Collaboration or Competition? The New Strategy for Supply Chain Success

Welcome to this week's episode of the Sustainable Supply Chain Podcast. I'm your host, Tom Raftery, and today we're delving into the intricacies of supply chain sustainability with Eric Linxwiler, Senior Vice President at TradeBeyond.

In our conversation, Eric sheds light on the pressing challenges and transformative solutions within the retail supply chain sector. We explore how TradeBeyond's digital platform serves as a control tower, enhancing visibility and coordination across complex supply networks. Eric illustrates the critical role of technology in managing environmental impacts and improving social governance within supply chains.

A significant focus of our discussion centres on the practical steps companies can take to address scope three emissions, which often make up the bulk of their carbon footprint. Eric also highlights the emerging technologies, such as AI and blockchain, that are playing pivotal roles in enhancing transparency and efficiency.

Furthermore, Eric shares insights on the collaborative efforts needed among competitors to drive industry-wide changes, underscoring the importance of shared initiatives over isolated actions.

For anyone in the retail sector, or interested in the intersection of technology and sustainability, this episode offers valuable perspectives on making supply chains more responsive and responsible.

To learn more about Eric and the work at TradeBeyond, visit their website, and don't forget to check out the video version of this episode on YouTube.

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Transcript

Eric Linxwiler: 0:03

You would be surprised, your listeners might be surprised, when you look at the size of organizations that we work with the, the revenues, the margins, the throughput how many of these organizations truly don't have a handle on the physical makeup of their supply chain and the partners within that supply chain?

Tom Raftery: 0:28

Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, wherever you are in the world. This is the Sustainable Supply Chain Podcast, the number one podcast focusing on sustainability and supply chains, and I'm your host, Tom Raftery. Hey everyone. And welcome to episode 14 of the Sustainable Supply Chain podcast. My name is Tom Raftery, and I'm excited to be here with you today. Sharing the latest insights and trends in supply chain sustainability. Today, we're talking to trade beyond about the retail space and sustainability there. In the coming weeks, I'll be talking to pat McCullough, CEO of ProducePay about reducing waste in the food industry. The following week, I'll be talking to a company called Aiola about using natural language processing and AI. Following that we'll be talking to JP Stevenson from Elevate in Asia, talking about how sustainability is taking place in supply chains in that region. But back to today's episode, my special guest today is Eric. Eric welcome to the podcast. Would you like to introduce yourself?

Eric Linxwiler: 1:31

absolutely. Thanks Tom. I really appreciate you giving me this time here today with you and, and look forward to the conversation that we're going to have going forward. I personally am about 30 plus years in the the supply chain management space, particularly around technology solutions, working with retailers, brands, factories and their supply chain partner communities, connecting up the conversations that have to happen to manage the overall process of ideation of product, moving product through a sourcing compliance inspection process, and then ultimately delivering that product to the consumer. I've been with TradeBeyond since the beginning. Myself and our co-founders started the company almost 11 years ago now with a primary focus of doing exactly what I just described. And for the last two years, of course we've seen a tremendous amount of velocity in the retail supply chain sustainability, responsible sourcing space. And we've been doing a good deal of work in partnership with our customers and hopefully bringing change globally to those challenges. Welcome anything you want to talk about around those topics or others and, and again, happy to be here.

Tom Raftery: 2:44

Great. And as one of the co-founders, what was the kind of thinking behind setting up TradeBeyond?

Eric Linxwiler: 2:52

Yeah, well, it's, it's all about providing a single digital platform that can act as a control tower to help brands and retailers that are focused on bringing private label or exclusive brand to market faster, with greater quality and with the utmost care in appealing to the needs of responsible sourcing, sustainability, and transparency.

Tom Raftery: 3:19

Okay. And. How do you help your customers do that?

