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The Value of Supply Chain Partnerships with Juli Lassow
135 Plays2 years ago
In this episode, Juli Lassow, Owner & Principal at JHL Solutions, joins Host Brian Glick, CEO of Chain.io, to discuss:
- How LogTech has impacted supplier partnerships
- The impact of insolvency on supply chains
- How to transition from customers to partners
- The nitty gritty of sourcing, nearshoring, and multi-source sourcing
- How virtual meetings enable creativity
- The best operational practices for shippers and retailers
Juli is dedicated to supporting retailers and suppliers in finding, developing products, and negotiating with each other. In her role at JHL Solutions, she works to connect the dots between mass retailers and suppliers and to arm them with the strategies, processes, and tools to make better products faster – and for less. Prior to launching JHL Solutions, Juli spent 15+ years in progressive leadership roles in sourcing, project management, inventory management and buying for Target Corporation.Follow Juli
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Transcript
Importance of Face-to-Face in Business Partnerships
00:00:05
Speaker
I think the conversations matter.
00:00:08
Speaker
In the partnerships that you're looking to deepen and create more value, the closer you get to face-to-face, the better positions you are to deepen that partnership. It's you're building the know-like trust factor, which certainly is important across many aspects of life. But in business, partners are willing to give more to their partners that are growing in the same way, that they're excited about bringing the future to life with them.
00:00:36
Speaker
It's hard to communicate that over an email. You lose a lot of that dimension.
Introduction to the Podcast and Today's Topic
00:00:44
Speaker
Welcome to Supply Chain Connections. I'm Brian Glick, the founder and CEO at Chain.io. Today, we're going to get a little bit out of my comfort zone and talk about the thing that happens before shipping and trade compliance and all of that, which is sourcing.
Julie Lasso's Experience and Focus on Supplier Partnerships
00:00:57
Speaker
Our guest today is Julie Lasso.
00:00:59
Speaker
We'll let her do her introduction, but I'm super excited to learn all about the things that happened to get us the products from the beginning. Julie, thank you so much for being on the show. Oh, Brian, I'm thrilled to be here. Thanks so much for having me. So why don't we just start with a little bit of introduction, kind of where you come from and what you're doing today? Yeah, happy to share. Thank you so much for asking.
00:01:23
Speaker
I grew up professionally at Target Corporation. So I'm Minneapolis based and like to say, I still live in the shadow of the bullseye. I worked mostly in the merchandising or merchandising adjacent areas. So inventory planning, buying, negotiations, and some finance rotations. But I spent about half of my time at Target working in the own brand sourcing space. And at Target, that's all about finding the right suppliers, working with them throughout the supply chain.
00:01:50
Speaker
as they're sourcing new materials and really onboarding them so they can bring amazing own brand products to the shelves. And I left Target six years ago now and launched my own consultancy. And I've stayed really focused on that supplier partnership space. So today, I support retailers in finding the right partners, developing products with them, or deepening their agreements, oftentimes in own brands, but not always, and then do a lot of work negotiating with them.
00:02:19
Speaker
And as you and I have chatted, I know it won't be news to any of your audience. The last couple of years have just put a lot of stress and strain on those supplier partnerships.
Impact of Recent Years on Partnerships
00:02:29
Speaker
So that's the place within the supply chain that I really focus is how retailers and suppliers can partner together and either mitigate supply chain risks or resolve issues quickly and with as minimal impact as possible should and as they arise. So how has the chaos of the last couple of years, how has it impacted
00:02:49
Speaker
those relationships. I mean, I know that certainly have changed, but have they gotten stronger, weaker, like kind of, what's the real landscape out there?
00:02:57
Speaker
I would say yes, all of the above. And I would add a third category. I had a feeling that was the answer. Yeah, I would add a third category to that is that some of the partnerships that existed pre the onset of COVID don't exist anymore. So that's often or unfortunately has been a situation that I've had to help resolve is where partners have gone out of the business or elected not to do business with each other anymore, because of the whatever happened during COVID either put one of them out of business or made their partnership untenable, unfortunately.
