How to Take Your Brand Global in 2027 (Without Tying Up Your Cash)

side of e-commerce, digital marketing, and building consumer brands. I'm your host Nick Sharma, I've spent the last nine years building, scaling, and investing in brands, and through this show in my weekly newsletter at nip.co/email, I'm here to share everything I've learned. The wins, the losses, the experiments, the tactics, and the insights, also you can unlock

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Brands like Kitch use triple whale, book a demo at triple whale.com/limitedSupply. That's TRIP LEWHALE.com/limitedSupply. Welcome back to another episode of Limited Supply, I'm your host Nick Sharma, and today, I've got a really fun episode with a long time friend of mine, Izzy. He started a logistics company called Portless, and he's just a master of logistics.

He got into this because he was a brand guy and had a few different brands.

One of them was, or his last one, was basically shipping drones globally, and he would

manufacture in China and basically ship globally, so he ended up building a really deep logistics network that goes, you know, last mile around the world, and that's kind of how he turned it into his company portless today, but we talked all about basically international expansion, how to go, when to go, when is the right time, what kind of products are the right ones?

You know, what kind of incremental revenue can you expect by doing so, how to do it from an advertising standpoint, it was a really in-depth, really thorough, fun conversation. So, a great informative conversation, I hope you enjoyed. If you have any questions, you can reach out to me on Twitter at Mr. Sharma, or reach out to Izzy Direct, and you know, one of us will make sure we get back to you.

But I hope you enjoyed today's episode, and let me know what you think. Izzy, we've known each other for, man, how many years now?

“I think since the right, right before Portless was announced, right?”

You were amazed. Name something else, right before as well? Yeah, we were a brand called Browse, and I think when we met, or was, can't even exist yet, it was built on top of my previous business. Yeah, so we got to meet a few years ago, and I was just so blown away by the thought of this

of what Portless could do, which is kind of like factory to consumer shipping, but not in a way where you're cutting the brand out, or, you know, giving the factory the advantage to, you know, take over your customer, more so, like, oh, wow, logistics, actually just became a lot easier. You can skip the entire 3PL in the US, and all the costs that come associated with that,

and basically go from factory to a consumer, and I think 6 days was when we first met, the number that you were saying, and, you know, I was mind blown, and so I ended up investing

in the seed as well, and yes, since then, it's just been amazing to watch the growth.

I think you guys have grown insanely fast, but yeah, we've had a great relationship, and it's been fun to see brands also jump on board and kind of see and take advantage of what Portless has to offer as well. So before we even talk about browse, can you just quickly give like a easy to understand explanation of the direct from Asia supply chain that you built, because I'll tell you

the thing that, like, really made my brain turn initially was when I ordered something from a Portless brand, and as a consumer, I had no idea that this package came from Asia. It showed up for the first time on my tracking as a customer in LA or Miami, and then, you know, it was like two days to my door, and six days from, you know, when I placed the order.

“So could you just give a quick understanding of how that works?”

Yeah, absolutely. There's three common myths when some of them says, oh, something was shipped from near the factory or from China or Vietnam to the customer.

So the first common myths to the economy, this is going to be like, oh, it's in a horrible

brand experience. I'm going to see Mandarin on the label. I'm going to see Chinese tracking number. That has been solved like eight years ago. Now, in a customer's order, within 24 hours, they're getting a USPS tracking number, five

days later at their front door, delivered with a local label, custom packaging, and, you know, the driver that you recognize that does all your packages. So from a experience, it is fast, it is localized, and a consumer thinks you have facilities in really five hubs around the US, LA Chicago, New York, Dallas, Miami, because those are basically the entry points, right?

Those are the entry points.

“Think about how long does it take to fly from China to the US?”

It's about 15 hours, meaning theoretically you get in order. It could be in the US at the 24 hours and your zone skipping, right? That means once you inject it in zone one zone two, it's a two day delivery. We see three day deliveries all the time. The P50, the P90 might be a longer, I'd like the P50 to be five days, and at the P90

an extremely fast localized delivery.

“It's a classic myth, people think, "Oh, can't be, maybe because you bought from”

Temenol Express, we've not brought like that. We localized the entire experience." The next thing is, you know, the people that use this model must be selling crap. No, absolutely not.

Like we'll talk about Quince later, Quince built a 10 billion dollar business, high-end,

cash worth sweaters, built on this model. And now we do hundreds of brands, built on this model. Quality depends on the brand, we will give the consumer an amazing delivery experience, the brand owns the quality of the good. The next classic is, like, okay, but then it's something really expensive.

Then we're going to say, "Oh, you're probably thinking of like DHL." Again, we love globally, we part with globally, but if you use very often globally out of the United States, you're using DHL. So customer gets to check out 30 bucks, 25 bucks. You can't do performance marketing around that, right?

Because you're still killing it. For us, our shipping starts at five bucks. Five bucks, think about a T-shirt or like a accessory, obviously goes up as it scales in the weight or dimensional weight, but for five bucks, starting of five bucks, and to end delivery, low-class experience, fast delivery.

And now you could access and we'll talk, but it's in 81 countries around the world. It's a big world. There are billions of people out there. You want to do that? Madda, CPMs are cheaper in Australia, United Kingdom, American United States.

“So I think at a high level, that's what we do.”

Those are the common myths and really giving a today, low-class experience as if you're in a local shipbob to your customer while gaining massive cash flow advantages in the portless model. And obviously, we'll break down different parts of that. Yeah, I think for today, through the big topics is one is obviously using portless and

portless logistics to open up new markets without opening new warehouses. And I think the other one, which you nailed on the head and what I want to start with, is how we keep kind of cash flow moving. And specifically, how do you tie what you do with your inventory to cash flow in terms of customers purchasing, but also your own spend as a brand?

