracted and pour my time into the pursuit of excellence in areas that just won’t matter to me when I’m 70.
If I want to be an involved and committed father, then I’m not going to be great at video games or golf. My competitive fire can sometimes distract me and dilute my focus on things that won’t matter in the long run.
One of my favorite movies growing up was the original Jurassic Park. Jeff Goldblum plays the scientist Ian Malcolm. When he sees the dinosaurs created from DNA engineering, he observes:
“You were so concerned with whether or not you could that you never stopped to think if you should.”
I’m often guilty of the same mistake — particularly when I’m not being intentional.
We’re intentional about how we allocate money into different investments, but your time is even more precious than money.
Be exceedingly deliberate about where you choose to use it.
3. Excellence requires quitting
If you are reading this, you are likely a person who scores high in persistence — the tenacity to keep going when others quit.
You have the willingness to pay the price of loneliness that often comes with doing hard things.
I’m the same. I just don’t quit. I’ve always viewed persistence as one of my superpowers, an asset.
That was true right up until I founded a company that failed.
Reflecting on that period in 2012, I’m not ashamed of the business outcome. When you make asymmetric bets, often you are going to lose.
The self-criticism I took from the experience was that I kept trying to make the project work long after it was doomed.
I was like the doctor who keeps using the electric paddles on a patient who is clearly already dead.
I should have taken the “L.” Learned from it. And then, moved on.
But I was determined to make it work because … I do not quit. The result? I wasted another year of my life (and another couple of million dollars) because of my persistence.
Persistence is not always a virtue. It can also be toxic.
The person who keeps going deeper and deeper with a destructive addiction. The co-dependant personality in an abusive relationship who keeps trying to make it work. The gambler who keeps doubling down right into bankruptcy.
This isn’t just true of overtly negative situations.
The most dangerous business is the mediocre one. Good enough that you can’t quit. Lacking the potential to be truly successful.
Persistence is only helpful when we apply it in the right places.
How do you harness the positive power of your persistence without the toxic aspects?
You become good at quitting.
It’s completely counterintuitive but 100% true. Here’s how Seth Godin put it in a tremendous book called The Dip:
“Winners quit fast, quit often, and quit without guilt.”
“Winners quit all the time. They just quit the right stuff at the right time. [...] Strategic quitting is the secret of successful organizations.”
When you become skilled at quitting, your persistence becomes a superpower.
Quit the stuff that doesn’t matter. Quit quickly. Quit without guilt.
If you aren’t afraid of quitting, it will make you much more willing to experiment and try new things.
Make the decision to quit everything except the most important things. Then, focus your time, attention, and energy on being the absolute best you can be in those areas.
And those areas alone.
Your email bill should not grow faster than your revenue
You pay to acquire a subscriber.
Your email platform charges you for having them. Then they sign up again with a different email address. Billed again.
You pay 3x for one person.
Postscript is taking on big email.
- merges dupes
- bills by sends
- transparent renewals
They also help you make more money. We use them for SMS.
5 STARS IN MY TECH STACK
They put together a free “Voter’s Guide to Email” with 7 questions to ask your provider before you renew.
1. Am I paying for duplicates?
2. Bigger list. Bigger bill. Why?
3. Who cleans up your database?
4. Can I change the attribution?
5. Is the CDP another upsell?
6. What’s my renewal rate?
7. How fast do you ship features?
If you are not going to switch to postscript at least make your email provider explain themselves.
Collabs & Community Behind Hulken’s Growth
Meta’s Product Director Explains Andromeda, GEM & Lattice
CEOs Hire CMOs to Drive Growth, Then Get in the Way
The five top stories from this week in commerce and DTC.
1. Bose Acquires Skullcandy: Bose
Bose acquired Skullcandy for an undisclosed amount, following a partnership that already brought Bose technology into Skullcandy headphones and earbuds. Skullcandy will remain a separate brand based in Park City, Utah.
Bose plans to expand its access to engineering, distribution, and commercial partnerships, while tapping into Skullcandy’s established communities in action sports, music, and gaming.
Huge congrats to friend of the show, BG Garofalow (Skullcandy’s CEO)!
Show him some love on LinkedIn.
2. Salesforce to Buy Braze for $5.66B: Salesforce
Salesforce agreed to acquire customer engagement platform Braze in a deal valued at approximately $5.66B. Braze serves roughly 2,770 customers, including Urban Outfitters, Instacart, and Equinox, coordinating marketing across email, SMS, WhatsApp, apps, and websites.
Salesforce plans to combine Braze’s real-time personalization capabilities with its Marketing Cloud and customer data products. The transaction remains subject to shareholder and regulatory approvals.
3. Unilever Sells Welly: Reuters
Unilever agreed to sell colorful bandage brand Welly to Forward Consumer Partners, five years after acquiring a majority stake. Co-founder Eric Ryan will return as a strategic adviser and board member. Financial terms weren’t disclosed, and the transaction is expected to close in the fourth quarter. The acquisition marks Forward’s first investment in consumer health as Unilever continues reshaping its portfolio.
4. Meta Adds Product-Level Ad Reporting: PPC Land
A new “Top products in your campaign” panel has appeared in Meta Ads Manager, showing individual catalog products ranked by spend, clicks, purchases, and conversion value.
Advertisers can also view results for specific ad sets and open a more detailed Product Insights dashboard. Media buyer Bram Van der Hallen spotted the feature this week; Meta hasn’t yet confirmed its availability across all accounts.
5. TikTok Shifts Spend Beyond Meta: Business Insider
TikTok is moving advertising dollars to YouTube, Pinterest, and mobile-app networks after Meta blocked ByteDance ads in several markets. Sensor Tower estimates YouTube’s share of TikTok’s spend rose from 9% to 17%, while Pinterest’s increased from 3% to 9%.
The restrictions also affect third-party advertisers linking to ByteDance properties, including brands sending shoppers to TikTok Shop. The spending shifts were reported October 21, following the ban’s October 8 start.
With thanks and anticipation,
Aaron Orendorff
🤓 Chief Executive Officer
P.S. (Disclaimer): Special thanks to Fulfil and Postscript for sponsoring today’s newsletter.