Well Delivered by Flowspace Episode 1: Growth, Systems, and Scaling with Casey Plachek

Full Transcript

Ben Eachus (00:02.869)
All right. We are live. Well, welcome everyone to the inaugural episode of Well Delivered by Flowspace. My name is Ben Eachus I am the co-founder and CEO of Flowspace, which is a fulfillment platform that helps e-commerce brands store and ship their products closer to their consumers. Joining us on the call is Casey Plachek who has spent the last 15 years optimizing supply chains, first as a consultant and then later working directly with fast growing CPG brands.

Casey Plachek (00:30.018)
It works.

Ben Eachus (00:32.755)
Like Wuffes a pet supplement brand. And most recently she is the VP of operations at Hiya which is a children’s healthcare brand that is rapidly expanding. So Casey, thank you for joining us on the call.

Casey Plachek (00:46.224)
Yeah, thanks for having me.

Ben Eachus (00:49.053)
Awesome. Well, Casey, I just want to know how did you end up in supply chain operations?

Casey Plachek (00:55.566)
It’s always the fun one. So I actually got.

Ben Eachus (00:57.173)
Did you? Yeah, I was gonna say did you dream of it as a kid you’re gonna be in supply chain

Casey Plachek (01:02.958)
No, no, no, no. I actually thought I was gonna end up in marketing after I went to business school. But funny enough, I actually started my career in, it’s called ISE, so Industrial Systems Engineering. And then somehow I got talked over into the business school. And then the business school is like, we basically have that degree with the business degree. And that’s kind of how I ended up here. But I feel like everyone has like one really good professor that convinces them to go down their career path.

I had mine at college at Ohio State and he was just like, you’re like made for this because it’s the perfect combination of doing something with critical thinking and analytics. But you’re also doing a lot of piecing together a big puzzle and trying to solve it on the fly. And that really is what supply chain is, is the mix of interacting with people, influencing people, looking at numbers, coming up with an analytical plan, and then trying to figure out how all the pieces go together and putting them into action.

Ben Eachus (02:02.203)
I totally agree. from my perspective, one of the things that I loved about it was how mathematical it can be. But then also all of the things that you’re working on touch physical products and people that are moving these products. So it’s kind of this unique combination where you need an analytical background, but you also need to be good with working with teams cross-functionally. it’s exciting. So, so you had this amazing professor at Ohio state. How

Casey Plachek (02:08.674)
Okay.

Casey Plachek (02:23.809)
Yeah.

Ben Eachus (02:30.015)
How did you get your start? Like what was your first role in supply chain?

Casey Plachek (02:33.389)
Yeah, so I’ve always been in the natural products industry my entire career. I’ve been into better for you products just because I myself am a type one diabetic and I have celiac disease. So since I was like 12 years old, I’ve always been reading nutrition fact panels or supplement fact panels and just really interested in like what I put in my body and what it does for me. So when I was in college, I was actually looking at like the product labels at Whole Foods and I found

a company that was called Real and Wonderful. They went by Raw and they made these dehydrated macaroons and snack crackers. And they were in Columbus, Ohio at my local Whole Foods. So I literally just emailed them and was like, hey, can I come work at your production facility? Like I need a part-time job. I’m in college right now. And they were just like, sure, come and learn dehydration. So I worked in that facility doing everything from line work, packaging, mixing, blending,

fulfillment of orders for Whole Foods and got this really tangible like real world experience the first three years of what I consider my career because it really got me interested at like the small scale like how you build into something much larger scale but I got to actually do it which to some degree really helps you put things in perspective when you’re building a brand like where do you even start and get to the next level so it was a really good fundamental training to get used to.

what small business looked like. And then after that, I got my first corporate internship with James Smucker in Orville, Ohio. And I got to see at the time what was like one of the most automated facilities I’ve ever been into where they had robotics for already like 80 to 90 % of the facility. And this is back in like 2013. So it really has come a very long ways and it was really cool just to see even like here I am today.

Here’s the future and then there’s this whole gamut of like the in-between world and that’s kind of where I work now.

Ben Eachus (04:32.5)
That is super cool and I love that you got your start physically on the line and actually can I’m sure it helps you at least Visualize some of the things that you’re working on like the lines on this spreadsheet Yeah

Casey Plachek (04:38.658)
Mm-hmm.

Casey Plachek (04:42.198)
Yeah, visualize and problem solve for sure. Yeah. And you learned a lot about like, I’m going through like, poka yoke college, I’m going through learning about how you write things for equipment. So it was like we were going over how do we go from scooping out macaroons with an ice cream scooper to making them more into like a puck so they could go through the machine and become more automated, just even like

being a part of that really helps your brain going in that right direction. Like how do I actually like change things to make sense for what we can do and like what the customer wants at the same time.