Now, I feel like when I first heard about portless, where we started talking about it, I didn't understand the cash piece of it. You understand more of the logistics and the ability to accelerate logistics globally. But can you just give a quick background of browse, maybe? And kind of how what you were doing there, how you were operating and what that led to,

or kind of like how that led you to basically create this model for yourself before figuring out how to make it for everybody else. Absolutely. Siren of brand for 10 years, the first tier is that brand is called browse. It was kind of homey kitchen, curated homey kitchen products.

That was the model. The first tier is that business. We did, the first year was like 100,000 a revenue, the second year was 200,000 a revenue. Not because I had any issue in demand. I had tons of demand, but in every business, no matter how big you are, the specific amount

of cash you could work with. And then in the early stages of my business, I would invest, wait, wait, wait, because I got to wait production, 60 days on water, and I need to do it six months ahead of time,

because you always need buffer every time.

So I was constantly putting up cash, waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting, finally getting the goods. Then selling it. And when it sold out, all right, I got to start again, supply chain, new PO, newly time, new 60 days on water, then selling it again.

So it was like, not even that much revenue, but never had cash in the bank. It was always out in the market, always in product, either on water or in the facility. Then in 2015, we moved, or forth, late, 14, into 15, we moved to this cross-border model. And I got lucky because I met a bunch of excellent public executives that kind of came really advisors to teach me how to run this model.

You went from 200 grand to two and a half million, and we grew 100% thereafter after that, two and a half million, five million, 11, 22, then roughly 50, and we're on the next road track to a hundred, and really nothing changed. Imagine, change was same demand, which change was, if you could evolve how you use your cash, and you could get your inventory out of factories and search selling it, 24 hours

“after it's done production, and everything changes, right?”

And all of the sudden, you don't need to buy it to credit. You could have, you could reinvest your capital.

You don't need to put a million dollars at a time in the inventory.

So that was how I experienced browse this model under my business, browse for the first call it eight years once we started doing this. Eventually, we hit I was 14, attribution year, which was a chaotic year in 2022. We ended up shifting more to deport less. And that's when I met you, I guess almost five years ago, and to be to be, where we just

helped now hundreds of brands leverage that model, but pure understand, cash flow is what companies into bankruptcy, not your profit margin. And you can still maintain profit margin. You have great, you know, our ship rate started by box, but if you could unlock cash flow,

world, and reinvest your profit very fast, there is nothing stopping you, go from zero to

hundred million, literally in one to two years.

And we have examples that we'll talk about later on, but that is reality. That is the world we live in. I remember a few years ago reading this medium post, you've probably read it to is from the Jim Shark founder talking about the negative cash conversion cycle. And that, basically, the secret to how Jim Shark grew, like, they had advertising dollars

to spend that no competitor had because of essentially very similar playbook to this. And yeah, it's actually pretty amazing, because when you lay it out that way, it's like, almost instantly now your cash is not tied up and sitting somewhere. It's constantly flowing, it's constantly moving. And if, like you said, you can start selling right as your production on is done.

You're grabbing the money before you might even have to pay your shipping vendor, you know, to sell it out. That is such a good medium post.

“And I think it's worth taking a second time packing that.”

So negative cash conversion cycles, if Fano doesn't know, is you're getting paid from your customer, prior to you need to pay your vendors. That is a crazy concept and very hard. Because if you do that, basically, your customers are your investors. You don't need to go and get crazy lines of credit from the, you know, the wayfires of the world.

Really, if you optimize supply chain, which is what, sheen and teamo and quencent and

auto built, you are running an extremely powerful business.

And, and that's a part of the example. So A, less money inventory in this model, like Jim Shark, too. Could you negotiate better terms in this type of model? And the answer is yes. Supportless has a little learned soon.

We have a supply chain service company, right? Logistics is one aspect, right? A carrier is a piece of logistics is a piece of supply chain. But we help brands negotiate better terms. And the mission is, the portless mission is, we want every brand running at negative cash

version cycles. And that is hard to do on your own, if you're not big. But if you have a different model, you're shipping differently. Your goods are staying in China. There's different conversations you can have with your vendors that will literally change the game the way you run your business.

So, yeah, mission is to put the cash advance businesses out of business. And let you leverage supply chain, sophistication to run out of your business.

“Yeah, one of the brands that I think is kind of unsuspecting, but really did this playbook”

well with you guys is hello Nancy. Could you talk a little bit about kind of their success? Yeah, Rajna and her brother are literally one of the most impressive operators I have ever met. And we met them three years ago and they didn't have a brand.

Like actually today, we don't take businesses under a million.

But back then, we were, I guess, a little more open. And we just met them like, these people are monsters, like amazing operators. And what happens when you take an amazing operator, a great product, and know how to do marketing, and you leverage the portless model, they went from zero to now north of a hundred million within three years.

And you cannot do that. Like, physics will not allow you to do that unless you had a billion in the bank. Kind of wouldn't three years ago. Most of the third quarter, you know, half of that just gets tied up, tied up an inventory. So what they were doing is they were doing small back production, selling it, taking the cash,

reproduction, and they just scaled around the world day one, and they just nailed it. And to me, that is like an early indicator of what I think the next thousand merchants will look like. And next thousand brands will look like if you are a strong operator. And I talk about this often, you follow Shopify stock.

It's going up, right? Their stock is crushing. What does that mean? Consumers love brands. Consumers love buying from brands.