00:03:24
Speaker
But on the other end of the spectrum, I think there's a lot of retailers and suppliers now that have deepened their partnership, that have come to realize how important they are to each other, how well aligned they are, and how they were able to survive and in some cases thrive as they were navigating the COVID response era. So those teams that have done exceptionally well are the ones that have been really open and transparent about their strategies, the issues they're facing. They come to the table with solutions and a little bit of
00:03:51
Speaker
business empathy and grace where it's called for. And then there's a spectrum in the middle of that from having a great partnership to no partnership where some are stronger, some are more transactional now because I didn't take the opportunity or didn't find the value in deepening the relationship.
Role of Technology in Partnerships
00:04:06
Speaker
So is there any kind of correlation or between the amount of tech that's involved in those relationships and
00:04:15
Speaker
versus the conversations that happen and the health of those relationships is, you know, is tech helping? Is it hurting? I love that question. I will start by saying that I am not a deep tech expert. I know some of your guests have been and that is, that's not the space that I played as deeply. But what I would say is where tech can enable really great conversations is when it brings data that's meaningful, timely and accurate.
00:04:40
Speaker
and you're able to use technology to either strategize or problem solve better. That's the places where tech can help. Where tech can get in the way or interrupt a conversation, that can sometimes be a hindrance. When you're resolving problems and you're just communicating through email or just spending information back and forth with each other and you either don't have the right information or you're not making time for a conversation, that's where I can see tech start to erode a relationship or keep it from deepening.
00:05:09
Speaker
What do you love about this? Why after all these years still deal with all of these nightmares of all of the chaos that's out there?
Challenges from Global Instability and Banking Issues
00:05:17
Speaker
I am a problem solver at heart.
00:05:21
Speaker
And I think working in retail, working in supply chains gives me ample opportunity to work on finding ways to solve problems and create more value. Honestly, I look for that just from a professional personal satisfaction. The work that I do is deepening and adding value. And when I can help my clients and their partners add greater value to their organizations, their teams, ultimately their customers, that's something I find a lot of personal satisfaction motivating and motivation in doing. So that's why I come back.
00:05:50
Speaker
So which are the problems that are keeping you up at night this year? What are the big ones?
00:05:55
Speaker
I think the big ones are certainly global instability and how that's going to continue to have impact on supply chains and importantly raw materials. I do a lot of work in negotiating when we're looking at raw materials and we're starting to see inflation unwind a little bit. It's a lot less predictable because of some of those bigger global factors and global instability. And so that's making it challenging to peer into the crystal ball to say the least.
00:06:23
Speaker
So I'll make you peer into that crystal ball. No one has an answer for the question I'm about to ask, but I'm going to ask it anyway. You know, over the next five, 10 years, is that instability? Are you thinking that that's the new normal or is this a thing that goes away and we all get to relax?
Stability and Cost Pressures in Supply Chains
00:06:41
Speaker
Yeah, we're totally going to relax. It's going to be fine. Well, great. We can just end the interview. Yeah, we're done. We're done. Eight minutes in. It's interesting that you say that because as we're recording this, as we chatted just before we hit record today, there's a lot of instability within the banking sector right now that completely colors my answer in a way that it wouldn't have even 72 hours ago. I would have said that we were heading to somewhat of a normalization where
00:07:10
Speaker
Yes, we're globally connected, but I'm seeing supply chains become much more flexible, and so we've uncovered a lot of those break points and congestion points, and teams have been making progress, I'll say it that way, on finding their next best alternative. If solution one isn't going to work, but this is a mission critical point, a lot of people now, a lot of teams in place have that go-to, and that's created a little bit more give in supply chain, a little bit more give in the product.
00:07:40
Speaker
life cycle. That being said, I don't know if we know what the bottom is of what the fallout is going to be from banking insolvency right now in the US, how wide that's going to spread. I would imagine that's going to be resolved within five years. Hopefully.
