ShippingBo: Interview with Romain Parent

Hello everyone and welcome to this new article which includes the content you can hear in the podcast.

Today, it's Benoît Gaillat from Pika.fr, and I'm joined by Romain Parent, CEO of ShippingBo. We're going to talk about SaaS, e-commerce, and logistics, with lots of super interesting things from Romain.

To listen to the podcast, click here, just below. To read a part that particularly interests you, click the article just below!

What is ShippingBo?

ShippingBo is a SaaS startup. Launched in 2016, its ambition is to offer a European technological standard for players in the omnichannel commerce supply chain : e-retailers, DNVBs, brands, logisticians, manufacturers, retailers, GMS, GSS, wholesalers, marketplaces, carriers, etc.

To put it simply, ShippingBo has more than 200 plug and play integrations to connect to any E-commerce or logistics system and be able to offer services on top of it like E-commerce OMS or other. And there are always APIs if needed. The idea is to create a single language between e-commerce players to facilitate their collaboration and ensure the seamless delivery of an order.

So there are 3 main services at Shippingbo :

• WHO
• WMS
• TMS

All of this serves to improve or streamline services such as: Inventory management, order preparation, choice of carrier, printing of parcel labels, sending notifications, delivery tracking, processing of returns, etc.

To learn more, visit https://shippingbo.com/ .

Interview Romain parent

Hello Romain, how are you?

Romain Parent:

Hi Benoît. Great, very happy to have you invited. Thank you very much. This is an opportunity to explain a little bit about everything we can do in logistics to boost our e-commerce because it's not always what we think of first. I appreciated that you put a little spotlight on logistics because it's really a vector of growth and profitability for merchants.
I'm convinced of that too. It's true that it's often a sector that we see as a cost center, and I remember a discussion we both had at the e-commerce trade show that was fascinating, and that's what kind of generated this invitation today to try to go a little further, to see a little bit of everything that is possible today and to go beyond the meaning of the word logistics with just the shipping of parcels.
There are plenty of things like that to do, and you've developed them with your team. But perhaps, by chance, there are still people among our listeners who don't know about Shippingbo today.

Benoit Gaillat:

Can you give a little introduction to what you do, the concept, why you are here?

Romain Parent:

Okay, yes, with pleasure. So, Shippingbo is a software publishing company, a French company headquartered in Toulouse. Most of our teams are in Toulouse, although we also have an office in Paris and employees in Bordeaux. We launched Shippingbo in private beta in 2016 and publicly in 2017.

We now have 85 employees and we currently equip 1,400 companies, mainly in France but already in various European countries, to help them make their logistics no longer a necessary evil, but a performance lever for their omnichannel e-commerce activity.
For this, we have a software suite which includes 3 main components.
The first is an Order Management System. It's a slightly complicated term to explain something simple. It means that we're going to centralize, in a sense, the orders from all of a merchant's sales channels. This could be their CMS, so PrestaShop, Shopify, BigCommerce, etc. Then, we're going to direct it to our database to be able to implement business rules and dispatch this order to the right preparation point. This preparation point, logically, could be a warehouse, an e-commerce warehouse, it could be a store, it could sometimes be the supplier directly who will ship in dropshipping mode, it could be an independent logistics provider called a 3PL to whom I subcontract my logistics in whole or in part. And then, it could also be a Fulfillment-type logistics provider from a marketplace that offers me a complementary service to its marketplace activity, for example.
So, the WHO is a bit like this guidance to choose the right preparation point with different issues. It can be CSR issues, ultimately limiting the carbon footprint by sending the package as close as possible to the consumer, economic issues by choosing the most efficient way to reduce my cost or delay as well, since consumer satisfaction is an important issue. Then, once my order is directed to a warehouse, that brings us to the second building block of our solution which is the WMS warehouse management, Warehouse Management System, which will allow us to organize the entire order preparation part within the warehouse, so picking, packing, and there too to save time and provide customer satisfaction, profitability and also performance compared to other merchants, for example, who are not as well equipped on the marketplaces.
And finally, the third building block is what we call the TMS or ADITY solution which allows you to connect in real time to the carrier, already upstream to choose which is the best carrier to ship this order, again in relation to fairly powerful and automatable business rules, to generate the parcel label and to be able to ship the parcel quickly and send this information in real time to the end consumer, whether by email, SMS, and also to close the order,

What does that mean? It means sending the information to the WHO to tell them, for example, informing Amazon that the order can be moved to shipped status or my Shopify as well.

