Transcript:
[00:00:00] BRENDON BEEBE: Jane. com shut down abruptly. So sellers were told to keep shipping, keep shipping, just keep acting like normal and lost everything they sold for the last month
[00:00:09] JARED WARD: plus. There always seemed to be that delusion even with the founders. They thought they were this Gucci. No, you're, you're fast fashion. How do you even prevent something like this?
[00:00:26] JARED WARD: Hey guys, welcome to Ops Unfiltered. This is your host, Jared. I'm the founder and CEO of Luminous. Um, this week we're actually doing sort of a Emergency episode given recent events. So I don't know if you guys heard, um, if you are from Utah, um, you probably know this news already. Jane. com, which was a pretty decent size platform out of Utah.
[00:00:51] JARED WARD: Um, it was for small sellers, small boutique sellers and small businesses to sell fashion and decor items. So it [00:01:00] shut down abruptly, very abruptly, uh, uh, last Friday and. We sort of broke the news in, in Utah, I don't know if really Reddit broke the news, but actually your post was, I would guess probably the most popular posts that spread the word.
[00:01:20] JARED WARD: So like, how did you find out about it, Brendan?
[00:01:23] BRENDON BEEBE: I have a friend that messaged me that morning on a Reddit, cause he found a Reddit thread about it. And he's like, Hey, is this true? And I think I talked to you, you called somebody you knew and it was, Hey, it was, the site is down and nobody can get access.
[00:01:36] BRENDON BEEBE: And nobody knew anything at the time. It was pretty nuts.
[00:01:38] JARED WARD: Yeah. And this is, it's a massive deal for a lot of Utah sellers. So just quick background on Jane. com. So Jane, they, they were a marketplace started in 2011. Um, they, they were one of the fastest marketplaces, uh, to grow to a billion dollars in GMV.
[00:01:56] JARED WARD: So, um, it took them, it was less than 10 years. They were already grossing more [00:02:00] than a billion dollars in general merchandise volume through the platform. Um, and they attracted a lot of small sellers over the years and really a lot of these small sellers who I actually got to know over the years. Back in my previous career, I helped out a lot of the Jane sellers.
[00:02:19] JARED WARD: Source products, um, you know, find better price products from China and, and help them get into a warehouse and, and, and sell on Jane. So, these small sellers, they really, their business and their livelihood was, uh, for a lot of them was 100 percent tied to Jane. Like they pivoted their entire business like, oh wow, we're crushing on Jane.
[00:02:42] JARED WARD: Um, You know, these are most of Jane's sellers are smaller businesses who probably profit, like, probably in the range of like 50 to 100, 000 a year. So just imagine your livelihood is tied to this platform. And then all of a sudden last Friday, done.
[00:02:58] BRENDON BEEBE: And worse than done is [00:03:00] Jane. com had been holding funds for probably over a month.
[00:03:03] BRENDON BEEBE: At least from the words we're hearing and weren't paying out sellers. So sellers were told to keep shipping, keep shipping, just keep acting like normal. And it wasn't until, you know, Friday that they lost all access and lost everything they sold for the last month. Plus, uh, and they couldn't get access to, they had no access to emails, to orders.
[00:03:22] BRENDON BEEBE: There's some, there's actually buyers who can't get ahold of the people that sold them products. Like they just don't know how to get ahold of
[00:03:28] JARED WARD: them. And yeah, the, if you go to the website right now, it's like, just says in blank text, like down for maintenance and yeah, I know a couple, I called some Jane sellers that I knew and verified as much as I could.
[00:03:41] JARED WARD: Um, and yeah, so at luminous, what we've done, what we're trying to push for right now in Utah, we've posted on tech talk on LinkedIn, on Instagram. Um, I just give some background, but the main point is, yeah. Brendan created, he, he aggregated all of the [00:04:00] data. So like all of the sellers. And they're stores on whether it's like Shopify or Etsy or wherever where people could help buy their products and you even have it.
[00:04:12] JARED WARD: We have a link. It's called Jane sellers. com. And if you go there, you can see how much money. Each store is owed, and from there you can go and shop and, and, and buy something.
