Episode 18 - Carmit Glik

(upbeat music) - Hi, so we're talking on Brand Spot. I'm Maddie Bennett, and today I'm joined by Karmick Glick, the CEO and founder of Ship Forward. It's lovely to have you here, Karmick. Thank you so much for joining us. So, thinking about the company and background and your leadership, what was your journey like leading up to becoming the CEO of Ship Forward? And what excites you most about was during the company towards success in the digital-frighted forwarding space? What would you say? - So first of all, happy to be here. Thank you for inviting me. I'm very excited. So what led me is actually, I started very young. I was actually on my 20s, and I was looking for a job to travel the world and ended up working in a very, very large shipping corporation and logistics that took me in a different way of traveling the world. So I joined Merysky in my 20s, and was fortunate enough to be part of a leadership program there. And a training ship program. So my first expatriation was to Hong Kong and South China. - Wow. - So a very young age, I think, that was probably the best thing I could ask for even without knowing, because that exposed me at the time, early 2002 to the real logistics, meaning that they're really a heart of logistics. And in China setting up commercial asset in Xinjiang and Guangzhou working with very large supply chains, like Walmart, Huawei, Lenovo, and so on and so forth, will expose me to the world of logistics. And probably have changed the course, I would say, of my life. And later on, I have gained more knowledge of working across Europe, also in the headquarter in Copenhagen and afterwards in the Netherlands, you're do rather than important, the biggest port in Europe. And I think that experience really exposed me to what is to the blockchain from origin at a destination point of view. But also clarified to me very, very deeply, that while we talk about very large cooperation and companies like they wanna work on the diverse group, their challenges and their solutions are very different than small businesses. And at this, from my point of view, I realized that the gap is really on the small business side. Interesting. And let me explain a little bit more with that large companies has a lot of professional working with them. They have challenges, of course, supply chain logistics is never a smooth sailing, no matter what's your size is. But they have a lot of tools and technology and they also have a lot of resource on the human side, but also capital to deal with those challenges. But when we're looking at small businesses, there is a really, really needing gap because at most they are underserved and overpay for what they're getting, knowing that or not knowing that. And that's the situation at least that I've experienced for my 26, 27 years off of working in this domain and really was kind of and follow my, let's say my understanding and that I can better or I can help to that segment by really integrating technology into the supply chain. And this is what we're doing in sheep forward. Brilliant. Well, thank you so much for expressing that. And it's amazing to hear about your journey as well, leading up to this point. That's amazing and very inspirational as well for anyone who wants to start something when they're younger. Yeah, that's really beautiful to see that. You've shared a bit already, but could you just maybe expand on the vision behind the creation of sheep forward and how you believe that the company differentiates itself from competitors in the logistics industry? Yeah, happy to. Thank you for asking. Our vision is really to be the logistics partner for small businesses. And when I'm saying it, it sounds very clear why not? Or what is the issue? But we made a deliberate choice to serve the small and mid-sized businesses. By that, when you make a deliberate choice, you need to cut all the rest. And we deliberately cut all the rest. And I think this is the main differentiation because we have put ourselves in the small businesses issues. We develop a platform and solution that is also digital, but also physical. Because in our business, it's not only about a nice digital front-end or a nice digital tool. It's need to be connected to actually physical as a move of logistics across the world. So it's not that easy as a pure digital solution. And I would say very clearly, there will be a large corporation and registering to sheep forward. They probably will not find what they need or what they're looking for. So we are literally put herself in small businesses, choose and set up in what they need, how is their day looking, what are their specific needs. And our solution is rounded. So from a digital solution, we have a very easy, let's say platform or interface that anyone that even do not have the logistics language that can log in very, very quickly and can start already book in a few minutes without having any knowledge prior to it. And then we are able to provide them the full stack of solution. If it's full container, less and full container, or a free solution, we are able to support them with AI assistants on the platform with any question that we have. And there is also a 24/7 human being check that is on the platform as well. So everybody, whatever they feel that the port and the best can use. And we give them the full umbrella of services and it's given 24/7 because then we realize, well, small business owner have so much to do and he might have the time to look at logistics or other things all weekend, at night, maybe on Christmas and we are there for them no matter where they are. We do not have nine to five policy. So we have expert there, 24/7 ready for any question, wherever and whatever is needed. Where else all the information is also on the platform itself. So a customer without clear knowledge can book, can have a checkout which is online credit card. They can apply for loans, they can run them directly to the bank, they can see the shipments and live on the platform and all the milestone, a partial milestone after it's been booked. And they have accessible communication directly with a team at any time if they wish to and if they don't wish to, of course they can choose to be notified otherwise. So we really, really looking at the small businesses and literally trying to understand their needs with a very clear pricing attitude of what you see, what you get, what you pay for, is what you will be invoiced for. And that all sound very normal, it would say. And yes, of course. But unfortunately it's not what happened in the screen or. So true. Wow, thank you so much for giving us a breakdown of the tailored solutions and the standout features of your platform. That's really exciting and I'm sure it's helping small and mid-size businesses so much. It's exciting to hear about it from you. So we're thinking about technologies like automation and data analytics, for example, in hearts in the customer experience. How do they improve the overall efficiency of your shipping processes? So the off-gozer is element of daily operations, which of course everything can happen to in the lifetime of the shipment. It can go through very smooth and it could have a lot of issues. And when I'm saying a lot of issues, if the container is on C and there is some store, if a tracker pull the shipment out of the container and there was some accident, if the tracker is stuck on traffic. So in essence, it's about really making sure that the customer is aware of those challenges across the lifetime of a shipment and that he always is communicating because I cannot prevent traffic or accident or weather, but I can't make that information accessible to the customer. And I think this is what we are focusing on to make sure that we online able to communicate with the customer when things are happening and also be able to have a full transparency on the service and the pricing and then also on the professional side. That's