00:07:56
Speaker
We'll come out of whatever the impact is that we see in the short and mid term, but I think we've just reinforced now that we can't have the brittle supply chains that we've had. So I think that's creating some more stability, but then the pendulum will swing and at some point we'll become more brittle again and more short-sighted and then have to go through the cycle again. That is my prediction on the 10 year front. So actually, so that brings up an interesting thing that I've always kind of seen in my work over the last 20 years or so rare.
00:08:25
Speaker
you have some sort of impact, whether it was, you know, in the transportation space, obviously September 11th is a huge impact, right? And then everyone is focused on security and cost becomes second to security or when the free trade agreements all started falling apart and we had the trade wars in 2016. So, okay, well, we'll focus on that and cost becomes second. But eventually see the CFO always seems to push cost to be the most important thing. And then you get brittle and then you break again.
00:08:54
Speaker
Is that a valid fear? I mean, have you had that experience on the sourcing side as well? I come from more of the transportation side, so. Absolutely. I think that's really well framed that the urgent of the moment will drive a lot of decision making the shortened midterm. But like I was touching on earlier, there's definitely a pendulum where you're solving, you're prioritizing. We'll never let this happen to us again, mantra, until we do.
00:09:18
Speaker
And I think your conclusion is a reasonable one that as things start to stabilize, we become a little more targeted and focused. I think technology and tools and analysis continue to evolve that, yeah, that CFO is going to come knocking and they're going to have their questions and there's more accountability in the financial space where
00:09:41
Speaker
Retail used to be a lot looser. I've been at this for a couple decades now when it came to knowing where all your pennies were. You can't operate that way anymore. We have access to the data. It's easier to understand than ever. I do think that the momentum will be back to more rigidity in time, but we had a pretty good shake to the system. I think it's going to take a little while before that pendulum will fully swing back to
Maturity in Smaller Supply Chains
00:10:07
Speaker
rigidity.
00:10:07
Speaker
So that flexibility that's been introduced in all of this data, I would imagine that in your consulting you've worked with at least one other company that's smaller than Target. Is there a big drop off as far as when you go from the, you know, let's say those top 10 or 15 supply chains in the world to everybody else? Is there a big drop off or are you seeing that even smaller clients have are starting to be more mature or have that data available to them?
00:10:37
Speaker
The smart ones do. There's such a fantastic opportunity to digitize throughout the supply chain, throughout product development. And you do want to size the solution to fit the problem. There are some solutions that are way over the top and not going to be worth the investment in capital, the investment in team resources to run.
00:11:00
Speaker
There is a breaking point, but the teams that I work with that understand what their pain points are or what their aspirations are and focus the solution to meet just ahead of where they are. So they're stretching themselves a little bit. They are looking down the field of if this is the organization we want to be, would this solution help? Would this solution help?
00:11:20
Speaker
Or what are some of the roadblocks that are keeping us from being that team? And how do we, can we remove some of those roadblocks by an additional build on or reimagining? I think those are smart teams. It's tricky. I think that things that are tricky about that is when you just try to fix one piece. So that's what I see my clients are struggling with the most is when they're trying to pick just one specific piece. Sometimes that's hard to do. It could be the most important thing, but if you're going to touch this, you need to touch this, this, and this.
00:11:50
Speaker
Again, I'm not a technology expert. No, no. I have a personal cliche, at least, that I like, which is that there is no such thing as a technology problem. There are only business problems that involve computers.
Aligning Technology with Business Goals
00:12:05
Speaker
And that if you're coming at anything, even as the CEO of a tech company, that if you're coming at anything and the first conversation you're having is using the word data lake,
00:12:15
Speaker
you probably already lost, right? Like you have lost the war before you fought the first battle, right? That the first thing should always be, we're trying to make more money, spend less money, satisfy this brand promise, something that has no, for the word XML or the word Data Lake or API or blockchain is not in that sentence. Right. And then
00:12:42
Speaker
tech is very valuable after that point to then go solve that problem. Absolutely. Absolutely. So it would be irresponsible of me to have an opportunity to talk to somebody from the sourcing world and not just randomly throw the words China and near shoring.