Sure Amazon exists, but Amazon is our storyteller. Amazon is not a brand. So brands are only getting stronger. So when there is demand, they'll be supply. But in today's supply, it is hard.

It is hard to be emergent. You got to find tons of cash. You got to lay it out. You got to wait so long.

“But what if the future of e-commerce is actually closer to SaaS business?”

Where you could learn how to have most of your money being paid from customers in advance, or much less money put in inventory. Now you're running in a credible business. And now you could be the next hello Nancy. You could run to 100 million, 200 million of revenue in a faster time frame

than anyone has ever seen in e-commerce before. So yeah, that is one example. I think one of the most impressive operators we are proud to be the partner. And there's hundreds of other brands that are like them,

or becoming like them, in this new era of e-commerce. Yeah. Another thing that comes to mind too is when you run out of product, or in your case of browse, where you had products being sold, and then boom, you're out of stock.

Like what happens to all the ads that you're running, all the marketing you're pushing, you know, influence your campaigns,

All that kind of becomes a waste if people then go to your PDP, and there's nothing to buy. Under percent, and I talk about this,

“we work a lot with like fractions CFOs to give guidance to their merchants.”

You know, if anyone's familiar with a P&L, you be like, okay, what were my sales? What was my cost? What was my profit? What you don't see on a P&L is out of stock. It's not on your P&L.

This is missing revenue. But what happens in your out of stock, winners, your best-performing products is the driver of your business. And if you're out of stock, you're losing that revenue, and we've seen on average, once you go to the portless model,

your revenue will simply increase by 30 percent

by being more agile and how fast you can restock. And that is revenue that is contribution margin, and you're doing all the same work. Right? You did all the design planning. You did all the marketing testing and the branding.

So out of stock is your losing revenue. Your competitors will get that click instead of you. And to your said, there's those repercussions across the board. First of all, your factor gets less P&L's from use. You're less important.

Your ads now have to be paused. And I spent years in meta-marketing when I ran the browse business. You pause a high performance ad. Like good luck ring Asian ad. And like, yeah, agency marketing.

Like when you have momentum, you do not want to stop momentum. And the right amount of math. Yeah, to stock. That sucks.

Yeah, it's funny you say that. Like I remember even, you know, 2017, early days of direct consumer. I remember our CFO would be like, okay, well,

“you know, how many page views are you going to forecast on this date?”

How much ads spend are you going to forecast on this date? I'm like, what are you talking about? It's all based on momentum. You know, if we have good momentum, we're spending as much as we possibly can.

We might wake up and spend, you know, $200,000 in a day when we normally spend 70 just because the momentum's there. Like you kind of have to follow it. And if your ops aren't there to, you know, be able to keep up with that, then, you know,

what good is it to have like killer marketers on the team as well? And by the way, that is the difference of like, old world versus new world. So the overall, if you talk to like either CFO or someone planning a inventory, you're like, okay, you have a retail store.

We kind of know on a have our town of people calm, because only certain people live in your vicinity. So you can make some pretty informed bats and decisions. But when we talk to some of the software providers and helping you predict inventory,

I'm like, it is almost impossible in the modern world where you could scale and meta and meta has billions of people on their network. You want to scale that as hard as you can if your ad is working. But you cannot predict that. Good luck predicting in your inventory that you're going to need instead of

1,000 units, 25,000 units. Forget that exactly. That means you're pausing your ad, you lost a revenue, you're literally going to wait till next platform. Also, they would just look at you and be like,

you're crazy to think. So you're going to go 5,000 and 25,000, you know? But it exists, right? Totally. In marketing on the marketing side,

you have a good cat, you have a good CPM, you're at his working. Nothing is stopping you. By the way, add multiple countries around that. Add another few percent. But if you're if you're supply tank cannot match the same agility as

your just as your digital distribution, you're going to get stuck all the time. So on the back end, you know, you're still running supply generally get a retail store on the front end, you're running a digital, true digital business.

So build a true direct consumer. What you say direct to consumer is not true today. And to instruple the direct is back to direct. Because that's we have the agility. That's where you're taking away a lot of the cost.

You opening up cash flow in the traditional direct supply chain. You're basically a retail store that happens to store in the warehouse. So yeah, you can, if you match the modern digital distribution, the modern way of selling, which is digital marketing, which could scale most agile ways.

And you match that to an agile supply chain. You could scale like crazy.

You could get to 100 million within a couple of years

if if you have two sides of agility. Now, it still adds, you're still moving production. But you could take away 90 percent of the delays and the inefficiencies when you when you look at models like this. Oh, also, it's like if you can, if you can still get the product

same product to the customer with the same quality much faster, not have to deal with sea freight and any delays that come with sea freight.

“And you know, all the customs like why wouldn't you 100 percent?”

And then, and then add the global aspect to that. And this is, you know, what we have in our list. But like, brands use to say, like, hey, when is right to go global? Again, if you're using a shipping container,

you're bringing all your goods to let's see a big guest facility or a land facility. And then you're selling the world, you're selling around the US. And as I hop, when should I ship to the UK? When should I ship to Australia? Well, right now you's globally, meaning I will import an

traditional, again, we're participably. And we do outbound China with them. So we're big fans. But if you use outbound USA, you're paying import tax. By the way, you pay import tax in advance.

In traditional model, you're bringing a million dollars to T-shirts.

You haven't sold the T-shirt yet.

“In the modern model, you're not paying any import tax until you sell it.”

And only once you sell it across the border, then you pay the import tax. So you have tax deferment. But in the traditional model, you're paying the import tax. You're storing it locally. You bring it halfway across the world.