Ben Eachus (05:13.94)
That is super cool. I’m sure seeing it at Smucker, was almost like, this is what you can aspire to be in many years, right? And kind of building. So you like see what good looks like, but then I think a lot of your career has been spent at these like emerging brands that are scaling, right? And kind of providing that guideline or guidelines to get there.

Casey Plachek (05:22.728)
Yeah, yeah, of course.

Mm-hmm.

Casey Plachek (05:32.492)
Yeah.

Casey Plachek (05:36.534)
Yeah, yeah, there’s a whole, there’s a whole gamut between like a $1 in sales and 100 million. And then there’s a whole other thing from 100 to 500. And then after a bill, it’s just like, you know, I’m expecting lots of robotic picking and manufacturing at that point.

Ben Eachus (05:54.005)
You know, I had a business school professor and you know, I had kind of dreamed of starting my own company and all that. And one of the things he said was that if you want to start your own company, uh, you know, the, the most common starting place for that is to work at a company with less than a hundred people. Uh, and then you go do it. And I always wondered, that never quite made sense to me. And then I joined at a smaller company. And I think it’s because you can kind of see how the sausage is made. There’s no like.

Casey Plachek (06:00.334)
Mm-hmm.

Casey Plachek (06:10.082)
Yeah.

Casey Plachek (06:20.529)
Yeah.

Ben Eachus (06:20.698)
separate separate departments Your hands are kind of in everything. And it sounds like you got that experience with the Whole Foods vendor there.

Casey Plachek (06:25.676)
Yeah.

Casey Plachek (06:30.068)
for sure. That was the intro. There’s lots more intricacies that happened over the years.

Ben Eachus (06:35.252)
For sure. you know, guess like Casey, so from there, from Smucker, it sounds like you started your own consulting firm to help brands with some of these scaling problems. Could you maybe just talk about like why companies would hire you, what you focused on? I have a million follow-up questions too, but.

Casey Plachek (06:45.495)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Casey Plachek (06:56.213)
Yeah, there’s a million. Yeah, it actually starts back a little bit sooner than that though. So my first job out of college was being a replenishment buyer for Whole Foods in Florida. So this kind of got me on to the retailer side and got to work in a retail distribution center setting, got to see more of how the distribution side of food went.

And just got me privy to like, what are buyers even looking for, right? Like everyone has this aspiration, the CPG, the natural CPG space, Whole Foods is still like the golden egg. Like everyone wants to get there. So that helped to give me a lot more insight into the sales and marketing piece of like, what do we even need to do knowing the operational side of how we get there? What does it need to be the end goal? And then from there, it’s like,

Ben Eachus (07:31.379)
Yeah.

Casey Plachek (07:46.286)
I kind of drifted into the beauty space for a while, still working in distribution and manufacturing, but eventually came back and worked for another consulting firm, as you said, like work for someone to see how it works. So back in 2019, I worked for a startup called Siddhi They’re still around. They’ve kind of become more of a venture capital company now, but they were doing honestly what I ended up doing really similar. It was, you you work with brands as kind of like a fractional

Ben Eachus (07:59.39)
Mm-hmm.

Casey Plachek (08:16.247)
consultant slash you’re an N time person you’re working there some of the time they don’t need you full time They pay fractional what they would pay for you to be a full-time equivalent but truthfully I had a really great boss who I still love to this day and she kind of got me more on the scrappy side of like learning like how do you even build a supply chain where do you start what’s necessary what’s not it was in this period that I got introduced to

what I’m gonna call like mini ERP systems. Everything I had known were the big systems of JD Edwards, SAP, Sage X3. And I got to know Dear, Syncore 7, some of these other like small processing platforms, like literally how to set them up and integrate them with Shopify. And at this point in life, it was also like my first time getting introduced to Shopify, which everyone knows now, but in 2019, I never worked within the website. I’ve always worked on the backend.

Ben Eachus (09:11.335)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Casey Plachek (09:12.649)
So 2020 was really the evolution of getting more into the technical side for me and like learning what technically had to be done to make something, move it, and then distribute it. So 2020 was totally a building year. I can say for sure like a lot of stuff I knew coming from corporate did not apply to small business at all. It was like

Ben Eachus (09:25.427)
Mm-hmm.

Casey Plachek (09:36.514)
having to relearn the why before everything versus when you’re in corporate, you kind of just do and that’s your job. But when you’re in small business, you really have to take the time to just like learn how and why. And I think that was the biggest mindset shift, but also like from my personality type, it was so much more fulfilling because I wasn’t just regurgitating information I knew, I was building and learning every single day.

Ben Eachus (09:43.28)
Yo.

