Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Building Trust Through Supply Chain Journalism with Peter Tirschwell
71 Plays11 months ago
In this episode, Peter Tirschwell, VP of S&P Global, joins Host Brian Glick, CEO of Chain.io, to discuss:
- AI investments, industry trends, and progress toward greener supply chains
- How personal relationships continue to drive growth in logistics
- The value of S&P’s annual maritime event, TPM
- Peter’s journey with the Journal of Commerce and lessons learned in his role
Peter has been reporting on supply chains for nearly 30 years. Prior to his role as the Vice President of S&P Global, he served as a shipping and international trade reporter, bureau chief, assistant managing editor, and editor in chief of the Journal of Commerce newspaper. Peter is also the Founder and a chairman of the TPM conference, the world's largest container shipping event founded in 2001. Peter continues to write as a columnist for The Journal of Commerce and JOC.com covering a range of international logistics topics.
Connect with Peter
Follow JOC.com
Follow S&P Global
Connect with Brian
Follow Chain.io on LinkedIn
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Supply Chain Connections Podcast
00:00:03
Speaker
Welcome to Supply Chain Connections. I'm Brian Glick, founder and CEO at Chain.io. One of the really great things that I've had the opportunity to do as part of recording these podcasts is talk to people who come at this industry from a lot of different angles. And this episode is particularly
Meeting Peter Terschwell: A Key Figure in Trade
00:00:25
Speaker
Interesting and I would say special to me because we're going to talk to somebody who genuinely be considered a luminary in the industry and someone who really sits at the center of so many activities, especially on the international trade side.
00:00:42
Speaker
So yes, we're going to be talking to Peter Terschwell, who is title as Vice President of S&P Global, really that explains nothing, but as the leader of the JOC, the Journal of Commerce, and the TPM event, really is directly tapped into the pulse of the international trade community. So this is a rare honor, and I hope you enjoy the episode. Peter,
Peter's Journey into Journalism
00:01:10
Speaker
welcome to the show.
00:01:12
Speaker
Hey Brian, how are you? Happy to be with you. I'm good. Thank you so much for doing this. I think I'm excited to hear a little bit about your history since you get to spend so much time asking other people about theirs.
00:01:25
Speaker
Why don't you tell us a little bit about how you got into the industry and what you do? Well, it's now actually not a short story because I've been doing this for now 30 plus years, but I grew up in New York City. I went to college in Maine. I got a little bit of a knack for journalism when I was there. When I moved back home to New York, I did my MBA.
00:01:53
Speaker
Thinking that i was gonna go and follow my father and my uncle into the financial world and then i get my toe in the water and decided that i didn't wanna have any part of that world that wasn't really for me and so my nba ended up.
00:02:10
Speaker
I converted it into a journalism degree, essentially, like the reason why the rationale for my completing my MBA was to go into business journalism. So I finished that and I was hoping to find a job in New York City with a business daily and
00:02:27
Speaker
stumbled literally out of by chance on the Journal of Commerce, which was still a daily broadsheet newspaper published out of the World Trade Center. It was the old maritime newspaper of New York City. There were a bunch of old men with their green eye shades tapping out the shipping news. And as soon as I walked into that newsroom, I said, this is exactly what I'm looking for. And I even thought at that point that that's probably where I'm going to spend my entire career, which has kind of been what has happened.
00:02:55
Speaker
So that's sort of how I ended up there. So you, like me, you wandered in to the industry, not really giving a damn about the industry itself. And I wandered in because there was a job plugging in computers at a customs broker and I said, Oh, you're going to pay me money to play with computers. And that sounds like fun and sounds like you had a similar entrance, but I would assume sometime over the last 30 developed interest in the industry itself.
00:03:23
Speaker
So kind of how did that evolve?
Newsworthiness of Trade Disruptions
00:03:25
Speaker
How did you find the passion about this space? Well, you know, partly it was just absorbing the culture of the Journal of Commerce because the editorial team
00:03:36
Speaker
The reporters, the editors, the ownership really were very committed to the idea that international trade is good. It's a good thing. It creates a lot of jobs. It makes countries dependent on each other. So trade is good and anything that inhibits trade is bad. And so that's where the Journal of Commerce found a lot of its news and was sort of the rationale for why it would report a story.
00:04:04
Speaker
If tariffs went up that's bad if there was a long shore labor strike that delays cargo and creates problems for companies trying to do importing and exporting that's bad and so it didn't take me long to pick up on the notion of.
00:04:22
Speaker
trade disruption in any of the many, many forms that it takes as being newsworthy and interesting. So one of the very, very first stories that I cover, there was a very small ocean carrier, sort of a startup ocean carrier, it was called BCSL.