refreshing comment to hear about the transparency. Because like you said earlier, it sounds like something that should happen, but it's not something we see. So it's refreshing to see that your company offers that. So thinking about market trends and challenges, obviously the logistics industry has faced numerous disruptions, whether it be the pandemic or geopolitical issues, but how has ship forward adapted to these challenges and what strategies are you implementing to build resilience into your business model? Would you say? Actually, I would say we don't have to adapt to these challenges because we were born from the need of those challenges. So we launched the company on COVID and that period of time was 2021. The need for the company as she forward was so critical because at the time of COVID there was no space. If you remember, I will give a big background. What happened is that global demand to product have rose in significant number and the global supply was the same. So adding to it blockage and ports because very little movement of human being on the need of people to work from home and not being at the port and all those destruction have come to a significant increase of demand and not sufficient supply which actually brought the number of or the cost for shipment to levels that historically we have not seen. With that, the small businesses who are in such a situation that barely they could find any asset or space of cargo for them because those that couldn't pay for it and those that could maybe pay for it they just didn't get it. So actually, she forward was born to that need and we at that time provided asset and shipment and the only one I believe that provided asset and shipment to small businesses and I think that's the reason we never had to adjust it. We are here because of it and we continue and I have to say unfortunately since COVID actually we don't see any decrease in disturbance on the contrary. It's continuing with the digital political issues with environmental issues on the Panama Canal that we had faced before and I think this is where I believe that the reason that she forward was so successful that it really was born from the need from day one so there was no adjustment. We are digital from day one. We use best technologies out there to solve solutions from day one. So for us it's very natural to integrate in what happened in currently as well. Yeah, wow, what an achievement that is that's reassuring as well and see that looking forward. There is this solution with you guys so that's awesome. Now, thinking I know we you briefly touched on environmental issues, sustainability is becoming a growing concern in global trade but how is ship forward addressing environmental impact and do you see sustainable logistics planners in true row in your company's future? Here I also believe that probably we are the most sustainable logistics company out there because for us of all not only that we provide digital solution are these paper less and provide all the documentation, libraries, servers, everything on our platform. It doesn't require our customer to do anything more than that. We also outreach to our customers and our audience digitally as well. So we don't sponsor a salesperson driving to somebody and visit them and create a sort of a CO2 or paper work so anything is such. So we are end-to-end digitally also with our outreach, also with our commercial and that's mean the travel here we are the most sustainable logistics company out there even though I never thought to market it like this but because of your question if I'm thinking about it probably there is no other logistics company that is more sustainable than ship forward. Brilliant. Again, what an achievement that's definitely something to be proud of and something that we need in this day and age as well. Thank you so much for answering all those questions. So thinking now about the future of ship forward is the leader of a forward thinking company. How do you inspire innovation and agility within your team especially in the sector that's often seen as a traditional and slow to change movement? What would you say? This point was something I consider very early in the setup of the company. And I think the main thing is to encourage innovation thinking outside the box is actually to bring people with various experiences and diversity and that's not only gender diversity as such but for example, actually forward many of our employees do not have specific industry experience in Marxist League, in product, in R&D where they can bring various ideas and innovation coming from different domain. Of course people that work in operation, in ocean and air, myself as vast experience in the logistics industry but where I could diverse the expertise and knowledge from other domain I did and this is something I did from really big one. So that's bring by itself creative thinking and different thinking because if I would have hired the same time of people as a traditional forwarder for example, then most likely I would be at the same place. And that was really something that was in my mind really really early age. So I think that comes very naturally when people comes from various industry for various experiences, also of course if we're looking at a gender as well. So I believe the most diverse team that you can have probably will generate that innovation in mind and create a place when everybody can speak on their mind and just experience, just leave so many of you having some idea, let's try. Let's see what happens. Basically nobody knows exactly what will happen to say you try one other thing and one will be successful, that's a great thing. When you try to kind of block that from beginning then you probably don't get anything. But we experience in quite a lot of things, we try in quite a lot of different ideas and we we fail a lot but we fail fast and move on and probably learns a lot from feelings. Thank you for sharing that, Cognit. It's inspirational to see how you thought about it and how vast and diverse as well. Your team is, that's really lovely. So finally then, looking ahead for the next few years, what are some of the key goals or milestones that you envision for ship forward? What future trends do you believe will shape the logistics industry? Well the logistics industry is going through interesting time because I think if we look at the last 25 years China was the factory of the world. And we've seen in the last few years a really shift in that in the sense of, because we're really looking to source in various locations other than China. And that by itself is the big shift for supply chain and global trade. So I believe we will continue seeing it happen. And that's required that customers will have to rethink of their supplier base, rethink about their logistics path. And we need to also think of maybe new partners that can support them in various locations. And I think that's what we're trying to keep on seeing. I also do see how digitalization is becoming a must have and not nice to have. So I do believe that definitely after COVID, which kind of in first that even further, I do believe that definitely from the customer point of view, it will be a given that's that the logistics player will have to provide the six tools online digitally with less waste as we mentioned before and looking at environmental aspect as well. So those I believe are still forces that we will see continuing changing the supply chain going forward. And we are positioning very well within those. Brilliant, lovely. Well, it's really exciting to hear about ship forward. Thank you so much for being with us, being with me today, just chatting and it's really inspirational to hear how you start it and where you are now and the future of the company as well. So really appreciate you joining me today, Carmen. Thank you so much. Sure, thank you so much. I really enjoyed it. Thank you, Madam. Thank you. [Music]