All of this allows for automation and ultimately provides a seamless customer experience.
Basically, I place an order at 9am on Amazon, at 9:01am, the OMS picks it up and chooses the right preparation warehouse, at 9:01am and a few seconds, Mathieu starts preparing my order, I am notified and they tell me, there you go, your order is being prepared, so I am reassured as a consumer.
And then, the label is generated via Chronopost for example, I receive at that moment a new notification possibly which tells me, now your order is prepared awaiting collection by Chronopost, then when Chronopost comes to collect the package at that moment, it will be Chronopost which will be in charge of tracking to tell me, there you go, now your package has arrived at the Chrono web and possibly the package is delivered.

And so, that seems easy, but very often, in fact, among e-commerce players, there are many systems in their information system which are in cascade and sometimes, an order which is placed at 9 a.m., is not always prepared the same day and even less within a few minutes of receiving orders.

By the way, it will be interesting if I explain to you, isn't it a bit overkill to prepare an order in a few minutes when I ordered and was told that it would be delivered in two days?

Benoit Gaillat:

Yes, that's a good question. But suddenly, for ShippingBo, we agree that today, you are not a logistician, it's a software in fact that we will come to interface with its CMS, so the one that will sell and which will serve to really homogenize, if I may say so, an environment that is very diversified today because e-commerce is not just its site, it can be marketplaces, it can be taking orders to be delivered in store, it can be both online and offline.

Romain Parent:

In fact, today, it's very fragmented and you're going to be able to propose centralizing all of that a little bit in a single interface. Exactly. In fact, many companies have moved to a bit of an omni-channel approach, so they have multi-platform sales on their site, as I said, online, offline. And we're going to mirror the concept of omni-logistics on the other side, which allows, where before the question was a bit of a question of do I internalize and do I outsource? It was a bit of a binary one.

We actually offer a hybrid approach where I have part of my logistics in-house, part with one or more logisticians, part that I also leave to my suppliers, as I said, part in fulfillment with marketplaces, etc.
The question today was a little bit about whether I put everything in fulfillment with Amazon, but with risks, but I have the benefits of Amazon, or is it discounted for those who want it, etc.

And in fact, you can have a slightly hybrid approach, that's really the big advantage. Exactly. Here, we're going to talk a little bit about strategy. What led us to propose this offer in the end is that the market, as you said, is very fragmented.

Today, it's Amazon that initially pushed, for example, its fulfillment offering for its marketplace players. Why did they make this proposal in the first place?
They were retailers themselves, and they built a brand image based on quality logistics service and a truly top-notch post-purchase experience. So, they expanded their catalog by allowing third-party merchants to sell on the marketplace.
But they realized that if the merchant didn't have the same level of quality in logistics, it damaged Amazon's brand image.

So they said if you can't reach a certain KPI level, then you have to entrust your logistics directly to me and I'll take care of it. They suggested FBA.
And as marketplaces develop, particularly with great technologies like Miracle, Iceberg or other platforms, often French, well, there is also this need for marketplaces to create their own fulfillment offering.

So, there was Octopia at CDiscount, Rakuten has an offer, Zalendo has its offer, etc. And for the merchant, it becomes complicated because now, what do I do? It's exactly what you were saying. Do I put all my eggs in one basket, all my inventory in the same warehouse?
And in the end, if for example, in a given warehouse, there is a social movement, I no longer have access, this was the case for example at one point for people who had 100% of their stock at

Amazon, for a few days, had their stock blocked for their entire order that wouldn't ship. The other aspect is that marketplace offers are often designed for rotation, not for storage. So, it requires really good forecasting. And then, if I have stock that has remained, for example, more than 30 days at Amazon FBA, it will start to cost me a lot.

And so, what an OMS like Shippingbo allows for example, is to say if I have orders that arrive for example from my website and I have stock that has been at Amazon for too long, even if I have stock in my warehouse, I will be able to be part for example of an order from my website from Amazon or from Octopia in the same way, etc.

Benoit Gaillat:

Exactly, so that's what you told me a little bit about, that the basis is to improve the operational efficiency of all order processing, to promote automation and then a little bit of synchronization of our information, because it's true that today, developing a multi-connector like that when you're an e-commerce site, in fact, there are still a lot of platforms to integrate, so technically it's starting to be a little bit of work too, knowing that it's still code so it evolves, but that's I would say the slightly technical part.