Casey Plachek (10:03.118)
So it’s like if you’re someone that really struggles in like work with like doing repetition, corporate’s probably not for you. You’re gonna love the small business side. If the repetition and like steady paced is what you need, then corporate’s much better than this side. But for me, I was just craving something else. I’m like, I wanna learn more. I wanna cap out. So working in the small business side, working with Siddhi really got me introduced to like what it takes to actually like build a brand, whether it was

setting up the logistics, doing the pickups, setting up a 3PL, finding new co-packers, learning label and regulatory, getting exposed to different types of problems that you can have in production, right? If it’s refrigerated, frozen, a sauce, a meat, there’s so many different parameters you can hit and you have to learn these little things for each of them. And then honestly, at some point, it was just like my company wanted to become more of a venture capital firm.

I was kind of ready to work with some smaller clients and even what they took on. So I started out on my own in 2021 and became a consultant kind of doing what I was doing before. But what I changed up was kind of just letting people tell me like, treat me as a project manager, tell me what you need help with, which was an interesting few years because the stuff people came to me to started to get more repetitious, but it was really varied.

Like I had everything from a couple startups that hadn’t even done a quarter million dollars to startups that were doing about 150 million and everything in between. At first I thought, you know, I’m going to help a lot more of the smaller guys, but the truth was with tackling that audience, they had a lot harder time paying me what I needed. So then I started to go to kind of a middle tier and I will say this whole time I’m very, very, very niche. I’m like, I’m supply chain.

Ben Eachus (11:32.788)
Mm-hmm.

Ben Eachus (11:44.275)
Sure.

Casey Plachek (11:51.765)
I’m natural products. I can help in some areas, but I’m really trying to stick to food. If it’s not food, I might not be the right consultant. So it was very narrow, all referral based, absolutely no marketing besides posting on LinkedIn every day, which truly built my personal brand up quite a bit. And just kind of took whatever projects I got. So I got quite a bit in the forecasting space and just helping people plan production runs.

measure it out against cashflow, kind of know like what’s coming in, what’s going out, what’s the minimum viable product that we need to put out on the market to get that wheel going. To a lot of ERP systems, I got paid quite a bit to just set up Dear systems and teach teams how to use it. I got paid to fix other systems that they had hired much more expensive people than me to integrate, but they never really learned how to match an ERP system to what’s physically being done.

Ben Eachus (12:40.221)
Sure.

Casey Plachek (12:49.492)
So my whole thing I learned in corporate was just like always mimic the system to what you’re physically doing. Same applies to warehouse management systems. It was really just a mix of taking whatever people wanted. Looking back, if I had to do it differently, I would probably not have even bothered with companies below 10 million. I probably would have focused on the bigger ones. I probably would have diversified a lot more than I did and gone into a couple other niches and kind of expanded like my knowledge house.

onto different product lines and stuff.

Ben Eachus (13:18.867)
Sure.

Well, a couple of the things that you mentioned that I just want to kind of drill into a little more is this idea. You mentioned you had a really good boss, at one of your previous roles. And, know, I think for me personally, I I’ve had the benefit of working under really great people before and just learning a ton. And I think with supply chains specifically, it is something where there is like this tribal knowledge as well of like,

Casey Plachek (13:31.359)
Yeah.

Casey Plachek (13:41.9)
Yeah.

Ben Eachus (13:50.142)
Cause there’s a pattern recognition of problems that you’ve seen and picking people’s brains about how they solve it. But I was curious, like, what did this person do for you? Like, What did, what did you learn from them? Because I like, I always think it’s really helpful and I can tell you some of the things that I’ve learned, but, yeah, just curious.

Casey Plachek (13:54.208)
Yeah.

Casey Plachek (14:01.142)
Hahaha

Yeah.

Casey Plachek (14:09.192)
Yeah, I see this is where it’s funny. It’s like she didn’t really. She did show me some basics, but her whole thing was like she was obsessed with rhinos. There’s this book about learning how to Rhino and the whole premise of this book that she was trying to get to me is learn how you learn or learn how you learn best. So she was just like her biggest message to me was like stop waiting for someone to tell you what to do and go figure it out.

And that was probably the biggest piece of advice from her that I took that I didn’t even realize I was kind of sitting in this complacent space waiting for people to tell me what I need to do when I had all the knowledge to go figure it out. And even today, I still follow that mindset that she kind of ingrained in me of like, you just got to try things and figure it out. And then as soon as you figure it out, you suddenly become the knowledge expert of it and everyone will come to you for that.

Ben Eachus (14:45.319)
Mm-hmm.

Ben Eachus (15:01.575)
sure.

Casey Plachek (15:03.328)
And then as soon as you get in that wheel and you’re just starting to do it over and over again, you get confident that it’s the way you need to move about the world and like you can keep learning new things.

Ben Eachus (15:13.043)
Totally. That’s, that’s such good advice is like, you know, it’s not like hands off. Obviously there’s guard rails, but I think some of the best leaders that I’ve worked with have really just said, look, I trust you go, go figure it out and research it. and that’s been so helpful. the other question I had for you and you’re coming from a big corporation and you’re going to work for companies that are just starting out. Right. And obviously.