00:04:38
Speaker
Lost in the annals of history, but they were running maybe two ships between Eastern Mediterranean Turkey Lebanon Israel and the US East Coast and The company fell on hard times and went bankrupt
00:04:53
Speaker
But the captain knew this and he stopped his ship and dropped anchor outside of the port of New York and wouldn't come into the port because he thought that he and his crew would be at the back of the line for having creditors be paid. The bunker suppliers, the port suppliers, the marine terminal operator, everybody would get paid before they would.
00:05:16
Speaker
And so he refused to come into the port and sat there for two or three weeks and not moving. And I thought that was really many, many different levels of complexity there. Lots of different angles, human angle, trade angle, financial angle, maritime angle. And it wasn't long, Brian, before I was truly hooked.
00:05:38
Speaker
And one of the things I like to tell my team is, if you see what looks like a thousand foot deep hole in this industry, under it are a thousand other thousand foot deep holes of complexity. That everything is just nested complexity. I agree. I completely agree with that.
Trust and Integrity in Journalism
00:05:56
Speaker
So one of the things that's changed in those 30 years is I guess the relationship that
00:06:04
Speaker
JOC has with the industry and kind of the expansion since, you know, in the last 10, 15 years of lots and lots more voices commentating on the industry, you know, but one of the things, and we've had Eric Johnson on the show as well, kind of talking about this a little bit, explain to me the difference between
00:06:25
Speaker
journalism that you pay for and people who just talk about things? Well, you know, I think that getting people to pay for written editorial content, which we do successfully. So we have a growing circulation base and we have very, very high renewal rates. And is every story that you write going to be
00:06:47
Speaker
you know, some attention grabbing headline. No, it's not. A lot of stories are pretty run in the mill, just reporting on things that are happening that may or may not be particularly exciting. But what is most important is trust, that
00:07:02
Speaker
Reader is gonna know that you've properly reported a story that you've reported it from multiple angles you don't have an axe to grind you're not favoring one side or the other and most importantly that you are not putting in including sort of surreptitious plugs for your advertisers.
00:07:22
Speaker
And I'm not suggesting that other media do that. I'm not saying that in any way. But what creates a subscription business is trust. And they have to believe that you're truly doing your homework and that you're making the extra call.
00:07:39
Speaker
and that you're building relationships with important people who have valuable things to say. And if you do that over a long period of time, years, decades, just keep doing what you're doing, you will develop, hopefully, a reputation that if somebody reads what you write, they can hang their hat on that. It's going to be true. It's going to be accurate. It's going to be fair. And the decisions can be based on that.
00:08:07
Speaker
So that's really what I focus on more than anything else in my role is how do you build trust with the market? So you said relationships and trust and all reminded me that that was actually the theme of TPM last year, right? Was relationships matter? Why
Origins and Significance of TPM
00:08:24
Speaker
TPM is a lot of work, right? And for those who don't know, that's the Trans Pacific Maritime Show, which the JOC puts on every year in Long Beach.
00:08:32
Speaker
You are TPM to some people. Why do it? Why does that exist? To be honest with you, it came down to the fact that me and Bill Mungaluzo and Chris Brooks and a whole bunch of other of our editorial team back in the year 2000, when the daily newspaper could no longer be economically printed, was losing money. We couldn't print and distribute a daily newspaper the way the company had done going back to the 1820s.
00:09:00
Speaker
And that didn't matter as much to us as our ability to continue to do what we were doing. None of us wanted to go into PR. None of us wanted to be on the unemployment line. None of us wanted to be covering the pharmaceutical industry or, you know, or some other market other than shipping. We wanted to cover shipping and hopefully do that for the rest of our careers. So that meant that we had to come up with alternative revenue, basically.
00:09:27
Speaker
because the newspaper was gone. All we had was a website and a lot of our traditional sources of revenue had disappeared. So we said to ourselves, why don't we just invite our sources on stage with us in front of a live audience and hit them with the hard questions the way we normally do over the phone.
00:09:45
Speaker
And we're not events people. We were not events people then. We're not events people now. We really didn't know what we were doing. You could argue that we still don't know what we're doing, but we're bringing that level of integrity of information into a live event. And 24 years later, I mean, the event is what it is. There was no grand plan to have TPM become what it is today. How does it
00:10:10
Speaker
Feel to have it be what it is today it feels great because it's an endorsement of the core values of our business because I don't believe that buyers in any market no matter what the market is you know that in this case it species it's you know retailers industrial companies consumer products the whole nine yards bco's are the buyers in this market and
00:10:36
Speaker
they will not come to an event, no matter what it is, if they're paying a registration fee only to be sold to by speakers. Because then it's not like the product isn't the information, you know, they're the product for the sponsors or for the advertisers. And that's going to be a massive turn off.
