Dr. Bill Hardgrave - President at the University of Memphis - joins Mike about the BOPIS implications of on-shelf availability and out of stocks.  

Bill provides us prospective about the customer implications of out of stocks for retailers as it relates to BOPIS. How confident are retailers in exposing on hands to customers for BOPIS? Are they hiding inventory from their customers? Is there a difference between and OSA at the shelf (disappointed customer) vs. a BOPIS failure (refund required) to the customer?

Donnie Williams 0:04

Welcome to Season Two of the SCMRC Lead podcast featuring epic supply chain lessons from our industry partners. My name is Donnie Williams and I am the Executive Director of the Supply Chain Management Research Center in the Walton College at the University of Arkansas. Season Two of the podcast will be hosted by Mike Graen. Mike is the director of the retail supply chain initiative, and this is a strategic partnership within the SCMRC. The goal of this initiative is to surface the challenges and opportunities of on-shelf availability or OSA focusing on the concepts tools and technologies driving retail OSA. Season Two will feature a dynamic guest list of retailers, CPG suppliers, solution providers and industry leaders to drive collaborative efforts and advanced learning within the industry. Thank you for joining and enjoy the podcast.

Mike Graen 1:02

Bill Hardgrave 2:43

Thanks, Mike glad to be here appreciate the invitation.

Mike Graen 2:46

Awesome. We have worked together for so long in the area of both on hand accuracy and technologies like RFID, we could probably spend two or three hours on a talk and just about different stories and projects that we've been on with industry, etc. But But today, I'm going to really be just very, very narrow focused. Because there's this new dynamic, at least new to the industry and to customers. That that is really focusing on omni channel, we've been talking about omni channel and buy online and pickup in store for a lot of years. But I don't think until the COVID pandemic happened, people really understood what that meant. So we've done a lot of interesting conversation around on hand accuracy. And I really want to connect it back to what the biggest opportunities are, which is buy online and pickup in store. But before we get into that, I have a personal question for you. And I've asked this of guests because not only you are you an expert in this field, both from an academic standpoint, as well as industry leadership, but you're also a customer, you buy things in stores, whether it's BestBuy, or whether it's Amazon or Walmart or Target, et cetera. So one of the things I have asked all of the folks who have been guests to this is do you have a personal example where you actually ordered something online, and you went in and you were disappointed because the order wasn't fulfilled? Do you have a story like that, we'd love to hear about the story?

Bill Hardgrave 4:16

Mike Graen 5:01

Right

Bill Hardgrave 5:02

Mike Graen 5:24

Really

Bill Hardgrave 5:25

via bopis, that's the only way I bought anything was via bopis.

Mike Graen 5:30

And just to be clear, that was pre pandemic?

Bill Hardgrave 5:32

That was pre-pandemic. So starting in November and December, everything I bought, I bought via bopis. And the results were were shocking, eye opening and quite sad at how poorly retailers executed, really across the board, in what should be the simplest omni channel enablement.

Mike Graen 6:02

Got it.

Bill Hardgrave 6:03

Mike Graen 7:04

And I'm assuming that because it was it because of frictionless shopping, people didn't want to go into the store, say, Do you think that was the major driver?

Bill Hardgrave 7:13

It was that that was a major drive right is, hey, I don't want to go to the store, I don't want to get around people. So I'll order it and I'll go pick it up, or you'll bring it out and drop it in my car or something. But you know, this whole idea of touchless. And a lot of stores, of course, went dark, right in the early stages of the pandemic. And and people can order online and be on just bopis right of, hey, I can go ahead and order my stuff online and get it delivered to the house. And that was a whole other issue that maybe we want to talk about of the inventory accuracy or inaccuracy, I should say. But let me get let me get back. I'm getting a feel already Mike. I wanted to share with you just a couple of things that we found Yes, for the some some personal experiences there. And so what what we would what we would do, what I would do is knowing that, that we had, they were they were executed poorly, I would here's how I would, here's why I do it after I started realizing this is really bad. So I would go into the store. And I would have my mobile device with me, I'd make sure I wasn't on the Wi Fi. I wasn't using their app, so they didn't know who I was and they didn't know I was in the store right? And I would literally stand in front of a shelf looking at the product and go online and say I'd like to buy this and pick it up in store and I'm standing there looking at the product. And so I'll share with you some of the things that I got for example in apparel I'm standing here I'm looking at there's five on the shelf on my mobile device it says sorry this product is unavailable at this location.

Mike Graen 8:56

Wow.

