The fulfillment sector has grown in lockstep with e-commerce because the growth in e-commerce has made logistics sexy. There has also been a heady rush into the industry because of what Amazon has done in the space.

“We’re moving really rapidly to the economy of now,” Erik Volkerink, CEO and co-founder of Trackonomy, told Retail Brew. “It really puts all the dimensions of a supply chain on steroids, from a speed and efficiency standpoint; [everything] needs to happen super fast.”

Over the last three years, fulfillment companies like ShipBob and Flexport have dealt with a lot of transformation in the supply chain. With the height of the Covid-19 pandemic in the past, these companies found other challenges to deal with in 2024, like the rising cost of doing business and a drastic increase in parcel volumes to be shipped. Experts told Retail Brew that for e-commerce deliveries, third-party logistics providers (3PLs), need to rethink the fundamentals, keeping shipments at the center of their universe.

Enter 3PLs: 3PLs handle fulfillment operations for the bulk of the brands that sell online across marketplaces like Amazon. Fulfillment operations in the world of e-commerce brands that earn average revenue anywhere between $10 million to $1 billion are dominated by 3PLs. Smaller brands selling online tend to do fulfillment in-house initially, but once they cross $100,000 in sales, they tend to opt for 3PLs, anecdotally.

“I’d say for a brand that does up to about a billion dollars in sales, it is very common to have all, or at least a significant share, of their fulfillment outsourced to a 3PL,” Matthew Hertz, founder and CEO of Third Person, an AI-powered platform for e-commerce brands or retailers to discover and connect with fulfillment partners, told Retail Brew.

The relationship between an e-commerce brand and its 3PL is “like a marriage,” Hertz said.

Keep reading here.—VC

Walmart is the biggest and (quite literally) bluest retailer in the US, minting hundreds of billions in retail sales and making billions in digital advertising revenue.

In the eyes of advertisers, though, it still doesn’t hold a candle to Amazon.

Even though Walmart has made strides growing its retail media platform, advertisers are still warming up to Walmart’s capabilities this holiday season, media buyers told Marketing Brew.

Keep reading here on Marketing Brew.—RB

While Adam Rymer’s promotion to CFO at Chipotle might have been accelerated—his planned January 2025 appointment was moved up to October 2024—working a wide variety of roles across the company and having an important mentor prepared him to jump right in, he told CFO Brew.

With 15 years’ experience at Chipotle, he’s touched most aspects of the business at some point. His Chipotle tenure “started at one of our most entry-level positions in our support centers,” he said, and he even “spent a few years in HR,” acknowledging that his journey has “been a little more unique than some career paths, especially in finance.”

Keep reading here on CFO Brew.—NP