[00:04:24] BRENDON BEEBE: Yeah, I think the whole weekend we were trying to go over like, how could we help? We're in this ecosystem, and I was listening to phone calls Jared was having with his friends of people who were out ten to a hundred thousand dollars and just lost payouts, in addition to just having dead stock right before.
[00:04:39] BRENDON BEEBE: Black Friday. And I was like, what can we do? We don't offer services to customers like that. Um, and so I think the least is just try to raise awareness and try to get the Utah community together. I think it's proven through COVID and through other layoffs, the Utah community really comes together and helps people.
[00:04:57] BRENDON BEEBE: And these sellers are too [00:05:00] small to notice. I think most businesses, most people I talk to don't even know what Jane. com is necessarily. unless you're not that realm. And so hopefully this is a way where we can rally some support behind them.
[00:05:14] JARED WARD: Yeah. So the, the last I heard, which was just yesterday, some of the top sellers, like they're owed.
[00:05:26] JARED WARD: Mill over a million dollars easy and payouts and it's just divided between like the top sellers How do you
[00:05:32] BRENDON BEEBE: know I have you verified like are these just like out of their head numbers or have you verified it somehow?
[00:05:37] JARED WARD: So I talked to I have I have some friends that I've I've done business with before I'm in Jane and according to them.
[00:05:46] JARED WARD: They're in like a sellers group where they're talking all the time and Uh, one, one of the sellers, Coco and Maine, um, Danny, she's, she's been one of my friends for years now. Um, she, she told me like, you know, she's out, I [00:06:00] don't, I can't remember her exact number. Um, Qualtree, which the company that I used to be CEO of, they're, they're owed, like, I think a couple, no, he said 50, over 50 grand in payouts.
[00:06:12] JARED WARD: And then Danny told me that some of the top sellers are owed over a million dollars. Holy crap. So, um. Yeah, I guess technically not. I, I, like, I haven't seen screenshots of their portal and like their expected payouts, but, um, it's definitely a big number. So this is, it's a big deal for businesses.
[00:06:31] BRENDON BEEBE: What are the chances of them getting that money back at this point?
[00:06:34] JARED WARD: Oh, uh, next to nothing. I mean, you saw the news recently. They, they're, they're already in the beginning stages of filing for bankruptcy. They're not responding at all to any of their requests. So, it's next to nothing, I would say. What can people do at this point, if you're a Jane Seller, and you're trying to go like a legal route?
[00:06:55] JARED WARD: What, from your research, what are the options?
[00:06:58] BRENDON BEEBE: So, I think there's two [00:07:00] things, um, Forget, the specifics are online, but you can reach out to the bankruptcy group that's handling their bankruptcy. But also Lehigh police are doing an investigation and I think they're collecting information So I'd call Lehigh police put your name on there Make sure they get your details how much you're owed but also reach out to the bankruptcy attorney that's handling the case At least that's what I've heard like it's hard to verify any of this like like you said nobody's has said anything
[00:07:30] JARED WARD: yeah, it's it's been totally silent and like honestly, I feel like that's That's probably what Jane wants.
[00:07:36] JARED WARD: They want this just to, or that really, I, I I'll stop saying Jane's prop, probably more of the VCs who bought majority ownership in Jane. Um, yeah, which I don't know all of the details of that transaction. I just, what I do know is at their series a, where they raised 40 million, apparently Some of, some or most of that was an actual [00:08:00] buyout to get the original founders out.
[00:08:02] JARED WARD: So these are the rumors on the street, right? Nothing is
[00:08:05] BRENDON BEEBE: out there. But what are the, what are the like? What are the rumors
[00:08:09] JARED WARD: that you believe
[00:08:10] BRENDON BEEBE: at this
[00:08:10] JARED WARD: point? So the rumors, and I can give some quick background on myself and the interactions I've had with Jane. com over the years. So, back in, I think it was like 2017, 2018, um, I worked on the same building as Jane.