Nearshoring Trends Post-COVID
00:12:58
Speaker
and reshoring at you and let you free associate for a moment. Happy to. It's something that I've been very interested in for a while. Some of my my bigger priorities within the sourcing and retail space or how do we source more sustainably? How do we think about improving the value and impact of products, not only for the end consumer, but how they're being made and how they transition to the supply chain. So nearshoring isn't something I've been excited about. And while
00:13:27
Speaker
I don't take the phrase silver linings lightly when we're talking about COVID response era. I think looking at the opportunities to near shore and what can we do to create some flexibility and increase the health and increase the sustainability of our supply chains through near shoring.
00:13:43
Speaker
I think those are really great conversations to be having, and I'm happy to see that that's been something that has been increasing over the last year. I think it does predate COVID in a lot of senses, but when you start talking about critical infrastructure, critical technology, computer chips, and bringing those back to the Americas, I think we're seeing a lot of conversation now and change starting, and I think that's only going to
00:14:11
Speaker
increase in size, scope, and speed.
Dual Sourcing and Value Creation
00:14:14
Speaker
I'm going to go one level deeper on this. When we're working with global organizations who are selling globally, right? The nearshoring to me is a little bit of a different definition than just though I can do it in Mexico, right? Or I can do it in Texas. It's, you know, being able to multi-source.
00:14:35
Speaker
the same skew or similar skews, being able to build the product that's appropriate for the market. And, you know, whether that market's Europe or, you know, South America, it's going to be a different vendor mix and the like. Is anyone, are companies really ready for that world in your opinion? Or is this fantasy of like being able to say, Hey, you know, I want to really be able to produce, you know, for the carbon impact alone, I want to be able to produce in
00:15:02
Speaker
Uzbekistan, the t-shirt that I'm going to sell in Eastern Europe and I want to produce it in Honduras for the US, right? That kind of world. So.
00:15:12
Speaker
Is that a reality? There are times where it makes sense to fully dual source because it protects and creates some resilience in your supply chain, and or it's got the benefits of it's closer to where you're shipping, it's closer to your ultimate consumer, so that saves on time. It creates some benefits and forecasting accuracy, certainly from a sustainability perspective. There are definitely cases where that is going to be fantastic.
00:15:39
Speaker
What you have to look at in the balance then is that you are splitting your opportunity to create value with a single partner. And you're going to have to look at the value that you create with two partners. And net net, are you coming out ahead by splitting that production across two or three key suppliers?
00:15:59
Speaker
great partners and great resources, you are going to be able to solve the quality or the product problem. I'm pretty confident that Apple, if they are going to dual source iPhones in China and in their factories in India, they're going to get to a point where they're going to hold a high enough level of integrity in QA that you aren't going to be able to tell the difference between the phones.
00:16:20
Speaker
And you'd certainly be able to do that with a t-shirt if you're producing at Honduras versus Uzbekistan. To use your example, I think you'll be able to sell the product and the client customer satisfaction in the quality of the goods. But if I'm splitting my buy between those two factories, MI is important to them.
00:16:36
Speaker
And will their relationship with me, will their turnaround time, will their costing be as compelling as if I just sourced out of one factory? But then I'm looking at the total cost of goods and the commitment that it takes to make product in Honduras where I might have to have extra product lead time built in to ship it across the Atlantic Ocean in the example that you brought up. That's a little bit of a long answer. I don't think it's the right answer for everyone. And those would be the considerations that I would go through in trying to decide.
00:17:04
Speaker
Yeah, no, that makes sense. And that impact gets to some words that I think people use interchangeably that you're using very specifically here, which are supplier versus partner, vendor, like all of these words can mean
Tiering Suppliers for Better Partnerships
00:17:21
Speaker
different things. And that, you know, the size of your spend is obviously a big impact on where you fit in that hierarchy with the person or the company who's producing your product. But kind of how do you.