And then you're shipping it back by Deutchael Express, that'll cost you 30 bucks to the UK. Like, that's dumb. Or you're going to open up a three-peel to new market. Like, good luck. What if it doesn't work?

Now you've got to figure out what you're dead inventory. So again, the modern way of running supply chain will be the difference of you winning against your competitors. And if you don't do it, or you're going to get educated on it, like you said with Jim Shark, someone else's well.

And Jim Shark, if you can take a negative catal cycles, is how they won the market. And if their competitor would have done it as well, maybe they would be equal sized competitors to them in their space. That there are equally as new as them.

And no one did. So yeah, getting educated, understanding this market, you like, oh, it's yourself that you want to compete over the next five, five years.

“Yeah, I think the key there reminds me of the old Mark Cuban quote,”

which is like, you know, somebody's already working 24 hours a day, harder than you to try to outcompute you, something like that. And it's kind of the same thing here, which is like, look, if you're not going to do it, your competitor's going to do it.

So absolutely. Yeah, I guess what, what is that kind of going more into like, you know, is a brand even ready for this? What are some parameters you see to qualify a brand to be ready for international growth?

And actually maybe before we get into that, one thing I wanted to ask was also like, if you're a brand that only sells in the US, like, is this type of solution still relevant and helpful? 100% most of our business actually is helping

brands service the core market because I think about it. We have now on a P50, five day delivery. Our average is five day delivery. We are a very similar to almost any average three-peeling United States.

So your customer, like the way you said it, there is zero downside to the merchant experience to the customer experience. They get their items that are on average five days, local label, local tracking number.

It could be non-branded poly or branded poly or box, whatever, you know, well, help brands, you know, make that decision if they want it. So customer gets no difference in their end. And then you as a merchant,

you could go from a million dollars at the door day one

“for your inventory, being stuck for six months, 200 grant, right?”

Yeah, it means nine hundred thousand dollars in this example to run your business, do marketing, hire people, expand your product collection, that is game changing. And not only are you gonna bring less money in. You're not waiting three months to sell your first good.

Once it's done production, 24, 40 hours later, you're selling it, you're getting cash out faster. It was literally one to two days from the, you know, the absolute of the factory. Yeah, to being in a three PL ready to ship.

Little, you're going Joe, it's three hours. You're saying that it's, it's an hour. You're north, you know, your Shanghai, you're talking about one day. So, you know, north, west, you're talking about two days, north, west, China.

So like you're talking about 40 hours, you're done production. What you would have now have to wait for like the port, to pick up your truck, or at least it's picking up your goods. It's not the salary of 24, 40 hours. Zero kind of complexity, zero headache.

You're not working with your freight Ford and Custings broker. We're dealing with all of that. Yeah, no containers waiting at customs. No, no backlog at ports that move very slowly. That goes right.

Right. Wow. And I guess like from a product standpoint, are there products that are better fits than others for this type of the model?

Yeah, absolutely. So, so we say we're not made for everyone. If you run, let's say a home, uh, a kitchen appliance business, you're selling freight traders. Not going to be good for you.

Why? Because end of the day, portless uses, you know, dozens of freight Forders and air cargo providers to ship goods around the world. You know, anyone countries, many different lines that you're battery product, a cosmetic product, a regular product.

So, we again, we build that complexity in house, and we simplify it for the merchants. But in order for that to work, it's got to be under our, I would say, under three pounds, it's Apple Stappell shipping rate. So, if you're currently paying in the US six bucks an order,

by us, it will be around six bucks an order, call it around a pound. Under, under a pound, it gets even cheaper. Again, starts around five bucks. But once you're above three to five pounds, then the efficiency goes down the cost,

the efficiency, of course, cash flows great. But then your penal will get more impact, they'll pay more for shipping. But if you're in the apparel space, you're in the accessory space, electronic space, cosmetic space, truly space.

Like any of those, you know, types of accessories, Toyspace. This is probably up your alley. I would say like 60 periCommerce is this a crush

if you look into it and get a better understanding of that. Amazing. And then for, I'm sorry,

go ahead. As you say, tying into your original question, which is, who is the right profile to go global?

really focus on core market. How do you massively change the way you are ready to supply chain, customers seem experienced and you have major cash flow, major markets. We have brands in the U.S. and we first run their U.S. logistics. We have brands on Australia. We run their Australian brands. UK, Canada, Europe, etc. But now we say is, on average, I'll give you a stat. On average, within seven months, majority of the brands beyond board usually came in with one country they're doing

business end and they are in nine countries seven months later. And what, and since we've helped brands go global, not a single brand has pulled back a country. And on average, again,

it ranges from higher to lower. We see brands that a 30 to 40 percent of additional revenue

are from outside of their core market. So if you step 100, let's call it a 10 million dollar business in the United States. Within nine months, usually a 14 million dollars and that four million