[00:08:27] JARED WARD: So I was on the floor one in the Silicone Slopes. They were on the, I believe it's the fourth floor of that building. So I ran a sourcing division where I helped e commerce companies, um, take their products and, you know, cut costs by sourcing in China or Vietnam or India, wherever. Um, so I actually met with Jane back in like 2017.
[00:08:49] JARED WARD: So I, I met a lot of people on the, Like the seller relations side and, um, in a couple of different facets of the business. And then I met, I met most of their top sellers in, in [00:09:00] person. And some of them I, I even helped source products for. So, um, I do have, and, and I also in my network, I know people who know the founders directly and are close to the situation.
[00:09:11] JARED WARD: So. Not an expert, but I do have some insider information. I'll, I guess we can only classify this as hearsay. But, um, so from my understanding, um, you know, ever since their Series A to, which that Series A for 40 million, apparently it was to, to buy out the founders. Um, there's a VC. So they
[00:09:33] BRENDON BEEBE: raised 40 million in
[00:09:35] JARED WARD: 2020?
[00:09:36] JARED WARD: I believe it was 2019
[00:09:37] BRENDON BEEBE: actually. 2019? Yeah.
[00:09:38] JARED WARD: No, no, sorry. No, I think it was 2020 and one of those
[00:09:41] BRENDON BEEBE: years. How did they burn through 40, 40 million in just a few years? Do you think?
[00:09:47] JARED WARD: Again, the just rumors, um, apparently really bloated C suite salaries, which that can't, I mean, bloated C suite salaries for a small company [00:10:00] like that, that, that can't be like the main thing that did them under, um, um, two things I do know, bloated C suite salaries and, um, misses like strategic misses.
[00:10:13] JARED WARD: Like, they were trying to expand it in different markets and just do different experimental things, but they put money behind, um, and, uh, apparently a lot of them missed, and the third thing that I would just simply guess would be if this, you know, if this was financed, if this acquisition, or the buyout of 30 The founders was financed, which it probably was like, why wouldn't you?
[00:10:38] JARED WARD: Um, I'm sure they got killed in interest rates. That could have been a part of it.
[00:10:45] BRENDON BEEBE: So the idea being, so you're saying when they raised that series, a, the 40 million went to the founders to buy them out supposedly, and then the 50 million deaf, the VC fund came in finance that 40 million, probably from the [00:11:00] company.
[00:11:00] BRENDON BEEBE: And the company was paying that debt back. Probably.
[00:11:04] JARED WARD: And that's just a theory. I don't know if that's true. I'm like, we're trying to make sense of like, how, how do you shut down right before Black Friday? Like Mm-Hmm. Jane makes 25% on all transactions, all the throughput. So like, which, that's a massive referral fee.
[00:11:21] JARED WARD: Um, even Amazon is 15%, obviously they make more through FBA Etsy is like 7.5%, eBay's 10%, so it's like 25%. That's, that's, that's massive margins on GMV. So it's, it's just hard, like things must have been really bad through some factor that we don't even know and that's why the theory is like, okay, this was financed and it probably had a really bad debt resurface payment
[00:11:47] BRENDON BEEBE: because they must have had, they must have been doing 50 million.
[00:11:51] BRENDON BEEBE: That they're taking home after, from seller fees and whatnot.
[00:11:55] JARED WARD: Oh, yeah. Cause, so. At least. Jane does, I think their peak GMV was [00:12:00] 250 million or over 250 million, um, maybe it squeaked to 300 million, um, then it, it sort of, it went down a little bit, um. Again from my sources, they were saying that they were still on track to do 200 million this year.
[00:12:16] JARED WARD: So yeah I mean just by that math total that they pull in through 200 million dollars in revenue is at least 50 million dollars So I mean something had to have gone really wrong to shut down operations and like nothing to Right, they could not even sell the business. They couldn't even Fundraise more.
[00:12:40] BRENDON BEEBE: They couldn't even pay their sellers. Like they were, this feels like a FTX situation where the company's using the funds that their sellers are rightly deserved. Yeah, it does. It feels
[00:12:52] JARED WARD: like something, well, something quote unquote, something collapsed. Well, I think when you stop paying your sellers. Then and you [00:13:00] tell them to keep selling if they pull those listings then all of a sudden like that things collapse.