00:17:34
Speaker
advise that companies get from being a customer to a partner with their vendors? What are the best practices there? Absolutely. Tearing them and thinking through who are the partners that I can't live without and thinking about them that way. And again, navigating 2020, 2021 probably made it pretty clear to you who your key partners are.
00:17:59
Speaker
It's certainly some of your largest vendors with the greatest amount of spend. Sometimes it's very mission critical. If you are an apparel supplier and you've got a very specific set of trims, zippers, buttons, whatever that you need or packaging that you need, that might be one of your more critical supplier partnerships that might not be the top in dollars, but is essential. So start with thinking through who those vendors are and splitting them out appropriately. If you've got a thousand vendors on your matrix, you aren't going to be able to treat them all the same. And so some of them you may aspire to be partners with.
00:18:30
Speaker
someone's going to be much more transactional and they will always just be a vendor or a supplier. And then once you've got that tearing broken down and you've qualified, all right, do I have the scope and the capability to really deepen and prioritize these partnerships? What would success look like? What do I need this conversation to be? And with those vendors that you are looking to deepen the partnership, I encourage
00:18:54
Speaker
A lot of communication around what your strategic plans are. Where do you want to take the business more broadly? In some cases, more specifically with a category, do you have major growth plans? Are you shifting from an ESG perspective in a meaningful way? And encourage them to be transparent alongside of you so that you can understand our priorities continuing to go down the same path. Are our growth trajectories similar? If we want to double this business in size, can this partner go with us?
00:19:20
Speaker
And so really mapping that out and being transparent with where your strategies are and then focusing on where are the places that we're creating value. And that's when you start talking about certainly a cost of goods, length of contract, quality of product that you're building. And you can create the time and space to go deeper, again, with some of those vendors, not with everyone. But that's how I think you're really deepening that partnership and creating value with that top tier of suppliers.
00:19:46
Speaker
And as you move down your hierarchy, both based on time and return on investment of the partnership, you often will get more transactional and you're focused on just a handful of things, whether that's lead time or cost of goods. It's a little bit more interchangeable. You can't be the same to everyone. I wouldn't encourage anyone to be the same, plan on showing up the same way to everyone and adjust your activities and investment of time and resources accordingly.
00:20:11
Speaker
question that just popped into my head that we didn't talk about in our prep, but just for fun. Just for fun. Because you got me thinking about when we used to do factory visits a lot earlier in my career versus the conference calls and the beatings via conference calls we would do and like the, let's schedule it at a convenient US time just to torture the vendors who are non-compliant today on their data. How much does face-to-face matter?
00:20:42
Speaker
And does it still matter when it comes to these relationships being in a room?
Face-to-Face vs Virtual Meetings
00:20:47
Speaker
I think the conversations matter in the partnerships that you're looking to deepen and create more value. The closer you get to face to face, the better positions you are to deepen that partnership.
00:20:59
Speaker
It's you're building the no like trust factor, which certainly is important across many aspects of life. But in business, partners are willing to give more to their partners that are growing in the same way that they're excited about bringing the future to life with them. It's hard to communicate that over an email. You lose a lot of that dimension.
00:21:22
Speaker
You get closer on zoom certainly but if you're in the room you're having a strategic conversations you're both bought into that vision of success. Start to get a lot more creative and then you also position your partner to be able to tell that story that vision share that internally and their organization so that they can advocate for better access to development resources it costing etc because it's about the story of the future building one of the things that i found.
00:21:50
Speaker
that I've never been able to replicate on the Zoom is the accidental conversations that happen that open up. You know, you start talking about somebody's kids and then someone has an idea about something that just kind of pops into their head and, you know, video calls tend to be agenda very well, right? And you never sort of deviate and have those accidental learnings that then open up. Oh, that's why that vendor is difficult. I didn't realize that their kid's sick or that,
00:22:19
Speaker
You know, that now I've seen the town that they live in and I understand why they are now unable to supply this service to us because it is so far away from where they are. That type of thing, that accidental thing, I think sometimes you get on a plane, you discover those things a little bit faster, I think.