Eric Linxwiler: 3:25

Yeah, great. Great question. We, we provide them with a tool set, with a roadmap, Tom that puts all the key stakeholders onto a single platform of communication, which allows them to eliminate mundane tasks and the gaps, the white space that exists in the handoffs, inter and intra departmentally from early stage product ideation of designers or category managers developing a detailed specification and handing that off to a sourcing team or sourcing professionals, which then have to onboard and collaborate with potential tier one, tier two, tier four suppliers or vendors or factories to actually manufacture the goods. And then keeping up with all of the activities that have to happen post order commitment to ensure those goods get delivered. You can imagine that without a single platform, digitizing that communication flow, automating that critical path providing visibility with the time and motion calendars needed to keep everyone on task. But otherwise instead relying on Excel or WeChat or WhatsApp or email certainly a lot of things can, can fall through the cracks. And we are here to make sure we we mend and paste over those cracks and keep everything moving efficiently.

Tom Raftery: 4:57

Okay. And do you ever, I mean, it, it's, it's great to have a single platform and have everyone on it, but if you have your single platform, and I'm a company, sure I sign up and I go on your platform, but then I have 15 other platforms that I have to sign up and, you know, have logins for and do you not get kind of platform fatigue or do your customers not get platform fatigue for jumping onto every single, single source of truth that, that that's out there?

Eric Linxwiler: 5:30

Yeah. Well, there's, there's a lot of questions in that statement you're not asking you know, and, and, and, and you're, you're correct. And it can be dissected a number of different ways. First and foremost, let's not be naive. I am by no means professing that an organization the size of, of those that we work with, globally known retailers and brands, you couldn't run your entire operation on the single, the single TradeBeyond platform solution set. What we do believe is possible is that through the collaboration and the connecting of multiple systems, you can create a single platform whereby you've got a multi enterprise collaboration network that's feeding data into a central repository that can be shared from a single sign on. Maybe a limited number of sign-ons by all the stakeholders in the process so that they don't have to come in and out of multiple systems. And that's really what we're striving for. I mean, that's the ultimate goal. I call it the connected Cloud community. I'm a simpleton. Gartner calls it the Multi Enterprise Collaboration Network. That's a mouthful. But in the end I, I believe what we're trying to do is, is make everyone's life not easier, not simpler, by no means is this an easy business but give them the opportunity to create efficiencies where they otherwise wouldn't have them.

Tom Raftery: 7:12

Okay. Is there any particular industry you're focusing on or are you across the board?

Eric Linxwiler: 7:19

Well, we focus in, at TradeBeyond we're a hundred percent focused on retail. Now that being said, we're not focused on a specific vertical within inside that space, we serve hundreds of customers and tens of thousands of users that are focused on apparel, wearable apparel, footwear accessories. We focus on organizations that are serving the DIY or do it yourself or hardware markets. We have specialty retailers in pet or sporting goods. We have hyper markets that serve a single shopping experience for everything from food to apparel to electronics. The product assortment and the focus is not what drives us. Simply being in retail and doing it at a large scale and being hyper-focused on private label and exclusive brands is where we play.

Tom Raftery: 8:21

Okay. And at the outset you mentioned ESG and sustainability a couple of times, and that's great, given that this is the Sustainable Supply Chain podcast, so. How are you helping your customers with their ESG and sustainability goals?

Eric Linxwiler: 8:40

Ha. Big, big question. Big topic, broad topic. When I get this, when I get this question either casually you know, or, or formally, I like to break it down into the three components of environmental, social governance and speak to each of them individually. So let's take the E, Environmental this is probably the number one. I, I believe it is. I, well, maybe S is the, is the number one, but certainly E is a, is a, is a question that we are getting every day. How can you help here? We're seeing retailers and brands begin finally to put real movement and velocity behind the initiatives that they signed up for, for Scope three, carbon reduction for better wastewater management, attention to deforestation. And, and we are helping retailers and brands to identify, first, the source, the be the greatest opportunity for reduction in their supply chain. And more importantly, most importantly. We're providing them a bridge to communicate to co-plan to partner with their supply chain partners and develop mutual contribution to the corrective action plans to the preventive action plans and to the motivation to execute on truly meeting the reduction targets that they've publicized. So that's the E. We're doing a lot of work there. S social, you would be surprised, your listeners might be surprised. When you look at the size of organizations that we work with the, the revenues, the margins, the throughput how many of these organizations truly don't have a handle on the physical makeup of their supply chain and the partners within that supply chain? It's been very rudimentary at best to map your supply chain. It's difficult. It's been heavily reliant upon having other third parties do it on your behalf. Over the last two years highly driven by, by global legislation, we have seen a lot of our customers come to us and ask us, how can you help us visualize, how can you help us draw the connectivity between ourselves and our third, fourth, and fifth tier members of our supply chain that we might otherwise not even know exist? And that's where we've been doing a lot of work. And that's the S. I will tell you, governance is is an area that is coming to us more slowly. We do see opportunities in capacity planning, in financial risk analysis, in better managing the safety and security of big data within our customer's usage of our tool set and others that are connected to our tool set. But we're, we are personally seeing less of the G and, and more of the E and the S.