Casey Plachek (15:16.492)
Mm-hmm.

Casey Plachek (15:27.883)
Yeah.

Ben Eachus (15:42.43)
You’re working at these companies because you believe in the mission you believe in that they could be really big. One of the things that struck me from coming from a bigger corporation to then startup land, in working for a fast growing direct to consumer company is that everything, even in supply chain was a sales pitch, right? You’re convincing a co-manufacturer to work with you. You’re convincing a 3PL that your volume is going to grow over time and you’re

Casey Plachek (16:07.852)
100%.

Ben Eachus (16:12.487)
you’re almost pitching the promise of what it could be rather than what you are today. Right. And I’m just curious, like from your perspective, running supply chains for these companies, any pieces of advice when, when dealing with vendors and people that you need to kind of, they may be vendors of yours, but you still need them to believe in you and what you’re doing. So curious, like how you’d approach that.

Casey Plachek (16:17.003)
Yeah.

Casey Plachek (16:32.96)
Yeah, there’s, yeah, it depends too at what point we’re talking about. You’re coming into the picture that advice you take if you’re under a million in sales is you’re going to prepay everything. It’s just kind of part of the game now and people have gotten burnt. Like you have to have the cash kind of ready to go. It’s not the same way it was 10 years ago, but even on

Ben Eachus (16:40.818)
Yeah.

Ben Eachus (16:47.815)
Yo.

Casey Plachek (16:55.66)
Like the other side, if you’re like a $50 million company that barely has credit, that’s also something I’ve ran into where they were too cash heavy and they never established credit to be able to have like, let’s say $100,000, $200,000 line of credit open. And it really goes back to like the best approach was always have the numbers make sense. So at least with like the retail side when we’re talking forecasting, it’s like.

being realistic of has the buyer issued a PO, what day are they actually issuing it, how many stores did they promise, what’s the typical velocity in that. So at least we can put some basic numbers and logic behind what we’re saying versus just being like, we expect 10,000, but there’s no logic behind it. There still has to be a baseline of logic, and I feel like that’s still the best way to go about planning is you get basic logic. If someone asks, I should be able to give them enough

Ben Eachus (17:40.179)
Sure.

Ben Eachus (17:47.047)
Yep.

Casey Plachek (17:51.104)
reason that is not just my personal opinion, but a reason why we got to those numbers. And usually that helps to convince people that you’re at least thinking in a rational, logical way. That’s not just, we’re going to be the next great thing. So the thing is, anyone you go into business with, if you go under, like they’re not getting paid, so they’re taking their own risk by helping you and trying to be realistic with yourself of like how these grow, how slotting fees work. Even with D2C, it’s a whole different game where it’s like,

How much are you willing to spend in CAC? What are you willing to spend per day? Trying to figure out these metrics of how it converts. Like having some baseline understanding definitely helps people lend you credit, whether it’s through the credit lines or through money or raising. You just have to have a baseline understanding of what you’re getting into in today’s world versus what it was. So if these things you don’t understand, in my opinion, it’s always better to work for someone else, get paid to learn them.

and then go build your thing versus too many people come into it not really knowing the basics and I think that’s where you get in more trouble.

Ben Eachus (18:58.439)
That totally makes sense. And you fit on so many good points around, you know, like having a plausible forecast. And it’s not to say you’re going to hit every forecast, but it’s like kind of showing your work because I do think generally vendors in the supply chain with us, your co-manufacturer or your fulfillment provider, or, anyone else that’s touching your products wants to do a good job for you. Right. And they want to understand your business so that they can.

Casey Plachek (19:24.393)
Yeah.

Ben Eachus (19:25.619)
price more competitively so they can staff it appropriately so that they can understand kind of where you’re going. Like is your dream to be in wholesale and can we work with you on some payment terms? Like things like that I think are so helpful. And I think the longer I’m in this space, the more I kind of appreciate that supply chain is not this isolated box, right? It’s like it touches every other group in the

Casey Plachek (19:52.811)
Thank you.

Ben Eachus (19:55.549)
in the company. and especially for DTC, it’s like your marketing

Casey Plachek (19:56.78)
Yeah, especially for a D to speed. It’s like your marketing can be great, but if the end product someone gets is garbage, it’s just, or if the experience is garbage, it truly does not matter. They will not buy again. So it’s, it’s the most underseen thing that matters the most that it’s hard to get people to wrap their head around. Like there’s a lot more going on here than just building and shipping something.