[00:13:06] JARED WARD: Mm hmm
[00:13:07] BRENDON BEEBE: There was a that I didn't remember reading something that sellers started pulling out as They had issues or earlier this year, or was it only when they started stopping payments?
[00:13:18] JARED WARD: Well, that was according to the seller that I talked to that it was when they stopped paying them.
[00:13:24] BRENDON BEEBE: Okay.
[00:13:24] JARED WARD: Cause apparently that's been going on for months.
[00:13:27] JARED WARD: Ah. Like the payments have slowly come to a halt and they've been messaging and, and they like up until a couple months ago, they're like, Hey, all good. Don't worry. You know, we're just going through a rough time right now, but we will get you paid back in a couple weeks. And then the seller started mistrusting them and they're like, nah, I'm pulling my, like, I'm not selling more.
[00:13:46] JARED WARD: Um, in the hopes that, like, I'm just going to cut my losses. So, that's probably what made it
[00:13:51] BRENDON BEEBE: collapse. Um. One of the unknowns to me is why shut it down right before the busiest time of the year? Their revenue, their [00:14:00] revenue would have spiked in the next couple months, couple weeks. Like how do you Shut it down and stop that completely.
[00:14:07] BRENDON BEEBE: I just had a thought though if they were paying sellers from sells out like if they sells this month were actually paying off people two months ago And it was they were falling behind by so much that they literally had nothing left It wouldn't
[00:14:24] JARED WARD: have mattered. Well, also probably something as well is I know Jane's revenue, I believe was down this year and the year before, um, compared to like 2018, 2019.
[00:14:36] JARED WARD: So they were probably way off on their projections. So if, if you projected to do a certain amount, especially if you have like a seller finance or a buyer finance deal and like crazy debt service payments, you have to, you couldn't keep up. Yeah. If you, if you projected say like 350 million revenue. Um, our throughput on the platform.
[00:14:58] JARED WARD: Yeah, then [00:15:00] you could be like millions and millions of dollars behind
[00:15:04] BRENDON BEEBE: The other key piece here too is at least from what we've heard they were looking to be bought out They had a few people looking to buy them out or to do some sort of funding But both if those were happening both those fell out last minute and they just had nothing left
[00:15:20] JARED WARD: Yeah, they just had to pull the rug.
[00:15:23] JARED WARD: What sucks too is for these sellers, it's not just how much money they're owed. It's the fact that for, for those of you who don't know, even if you're most of these buyers, excuse me, most of these small businesses who sell on Jane, you're doing one of two things. Um, you're either buying through like the fashion district, which I don't know if anybody knows what the fashion district is.
[00:15:47] JARED WARD: Yeah, it's just a district in LA. You're, you're spying from like a district of wholesalers who, you know, they import stuff and resell it to you. Um, and if you're not doing that, then [00:16:00] you're buying directly from a factory or a trading company in China. And my whole point is they had to plan for black Friday in advance.
[00:16:09] JARED WARD: And if you're a smaller business, like really small, then, then maybe you could have just been like, okay, yeah, I'm not going to buy. Like, well, we won't plan for that. But anybody who's meet a medium sized seller or a larger one. They had to plan, you know, they were planning for this Black Friday in March or February so, you know Some I there's some sellers who have imported like containers of leggings or cardigans or beanies and Now, not only are they owed a bunch of money and they filed bankruptcy, you're going to have to chase them, but you have a warehouse full of leggings that were supposed to be sold through Jane.
[00:16:53] JARED WARD: And it's like, what do we do now? It's insane. It's literally their whole business could be over. So [00:17:00] that, that's why we did the Jane sellers. com. And we're just trying to, like Brendan said, rally Utah together and just spread this to as many people as possible.
[00:17:11] BRENDON BEEBE: Yeah, I think the power of just like, community and the power of quantity.