Tom Raftery: 12:12

Okay. And what is your customer's motivation for the looking at ESG? Is it, there's increasing regulation? Is it our employees want us to do this? Is it our customers want us to do this? Is it, our shareholders want us to do this, our banks, our insurance companies, all of the above. You know, where, where do they fall typically on that spectrum.

Eric Linxwiler: 12:43

I think you answered the question. But let me break, but let me, but let me break it down a little, a little. Maybe come at it from a, a slightly different editorialized perspective. First, first of all, I, I am extremely fortunate, highly blessed to be able to travel the world and visit with my customers, my coworkers, potential new customers in the space. And one, one overriding theme, whether it's it's North America, south America, whether I'm in Asia or Europe. One overriding theme that I hear is that people truly do feel a responsibility to do the right thing. They don't always know how, right? I mean, they're not sure where to start. Maybe I'm being an idealist, but I'm just telling you what I hear. And I think that's a big, big motivator. You see leaders that have taken big, big swings to maybe, you know, to go to get way out in front others, extreme laggards, but talking about it. And then of course you've always got your, your folks in the middle. So I think that's first and foremost. I think there finally is a realization that, hey guys, we are in my world, in retail, you know, we're, we're, if not the biggest, certainly a top three contributor to all these challenges, quote unquote, ESG. And we owe it to ourselves and our people that are immediately connected to us, not let alone, let alone the third party, to do the right thing. So that's the first motivator. Now, as I've alluded to a couple of times, it's hard to get started. So what's the impetus for change? How do you get kicked in the, how do you kicked in the rear end? Well, I. The best way to motivate someone to do something is to legislate it.

Tom Raftery: 15:21

Yep.

Eric Linxwiler: 15:22

So you're seeing a tremendous amount and, you know, it's obvious. Your listeners that listen to this podcast, you know, they're, they're well informed. I don't have to educate them on that. So you see global legislation, you see U-F-L-P-A, you see, European and, and German Due Diligence Act. You see, you know, Canada two 11, et cetera, et cetera, right? This goes on and on. So certainly help to move people in that front. I think you're also seeing that there is a bit of, Hmm, I won't say potential shame, but I will say that folks have really sat on their hands hoping for a silver bullet when it comes to topics around environmental responsibility. You had a, you had a large, large number of organizations that signed up for science-based target initiatives around Scope three made broad claims of where they would be in 2030 and have yet to really begin to take action. Well, 2030 is now a, a short six years away, less.

Tom Raftery: 16:31

Less.

Eric Linxwiler: 16:31

And a lot of folks are now scrambling to say, oh my goodness, we've procrastinated too long. Now what? Now? What do we do? So that's a huge motivator. And I, I think, you know, I, I could draw down, you mentioned some others, obviously your investor or the investment community, your banking community everybody, everybody wants to do the right thing. We've put out several podcasts and had several webinars on our own channels talking around these topics. And they're, they're deep. They're deep no sense. No, no, no limit of opportunity.

Tom Raftery: 17:06

Yeah, you, you mentioned scope three, and that's the, the kind of elephant in the, in the emissions room, isn't it? Because the Scope one and Scope two for most organizations is relatively straightforward to measure and reduce because it's in your own house, as it were. Scope three though comes from your supply chain, and you can go all out on Scope one and two, get it down to close to zero, and still have enormous emissions because Scope three is typically 80 to 90% of your actual emissions. How are organizations squaring that circle? Because it's gotta be challenging to A, figure out how much your scope three emissions are, and then B, figure out how to reduce them.