00:22:37
Speaker
Absolutely agreed. I think you can shortcut your way to synchronicity. If you are walking the factory, if you're walking the showroom, you can solve problems in a more creative way often. Completely agree. But what I will say that virtual meetings have allowed for is an increase in touch points. So you might be able to solve a problem faster if you're in a showroom, but
00:23:01
Speaker
It's so much easier now to connect with global partners than it was even when I think about when I was at Target, when you had to just set the time for the conference call. It took however long to get on the call. Now it is a lot easier. It's built into a lot of our work patterns to pick up a Zoom as it were when picking up the phone wasn't quite as convenient. I know I wasn't calling my factory partners.
00:23:24
Speaker
on the phone, but people are more open to virtual communication. You don't want to be the jerk that sets a call in the middle of the day. You understand that you've got to find those bridging times depending on where your partners are and respect that. And then also just from a talent perspective, if you've got a dispersed workforce, teams have just become so much stronger that you're bringing greater talent to the screen
00:23:51
Speaker
Now, I think, so that's also improving. I think the quality of the partnership and the output of those decisions and priorities. I wouldn't fully unwind the zoom culture because I think it helps a lot, but I wouldn't say that it can fully replace face to face either. So when we did our prep, I only underlined one word in my notes, circular.
Circular Sourcing for Sustainability
00:24:14
Speaker
It's a passion of mine. And I.
00:24:18
Speaker
know a lot about it when it comes to the end of the life cycle of the product or the return side. But as a sourcing professional, kind of what does circular mean to you?
00:24:30
Speaker
and kind of how do you think about it in your practice? In the retail space, in the consumer goods space, which is where I've spent my career, circular is about a handful of things. One, it's about how are you designing a product and a product life cycle to create the smallest amount of waste. So you're bringing the fewest raw materials out of the ground to make your product. You're making less waste and pollution or minimizing to some extent, eliminating waste and pollution when you're producing the product.
00:24:59
Speaker
You're being thoughtful in how the product is transported.
00:25:02
Speaker
And when it gets into your customer's hands, you've designed it for size to fit from a length of service perspective. When that customer is done with their use of the product, there's a home for that product that is in the landfill. And the longer that you keep it at its highest, best use of those original raw materials and components, the better. And ideally that product, like the sweater that I'm wearing, I get to wear it. I donate to someone who also wears it and then two or three people down the road.
00:25:29
Speaker
It gets recycled, but the end date is not that it goes into a landfill. So think about that, the product perspective, designing that life cycle. And when I say product, I would include packaging. So packaging is also sized to fit to purpose for what we need it to do.
00:25:45
Speaker
And then there are so many ways that that comes to be. So if those are the key elements, it's the life cycle, the product itself, and it's packaging. Then there's so many ways to think about how do you engage along the way to close waste loops. So sometimes that's a waste loop that you can close as a retailer internally. Sometimes you see your supplier partners that need to close the waste loop in their production.
00:26:07
Speaker
and sometimes it's your consumer and how are you helping them with their solutions and how to use the product and move that product to its next user. I love it because the solutions can start really small, really focused. You're closing one waste loop at a time, but you're building a lot of momentum and moving progress forward, which I think is important when you are trying to solve really challenging issues around global sustainability, global stability. So don't try to fix the entire universe in one design session.
00:26:37
Speaker
Yeah, when it comes to circularity, I think it's it can be off putting because the idea of zero waste, it just sounds like you are closing one giant waste loop at once. I don't think that can be further from the truth. And there's certainly different waste loops will have different impact, obviously, in scale and scope and complexity. But start where you can start where it's most important to your customer, your client, where you're best able to make action. But the key is to start. So that's why I think about it.