And in addition to that, today, even so, with certain merchants, you are developing solutions where I would almost say more marketing to optimize stock rotation, sales, we also talked a little bit about creating slightly virtual bundles, things like that, and in fact we realize that if we dig a little deeper, logistics can also be, in the broad sense of course, it can also be a source of income for the merchant or a source of growth.

Do you have any examples you can share with us that would be a little bit “wow”?

Romain Parent:

Yeah, exactly, that's really our vision, because our model is to support our users in their success, so for that, you mentioned bundles. I'll take this example which is quite telling for merchants who have already worked with bundles, we know that it's often a headache and it's also sometimes a source of conflict between the marketing team and the logistics team.
And then if I go through a third-party logistics provider, it's sometimes even more complicated.

What a technology like Shippingbo offers, but there are probably others that offer it, in any case what our users do is interesting. I'll take the example of a phone charger. I'm a merchant, I sell phone chargers, for example universal chargers, so it's a black SKU 4212, that's it. I have 50 in stock in my warehouse.

From a marketing perspective, no one is looking for this on the internet. As a consumer, what I'm looking for is a Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra charger because that's my phone. And in reality, since this charger is compatible with all models, I can create a product sheet, a specific commercial offer for each of the models with which it is compatible.

I can find it for example with 1000 product sheets on my Shopify that meet a real specific need of a user customer search, but it will also potentially be the case on each of the marketplaces. But when the order arrives, an OMS will be able to translate this order for the preparer into a preparation order by ignoring this marketing notion by telling him, here, it's not the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra charger, it's the Samsung Galaxy SKU32 charger that needs to be pinched.
This is the simple case on a reference and when we add the notion of bundle, I can also say, I make a charger plus a phone case.

And so in this case, maybe I have a box of 30 phone cases when I had 50 cables. So my tool has to be, like people who don't necessarily have an OMS, they will create a bundle, buy packaging, stock a pack of cables plus chargers. And then in fact, suddenly, I end up with 20 cables to sell individually because I didn't put them in the bundles. And then after, I have 30 bundles.

With an OMS like Shippingbo, I can actually create a virtual bundle. And so my bundle product, I have 30 available, but I still have my 50 cables that are available for sale and also my 30 phone cases available for sale.
And if I sell all my cases, for example, I no longer have any bundles available for sale. So the goal of the OMS is to transform the physical stock into a virtual stock that is calculated in real time and is updated on each marketplace and on all my CMS, private sale continuously.

And that's really super important when you're multi-platform because it's a real performance criterion that marketplaces look at closely because for us, as consumers, there's nothing more disappointing than buying on a site, paying and then being told, no, in the end, we don't have the product in stock, we won't be able to fulfill the order. So sometimes, after three order cancellations, you can have your account closed on a marketplace.
I think that all the merchants who are listening to us, if they don't use an OMS, today, they use the stock minus two or minus X technique on each product flow to try to manage this as best they can and to try to synchronize stocks with the problem of order cancellation, as you were talking about earlier.
It's a big classic, especially if you use bundled products or things like that.

Synchronizing in real time remains a challenge for many merchants today. Imagine that you're working with a logistics provider, who doesn't know your marketing catalog at all.
Worse, for example, you work with only a Fulfillment offer and therefore, they will not create bundles for you. Creating a bundle, etc., is a service that must be billed.
It's logical, there are movements.
So for the logistician, when an order arrives, it's not a bundle to send, it's two order lines in the same package. So we'll tell him, you do the picking, you take a case and you take a charger.

And for him, he doesn't have to know that it's a bundle. So possibly, there may be an instruction on the order that will tell him, also put in such type of cardboard that it will be packaging that creates the bundle.
But for him, there are no new complexities, so there's no reason to charge either. It's as if it were a multi-product order in the end.

Benoit Gaillat:

Yes, because otherwise, if I don't have an OMS, I can end up having 50 stock locations in my warehouse with 50 of the same charger in one copy. Because there's one for the Samsung, one for the new Apple, and then one for... even though it's the same charger.

Romain Parent:

Exactly. And then that also... it makes you lose sales.
Because suddenly, if you have no more stock because you have pre-stocked in bundles, for example physical, I tell you maybe you have not sold all your bundles and what really happens physically sometimes in the warehouse, someone will call to take only the cable. In this case, I will disassemble the pack to give it to him.
And now I have to put back that I have a stock of one shell. So, imagine all this movement.