Eric Linxwiler: 18:06

Hmm, absolutely. It's creating, it's creating the knowledgeable baseline. Then creating the action plan to execute on drawing down the baseline. It's not wholly, and I'll tell you, I'll tell you what it's not. It is not wholly and solely a technology solution.

Tom Raftery: 18:26

Sure.

Eric Linxwiler: 18:27

At the same time, it is wholly and solely not a compliance solution. What it is, is a delicate balance of, of a collaborative solution. Getting in my business, getting the brand and or the retailer having a live conversation on a day-to-day, week to week, month to month basis with the key members of their supply chain that offer the greatest opportunity for significant reduction. And you're, you're gonna ask me, so, so how do you identify it, and then how do you actuate on it? I think I kind of paraphrasing what you said. So the first thing is the identification. Where we are helping in partnership with some expert consultancies in this space. And we're seeing a good deal of movement mostly throughout greater APAC in our world, in our business in partnership with a, with a, a few consultancies, we are getting the brand and the supply chain to document, segment and document the members of their supply chain that offer the greatest opportunity. The TradeBeyond platform has tools that allow for the visualization, the documentation of that supply chain map, the segmentation of that supply chain map. That's job one. And then the next step is having, and the brand contributing, if not a hundred percent of the cost, the majority of the cost to the supply chain partner to help them identify their baselines, document the baselines, in other words, what is my current emission, and then begin to develop, coach, consult, plans, action plans for reducing to a reasonable level, those emissions. So you, you, you have a, you have a platform such as the one we provide whereby I have a single repository of all the data, all my supply chain actors. I have an opportunity for those same supply chain partners to enter the baseline data that they're being helped, coached, consulted upon by a third party, an expert third party on what do my emissions look like, what should I be measuring, how do I measure it, what does it look like? You have visibility from the retailer or the brand side, seeing all of this data in one place. And then you have the opportunity to facilitate a discussion through forum, through messaging, through dynamic video conferencing, all on a single platform. This is what we provide to be able to track, monitor, gauge through KPI reduction over time or increase over time? What is happening in that supply chain and what are you doing about? Oh, well, I've taken, I've taken six high grade diesel generators and reduced that number to three over the course of the last 18 months and replaced it with X energy source, which has contributed to x number of basis points on my baseline data output. This is the kind of information that retailers and brands don't have. They set a target, which to your point, Tom, they set this outlandish target that they have little control over actually reducing, and then they just hope. Hope it happens. We say, no, it's not enough. You need to partner with an organization like us who then subsequently has partnerships elsewhere or vice versa. It comes the other way as well.

Tom Raftery: 22:54

Sure.

Eric Linxwiler: 22:54

partner with a consultancy and the consultancies will say, okay, we don't have the technology to, to automate all this, but we have partners that'll do that for you. And we all come together. It's four parties, the brand, the retailer, their supply chain partners, consultancies and experience in the space. And then a digital provider. Boy that's a lot of words. Sorry if you wanna dissect any of that, but, but that, I mean, that's what we're seeing and how we're helping.

Tom Raftery: 23:19

Okay. Okay. And of course. Your third party supplier have got their Scope one and two and Scope three emissions as well. So they can just work on their scope one and two, and then they have to go out and find their suppliers and do the same all over again. So it starts to become really complex really quickly. Right.

Eric Linxwiler: 23:45

Really complex, really quickly, really complex from the beginning before the beginning. Yeah. But, you know, it's, it's an overwhelmingly daunting, it's an overwhelmingly daunting scenario for sure. But if you just identify and we're talking, you know, I'm seeing such small numbers. I have a, I have a brand, a customer that is a brand that an everyday brand, double digit, billion dollar top line brand with several hundred supply chain partners that contribute to their scope three emissions as it relates back to the brand. But in the end, they identified less than ten, eight of those partners that could contribute enough reduction to help them meet their 2030 goal if they began today with action plans. So it's an overwhelming thought at the surface, but when you really begin to drill in, it's not easy. Don't do, please do not, do not misconstrue this as me saying it's simple. What I'm saying is the opportunity, the opportunity is accessible, but you have to get started. You have to start peeling back the onion and then you find, wow, I've got tremendous opportunity in a very small subset of my overwhelming supply chain community. I can make a real difference here. I just gotta get rolling.