00:10:55
Speaker
And so only if the buyers in the market feel that they're getting genuine value, genuine information value, genuine networking value, will they show up to an event like TPM. And so therefore I go back to the original premise, which is all we're going to do is put what we think our best effort to put legitimate information up on stage and build a program around the principles of legitimate information. And so to the extent that that is well received and perceived as valuable by the market, I'm very, very happy with that.
00:11:24
Speaker
in
Skepticism about Digital Transformation in Logistics
00:11:25
Speaker
the digital transformation space and the kind of digital forwarding and digital this and digital that, and I own a software company and I've certainly got my opinions on the whole thing, but that seems to have sucked a lot of the air out of the room, not just at events, but just in general. It's all transformation. It's all tech all the time. There's so much of it. How much of that
00:11:49
Speaker
do you think is real? How much of that gets you excited for the future and how much of it is just draining? Very little of it gets me excited, to be honest with you, because the amount of money that was plowed into logistics technology, I mean, there are definitely companies out there, yours is one of them, where you found a very, very specific niche.
00:12:09
Speaker
you're able to do something very specific and create value for customers around that. But this big picture, transformational play, redefining the industry, disrupting the industry, reordering the industry through the creation of new types of players in the market that disintermediate others, that was all hype. The industry to me is
00:12:37
Speaker
is just no different from the way it has been for a long time. The theme you mentioned of TPM last year, relationships matter. It's because they do. Why is it that there's just so many thousands and thousands of freight forwarders out there? Well, they're out there and they haven't been rolled up into massive conglomerates. I mean, of course there's consolidation in the freight forwarding industry, but
00:12:59
Speaker
There's a lot of small and mid-sized straightforwarders out there, and the reason why they continue to exist is that because they have loyal customers. And why are customers loyal to freight forwarders? Well, because freight forwarders have delivered for customers many, many times. They've bailed them out. The container had to get on the ship.
00:13:14
Speaker
pallet had to get on the plane. I desperately need this thing and I have to have it at this place and at this time and freight forwarders have a way of delivering for their customers. They don't do it by digitizing their operations. They do it by knowing the people they need to know in order to be able to help their customers. I always come back to that. And I've been writing a bit recently about Flexport because one of the things that I've perceived about Flexport is that they've actually come around to acknowledge this fact.
00:13:41
Speaker
that people are going to be at the core. You can digitize around people. You can maybe make people more efficient through digital tools and maybe even through AI. But at the core, it's going to be people that make the difference for your customers in the ways that count. So what do you see that you wish people were fixing in this industry? I mean, because I'm assuming year in and year out, you write a lot of things where you're like, man, I said that same thing last year, and I can't believe I have to write this again.
00:14:10
Speaker
So like what things are you just like, how come we haven't fixed this in the last 30 years? Well, I think certain things are not going to get fixed. I mean, yes, one of the things that we're writing about a lot of things now that we were writing about pre pandemic, the market is very similar in a lot of different ways.
00:14:25
Speaker
rate increases, low profitability, you know, the whole nine yards, over capacity, all that is very similar to the way it was. And probably it's going to continue, not necessarily, it's going to continue on a cyclical basis like this for a long, long time. Certain things
Addressing Climate Change in Maritime Industries
00:14:41
Speaker
that I would really like to be able to report a developing story that is not different from the past is a decarbonization. Because to the extent that we're reporting the same story on decarbonization, it means that we're not getting anywhere.
00:14:55
Speaker
If we're not getting anywhere, then the planet is getting hotter and potentially the damage to our planet and to future life on Earth is irreversible. I'm not a climate extremist or anything like that, but the fact is that we have to make progress and it's really, really hard. I am actually encouraged about the fact that we are not writing the same story that we would have written even a year ago.
00:15:23
Speaker
in regard to climate change in the maritime industry. So that's encouraging there, and I certainly hope that as time goes on, that that story does continue to evolve. Because if it evolves, it'll mean that the industry is addressing its share of responsibility for climate change. I don't want to go too far down this rabbit hole, but I was looking at the JSC website before we got on the phone, just to kind of get myself oriented for the call.
00:15:47
Speaker
And I saw two headlines. One, I'm not going to call out the companies, but it's $100 million investment in AI. And the other was BCOs don't want to pay for carbon offsets. And I'm like, there's $100 million going over here, which I know is a drop in the bucket in global trade, but, and then nobody wants to pay for carbon, but we'll pay for AI.