We don't agree that we paid someone for the light package. That's it, and that's it. So that's really super important. And if we go further, it also allows you to create unique products on the market while you are a distributor. Because maybe I do my sourcing like everyone else.
I may even use platforms to do my sourcing. And so, I have common suppliers. So, I have a lot of competition on my offers. But if I take three products from three different suppliers that make sense in terms of added value and I decide to take a picture, a description of why this product has value to be purchased as a bundle, then I have a product that is unique.
And what's more, when someone buys it from me, even on a marketplace where it's potentially difficult to manage shipping costs for multiple products, I'll have a bundle where I'll only pay the shipping costs once.

I might sell it for more. I make more margin because I only have one shipping cost. And what's more, I don't have any competition. So, it's really a big, big marketing lever and it also creates value for the end consumer because that's what we sometimes do on our website.

Even Amazon was the first to say that users who bought this product bought it with another one. But putting it in a virtual bundle really creates added value for the consumer. That's what I really appreciated.
It was precisely the possibility of somewhat decoupling the physical stock of the sale from the creation of the catalog of a marketing product. We must not forget that the site, itself, its objective is to sell and therefore it is aimed at a target and therefore this target must find itself in the use of the product.

Except that behind it, it's true that very often, we have a product, a SKU, a shoot and a stock location.

And in fact, today, from what I hear, in fact, we can really manage different sales conditions or use cases, and therefore different marketing cases, with a single stock location.
So, with the same stock value, targeting different customers, or even in the case of bundles, increasing the average basket or things like that. And so, that's also very interesting for profitability.
To also give your listeners some business ideas, we have people, for example, who will sell chain by the meter.

So, I can very well have 50-meter rolls of chain in stock. But, well, when I'm making, I don't know, a small gate, I don't need 50 meters of chain and so, it bothers me to buy a roll. So, I'm ready to buy from someone who is able to give me 3 meters of chain.

Well, how do I manage this stock dynamically of 3 meter section, 1 meter section, in the same way?

I can create all my combinations and Shippingbo will automatically calculate the available stock for the different chain divisions.
We have other interesting use cases, which are anything that involves production to order, such as web to print.

For example, for Shippingbo, I can very well have logos that I created for t-shirts. I have a physical stock of t-shirts by color and size. And then, with the combinatorics, I can create all the variations and my stock is calculated in real time. And there, we are really able to even operate in drop shipping mode on web to print in a very simple way. And so, what I'm trying to explain is that ultimately, where before we put the brakes on marketing creativity because we said to ourselves, it completely disorganized my logistics, this layer of abstraction that is the OMS, which retranslates order information into logistics language, opens up a lot of possibilities.

And we've seen in recent years, particularly with the arrival of drop shipping, that the marketing aspect has really come back to the forefront of e-commerce and that it allows for growth, differentiation and that it's really an important area to work on. I'll come back a little to another subject that we briefly discussed.
You were talking a little about shipping times. So let's say well-organized and well-structured logistics, very fluid. We have good shipping times.

Benoit Gaillat:
You were talking about preparing an order in a few minutes. So, in fact, today, customers sometimes order at 8 a.m., and they would like the order to arrive at 7:30 a.m. Aside from those cases, do you think today we are on the shortest delivery times we can have, which are often within a day, within two days? Are we moving towards even shorter delivery times? Are we on a delivery time or a quarter of an hour for all orders that are in town? What is your vision on that? And merchants, in your opinion, are there cases where they must prepare to speed up even more? Will it slow down? What is your vision on that?

Romain Parent:

So in fact, there was a bit of a quick commerce movement.
We've equipped some quick commerce platforms with the promise of "I have to deliver in 10 minutes by bike." Especially via Omni-Canal with all the stores. That's exactly it, with Dark Stores, even in city centers. And so, the problem is that if from the moment you pay for your order on the app, I have 10 minutes to bring it to your house, there are about 9 minutes to bring it by bike. So to prepare the order, there's one minute left between preparing the order and delivering it.

But what you have to understand is that between preparing the order and placing the order, the sales channel has to transmit the information to the order preparation tool. And this time is not always understood and perceived in the market. For example, we work with logisticians who use super WMS on the market.
And besides, at Shippingbo, we're in the best of breed. So we're not saying you should replace your WMS if it's working well.