Tom Raftery: 25:26

Sure, sure, sure. Sure. What part does technology play in all of this? Because, I mean, we, we saw 2023 was the breakout year for large language models, and AI has really come to the fore. Does that play a part in it? I mean, we're seeing, you know, a lot of people talking about blockchain five years ago. Is that coming back up? You know, where, where do you see technology playing a role in this?

Eric Linxwiler: 25:54

Yeah, well, where we see AI, blockchain, digital coin coming up is in labor. Labor management. You know, the, the social aspect, the social regulatory aspect of mapping your supply chain and identifying the source of your product as well as in material testing. So from an AI perspective, machine learning perspective, the ability, the opportunity to analyze, to digest a tremendous amount of documentation or data as it relates to all of the certification, the, the chain of custody that is made up of invoices and material certifications and shipping notices and bills of lading and purchase orders. If you can imagine for a, for a global brand that's hundreds of thousands of documents Impossible for human eyes alone to dissect with any sense of alacrity or velocity. So we've incorporated machine learning and applied AI to be able to scan those documents and also begin to make assumptions based on relevant, potentially connected data points to call through smart alerting the attention to the human eyes of something they should probably pay attention to. Right. So, you know, I've cut a purchase order to this particular tier one. This particular tier one typically is writing purchase orders or placing shipment requests on this number of tier two and tier three suppliers. We see actually that this tier four raw material provider or processor has has had a history of coming up in another relationship that you may want to investigate? Right. So the, this would be one example of us using some applied tech, some applied AI technologies inside of our, our TradeBeyond solution. We're seeing outside of our solution through partnership, an area that we're not specialists in but that I am deeply interested in, and by no means an expert, but we're seeing the use of of DNA tagging at the cotton bale level at the finished material role level, which allows us to, at the finished good level, be able to analyze, test a finished shirt like the one I'm wearing, and through its digital tag that was laid into, into the raw material or into the first phase of early stage material development to actually track back where, where parts of parts of the shirt actually came from. That is, that is phenomenal to me. We're not doing that. We're partnering with some customers that are, because in the end, we all have to get everything into that connected cloud community, right. To make sense of it all. So, so some, some tremendous things that are happening. I think the technology is coming fast, the adoption is coming slow, if that makes

Tom Raftery: 29:12

Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I, I've said many times in this podcast that technology is easy to change people less. So,

Eric Linxwiler: 29:21

indeed.

Tom Raftery: 29:24

Speaking of though, what kind of trends are you seeing in the space? Are you seeing people move quickly to be more sustainable less quickly? Does it depend on region? Does it depend, depend on which part of retail they're in? You know what, what kind of, yeah, what kind of trends are you seeing there?

Eric Linxwiler: 29:44

Yeah, well, I think I said it close to the open. Folks are committed to spending. They are also committed to being prudent about the decisions they're making for the longer term. So they're spending on small pilot projects or kind of putting their toe in the water. They're doing a small investment here in, and maybe the small investment isn't always financial. I mean, the small investment is in time. Right. So, yeah, we'll try this out. This looks like something we should do. You know, we're seeing that folks have made great strides in cotton, but they haven't made great strides. You know, our biggest, our biggest challenge in the apparel industry right now is recycled goods. Right. Being able to track back the material origin in a recycled in a recycled good or in in polyester as an example, blended, blended materials. I mean, this is a tremendous challenge and you're seeing a lot of people putting a lot of time and effort, a lot of conversation. Again, they want to do the right thing, but they have yet to find the right solution. I'm seeing, a lot of folks that don't trust what's in the market. I'm working with a very large multi-brand licensor in the apparel space. Currently many, many, well-known household name brands that they, that they provide. Their CIO recently told me, you know, you know, Eric, I, I wanna support my business. I wanna support their ask for looking into this transparency tracking or this chain of custody tracking technology. He goes, but frankly. I don't quite think it's there yet. So he's willing to support the business, but doesn't have the confidence that we, we are even far enough along. He said, I'd like to let this simmer one more year. We're going to do something. We want to do something. We have to do something. I want support my business players, my business partners. He goes, but I think they're jumping the gun. Now, just one conversation. Right. But, but, but but, but this is an area, you know, where, where I'm hearing. Another area, you know, another thing that we see, a trend that we see is there's a lot of people doing a lot of things, but they don't want to talk about it. Right? So you hear the term green hushing. This is, this has become, this has become highly. It's, it's, I won't say it's rampant. It, it, you know, it, it, there, there, there is a lot of, there is, there is a good deal of case study around folks that, you know, they're they're doing the right things. They're working really hard, but they're doing it behind the scenes. They don't want anybody to necessarily know because it puts the brand potentially at risk if they make a mistake. So there's, so there's lots of trend there. I don't know if it's good or bad but, but it is definitely a trend that we, that we're seeing.