Bill Hardgrave 8:57

I'm, another one apparel I'm looking at there's four on the shelf online it says there's one left another another apparel item there's I'm looking at there's three of them on the shelf online it says it's out of stock. Another one I'm looking at it there's nine on the shelf. It doesn't even appear on their website. So Mike that that I just want to share with you that's just a that's just a handful and I've got I've got tons of these where it's like this is this is such poor execution that you're that you're leaving money or the retailers are leaving money on the table.

Mike Graen 9:36

Yeah. So not to not to try and solve their problems. But do you think they just did were hiding inventory for other reasons? Do you think they didn't want to disappoint customers? We've talked with Justin about the the importance of onhand accuracy and ghost inventory. Do you think it was that, what do you think the driving factor? For that many examples of retailers saying not available and you're standing right in front of it is clearly you've got it.

Yeah, it's a combination of factors, the biggest one, I believe, is that they simply don't know what they have in store. And they just don't have any confidence in what they have in store. So when they don't, when you don't have confidence, you do a couple of things. One, either you just completely hide it, right. And so you just say, Oh, that's not available, right, or you don't even put it on the website to even make it an option. But but that it that lack of confidence in your accuracy also then manifests itself in in some threshold values. And we've seen this time and time again, with a retailer, and they'll set these threshold values and I'll give you, I'll give you a couple of instances. One is kind of realistic one, that's, that's, that's kind of ridiculous. But but it would not be unusual, for example, for a retailer who really doesn't have high competence in their inventory accuracy, to say, okay, you know, build it into systems look, if we have three or less of this, then then don't show, you know, just say we're out of stock or not available, because we don't really know if we have three, so let's make sure that we, you know, we don't want to we don't wanna have somebody come to the store to pick up something and then get here and be disappointed, right? So they'll so they'll hide in this buffer, they'll create this buffer. Now, I'll give you a ridiculous example of where the retailer, we started working with them. I don't know how they somebody in the retailer didn't think about this, but they had set their buffers at four. Okay, that's fine. Well, what's your what's your average SKU depth? Three.

You're never available.

So if your average SKU depth is three, and you set your buffer at four, you're hiding all your inventory, right? That was exactly what we were seeing with this retailer. They just they didn't they weren't showin anything. And it was it was interesting, because what led to us finding this is this retailer, we were talking about bopis and they're saying, Yeah, we tried bopis. And, you know, we're not generating any sales from bopis. So you're not generating any sales? No, not really nothing to speak of. And when we started looking it's because, you know, they're hiding all their inventory. So I think, you know, this idea of not knowing what you have, you know, and that manifests itself in in creating these buffers or completely, you know, showing, you know, not showing it at all, and really just not wanting to disappoint that customer. I mean, there's a lot of factors, but those are the big ones.

Wow, that's an incredible couple of examples. And not only did you give me one example, you gave me about a dozen examples. And those are all they're all really good cabot, so so I've got a statement that I've used as part of the supply chain research initiative as part of the University of Arkansas, I'd love to get your reaction to it. The future of retailing is going to be omni channel, it's both brick and mortar and online. And certainly bopis which is ordering it online and then coming in either picking it up in the store, having to put it in the back of your car. Or if you're Walmart delivering it to somebody's home through a service or Walmart plus actually coming in putting it in your refrigerator. Okay, so those are all options. But in order to be successful, you have to know what you have. And you have to know where it's located at an extreme high level accuracy. True or not true?

100% true.

Okay, cool. And the bottom line is we know from the research that we've done together, and with the Auburn RFID lab, we're looking at an industry average of 50 to 60% accuracy. And if it's wrong, usually it's overstated, which means I've got inventory. I think I have inventory, but I really don't, I'm overstating what I have, how in the world, in the world are we going to get out of this? Because if that's a growing trend, we got retailers and your examples, high inventory, clearly the customers are going to continue to demand not only bopis from a safety COVID perspective, but frankly time. Nobody likes spending 45 minutes in the store picking up basic items, right? So they start to rely on buy online pickup in stores not only save them time and save the money, both, so how are we gonna get the industry where we need them to be?