“is very often a mix of either skill and quicker or net new markets. And that's why you're a”

diversified. That is a great diversification and a great low-hanging through expansion to your business. And then when is the right time? I would say, like, if you're, I can under a million, you're under even two to three million, you're really just getting your business rock and I'm rolling. And that's why for a poor list, specifically, like under a million G&D's is not right fit. We think you know, we would say you're a little early. But when you're at a million and

a kind of million plus going global, it should be almost a default, because you don't have to do anything new in the poor list model or in the modern suspension model. So honestly, we're used to be wait to 50 million was like the guidance. I think that's the old world, the new grid and spinners we work with. It's really day one. I can, I don't mean day one under a million. I mean,

you're above a million. Like basically post product market fit. You got that product supply chain

in place. You know, you've got this set up. It's like you might as well turn it on and test it. Your CPMs are going to be much lower in international markets, you know, especially if you've gotten native speaking English markets like the UK or Australia or Canada. What are some of the other like good places that brands usually start, you know, they can kind of do similar marketing maybe to what they've done. Maybe a little bit of localization. But then also, you know,

they're speaking English, so they're able to kind of speak that same way. Absolutely. So the classic is, and to your point, it is so easy. Like you're on Facebook today, you just have to translate your ads. Hey, I got that. It's a done. It's a solve problem. Yeah, it's built in the ads manager. It's built in, right? Taxi. Come, Taxi. I don't want to create taxidies. You don't need to create taxidies, right? You know,

we work in all the major ones from open border to globally to new moral to reach these are great providers. They will solve your taxes. You don't need to think about it logistics. Well, I don't want to set up goods around the world. You don't need to. You have one hub. You're servicing 80 countries. Every customer thinks it's a local experience. World mail is really opposed, Canada opposed. So, and then returns. Well, Paul, this has 19 return facilities around the world. We can

end a few. We can, we can inspect it for you. We could forward, we're rolling out four logistics. You could ship it to the next customer in those markets. So really? Well, and school. Yeah,

“that that honestly was something we've been working for a very long time. And it's part of our”

overall, uh, uh, portless services. And then these services, portless doesn't make money. We're just here to build a modern, like you need the rails to run a global business. Yeah, portless is building the rails in any area that is necessary. So yeah, it was a problem. Like, hey, how do you want me to ship to UK if I can't we have returns? Now, we got you. You have returns. We'll inspect it. We'll send you pictures. Uh, we'll get you got you'll give us guidance of what's good and what's

bad. You want to liquidated you want to donate it. Um, but now that the rails exist on just a few partners, the like we say go global right away. But if you want it really easy. Sure, start with the UK. Start with Australia. Start with Canada. Nothing changes. You go into shop by markets. You you turn on local currency. Um, uh, you go into meta. You add the countries. You set up with us,

call it within two to four weeks. You're done the full set up. Do you know, added incredible markets?

And remember, today, not every brand is doing this. So also on an Australian brand is a Australian consumer is discovering a new brand. You get little hanging fruit. It's a great

“quality product. Now, I would say it doesn't mean you should start manufacturing your goods with the”

Australian consumer mind yet. I think you're still doing your core market, your manufacturing for the US market. It's an English, you have English packaging. That's great. And what you do is you start you start expanding it. And that will come for an English language. It's nothing. It'll convert right away. And then beyond that, you know, customers start doing it Europe and the customer start doing a pack. And again, consumers are everywhere. CPMs are cheap as long as your product is

call it three months ago or prior to launching. You can spend an hour working through your

ad budget with AI and still have to make every change yourself. Triple Wells Moby uses your business

“data to recommend exactly what changes you should make. And then can go and make those changes for you”

with your approval. You can plan before any money moves. Book a demo at triplewail.com/limited supply. That's TRI PLE WHALE.com/limited supply. I think that's cool for so many reasons. One, especially being like if you're the opposite, right? If you're a brand that is outside the US, you can actually use now a port list to get into the US and attack, you know, maybe arguably one of the biggest de-commerce markets in the world. That's pretty cool. The peer-to-peer returns is really cool. I

thought that was only like a concept that didn't know that that's actually possible. But how do you scale other brand ops around that? So you think about customer service as probably the biggest one that I can think of. But, you know, privacy policies, terms of service like the legal aspect, how does that all scale around as well? Yeah. And again, most of these are solve problems today. So a lot of the legal aspects to compliance partner takes care of it. Language, friends, you

“Shen, etc. Even for a while globally had a localized custom support. You really don't need it.”

You go on X today. You were reading amazing translated messages from people around the world.

You didn't even notice the planet that they wrote it in Spanish and you're responding in English, right? The idea, no idea. So C.S. customer support, there's a built-in solution for translation. Not much. That's the point. Not much changes. Again, returns. We have that for you. Tax compliance with one introduction. You have it live within seven to ten days. That's it. And now you have a global audience at a cheaper marketing and that's the

mission of the modern brands, right? The old brands are, it was all about kind of prior to 2022. It was all about top line. That there is dead. You got to run a profitable business. And there's no way running a good profitable business, then expanding globally, cheaper markets,

lower cat and running the best cash flow and supply to model you can grid. What does a small

Tesla, like, for a brand wants to go into a new country? And it's like, okay, do we have to build out a full team to go attack a new country? Is there a small version of a test weekend run? You know, like the way you're talking about it, sounds like I could take 10 grand and go test the new market. So I would say I put the country to two buckets and I think you framed well before, which is,

“if you want to test the English-speaking countries, it's like a no-brainer. It should be default.”

You go live default five countries. Now, what happens when you want to test Europe? Well, now you got many different languages. You got France. You got all even like France and different parts of Europe. As an American, and I'm as a Canadian, you think the checkout is like, oh, HST or sales tax is separate when I'm at them. Well, Germany doesn't work that way and Europe doesn't work though. You actually need an all-in-that experience. But in the early days, you're probably

over optimizing. So to go global and non-English-speaking countries, add a couple of countries, add all of Europe. See where you're getting to Madsick and you will still get conversion. Maybe not the best conversion rate yet you would want and you'll still get conversion rates. And they like holy shit, Spain is crushing. We have a brand, actually sorry, crushing in Italy. It's a electronics product. Italy's their number one market. There are Australian founders.