Tom Raftery: 32:51

Interesting. Interesting. The other thing I'm curious about is if you have any customer success stories that you can talk to. You know, we had this customer, they had this level of emissions or this level of forced labor in their supply chain or whatever metric we're looking at. And now they've moved, they've done X, Y, Z, and now they're at this other much, much better level.

Eric Linxwiler: 33:24

Yeah. Well, I can tell you that in this particular space, the case studies for implementing successfully, I, I can talk to a couple, but I'd also like to point out that even the success, what I would consider success stories are not necessarily resulting in positive outcomes. Okay. So what do I mean by that? Let me, let me dissect this a little bit for you. So, so we have a well-known apparel brand that has done a tremendous job in, in identifying to to the fourth tier, and then sometimes beyond. Through our, through, through mapping techniques and capabilities that we have their, their supply chain partners down to the cotton level. They have been able to get to a point whereby at the point, a port of entry when an order was stopped or they received a withholding release order from Customs and Border Protection, they were able to produce a reasonable chain of custody, a reasonable amount of documentation showing a digital path from the finished good, from the, from the purchase order to the style back to the original cotton. And yet, so that's the positive side. And yet we are seeing that particular brand and others told, well, that's all well and good, but it's still gonna take 12 to 15 weeks for us to get through the paperwork or get through the investigation ourselves before we'll release the order. So you can do, you can work super hard, do all the right things, and we still have a broken process. It's being worked on, but most all will admit it's broken, whereby no matter how hard I work, I'm still gonna miss a trend. I'm still gonna miss an NDC date. I'm still gonna drop you know, a, a direct to consumer order because I can't get my product out of the port. This is a problem that we absolutely must address as an industry. It is being addressed. I mean, think about it in more simplistic terms 'cause you have it happening in others, in other, it's not just in retail. Think about being an importer of bananas or tomatoes. I. And you know, you need to produce documentation. You're claiming organically farmed, you're, you're claiming a particular region where this, this particular import was farmed. You've got the documentation to prove it, and yet your tomatoes are withheld. Well, a tomato's not gonna make it 12 weeks. It's not gonna make it a week. So essentially, you've lost it all. And the burden and the cost is, is on the importer of record, right? It's not on anybody else. This is a challenge that absolutely needs to be addressed. It, it's being talked about, but there's, there's little movement being made. And this is the area that I think, you know, with all the success stories we can talk about, this is probably one of the, this is probably the top two fear you know, for our customers is how much do we invest, how well do we do? And then what's the return? So, sorry, spun yours question in a slightly different way, but I wanted to make that, I wanted to get that point out.

Tom Raftery: 37:21

Okay. Okay. Where to next? Where do you see all this going? I mean, more regulation, more pressure on companies. Do you see them becoming more sustainable? Do you think they'll achieve their 2030 goals? Where's it all going?