Impact of Operational Practices on Sustainability
00:27:02
Speaker
You know, it's funny on the transportation side, when we talk to people and oh my god, we have to think about
00:27:07
Speaker
you know, the exact routing and whether our ocean providers are slow steaming things. And in the meanwhile, they're doing 30% of their volume and air freight. You're like, guys, let's maybe let them use whatever fuel they want and not order everything a month late so that you have to then move it to air, which you didn't even watch it for in the first place. Let's go address that one first. It is interesting how
00:27:32
Speaker
people seem to think that new creative solutions are needed for a lot of things where just better operational practices can make a huge, huge impact, right? Yep. Absolutely. Absolutely. So what else are you excited about that maybe we haven't talked about as we're wrapping up here? What else am I excited about? We covered COVID, we covered circularity. What else is there?
Empathy and Collaboration in Supply Chain Solutions
00:27:55
Speaker
Like I said, I love the work I do because it presents an opportunity to solve problems and build value in partnerships. And it's fun to have conversations like this recognizing that your audience and your company show up in support in a different way that I'm used to, but that there's so many things that translate. And I think there's a connectedness across even industries and sub industries now. It's just so exciting. We're all like on the same or on a lot of these issues and pull in the same way, which I think is a lot of fun.
00:28:23
Speaker
Well, I would certainly admit that when I started in the customs worker space 25 years ago and would go into, you know, large apparel companies. Well, the trade compliance people hated the transportation, but everybody hated the sourcing people and they were on a different floor, right? Or in a different building in a different city. And that was just the way it was, right? There was, you can't, I remember many, many times, especially on the fashion side of the business,
00:28:53
Speaker
you can't even pretend that you're going to go tell a designer to do anything that might have an impact on any downstream process because God forbid, right? God forbid we do anything to a sourcing person that would maybe improve the landing cost of the product or improve the available to promise date or the like. But I don't think that's the world that
00:29:18
Speaker
people younger than us are living in anymore. I think people are more collaborative than they have been in the past. Yeah, I agree. I use the phrase of business empathy earlier, and I think the teams that are set up and have a culture of that
00:29:32
Speaker
are able to just be so much more successful because there's a sense that yes, the cross-functional team that needs to make this happen, but the teams that work well at least have that perspective in mind that there's different ways to build a great product, to lower costs, to shorten a lead time. And you don't have all of the answers and being open with at least some of the questions or knowing who to go to to ask some of those questions and get a broader perspective than what you bring to the table. That's a pretty fantastic way to go. So empathy plus curiosity is a pretty good mix in my book.
00:30:03
Speaker
I think that is an awesome place for us to wrap up on a
Julie's Availability for Further Discussions
00:30:06
Speaker
high note. So if someone wants to get in touch with you, wants to talk more, what's the best way to find you? Well, I have every confidence you'll put the links into the show notes, but I'm very findable on LinkedIn. So I'm Julie J-U-L-I Lasso L-A-S-S-O-W. So not quite like Ted, but please feel free to reach out on LinkedIn. Also website JHL dash solutions where I've got a fair amount of information around partnerships and circularity.
00:30:30
Speaker
And you can email me through the site or take a look at some of the things I've already shared. Clearly I'm passionate about many topics across retail and circularity. So I certainly welcome the conversation and would love to have you reach out. Well, thank you so much for chatting today. Yeah, of course. Thank you so much for having me. It was a delight. All right. Thank you. Goodbye.
00:30:51
Speaker
Thank you so much to Julie for such a wonderful conversation. As she mentioned, we'll include all the links to her contact information in the show notes. And also make sure that you head over to chain.io and check out all the new content we have in the blog section.
00:31:08
Speaker
recent updates, including a celebration of women in supply chain, white papers on making better build versus buy decisions, information on how to weather the rate decreases in economic downturn, and all sorts of other really great industry content, either for your personal development or for steering your company forward through these uncertain times. So looking forward to speaking to you again next time. I'm Brian Glick, founder and CEO of Chain.io.