Like why is Italy new number? Yeah, right? But it is, right? And they have a really cool camera product. And so once you see that, you're like, okay, let's go a little deeper. Hey, you know, open border. How should I build out my vat? Hey, did I get local M.O.R. services? So if anyone does know M.O.R. is called Merckin of Record, if you're a US brand, it corporate in America. You sell into Italy, let's say. Stripe is using an American merchant of record ID

and processing a payment in Italy. And you get charge for it, like 1.5% which is ridiculous, which is why merchant of record services exist. But what people don't realize and is talking to our partners at global E is one of the main reasons besides for saving money with Merckin of Record Services to claim rates. If you're an American processing entity and you're getting a credit card from Italy, you're going to lose 13% to 14% of your transactions because

the credit card, like who is this American processing in Italy? Probably right. No, it's not fraud. You're now a global business. So when you go deeper, here's another example. Again, these compliance partners have this services. You can activate local entities to do the processing for you. And then they deposit the money in your accounts. But that's just other ways of optimization. So English markets, it's a no-brainer go live. Other English non-English-speaking countries test the market,

Amazing. Now one thing that that I feel I got caught on to super early on with Portless was the idea

of using the Portless's logistics to handle any kind of replenishment subscription orders because, you know, if you know that it takes five days to go from factory to consumer, and I know that my replacement filter comes on the 27th, then you can ship it out and, you know, in the cheapest way

“possible, get it to there on the day of exactly. What are some other use cases that brands are using?”

Obviously, the cash conversion advantages, but like what are other tactical things brands are able to do? Yeah. So first I'll frame that majority of our businesses are the typically commerce. They give us the inventory, where else that we store, and we pick them back and we ship it. However, we saw, I would say, three interesting buckets of unique areas that have exploded over the last 12 to 18 months. One bucket, like you said, subscription, you know exactly what you're

getting. It is so easy to replenish and run subscription businesses in our model. But I'll say the two ones that I kind of was like blown away by the other two ones is pre sell. If you're a business, and back to negative cash conversion cycle, there is no better business than the world by pre selling a new idea collection. And we do this honestly with some of the biggest enterprises in the world, we have a couple big enterprise contracts, and there's no better business where you're like,

“hey, here's a new sweatshirt, a new bathing suit. It's limited collection. It's around for seven days.”

It's one in done. So all the sudden there is the kind of supreme experience where you only get a certain amounts of this will be live. Maybe it's a drop with a partner, with a design partner. But what what you do is, you sell it a pre sell. And then once you get your orders, you close it, and then you put into production, factory, let's say, depending on the item, let's it's on in 10 days. And once it's on production, it's in the customer's hand 60s later. That means,

radically, with an a two-week cycle, you just did a pre sell with a limited collection drop, zero, zero risk producing exactly what's needed once it's done. And then the customers get a two-week later, meaning that when you authorize their car or to get actually charge it, two, two, three weeks after this concept. So when brand started doing that was like, hey, let's test this concept. Now it's like a meaningful percent of the revenue, like 20% of their business is now this

drop concept. Because if you kid reduce how long it takes for my dear to production to customers' hands,

now that's an incredible drop experience. So that was an evolving space, you saw an absolutely

lot. There is a similar version of that that is now also crushing is in the apparel space. There's a concept of meat order. Now meat order is very different from every apparel space. But let's say if you're in the dress business and you have a base dress with your factory. And you say, you give them merch in the capability, hey, you can pick your material, you can pick what pockets you want, you can pick design. And then what happens is they

they create these orders and the factories because they're working with the base design, they make little edits. And by the way, you're charging more for this. And from a consumer perspective, like holy crap, I just got a custom-made or a meat-to-order dress or a meat-to-order sweater. And now traditionally, if you would have done that, you would produce it, you'd put on a boat and it'd just like, or you put in a plane and then you

inject it to Vegas and then zone one through zone eight. We're like, no, factories done production,

“we do factory pickups every day. It's in your customers' hands 60s later, right?”

So now there's this explosion of brands that we start meeting and start testing and scaling it of these meat-to-order concepts, which would be almost impossible to do without this model. So I think those are, you know, outside of our, you know, more typical brand that runs normal inventory stores, it picks and packs, which is still majority of our business. The subscription, the pre-sellimate order is just fascinating business evolution that are stealing that just

happens to be great fit for this model. Yeah, you know, a few weeks ago I was at an AI conference and one of the CEOs that was presenting talked about how he's now able to take his kind of core product and launch tons hundreds of new designs every month on the site and then he just tests and sees what has a high-click through a rate, what are the ones people are actually buying? And within a week he can decide which ones are now, you know, hitting a production and then being

shipped out with this factory to consumer model. And, you know, at the time I saw that and I was like, okay, that's cool. You can do that with AI, but then how do you actually fulfill that? But this seems like this is kind of the way to do it, the fulfillment piece. Absolutely. And I'll say there's obviously different levels of extreme. Of course, sheena's famous for like 10,000 new designs a day. That is right. Lovellxtrem would recommend. Anybody, but the on the other hand,

your business, the difference between going from a 20 million dollar brand to a 100 million

dollar brand is cross-hungle. You've got to take a, you've got to come up with new ideas and

And that's it. That's that concept. You've got to take your shops and go,

you're not going to win every time, but the winners drive $10 million line items or business

or business. Yeah. And yeah, I, you know, again, sophisticated brands, you evolve the modern brands,

“the new kind of generic brands. That's what they're doing. Yeah. Now, I feel like we can't talk”

about factory to consumer without also mentioning data and privacy. You know, there was that super famous case. I think back in 2017 when I first first, like really getting my teeth and e-commerce about all birds and Amazon, when all birds decided to sell on Amazon, and the Amazon comes out with a replicate product. What kind of information does the fulfillment partner in this case see? Like, what do you, what do you guys see? And how can a brand protect themselves?