Ben Eachus (20:21.284)
for sure. i think it’s, that’s why I’m always wary of anyone who calls themselves an expert, right? Because it changes so dynamically and there’s always

Casey Plachek (20:27.275)
But it’s the one thing people but it’s the one thing people are least likely to call themselves experts. I feel like none of us feel like an expert because every week I learn something new still and I’m like, right now it’s international and what we’re going through at Hiya and I’m like, I didn’t know any of this six months ago. Now I feel like the relative expert on my team.

Ben Eachus (20:31.954)
I think there’s.

Ben Eachus (20:42.516)
You

Yes. Just when you call yourself an expert, there will be some exception that will be truly, truly humbling for it for you. well, maybe we can talk a little about that on the international expansion. So many great brands start, start in the U S and that’s an amazing market. There’s obviously, a lot of money spent on these types of products, but can you share any learnings of, when, when are you ready to take that next step and maybe sell your products in

Casey Plachek (20:51.211)
Yes.

Casey Plachek (20:56.479)
Mm hmm. Yeah.

Ben Eachus (21:14.556)
other areas of North America or Europe or how do you think about that?

Casey Plachek (21:17.417)
Yeah, yeah, I think it kind of breaks down into like two questions because I think the first piece you have to ask yourself is like, what am I doing in the US first if you are a US brand? Like, are you DTC or are you retail? Because it’s two very different paths and almost anyone that tries to do both immediately usually fails. And even doing retail locally is still different than doing DTC nationally. So just kind of figuring out like what way do you want to go?

Ben Eachus (21:43.176)
Mm-hmm.

Casey Plachek (21:46.38)
Where do you want to put your eggs? Like that’s piece one. I think at some point you max that out as much as you can with where you’re at. Most people I’m seeing are still leaning towards DTC, but you know, CAC’s gotten a lot more expensive. The last few brands I worked with consulting or on this side, you’re looking at CACs anywhere from like 100 to 150 seem like they’re becoming more normal depending on the size of the company. And it’s like.

Ben Eachus (22:00.574)
Mm-hmm.

Casey Plachek (22:12.533)
Can a small business do that versus trying to get into your local retail? Maybe, but it just depends. So it’s like first exploring, are we ready to go outside the US or would I rather take on that other channel? I think that’s question one. And then if you’re like, I don’t want to go outside this channel, what does international look like? And that’s been kind of where Hiya’s been at the last six months. Our parent company is obviously very international, mainly in Asia.

Ben Eachus (22:16.34)
Mm-hmm.

Ben Eachus (22:25.896)
Mm-hmm.

Casey Plachek (22:40.253)
So they were very much encouraging us to go international. So we are launching two new countries. I don’t know if I’m at liberty to say yet, so I won’t say who, but it will be in Q1 of 26. Yeah, we will be launching two new countries. And just in the last six months alone, I can say it’s, you need the team. You can’t just do this with two people. There is absolutely no way, because even hiring consultants, we’ve gotten conflicting answers.

Ben Eachus (22:47.836)
Yeah, don’t, don’t, yeah, share anything. Yes.

Casey Plachek (23:06.155)
And the thing of it is with international, even as our parent company’s learning too, like everything’s changing right now. There’s so many active laws that are changing. Just the differences in NAFTA weren’t crazy, but even the USMCA agreement is slightly different and it requires slightly different paperwork than what anyone has really done before. Obviously with Brexit in the UK, there’s multiple things that have changed.

Canada, everyone always seems to think is really easy. And then you get into the work of what it takes to register of Health Canada and actually get into Canada and be compliant. And it’s not as simple as anyone ever thinks it is. So I think the first part is being realistic of like, does my team even have the bandwidth, the people I’m giving it to? Do they have the time to thoroughly research this? And then figure out like,

Ben Eachus (23:46.068)
Sure.

Casey Plachek (23:57.321)
what’s realistic in timelines. I would say from my experience this last year, it can be done in six months to launch a company or a country. But realistically, if we were doing at a pace where I thought like it wasn’t like all hands on deck or we had a smaller team, it would probably be about a year. And that’s just to get it right. There’s so many things of compliance where you hear of brands getting into countries and they’re immediately getting slapped on the hand because they didn’t do something correctly. Whatever it is. And it’s like,

Ben Eachus (24:17.438)
Sure.

Ben Eachus (24:24.638)
Sure.

Casey Plachek (24:27.09)
One of the biggest things with Europe, where it’s like a lot of brands look at Europe as a whole, and Europe as a whole is not the right way to look at trying to distribute. Every country has different laws, especially in food, different requirements for labeling, different ingredients are acceptable in one place and not another. And then you get into some of the regulatory laws and you’re just looking at a very mixed bag. So of course you can export from the US into those countries, but there is a certain point with volume.

it does make more sense to go to those countries and distribute from there and be compliant. And you have to make the call. Do I want to keep paying the export fees and the import and then pay for the shipping air fridding? Or would I rather go into these countries, put the time behind it, be compliant? Like once you’re in a lot of these countries, the shipping is actually fairly cheap compared to the US. It’s just, you gotta have enough volume to make it make sense.