[00:17:16] BRENDON BEEBE: We have enough individuals who are seeing what's going on. If every person made just a single purchase from one of these customers, I mean, that could be the difference between them keeping their house and them losing it. Like these guys, they're small businesses, um, a lot range in like, well, some are in the insane of a hundred thousand and maybe they're bigger business and they can sustain through other channels.
[00:17:42] BRENDON BEEBE: The majority of us are in like this 10 that they've lost. And this is a big season for them. And if just a hundred of us went and bought, you know, a hundred items from their store, that could be what they were going to do on Jane. com.
[00:17:58] JARED WARD: Yeah, absolutely. [00:18:00] Yeah. Like Brendan said, this is the difference between somebody losing a house or losing their business or, you know, making it through the holidays and being able to pivot their business to Etsy or to Amazon or to, you know, their own Shopify store.
[00:18:15] JARED WARD: Um, this is a conversation that Brendan and I have behind the scenes all the time. It's basically just Tech companies, or like companies in general, and leadership, identity, brand, um, I always thought it was very interesting with Jane, um, when I went and toured their facilities back in 2017, um, there was, they seemed to be.
[00:18:47] JARED WARD: They would, they would brag about the build out of, of their floor. And I remember when I was, when I went up there for a tour, I, I walked in and mind you, Jane is like a [00:19:00] platform where you go and buy 5 leggings or it's, it's like, it's cute quality boutique stuff, but it's, it's, it's fast fashion. It's, it's not expensive.
[00:19:10] JARED WARD: It's not high end. It's like, you know, they, most of their GMB is through like 5 leggings or beanies or cardigans. Um, So when I, when I walked upstairs to tour it, like every, they were pointing at it, like, oh yeah, that was 50, 000 and the brick alone was 250, 000 and it was, it was like, I was touring Gucci or Louis Vuitton and I was just like, bro, you guys, you guys sell 5 leggings.
[00:19:37] JARED WARD: Like, you're not, you're not Gucci. It's hard to think that that attitude probably didn't benefit them, you know? Did not come across as like a scrappy platform trying to make sure they grow. They're ready for their growth. And I don't even, I'm not even sure they quite understood what they [00:20:00] achieved product market fit in.
[00:20:01] JARED WARD: Um, I think they were always trying to be, you know, high quality, high end fashion. They wouldn't let foreign sellers on the platform. Um, they wouldn't let two sellers like sell the same thing. Um, all things that are a barrier to entry for fast fashion. And then, you know, to like double down on, on what you found product market fit in.
[00:20:26] JARED WARD: So. That was always interesting to me. It seems like they made a lot of
[00:20:30] BRENDON BEEBE: progress pre their founders leaving. Like, did you notice a big difference between Before there, while the founders were there and verse after the round of investment.
[00:20:40] JARED WARD: Um,
[00:20:41] BRENDON BEEBE: or do you think they were just, they were headed this way?
[00:20:44] JARED WARD: I think I just, my personal opinion as somebody who sold on Jane and then helped some of the bigger sellers, I think it started off with a bang and, um, they really found product market fit and like, you know, cheap, good quality leggings [00:21:00] and stuff.
[00:21:00] JARED WARD: And what I think, I think the founders already, there was that like, There's that delusion. Delusion, that's a strong word, but I'll say it. It's, there always seemed to be that delusion, even with the founders of like, they were, they thought they were this Gucci and like. Yeah, we're gonna like we're gonna high end boutique sellers, but the reality was like no you're you're fast fashion And I think that that delusion led them down to like a series of expansions Like I remember they were trying to expand to toys and games at one point and like electronics like asking I remember somebody asked me to like source a drill like a drone for them to resell and What, what are you doing?
[00:21:45] JARED WARD: Who's the customer? Why would you throw, oh yeah, do you want a toy drone with your five dollar leggings? So, but then what I do know is all those contacts and people that I [00:22:00] knew, after 2019, 2020, everybody said the same thing, like, oh, it's not the same. This place sucks. Like it's on the downhill. They don't even understand the sellers.