We have a product called WMS Bridge that allows you to connect your existing WMS to Shippingbo. Sometimes, it's not a WMS or warehouse organization issue. We see cases where the merchant moves on to an order that arrives, for example, on their website or on Amazon at 8 a.m.
And in fact, the logistician will tell me, in fact, from the moment I have the order, look on average, I take 2 minutes to prepare the order. Okay?

I'm looking at the stats. And actually, I realize that for Amazon, the order was shipped at 4:00 PM. So, what happened?
Already, there is a first period of time that has passed because I may have done a custom development or I use a flow manager or a module on my CMS which will retrieve my order from Amazon.
This may already be a batch system that will run every hour, which goes back down into the CMS, which is then connected by FTP to my logistician, there too perhaps with a batch system and it runs every half hour or every hour.
There, sometimes, it actually took 2 hours before I told the logistics specialist, "Hey, you can prepare the order." Afterwards, he prepares it in 2 minutes, but he's already lost 2 hours. And then, his system isn't capable of reporting the information in real time.

So there too, there are batches which, at the end of the morning for example, inform of the orders which have been prepared and then it is necessary to go back up the reverse chain.
As a result, the perceived quality isn't there. So, what we explain to logisticians is the difference between know-how and letting people know.

Me, if I am a consumer, if I don't have the information, I can't know that I am perhaps getting impatient for nothing or stressing out for nothing because I wanted to give this gift tomorrow and so, I want to be sure.

And so, that perhaps creates an ADV for me and therefore I have a cost to process a file where ultimately everything went well. The other aspect that is super important when we talk about omni-channel is that you may be several merchants with the same product on the marketplace and the marketplace must select which merchant it will promote, what we call the "buy box". So, to select, before it was stupid and mean, we took the cheapest merchant and that's the one we promote.

That's not how it works anymore. There are much smarter scoring algorithms, and in fact, from the moment an order is placed, the marketplace will start a timer and look at everything that happens on the order until it arrives at the customer's door, and sometimes even after, and will assign a score to the seller, not just to the overall seller, but to the seller on an offer and on a SKU.
And so, if you have good execution of the orders that arrive, it will increase your score and we have merchants who sell 20% more expensive than their first competitor and who obtain the "buy box" because they have a better execution score and therefore, better customer satisfaction.
So, it really has a direct impact when we get the "buy box" on the sales volume and on the repurchase volume as well. And that, what you're telling me, is already with a software engineer that we're going to pay a lot precisely because there is an operational execution that is already at the top. That's it. And so, that's the complement of the logistician. Sometimes, it's that their work is not valued at the fair value of their work because they don't have a suitable information system and that's what we bring to the logisticians, it's this transformation.
We're not here to teach them how to do their job; they do it much better than anyone else. Often, they've been doing it for years, but they needed this new version of technology to complement their information system to get through the transition.

And to also answer your second part of the question, how do we see things?

Today, there are different types of consumers, and since we have a plethora of distribution channels, we perhaps have a plethora of storage locations to be able to respond to all my issues. On the merchant side, we increasingly have many complementary transport providers to respond to different customer segments. I have customers who want to be delivered very quickly and who are willing to pay for it. I have customers who are very eco-responsible and who prefer a green promise and who are sometimes also willing to pay for it. I have people who say "no, I don't have to pay for transport" and I am even willing to wait or not.

Depending on the situation, I need to have a range of service providers and how I choose at any given time to ship a particular package with a particular carrier. I can have an operator manually click through each order to choose the right carrier. But when you start to place a certain volume of orders, it's no longer profitable to operate like that.
Automation tools are needed to implement business rules that calculate the choice of carrier automatically.

I don't think there's necessarily just one movement. There's a segment of people who want to be able to get their deliveries quickly. Deliveries can also involve collection. What's happening a lot is also pedestrian drives or potentially new models arriving because the Darkstore has been a little bit contested, including by politicians.

It's true that today, there's this CSR issue that means that moving non-mass merchandise when it's not necessary doesn't really make sense. But with the new city planning and urban development plans, logistics is even integrated into urban planning to enable greener logistics. This transformation is taking place with players like Urbi and others, as well as small startups, to implement eco-mobility within cities.

We're able to make shipping promises that are at least within the hour. We're not necessarily in the ultra-quick commerce business, but we're saying that I don't necessarily want to wait very long for delivery of a certain type of product and I'm willing to pay for it. I think that still has value.