Ben Eachus (25:21.854)
Yeah, no, that totally makes sense. And it’s such a good observation that like your work stream kind of shifts more into this regulatory or compliance kind of stream, which probably in your day to day US business is not the biggest concern, right? Cause

Casey Plachek (25:32.305)
Yeah.

Casey Plachek (25:36.338)
Yeah, yeah, I think at least from what I’ve seen, the biggest differentiation has definitely been on the organic side. And I’ve seen multiple brands talk about it kind of on LinkedIn too in the last few months where the EU does not recognize organic the same way the USDA does. So you’ve got all these challenges with trying to prove your product’s even organic certified to get through a customs agent that don’t exist here in the US but like is a completely different system in the EU of proving it.

It just, it definitely has not been as simple as I thought it would be, but I’m really excited that we’re finally getting to launch some new countries and see how it goes. Hopefully they love Hiya as much as the U.S. does.

Ben Eachus (26:21.012)
Awesome. Well, one other thing that you said, as kind of the decision process of when to go international, you had mentioned kind of when you think maybe the U S market is tapped out in terms of channels of growth. you know, the Casey, you have a ton of experience, launching brands, either from direct to consumer and going to wholesale or wholesale brands launching direct to consumer. I hear this almost on a weekly basis. So the brands that we’re speaking to is that.

Casey Plachek (26:33.961)
Yeah.

Ben Eachus (26:50.59)
They’re on the cusp of launching into a big retail channel or that’s on the roadmap. So what things can a brand do, especially a direct to consumer brand to kind of get ready for that next phase? Because there’s the systems are different. Maybe the cashflow, the working capital is a lot different. The team, the expertise you need is a little different. So maybe just talk through some of these big considerations as you’re expanding in to wholesale.

Casey Plachek (27:03.166)
Yeah.

Casey Plachek (27:14.868)
Hmm.

Casey Plachek (27:19.166)
Yeah, there’s a lot to it. I think the first piece there is what you kind of just alluded to. It’s asking, do we have the right team in place? Because that’s usually the piece that gets overlooked the most. And there has to be like a real settling of like, do we have the right talent to even be able to manage this? And that’s sometimes a harder question. That’s just kind of the growth question in general. So I feel like most DTC brands I know hit this plateau somewhere between like 80 to 160 million. And obviously that is successful. That’s a great company.

But a lot of the companies seemed to plateau at that point of D2C and they were like, okay, next step’s retail. So if you’re looking at it from that lens, you still do need to critically ask yourself, do we have the right leadership? The second phase is like, does our product even make sense? are we like retail compliant? And that’s an interesting one because D2C is so unregulated.

what you’re putting on a shelf is gonna have a different look than what you’re selling online and it could cannibalize your sales. So then you have to look at like, how do we differentiate between the two channels? Because you don’t wanna just take what you’re selling online and change the packaging and then sell it in stores, especially if you’re subscription-based. So it’s also getting the right people to look at your labels, see if you’re compliant. California especially, where we are is

an interesting state to learn retail compliance on and get yourself educated and have truthfully a good lawyer review it that understands Prop 65 and a lot of these labeling requirements. Just in general, i think I don’t know if I would go into retail anymore unless you’ve got a good roadmap out beyond one store of how you’re going to build and fulfill into it because the

Distribution partners you have to go through along with the retail slotting fees and the logistics are just a completely different game than what you do in D 2 C it. You really need to have someone that knows what they’re doing and has that like three year plan in place.

Ben Eachus (29:17.044)
So I think what you’re saying is you can’t just kind of, this can’t be a side project, right? no, absolutely not.

Casey Plachek (29:22.504)
No, absolutely not. It’s got a, that’s where I kind of get into, you have to ask yourself, do we want to go international DTC or do we want to go retail? Cause both are going to require you to have more resources than you have in that moment in time. And you gotta decide which way your team feels more aligned with. Cause I’d say there’s pros and cons to both. You’re not competing with your own product if you’re doing international, but you know, retail does have the potential to make

millions if you do it right and strategically and they’re combining distribution resources and you know you’re getting enough volume going through some of these groups like UNFI and KeHE it could make sense. it’s always better but you know you’d have to establish a really good presence online before anyone’s going to be able to put you into their stores directly.

Ben Eachus (30:13.46)
that’s really great insight. I, the thing that struck me having gone through that experience at a brand where we started direct to consumer to go to, to wholesale is just how different those worlds are in terms of, you know, with wholesale, there’s a, you have to hold a minimum quantity of, of safety stock, right? That has implications on your, your cashflow. the tech stack is different, which I didn’t appreciate, right? Like you’re, you’re now talking about EDI and I remember

Casey Plachek (30:40.147)
Yeah.