[00:22:09] JARED WARD: So there's, that was happening while the original founders were there. But it seemed to have gotten worse, like post 2019, 2020 just escalated. Yeah,
[00:22:19] BRENDON BEEBE: I remember them seeing them as a tech company and from a tech company perspective, they seem to have it all under like under control. I remember I was at four up and we started the exact same year as them, 2011 and they seemed to be crushing it.
[00:22:34] BRENDON BEEBE: And when they raised their 40 million rounds, it was like, geez, we are falling behind. And I remember talking to head of product and engineering over there. How do you guys organize things? It's like, it seemed like. Just, they were doing incredible things.
[00:22:48] JARED WARD: They, they were, so that's the thing though. Um, they were, and Jane was like the darling place of Utah.
[00:22:55] JARED WARD: Everybody wanted to go work there. And all of their employees [00:23:00] were under, under the C suite. Everybody was a freaking all star. And, yeah, they loved it. It, it's like, nobody said bad things about Jane. Like the employees and, and the sellers. It's like this utopia of a marketplace, um, sad. I don't know exactly what happened starting in 2018, 19, 20, but like, it seems like
[00:23:26] BRENDON BEEBE: The executive team was super disconnected from the reality.
[00:23:30] BRENDON BEEBE: At least somewhere along the line, they just didn't know what was going on.
[00:23:33] JARED WARD: Yeah.
[00:23:34] BRENDON BEEBE: Nor did they share what was going on, it seems. Yeah. At least most of the employees I've talked to, like they thought it was coming, but were expecting like February or March, you know, after the holidays. This was just unexpected.
[00:23:47] JARED WARD: Yeah,
[00:23:53] JARED WARD: how do you even prevent something like this?
[00:23:58] BRENDON BEEBE: Yeah, I don't know. [00:24:00] I wish somebody on that team would come and just talk about it. It'd be great to get uh,
[00:24:10] BRENDON BEEBE: I know the executive team up there probably isn't allowed to or they don't want, yeah They shouldn't because of bankruptcy. There's got to be somebody right under the executive team that has more details than they could share That experience, I'm like, what was it like, uh, this reminds me of a Toys R Us situation.
[00:24:27] BRENDON BEEBE: Toys R Us was crushing it, got a big investment, debt service payments, uh, crushed them though. And they went bankrupt. Was this a similar situation where it was just simply, um, the debt from acquiring the business, but the business out under, which I, that's probably what it is.
[00:24:46] JARED WARD: Yeah. I would guess that too.
[00:24:49] JARED WARD: Well, I think that's like, we can close that off about jane. com and we can move on to another topic. But, um. Yeah, again, janesellers. com. [00:25:00] Go and purchase some things from those stores. Maybe filter by, you know, the, the top owed amount and just go down the list. There's some really cool products there, especially for females or guys.
[00:25:15] JARED WARD: If you're wanting to buy your wife or significant other or somebody a gift, there's like awesome leggings and beanies and cardigans and
[00:25:23] BRENDON BEEBE: shirts. I know in my family, I talked to my wife over the weekend and we're going to try and buy all our gifts from janesellers. com. We're going to pick, you know, the sellers on there that we like, that were hurt, and uh, see how we can support them.
[00:25:36] BRENDON BEEBE: Um, the other piece we're doing is we want this to go bigger. If we can have 10, 000 people buying one item each, it would leave a huge impact. So tag the Utah businesses around here, get them involved, uh, get them to tag other businesses. I think we can make this go big.
[00:25:54] JARED WARD: I think so too. Um, now pivoting real fast, uh, [00:26:00] because we have, we have Brendan here.
[00:26:06] JARED WARD: So obviously you guys have seen Brendan on ops unfiltered on one of the other episodes, but, um, Brendan is our, our CTO, our chief technology officer. So you've got, um, us together. We're going to talk a little bit about the future of luminous and what are our goals, our plans are for 2024 and. You know, what's changed, um, some of the updates.
[00:26:32] JARED WARD: So, um, yeah, we're, we're closing out a good year at Luminous. Um, A lot has changed. There's a lot of new things in the product. And I think we have a pretty clear roadmap for 2024. So, um, for anybody listening, what are some of the new exciting things about the product that are in the works and will be pushed in 2024?[00:27:00]
[00:27:00] JARED WARD: Like major, major visions.