What we're saying is that when I'm a logistics specialist, it's not fair to me to keep my promises. If I want to use the full capacity of my warehouses and my staff, I have to prepare my orders quickly.
Just because I have time to prepare them doesn't mean I have idle time.

Benoit Gaillat:

From what you're saying, is that the situation in terms of logistics, stock location and delivery, will remain very heterogeneous for the next few years, in order to be able to respond flexibly to all use cases?

Romain Parent:

That's it. On the one hand, there's micro-fulfillment near cities and then there's large hubs. Where it needs to be optimized is funny because we're tech companies, and in logistics, we have a dual vision. There's the management of information flows and the physical flow of goods.

It doesn't necessarily take the same amount of time to implement a technical architecture to optimize information flows and to optimize goods flows on the scale of a city or a country. These are major transformations, and we know that a real global transformation is taking place. Even the government is implementing policies at this level because it's a real challenge for the commerce of tomorrow.

Benoit Gaillat:

Yes, and then it goes with policies too, I imagine, of circular economy, that is to say being able to recover returns, to be able to also manage after-sales service or things like that. That is to say not having flows only in one direction, but also returns which are appearing quite massively, even if they existed before.

Romain Parent:

Yes, what you're saying is super interesting. For example, in the furniture industry, there are even laws coming in that say, "I'll deliver a piece of furniture to you, but I have to be able to get your old piece of furniture back so it can be recycled." We've been talking about these topics for a long time, but now it's really becoming tangible.
And then there is also, as it is sometimes difficult to access materials, we see an economy of the second life of products. And there too, recovering returns to put them back on sale is also an issue.

For example, when I have an OMS, when the customer returns a product to me, I have the product that arrives in the warehouse, it is scanned, the employee who is in the warehouse automatically has the information to know, for example, it is the order of Mrs. Michu who returns the product. A priori, the product is not damaged, I will check.
And so, I can simply do my check, scan it, put it back in a picking location and then the product is put back in stock and the stock is set to plus 1 in real time on Amazon, on Cdiscount, on my Shopify.

Okay, okay. As you said, in furniture, it's going to become mandatory, but we're also seeing lots of merchants opening second-hand shops. In fashion, it's happening a lot, but not only. And that's partly customer returns, rather than being destroyed, to be able to be sold.
That's it, and it has implications for transportation plans. If you want to know what we call the transportation plan, it's really the truck routes. When I have a carrier come by, they could potentially pick up packages to take to a shipping hub, for example. But also, along the way, they could perhaps drop off returns for me. So, that's a new organization.

What complicates all this is that each player in the supply chain has their own information system, which has developed according to their own standards. There have been generations of DIAs who have tried to make things easier, but what Shippingbo is proposing, beyond our technology, our vision as a company, is to create a European standard, because in Europe, we have a lot of talent, but everyone does a little bit in their own corner, and to offer a digital highway to allow players to do business with each other, by having a single information language, to make it easier. I am a logistician, I connect to a carrier.

I'm a merchant, I connect to a logistics provider or a carrier. I have a universal power strip somewhere that works with all these systems. Today, that's really what's important, because we saw COVID arrive, for example. I had relied, for example, on stores for my distribution.

The stores are closed. I need to quickly rebuild my value chain, my distribution network, and my supply chain. If I have an information system that is very locked down, which may be very industrial, but which is not flexible, I don't have much responsiveness, and therefore not much resilience.


As today, we are in a world that is changing very quickly, with a lot of uncertainties, it is necessary, and this is what the new versions of technologies on the market bring, in particular SaaS technologies, to be able to rebuild its information system very quickly, with a very limited risk for companies.

Benoit Gaillat:

Yes, and at several levels. It can be at the product catalog level, as we were saying, to be able to reconfigure it without changing its stock locations or its products in stock. It can be at the carrier level, it can be at the store level, it can be at the delivery level, because we went over it a bit quickly. But in fact, one of the advantages is also this much faster side to interconnect, because otherwise, opposite, the other solution is an IS project. Classically, there are costs, development, pre-production, acceptance testing, testing, and especially maintenance.

Which has its advantages too, of course, but we feel that it has the less plug and play side of a solution which is already a bit, as you said, multi-socket.

Romain Parent:

That's it. In fact, the interest, for me, I see two main ones. It's what you say, time to market. Today, having a good solution is a solution that is quickly on the market and on which I can quickly iterate, because things change so quickly that the good solution today is not necessarily the one for tomorrow. And then, the other aspect is being able to scale. If it works, I might start with a first iteration and I'll seize lots of opportunities.