00:16:09
Speaker
And it seems weird to me. Well, you actually got to talk about two different parties here because the people paying for AI are the ocean carriers or one ocean carrier in particular that like all the other ocean carriers experienced a windfall of profits, the likes of which they had never
00:16:28
Speaker
come close to experiencing in the past and they're sitting on huge piles of cash and need to deploy capital because they're sitting on a lot of money and it needs to be put to work in one way or another. That's ocean carriers. The BCOs are truly not interested in or able at the moment to pay for decarbonization. And so the
Future Direction of JOC: Trust and Quality Content
00:16:49
Speaker
two are not mutually exclusive, I think, Brian. That's fair. What do you think the percentage is of the things that you hear, that you
00:16:57
Speaker
actually write about? How much more insight do you have in your role as to what's going on in the industry than what makes it to the written word? Well, to be honest with you, what I am hoping to do in a few years' time is hand over the reins of the business because in addition to being a working journalist alongside the JOC team, I lead the business commercially and I want nothing more than to go back to writing full-time.
00:17:23
Speaker
So there's a lot of things that I come across that I don't have the time to write. Now, I pass along a lot of tips, a lot of ideas, a lot of thoughts and data to my team members who are going to pick up on some of those. But yeah, I mean, if I had more bandwidth, I would be writing more. There's no question about it. What's your favorite part of your day? Writing.
00:17:46
Speaker
Simple answer. Writing. I have to file a column every two weeks. Reporting and writing my column is by far my favorite thing to do. But I like to do everything. I don't mind engaging in the commercial stuff. I don't mind engaging in all the investments we're making, the systems work, the workflow, keeping the team focused strategically. I like all that stuff because I know that where it's leading is in the direction of continued viability.
00:18:11
Speaker
because the business is performing well. S&P is very happy with our business. We've been part of S&P Global now for more than a year and a half. They like the traction and the credibility that we have in our market. Earned, of course, over a long period of time of focusing on trust and quality content, all those things.
00:18:29
Speaker
So i like all that because it's heading us in the right direction and it's gonna mean that i can continue to have a job hopefully as long as you know i want and willing and able and interested in continuing to write about this industry but that's for certainly i think to do it. Can i have this kind of.
00:18:46
Speaker
adage with programmers who get into the business side. And I'm one of them where they say eventually they're going to take away your keyboard. So you can't code anymore. And I still code, right? I'm not allowed to code the core stuff anymore, but they can't stop me from doing it on the weekends. Yeah, same kind of passion. So I get it.
00:19:03
Speaker
Yeah, it's hard to find a middle ground. I mean, you got into the business to do the core work and then you move on and become more senior and take on management responsibilities. But the reason why you got into it hasn't changed at all. So how do you find a balance? I mean, I think that's what a lot of more senior people in any industry try to do in one way or another, and some probably succeed better than others.
00:19:27
Speaker
Cool. So what's coming up next for you for JOC?
Global Expansion Plans and Relocation to Singapore
00:19:31
Speaker
What are you guys excited about? Well, I'll tell you, I relocated to Singapore about four months ago. So I'm leading the business from here. I can't tell you how exciting it is to be closer to the origin side of the business.
00:19:44
Speaker
and to get to know a whole new cast of characters out here and to begin to get to know the industry in multiple other countries. So I've traveled to Korea, I've traveled to Hong Kong. I was in Abu Dhabi a couple weeks ago. I had plans to be in Taipei and to be in Australia and Vietnam.
00:20:03
Speaker
So we have a view that there's a global market for what we do. So the idea to be out here and actually seeing how true that is and trying to take that idea forward is pretty exciting. We're very much in the middle of TPM. We're truly excited about TPM this year. We've got a great program in the works, really strong registration. So we're going to have another really, really big event.
00:20:25
Speaker
we're expanding into the downstairs area of the Long Beach Convention Center. So we're going to build out a whole new grand ballroom because it was almost a fire trap last year in terms of how full it was. I was in the back of the room, so I agree. Yeah, it was really tight. So we're not going to have to worry about that problem anymore.
00:20:42
Speaker
Awesome. Well, that sounds great. And I've got about a million more questions about the industry that I want to ask you, but I'll save them. I'll corner you at the bar at TPM. Sounds good. We can do all of that then. So yeah, thank you so much for being on. Excellent, Brian. A real pleasure to be with you. All right. Thank you. Thanks again to Peter. That was so much fun and really a privilege.
00:21:06
Speaker
to be able to take some of his valuable time to talk to all of us. So again, just if you haven't read the JOC, make sure to check the link in the show notes. And if you have the opportunity to go to TPM, be sure that you do. If cost or opportunity are your blocker, especially if you're early in your career or have an underrepresented background, please reach out to me because there are organizations that provide scholarships
00:21:34
Speaker
and other assistance for people who really want to grow in the industry and want to attend TPM to be able to network with what is really the cream of the crop when it comes to the international ocean freight business. So hope you enjoyed the episode. As always, make sure to check out Chain.io and LinkedIn, as well as the blog, and I will speak with you next time.