[00:27:02] BRENDON BEEBE: So one of the big things that we just deployed Is embedded EDI within luminous. There's no need to go find a third party like SPS commerce. We actually have the ability to link up directly with the retailers, which is huge. The majority of businesses we work with have one to two EDI connections and they're paying a third party, you know, a decent sized sum of money just to receive POs and it's not automated.
[00:27:27] BRENDON BEEBE: It doesn't go into their fulfillment. It's kind of just this manual process on the side. And it was, we found an incredible partner who is taking care of a lot of the work behind the scenes. But the fact that we can actually embed that within luminous is huge. And that's one of the motor, it's like exciting, but at a nerd level, I don't know.
[00:27:47] BRENDON BEEBE: I hopefully. Operators and owners respect that, but it's, it's really cool.
[00:27:52] JARED WARD: Yeah, the way I would put it is, if you're, if you're an e commerce brand and you're starting expanding to, I don't know, let's say [00:28:00] you get a purchase order from Costco or from Walmart or Target, like one of these big box retailers, then you know that word EDI.
[00:28:09] JARED WARD: Luminous, instead of like having to do all these things in another platform and then, you know, link it into your system. We can embed it all into one place. So it's just a great experience as you expand to big box retail.
[00:28:23] BRENDON BEEBE: Yeah. On top of that, we're just rolling out, uh, the ability to set up, build materials and assembly orders.
[00:28:29] BRENDON BEEBE: And all of this is. really setting the ground of for Delivering a lot of value next year so as far as like next year and where we're going this idea of multiple warehouses where to fulfill and forecasting and predicting and Purchasing it's we're trying to bring it all together and the use case that I've seen a few times Is you have your FBA warehouse you have your 3PL you [00:29:00] have your own warehouse and you're fulfilling out of all of them You're purchasing from China.
[00:29:04] BRENDON BEEBE: You're doing transfer orders between the three of them And forecasting becomes impossible. And so what we're doing is we now have the ability to consolidate the consumption velocity across all your warehouses, identify which ones need to be fulfilled from your own warehouse, which ones need to be fulfilled from purchase orders, and then giving you suggestions and just making that process as easy as possible.
[00:29:28] BRENDON BEEBE: And so that's the biggest, most exciting thing that's going to come out in Q1 next year.
[00:29:32] JARED WARD: Yeah, to add to that, when we say build materials or assembly orders, I think the main use case there is a lot of e commerce companies, they'll buy, they'll buy raw materials to save money. So what that means for an e commerce company is you need a system that will capture your sales like the SKU.
[00:29:59] JARED WARD: [00:30:00] That, um, is attributed to all of your sales. And then from that, you need a system that will give you the breakdown in a forecast. Like in a lot of systems can just give you a forecast of like, Oh yeah, you need to buy 200 more of this widget based on your sales history and your, your forecast and, and everything that we have project in the future.
[00:30:22] JARED WARD: But bill of materials allows for, okay, yeah, here's all of your sales history. Here's your sales velocity. Here's all of this. Here's all of the raw ingredients that you need to purchase in order to, you know, get that manufactured and assembled and get to your warehouse on time. So that's, that's a big deal.
[00:30:43] JARED WARD: And yeah, a lot of people, they don't even understand what the system needs to do. In order to, to be able to forecast for raw materials like that, but yeah, it's, yeah, super simple, easy to use, built materials that will allow you to forecast raw materials from your sales. [00:31:00] Um, so now something I'm super excited about is what you were alluding to before.
[00:31:07] JARED WARD: Um, really, if, if you're a brand that has multiple warehouses. And sells an FBA. Um, it's, it's somebody's full time job normally to just monitor all of the, all of the transfers and the ins and outs. Like, okay, if you're replenishing Amazon, you know, do you, do you replenish it from China or do you replenish it from your warehouse, your 3PL?
[00:31:37] JARED WARD: Like what data do you need to see? Luminous is building this. This all in one view that will let you drive all of those decisions. It'll show you everything you need to see at a warehouse level, at a product level. And it will, it will help you automate or like make those decisions [00:32:00] really quickly. Right.