Absolutely. So, A from a data property perspective, like every contract we have, we say,

any data we have is only to use for fulfillment or the services of your product. And

more or less specifically, like I ran a brand for 10 years, I shut down that brand. Does that brand had, you know, we were in kitchen, we were at home, we were originally adventurer, we're expanding into, like, a peril, but intentionally, I'm like, I want zero conflict of interest. Well, I was got shut down. That business is not operating anymore. And the only data we use is to deliver your goods to you. And as we roll out, I'm data analysis for our customers,

we're using your data or outside data to kind of inform you like, hey, your product is cool. You might want to consider selling in Germany, because that's a massive demand in Germany.

“So the only way we use the data is to fill your goods, service you as your customer, and it doesn't”

leave kind of the kind of the kind of firewall of your merchant of your brand itself. In that case, like, are there risks if you're using a shipping or logistics partner internationally, that is also a consumer brand itself? Yeah, I think they're, I mean, I don't want to call it names, but like, there are logistics businesses that also own a brand, and many of these brands depend on demand signaling in order to run the core, the core customer

business. So I would say there are brands that exist, logistics businesses that exist that also own brands, I'd be like, it's up to you to make that decision. Like, if they are selling in your space, they will have your data. You cannot not have your data. You need to test codes. You need product information. You need cog data, right? They'll know your cog. You need to know, actually, as the China government's getting stricter, you actually have to know factory and MIT's manufacture IDs.

You kind of need to know everything. So if a brand, if a logistics business also has a brand, and I'm not saying they will do this on purpose, but kind of like Amazon with all birds or Amazon with anyone, they will naturally know your data and probably make decisions on that data. And again, the intent is not, I don't think it's bad intent. It's just a fact. When you have a brand and you have logistics, there's just, as a merchant, you've got to make that

“call. That makes sense for you. Yeah. Yeah, no, it makes total sense. I think, too, the biggest”

thing you said is also like, you know, that might just be a carrier to take you from A to B, but let's also kind of as all these things. You know, the 19 or 20 return facilities around the world, the factory pickup, the pick and pack abilities, the ability to do the made to order. Yeah. So it's kind of a, I guess, really, also just apples to orange is here. Exactly. And we're a fan again. There's lots of logistics providers out there.

I think, you know, Quince has known to have a logistics. And I think they're great. They have great delivery times. I mean, huge fan said of Olivia Broman. I think great logistics. I mean, we use dozens of carrier partners. For a while, we were using QLS. One of our core internal lines are essentially the same delivery speeds. So we don't use it today. But we work with probably 24 different logistics carriers. One of them is like a QLS equivalent. But for us, and we're fans.

Like, we're never, we're big fans of what they do in our passage lever. But in our end,

we look at the opportunity, maybe more holistic. Logistics is one aspect of business. To do global business, you need global returns. To do this with your headache, you want a factory pick up. If you need your products have quality control with a click of a button, you could book quality control coming to our facilities and inspecting it. You want us to negotiate on behalf of your factory. We have a full service scene that will do that for you. We don't charge for it. It's part of our

kind of ecosystem. We also have global notes. So we have facilities in the U.S. because eventually brand gets big, they need to wholesale. They need to express. We have UK and Europe opening up by on January 1st. And of H2H1 will have Australian Canada. So our mission is, in order to build the modern brand, you need a modern global supply chain. And that's like a living ecosystem. And lots of things are needed. Logistics is one. And I think there's a lot of just

fighters out there. You know, we deliver a very fast rare. We have our averages is five days and it's

We want every single brand to run a modern supply chain with negative cash conversion cycles, selling globally, healthy cash flow and a healthy model. That's awesome. Yeah, I love that. Okay, we got a few minutes left here. I want to open it up to anybody who's got questions in the audience. And while you guys typed that book questions, so you brought up, we talked a lot about cash conversion cycle and just cash flow early on. What is it? Like, if I'm a brand who's now

holding inventory in China versus, you know, shipping it out to the U.S. And I'm trying to

“negotiate better payment terms. What does that mean for me when I'm negotiating with a factory do it?”

Do are they open to more favorable terms if you're holding your stuff in China or shipping it all out? So this is a very exciting evolving space. And again, it's part of my passion in my mission. So today, a factory does not look at a merchant differently. If it's cross-border, local warehouse cross-border logistics versus bulk cross-border. And we're the first injection of a efficient cash flow

would just come by being more agile in your inventory. So you'll go from a million dollars stock

to probably a hundred grand or two hundred grand in inventory at a time. But we have a service team and one of the conversations we're having is our brands, the merchants with service, but not typical in a typical supply chain. Your goods going to bow and at least China. So the factory wants to get that back from you. Good luck. Like, they're not coming to Vegas to collect our goods. But when Portless is holding the inventory in China, that means a different conversation. Like, hey,

these goods aren't leaving China. If anything goes wrong, pull it back. We can help you write a localized contract for that to negotiate maybe next for 30 days and extra 60 days. And there's other, uh, there's a whole actually project a portless literally focused on how could we work with our, with our merchants to help them and guide them to negotiate better terms to factories. So I was saying today, there's a little bit of blinders currently with factories like, oh,

everyone's the same. And we're seeing early indicators of one second, not every merchants the same. These goods aren't leaving China. They're buying less at a time. A risk is lower. They're doing