So, my technology shouldn't be a hindrance, it should be a tool, an accelerator for my business. And the same thing with my supply chain. One of the points we see today, the problem with uncertainty, if I'm a merchant, is how I'm going to do my restocking, what quantity I buy. Because if I buy a lot of stock and it goes, how will it happen? There, I have to be able to mix my approaches, precisely. There are references where I have no doubt. So, in that case, I'm going to buy them in stock. There are others, potentially, that I want to test.

And I can start, for example, in dropshipping mode. And if it works well, then I'll buy stock. We see, it's doing it dynamically. Because I even bought, for example, such a product, it even outperforms what I had anticipated. Am I out of stock? Or is it that, temporarily, the WHO tells me "since you don't have stock in your warehouse, just until the restocking order arrives, it leaves the supplier directly and then it will leave directly from your warehouse without you having to do any human manipulation, it will be done automatically."

And that greatly lightens the mental load of our users who can focus on developing their business and ensuring that their customers are as satisfied as possible.

Benoit Gaillat:

That's what I really liked during our discussion at the Paris Italoïd trade fair, it's precisely having this vision, a service vision of logistics, whereas very often, it's, I would say, moving product A to place B, whereas in fact, there are lots of problems to resolve precisely to have this somewhat seamless side.

Romain Parent:

And there you have it, even if, once again, we see that it's technology and programming that make it possible to provide services to make everyone's life a little easier. For the customer, fewer cancellations; for the merchant, better inventory management.
And right now, we know that cash should not be put into inventories.
This, I think, is valid for everyone.
And so, it's really interesting to see these service concepts emerging on things, I think, that have always been considered a necessary evil. You have to deliver the products and everyone does a little bit with that.

Well no, actually, there are solutions to go further and turn the situation a little to your advantage. And that's really interesting, I think. And that, you see, in their strategy, there, I was talking more about distributor strategy, but we also work with brands, whether they're manufacturers or NVBs, for example. Where there, it's the opposite. I potentially produced stock, I have to distribute it.

So, how do I manage my working capital? I can have a strategy where, in part, for example, I will sell B2B to bring in cash, with firm purchases, to have visibility on my purchases, perhaps with less margin than when I sell retail.
And as a complement, I distribute myself directly, which allows me to have direct feedback from users, to constantly improve my product, and also to make more margin. Perhaps I also have exclusive products on my direct distribution.
And then there's also B2B2C. For example, I'm going to set up an operation with a private sale. When I want to set up an operation with a private sale, it's also an example that will speak to people who do it, or who want to do it, it's good that they know how it works. If I work with a private sale, it will send notifications, emails, SMS, push notifications over a short period of time to its entire database targeted in relation to your product.

And so, it's a marketing cost to set up an operation with them. So, they have to make sure that you have enough stock available to set up an operation.
So, historically, how does it work? I sent stock to the warehouse of this famous private sale, so she was sure of the stock. Or, I have to guarantee her that I have stock in my warehouse.

So, what we see in companies that are not yet well equipped with IT is that before an operation, they will move stock that was in picking, so make a movement of 5000 pieces, for example, into a reserve area, so that this product is no longer available for sale and we keep the promise.
At the end of the operation, there may have been 4,000 sold, so I have to put the remaining 1,000 back in a reserve location. There, with technology like an OMS, I can simply say that these 5,000 pieces are no longer available for sale virtually. So, my pickers can no longer, by mistake, pick, since the PDAs, in fact, they know that this area is no longer pickable. And so, I no longer have any physical movement at all. And what will happen, at the end of the operation, effectively, I can automatically release the stock for other sales channels.

And conversely, because we often think about the case where it doesn't work, what we also see is that our merchants, conversely, if the operation works well, I will also be able to give them visibility on the rest of my stock. I have the guaranteed part and the non-guaranteed part.
And by the way, I might sell 7,000 pieces instead of 4,000, because the platform didn't have that risk either with an information system, with real-time stock. So, that's what you were saying, that logistics is really not a necessary evil. Today, it's really a growth lever for businesses.

And I still see that there is an awareness among quite a few companies of all sizes today that, ultimately, e-commerce is at least 50% supply chain, because marketing is very important. But if we don't execute well behind the scenes, it will fizzle out in the long run.

Benoit Gaillat:

I think this is one of the first things I learned in e-commerce, back when I was at Cdiscount, 20 years ago. It's that if the product doesn't arrive at the customer's door, you have to refund them, and everyone has lost money.