Ben Eachus (30:43.262)
There was a meeting where we’re talking to some of our developers who focused mainly on the direct to consumer side. they’re like, what is EDI? And you’re explaining it’s like, well, it’s this thing that was developed in the seventies, but all of your healthcare records and all of retail is run on this system. So it’s just, it’s a change and you definitely need to invest in it in order to scale it. but add to your point when done right, can be just this major

Casey Plachek (30:43.347)
Mm-hmm.

Casey Plachek (30:52.315)
Yeah.

Casey Plachek (31:02.002)
Yeah.

Ben Eachus (31:12.382)
growth lever for you.

Casey Plachek (31:14.469)
Yeah, for sure. If you hire the right team, I think that’s like my biggest takeaway. Everyone that expanded into has done it well has hired a completely separate team than the one that already existed to execute these other channels.

Ben Eachus (31:29.076)
Sure. Yeah. It’s just a very, it’s almost like a, know, in B2B sales, right? It’s a different sales channel that you’re going into. Um, so Casey, just kind of, um, looking forward a bit, um, what’s, what’s exciting you about your role today? Like what are some of the exciting challenges that you’re working on and maybe what are you looking forward to in the next couple of years?

Casey Plachek (31:35.582)
All

Casey Plachek (31:39.079)
Yum.

Casey Plachek (31:51.166)
Mmm.

Ben Eachus (31:58.035)
trends that you’re seeing, anything like that.

Casey Plachek (32:00.208)
Yeah, no, I think one of the more exciting pieces I’ve worked on through the international Project and our partner is that we’re going to be working with in the UK for distribution is really similar to how Smucker’s was where you walk into their facility and 90 % of it’s automated. The only thing that is not automated is our like kitting of our month one kits at Hiya So I’m really excited to just see kind of this full on.

Ben Eachus (32:17.812)
Mm-hmm.

Casey Plachek (32:28.105)
automation starting to progress forward. I think it’s going to become really popular in the next 10 years. I know it’s definitely expensive to implement. I still don’t know how many millions of dollars of robotics I got to see, but it is an interesting thing that is starting to change. And I’ve seen more groups offering it. And the COGs have been lowered on fulfillment order fees by about 40 to 50 % over what I pay for manual picking and packing in the US.

Ben Eachus (32:56.308)
Mm-hmm.

Casey Plachek (32:57.465)
So I do think we are going to see the rise of like more systemic automation, fulfillment, pick towers, conveyor belts going into trucks. I think that is the future of what we’re going to see. After that though, I’m really curious with like, truthfully, just consumer patterns, especially with the Gen Z market, because everything we’re doing is totally antiquated with boomers, millennials.

I want things the way I want it. I want it quick. I want it specialized, customized, whatever. But I am curious with them if they start to change the habits of the industry just because they start realizing like, this is putting out a ton of cardboard for me to get something delivered to my box. It goes against saving, you know, the planet. We’re all delivering our own customized packages to our house. I’m just kind of like.

Ben Eachus (33:42.782)
Sure.

Casey Plachek (33:47.689)
I’m curious to see if we see an evolution slightly backwards where we’re seeing more consolidation 10 plus years from now than we do today or if we’re going to see something that I might not even have on my radar yet.

Ben Eachus (34:00.315)
interesting. And first off, I don’t know if millennials are old, Casey, like, you know, I think we have some ways to go there, but you’re saying that basically like some of this like ultra fast delivery kind of initiatives, right? I want the product immediately. Obviously. yeah

Casey Plachek (34:06.028)
Hahaha!

Casey Plachek (34:17.457)
Yeah, I think that’s the next 10 years. And then after that, I’m really i’m really not sure as like Gen Z starts to replace Boomers in the marketplace. I am curious to see if we see like a shift backwards where it’s going to be more consolidation towards like retail.

Ben Eachus (34:32.04)
That’s super interesting. Yeah. Cause like the last 20 years have all, since I’ve been in the space of all pushed towards faster and faster and faster. But obviously that has impact where you’re shipping, you know, I don’t know if I need a toothbrush in like two hours, right? Like, that’s inefficient to pack that on a truck and deliver. So that’ll be really, really interesting. I was wondering also from a technology standpoint, any,

Casey Plachek (34:38.537)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Ben Eachus (35:00.2)
Aside from automation, any particular tools that you’re using or evaluating that are exciting to you that you think have a lot of promise. i know there’s a lot of talk about AI and all of these things, but curious what you’re seeing like in your daily life.

Casey Plachek (35:13.137)
yeah.

Casey Plachek (35:16.905)
Yeah, I truthfully am probably not the best person to answer this because we’re still using tools that are a little bit on the older end. I mean, we are just now implementing NetSuite. We’re moving away from SYNC Core 7. We’re using an Oracle system that’s been around for a while called Demantra. So we’re integrating Demantra with NetSuite to do MRP planning.