“more small batches, which leads to a very different underwriting risk. And I think we're, we're,”

we're we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll take that in 27. So yeah, and if, you know, Evan and once a despite you not it, happy kind of give you a vision where we're going with that. Yeah, we'll send out a link after, uh, which has all of that. Uh, one question I see here. So, you know, the next 60 days are very

crucial. We have Chinese New Year. We've got this January cash crunch that's approaching, you know,

where nobody's now buying, but all your bills for the year are right there. Uh, you know, last year, uh, going into Q1, it was a big stir around tariffs. And, you know, so many brands cut a bunch of costs. How should brands be thinking about this next two to three months period, as they get ready for 2027? Yeah. And, and I think for people that run traditional spy chain, like, this is probably the, the most exciting and hardest time of entire year. So you

have November December, which will do a massive particles revenue. Um, and because of that, brands, if you're not running a modern splash of model, you're putting a ton of money in inventory. You're making a huge bet. And it's coming in, uh, and your sales usually start scaling early November. So that means your money's tied up. And you don't even have cash to make new peos come for 2027. But also, if you look at Chinese New Year, Chinese New Year, I think is roughly

February 6, 30 days prior to Chinese New Year, back to the shutdown. Horliss doesn't shut at all. Well, this operates right through Chinese New Year, airlines operate the Chinese New Year. The factories, the people that make your goods, they're going to shut down around January 6, which means you have now a very tight time frame to take get money out of your investments

“and then create your peos to catch it before Chinese New Year. Because you need to be stacked”

you have 30 shutdown. There's ramp up period. Once they're back online, kind of Chinese New Year about 10 days, then they have ramp up period. This is the hardest art from the cash perspective.

Now, again, fortunate for the home to brands we service, they never ton of that much cash to

begin with. And they can make peos and restock really quickly. But if you, if you're in the traditional supply chain, this is your, your toughest time. You, but at the same time, you always have to make a mess here. So you've got to think of your factories and how when when are they closing and creating peos? Um, and yeah, and far brands like for the brands we've got to get creative, either you're in the market supply chain. You do in a while. If you're not, you got to look

a line to credit. There are some really interesting new SaaS solutions I saw. One of them is like things called triolina. Um, where they, they can help you average your PO over times. Let's say if you have a hundred thousand dollar PO, baby, you're paying 20k over five months. I mean, you got to get creative. Really, you appreciate your terms. Your factories, maybe buy the raw material so they could produce it quicker. We don't pay everything up front. Really go deep in

tuition supply chain. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. Um, ending more on a positive note here. What

is, what is, uh, one thing you're very excited for looking forward to going into next year, either because of the evolution of portless or, you know, there's some law, new laws in international policy coming up that you're excited to take advantage of with customers. Yeah, I would think from the international policy side, I mean, the diminimous times are gone.

“U.S. has gone a long time ago. Well, I think it's good because brands are no longer saying like,”

oh, I'm going to save two bucks on diminimous. Rather, I'm going to run a better supply chain model. So from a portless perspective, we see very good future with present-sheen, present Trump. I think Trump realized that China and U.S. are very interconnected. I mean, we have operations being on, but China continues to be the best place in most cost of place in the highest quality place to produce. Um, I think for us, uh, that that's on on the supply side. On the go-to market side,

portless now is going to have by, you know, already has in over the next six months. We'll have local notes in all the major countries around the world. So you used to be like a larger brand that had inventory sitting in the U.S., but, okay, I want to use you guys, what do I do with my inventory? No problem. Come to get to our local facilities. You could transition your local inventory to those facilities. She have no downtime on your local inventory. New inventory

comes to us. And now for brands in the 50 to 250 range, you're running local logistics for express, whatever you want, then you have portless China being, you know, out of stock, net new

“collections, and global and global markets. And I think with global return solution. So for me,”

2027 is, we're, you know, already have hundreds of brands, but I think we're very excited about brands, bigger brands, more sophisticated supply chain models, and portless being in a really unique place to service those brands. That's awesome. Yeah, even just as somebody close to the business, that gets me pretty excited because, you know, it's, it's been such a ride so far. And

now, now you're basically settling up to play with the big dogs. Yeah. And if you saw it

way earlier, like, and I met you. Oh, yeah, I'm obsessed. And you like, it immediately. And then years later now, we have hundreds of hundreds of brands, but yeah, and you, you saw the future

“there when we met, and people that we met back then, and yeah, likewise, like was cool,”

is he, where can people reach out to you? Either reach out to you, or somebody on your team, we're going to get that free supply chain audit. Obviously, we'll have a link here in the show notes, or as an email going out after, but yeah, any quick places to reach out, get questions answered. There'll be a great place for Sifku the the supply chain audit in the chat now. We'll send in the email. I was saying general porous.com has tons of content, case studies, videos,

tours of our facility, calculators. It is tons of content of porous.com. And then you could find me on LinkedIn and ask, you know, I answer every DM. I'm constantly posting content, not about porous, but overall the supply chain world, and how there's a new modern supply chain involved in

cross-world. Amazing. As you thank you so much for spending and sharing that knowledge with us. This

was like a value pack today. This was awesome. Well, thank you for having me, and I'm a supply chain, I'm a proud supply chainer. So I have an account of the supply chain. I go crazy. Amazing. Thank you, easy. Thanks for listening. We'll be back next time to cut through the noise on CPG, retail, and e-commerce. If you enjoyed this episode, why not share it with a friend and be sure to subscribe wherever you listen so you don't miss the next one.