[00:32:01] JARED WARD: Which is a big deal for brands who constantly have to transfer to FBA and constantly have to repurchase and replenish their SKUs. Yeah, I think what I'm most excited about is That opens the door for everybody uses the buzzword like AI But really more important than just saying your platform can do AI things It's like what are the use cases this new module that we're that we're building and rolling out it It has the most as the most use cases for AI.
[00:32:43] JARED WARD: Yeah, we're definitely going down the route of Okay, so we've taught our users how to replenish and purchase really easily.
[00:32:52] BRENDON BEEBE: Hmm.
[00:32:53] JARED WARD: I wonder how we can automate that What if you could auto replenish?
[00:32:56] BRENDON BEEBE: Right
[00:32:57] JARED WARD: and like what if we can capture all this [00:33:00] data? Learn from it and then you know be prompting our users to auto replenish FBA auto purchase auto draft all these PO's That's that you're really cool.
[00:33:10] BRENDON BEEBE: And the reason is is like the most The other piece of the software requires some sort of like physical act outside of it. If you're fulfilling orders, you have to go into the warehouse, pick things up, put them in a box. AI can't really replace that. Purchasing is that one act that is completely on the, if your inventory is accurate and your data is accurate, it's completely at a desk, on a computer, and you're looking over the exact same data, looking for the same ideas, spotting flaws, spotting problems in the data, identifying, you know, outliers and things you have to exclude.
[00:33:42] BRENDON BEEBE: Making predictions and just sending them off to the factory and those are all things AI is really good at and so as we build This out with that idea of like how can AI be your co pilot while you're purchasing? That's what we're looking at this next year
[00:33:56] JARED WARD: Yeah, totally I [00:34:00] think, is there anything else on the product update side?
[00:34:04] JARED WARD: Well, I think something, something to realize, um, as Luminous keeps growing in 2024, I think, um, we grew a lot, um, the, the past four months. Um, I think that growth is going to project, or that growth is projected to continue in 2024 month over month. Um, the biggest thing to look out for is we're going to be really loud on LinkedIn, on tech talk on Instagram.
[00:34:30] JARED WARD: We're big on content. So at luminous, we have a culture of content. So all of our employees. Um, they, they make content that is in line with their personal brand and we help promote that personal brand. We, we have a belief that B2B marketing is boring. All of the brands are freaking boring. Uh, people like to buy from people, not from boring businesses.
[00:34:56] JARED WARD: So that's something that we're, we really [00:35:00] promote individuality and developing your own personal brand. And I think that's, that's the thing that's going to Help us win over time and help us ultimately connect to more brands in a meaningful way.
[00:35:13] BRENDON BEEBE: Yeah. And I think the reason why is we aren't just a software tool you spin up and you hope it works.
[00:35:20] BRENDON BEEBE: It's when you're partnering with us, it's, we legitimately care about the success of your business and want to make sure that you're getting as much value as possible from us. And a lot of times that's being on the phone call describing, you know, what we recommend for a pick and pack flow or what we recommend to do in this situation or this situation, or how do you grow?
[00:35:41] BRENDON BEEBE: If this is what you want to do, and it's a very personal experience that we have with all of our customers, and it's not just something we're not a nameless brand, some software you sign up for, and you never hear from us. Hopefully you're talking with us. We're working with you. It's there's not a implementation.
[00:35:57] BRENDON BEEBE: You're live. Goodbye. It's a hey, you're with us. [00:36:00] You're our partner and we're working with you forever
[00:36:02] JARED WARD: Yeah, and I guess last thing I'll say in closing is If you're a luminous brand, we're gonna send out gift baskets this year and you're gonna get some swag So make sure you rock that swag like like I am right now.
[00:36:16] JARED WARD: I've got my shorts my My hoodie. Brendan has, you can do the Superman shows chest. So we're going to send this out if anybody else wants some swag just DM me and Yeah, awesome. So here's to a rockin 2024 Thanks guys. Thanks
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