Ben Eachus (35:29.598)
Sure.

Casey Plachek (35:41.129)
But in terms of what we’re doing day to day, it’s really just been exploring more through our co-packing partners and through our distribution partners, I think has had the most progress forward. That is the more exciting piece of what’s going on right now with the automated picking and pick towers and conveyor belts and being able to ship within two hours of getting an order. i think that’s kind of more of where I’m seeing the future going right now. And it’s 90 % less people than what I see in most DCs right now.

Ben Eachus (36:11.732)
That’s super interesting. you think more of the automation for physical activities is obviously first and then Yeah.

Casey Plachek (36:19.655)
Yeah, just right now though, because I feel like that’s where the cost is right now for fulfillment and shipping. So getting that under control is why the focus is there. But I do think we’re starting to use more automation, especially in like chatbots for customer service and whatnot. But even then, I am curious to see if there’s going to be more AI suggestions towards products and things in the future that will start targeting.

Ben Eachus (36:25.682)
Yeah.

Ben Eachus (36:34.291)
Yeah.

Casey Plachek (36:46.885)
even just a new market segment of like what pushes people to our website to buy if it’s just AI generated suggestions of like products to solve for like problems with kids.

Ben Eachus (36:57.652)
For sure. No, that, that makes a lot of sense. i think, one of the use cases that surprised us when we released an AI feature at our platform was that, many customer service teams of merchants that we support are big users of the product and they were asking questions in their native languages. So whether it be Spanish or, Vietnamese, they would ask the questions in, in the tool, in their language and we wouldn’t have to localize any of that.

Casey Plachek (37:23.785)
There it is.

Ben Eachus (37:27.58)
And that was cool because the product just responded in the same language. i didn’t anticipate that. yeah, it’s like we didn’t plan for that, but that’s what happened. And I guess the other thing that I hear you saying is like, you know, Excel is the, the widest, I guess the, most adopted supply chain tool there is right. And any pure software products in the supply chain or fulfillment, especially.

Casey Plachek (37:27.869)
Mm-hmm.

Casey Plachek (37:32.967)
That is really cool.

Casey Plachek (37:50.227)
Yeah.

Ben Eachus (37:56.252)
Need to be faster, better, and more reliable than Excel. Right. And I think like operators just love it because they can see their assumptions. you know, many people who’ve been using it every day have shortcuts. It’s not that taxing. so it’s gonna be really interesting to see what that replacement is. if anything. Yeah.

Casey Plachek (38:01.096)
Yeah.

Casey Plachek (38:15.112)
Yeah, there’s definitely some needs in it. And truthfully, I probably just haven’t done a great job of going out there to seek solutions. But even with documentation and supply chain, just sourcing and showing all the paperwork throughout the supply chain in one place and being able to organize that, there’s a lot of opportunities for things to get way more smooth than they are today, especially if doing importation and customs. It’s just.

I don’t know if it doesn’t exist or the right people haven’t solved it yet, but there’s plenty of challenges just with paperwork streamlining that definitely could use some AI improvements.

Ben Eachus (38:46.485)
Sure.

Ben Eachus (38:51.989)
Totally. And I think like the next step after that is ensuring that you know, it can talk to the systems that you already have in place. Like an ERP is like your, your financial system of record. It’s tough to use all these points solutions where they’re not fully integrated. It often just creates more work for the teams. so, I guess, you know, just with some, some closing thoughts, Casey, I’m to put you on the spot here.

Casey Plachek (39:02.344)
Yeah.

Casey Plachek (39:21.05)
Yeah, go for it.

Ben Eachus (39:22.133)
What is the thing that you’re most looking forward to in 2026? It’s the end of the year. We should be reflective here. So what’s 2026 for you?

Casey Plachek (39:27.398)
Mmm.

Truthfully, truthfully I’m eloping in February, so that is what I’m most looking forward to is eloping with my future husband and we’re eloping in France. So that is what I’m personally looking forward to the most. it’s right in the middle of, yeah, it’s a big one. It’s right in the middle of two country launches and a retail launch. What can go wrong?

Ben Eachus (39:44.157)
That’s a big one.

Ben Eachus (39:52.807)
I thought you were going to talk about some new supply chain tools. that, that probably is a better, a better reason to be excited. Well, that’s awesome. Congratulations. and Casey, i just wanted to thank you for joining us on our inaugural podcast here. Well delivered by flow space. So thank you so much. And if I don’t speak to you, happy new year and I look forward to talking to you in 2026.

Casey Plachek (39:56.71)
Yeah.

Thank you.

Casey Plachek (40:11.556)
Yes!

Thank you so much.

Casey Plachek (40:22.611)
Sounds good, Ben Thank you. Bye.

Ben Eachus (40:24.777)
See ya.