Romain Parent:

That's it. So the supply chain is at the heart of e-commerce. You need marketing, you need technology, but if there's no delivery, it's complicated.

Benoit Gaillat:

Great, listen Romain, do you have a final word to add? Because we've been chatting for a while now and it's really interesting. I'd happily keep you for three more hours, but after that, I know you have a bit of work to do. Managing Director, that keeps you busy, right? Do you have a final word for our listeners?

Romain Parent:

As I was saying, speaking with different business leaders, it's quite anxiety-provoking, it must be said, when you're a business leader, to manage an uncertain world. Because I have to make choices without having all the keys in hand. So, in fact, we've gotten used to a system of operation and we tell ourselves that in fact, there are things, it's not possible. And the obstacle we sometimes have is that when we talk to companies, they say "No, but really, that's nice Romain, but you're selling me a dream." What you have to understand is that whether it's Shippingbo or other companies, we're entering new technology cycles.

I think you're a Shopify expert, it's a bit the same thing. Where website launch projects used to take years to launch, it's completely reduced. With SaaS technologies like Shopify, Open Source technologies, it had already made a lot of progress. But this technological maturity in logistics is so recent that companies need to take an interest in it, take hold of it. Because sometimes, they have large chunks of technical debt that say to themselves, "It's not possible because I have such a complicated historical information system today that it's not possible to upgrade it."

This "Best of Brite" logic allows us to say, "We're not going to remove everything, we're going to allow you to boost your information system, remove parts that are no longer necessary, but keep everything that works well, and then do it in successive iterations." We're going to launch a warehouse in two days, where historical WMS projects took an enormous amount of time.
Similarly, when we talk to historical OMS players, a WMS project is called an IT project. And at Shippingbo, no, it's a launch, a configuration. Yes, we need to discuss to find out what business rules you want to implement.

We have APIs if you want to add custom developments internally or with your agency. But we have a common core that saves a lot of time. And that's the key to success today: being efficient and fast, because business doesn't wait. I want to say "Amen," because I'm everywhere. That's why we get along well.

Benoit Gaillat:

I quite agree with you on the parallel with Shopify, even if there are many e-commerce solutions. I say it every time, if I'm a Shopify pro, the idea is still that the merchant finds the one that suits him best. Today we have technologies that are really mature to offer time-saving services, flexibility, and in a somewhat hybrid and uncertain world, which characterizes the 2020s. And spending 6 months or a year developing something, we're almost behind once it comes out. That's what's a bit of a shame about response times today. Already when we count in weeks, sometimes people find it a bit long. Then there's always work to do, but connecting a new logistics center, I imagine that with you it can be done in days, or even maybe hours in some cases if everything is already equipped. Launching an e-commerce site, the same with Shopify, was unthinkable. There are sites that can be launched in a weekend if there's an emergency. Of course, not everything is perfect in a weekend, but we have response times that are unparalleled and that allow us to navigate this uncertain world. I think that's the key word.

Romain Parent:

Absolutely. Thank you very much again, Benoît, for the invitation.

Benoit Gaillat:

With pleasure. If anyone is interested, what's the process? Can you give us a brief rundown of who it's aimed at? What types of customers? For example, a multi-channel customer is already a big advantage, or a multi-marketplace sale?

Romain Parent:

We have a very diverse range of clients. They range from small family businesses that ship around ten packages a day to major accounts like Decathlon and Leader Price. We work with retailers, brands, and logistics providers, and we also partner with publishers and WMS vendors. We also offer solutions for platforms that have created their own marketplaces, for example, with market solutions that now want to create their own fulfillment offerings.

So we also have a technology that our customers sometimes call the logistics miracle that allows you to create your fulfillment offer when you have a marketplace without having to invest billions in warehouses like Amazon did because Shippingbo will connect me to the best logistics provider without ultimately a long development time or the implementation of warehouse purchases necessarily internally.

Benoit Gaillat:

Ok, so Shippingbo, we go to the site, we find all the information.

Romain Parent:

Exactly, we remind you, we have a cat and otherwise we are also on LinkedIn of course.

Benoit Gaillat:

There you go, or you can call Romain at 06 XX XX XX XX. You're welcome. Managing Director, plus you have little time. Thank you very much Romain for all that, it was fascinating. So see you on the podcast for the next episode with a new guest!