Eric Linxwiler: 37:38

Yeah, I think a lot of organizations are gonna miss their 2030 goals, that there's no doubt about that, and there's gonna be a lot of backpedaling. A lot of, a lot of recalibration of expectation. I think, will, my, my hunch is that you'll begin to see that happening here in the next two years. So people have a runup and they, they have the ability to, to, to move off of their previously published expectations and, and kind of reposition the message. I think that's gonna happen. I also think that you are going to see more inter competitive brand collaboration around all things supply chain related. Over the years, I mean, the two largest the two largest DIY retailers in the United States. I'm not speaking outta turn, they, they've presented publicly, but I won't call out the brands, but I think you can figure it out. For many years they actually joined together because, I mean, let's not be naive. They were using the same suppliers. There was overlapping of suppliers. They're selling a lot of the same product in each of their different stores, right. And they said, you know, why are we putting so much burden on, on each of our suppliers or each of our factories? You know, when and asking them to do something for us and, and something, you know, something for each of us that's actually very highly overlapping when it comes to producing audit documentation, producing social documentation technical attestation, et cetera. It's the same for both. So they launched, they launched a collaborative campaign, and they're still collaborating today and, you know, helping to eliminate what, what we call in the industry audit fatigue attestation fatigue. That conversation is, is, is getting, is getting a lot more velocity of late. I was in, just last week I was, I was in the office with the head of supply chain and the head of traceability, responsible sourcing sustainability for one of the Globe's largest athletic apparel providers. Footwear and, and athletic apparel providers. And, and they said, you know, they were, we were having just, we were having a conversation, a business conversation, and they said, you know, Eric, we're really happy with what we've been able to accomplish with you guys with regards to cotton. It's great. Moving from tier one backwards to tier three, four, and five. Getting that documentation and putting the onus on tier one to, to work on our behalf to get that documentation. It's time for us to go the other way. We don't think we can do it by ourselves. We think we need help from organizations like yours, but we also think we need the collective IQ of other brands in our space. And we actually had a conversation about how we might be able to help them facilitate the bringing together of, of multiple brands or multiple competitors to have the conversation of flipping the script, you know, instead of moving from, from the front. Back from, from the final, from the final point backwards, move from the first point forward. So I think you're gonna see what I'm seeing is a, is a lot more breakdown, very similar to those two DIY retailers that came together many years ago and say, look, we can do this. We can still maintain our competitive ip but help the industry at large to realize some significant gains. I think you're gonna see that.

Tom Raftery: 41:29

Fascinating. Fascinating. We're coming towards the end of the podcast now. Is there any question I have not asked you, Eric, that you wish I had or any aspect of this we haven't touched on that you think it's important for people to think about?

Eric Linxwiler: 41:45

Well, I, I think we've, we've covered a lot of ground here. Maybe just a couple things worth, worth revisiting. We made the point early on that it's that I, I believe, and throughout that it's not just I'm a technology provider. I mean, at the end of the day, right, that's what I do. But it's not just about technology. It's not just about digitalization. It's also about people and business change management. And although we see ourselves as a technology provider, we also have a tremendous amount experience in marrying the two of those things together.'cause it is truly, it is truly a two-way a two-way solution. So I would just, you know, leave people with the thought that while it is an overwhelming task to think about And trying to realize some of your initiatives, don't try to draw a line between the two, but look at your partners across the continuum and maybe bring everybody into the same room to have a dynamic whiteboarding conversation and see if we can collectively arrive at some, at least some go forward steps to get you started.

Tom Raftery: 43:00

Okay, great. Super. Eric, if people would like to know more about yourself or any of the things we discussed in the podcast today, where would you have me direct them?

Eric Linxwiler: 43:11

Yeah, for sure. Well, first of all, start with our website, so all one word, TradeBeyond. Dot com and of course you can find me. I'm easily accessible. I'm no internet ghost. You can find me on LinkedIn, no problem at all. You can email me directly through our TradeBeyond website and I'm always happy to talk.

Tom Raftery: 43:34

Fantastic. Fantastic. Eric, that's been really interesting. Thanks a million for coming in the podcast today.

Eric Linxwiler: 43:39

Great. Thank you Tom. Really appreciate you.

Tom Raftery: 43:42

Okay. Thank you all for tuning into this episode of the Sustainable Supply Chain Podcast with me, Tom Raftery. Each week, thousands of supply chain professionals listen to this show. If you or your organization want to connect with this dedicated audience, consider becoming a sponsor. You can opt for exclusive episode branding where you choose the guests or a personalized 30 second ad roll. It's a unique opportunity to reach industry experts and influencers. For more details, hit me up on Twitter or LinkedIn, or drop me an email to tomraftery at outlook. com. Together, let's shape the future of sustainable supply chains. Thanks. Catch you all next time.