Well, I think the pandemic was a huge eye opener for many in the industry. You know, as I said earlier, kind of pre pandemic. A lot of retailers viewed bopis as this well this is kind of a nice little feature but it's not it's not core to who we are right I mean, people are still going to come in the store they're still going to shop this and this is just kind of a nice little feature. You know, consumers in the pandemic, that became a lifeline. As I indicated earlier, post pandemic, consumers absolutely expect it. There's no There's no doubt and it's, it's no longer a nice to have. It's it is a requirement. Now you're not going to have a a strategic competitor, strategic competitive advantage because of it. But you will have a strategic disadvantage if you don't have it. And so retailers are, are now finding that they've got to do that. And one of the things that we've done, Mike to help retailers out is we created a scorecard around bopis, and we're, we went in, we've been up now to about 100 retailers and and did an analysis for them. We will and we'll compare what what, what they their their metrics against industry and against their peers from the same industry. And Mike, it's shocking, but it's it at least opens their eyes. I mean, I'll give you a couple of stats from what we've seen in the industry around bopis. The first one, which is really a simple one, right is, you know, do you show on your website the count, the inventory count, right? So if you're going in and you're saying I'm wanting these these, these windshield wipers, or these tires, or whatever it may be, do you show as a retailer the count, only 35% of the retailers are showing the count.

Wow.

Now,

Now, wait a minute, does the count mean in stock or not in stock? Or do you mean I got seven? When you say count

A specific number. Yep, only 35%. Now the obvious question is why why wouldn't a retailer show we count? Well, the reason why they don't show the count is they're not really confident in the count. Right. All right. So that's, that's a that's a red flag. Right? If you're not showing the count, that means you don't know what you have. Alright. Second one, which is, which is much, much more I think damning on the on the retailers, you mentioned this 50-55, 60% inventory accuracy, you know, as we what we know, in store for bopis accuracy, the number drops to 13%.

Wow

Now, this is across a lot of categories of retailers, and doing exactly what I described earlier, we what we walk in, we say we want this product, I'm looking on the shelf. And do the numbers match. Only 13%, Mike, 13%. Now and look, that's a 13% with an asterisk though, however, right? Because it could be that somebody's picked up a couple of items, put them in their shopping cart, and they're somewhere else in the store. So that's it's not a hard and fast number. But it's you get the kind of the sense. It wasn't 90%. Right? I mean, it's 13%. So we know there's a lot of work to do there. And you know, we've even done the analysis of hey, are you actually showing? You know, the idea behind omni channel is that it's not online, or in the store, it is product, and it's available to the consumer, when how and where she wants it.

Right

Right. And if you're if you're distinguishing your channels, well, you're not omni channel, your multi channel. It's an improvement over a uni channel, but it's not omni channel. Alright. And so if you're really going to get the omni channel, then what you have in the store should be available, you know, on other mediums right on your phone, your computer at home. And likewise, if you're showing something on the mobile desk, it should be in the store as well. We got a lot of work there for retailers to sync those things up and make it seamless for the person.

Yeah, so one of the things I guess I would ask, you mentioned the fact that you your team was going out and doing research, and I'm assuming the retailers don't even know you're doing this research on them.

That is correct.

So I guess the first question is, if I'm a retailer listening to this podcast, I already know there's probably three reasons I don't have product on the shelf. One is my on hands are wrong. Second, I've got operation problems in the store, it's sitting in a truck somewhere, it's sitting in the backroom, etc. Third is this really, really weird word which is hard to define? Which is it's the supply chain, whatever that means, right? So so if you've already done research on my myself as a retailer, how do I find out about that? Do you have do we have people that we can contact on your team that can allow us to have a discussion about what our results are and what steps we can go through to improve them?

Yeah, absolutely. And we we've shared with most of the retailers at this point that we've worked with because we reached out and said hey, you know, just let you know we we've done this, we're happy to share the results. We actually give them a little customized report, you know, and just say hey, here, here's what we found. If you if you want to talk to us about it. Right. But otherwise, we just hope this will help you as you as you think about how to execute better as a retailer.

Okay.

So I think we, I think we've contacted the vast majority of the retailers that have been involved.

Okay.

If a retailer has not been involved, we, you know, we'd love to include them. I mean, it's pretty easy to do take our take our scorecard and go through. Because we measure the, you know, the online side that you know, that you're, you know, where you're ordering, bopis, you know, the communications, like the number of emails you get, and does it tell you where the stuffs at and even pickup? You know, the, you know, is there certain hours you pick up? Where do you pick up. So we've got three categories of the scorecard. And really, there's no good or bad, but what we do is we show you where you're at, relative to others who are like you and then to the entire industry. And of course, the more we do, the better our numbers get as far as reliable across the industry.

So it's interesting to me as if the retailer's already know this. And by the way, they probably already knew this anyway, you just exposing what they already knew and didn't want a lot of people know. One of the things that I think would be an opportunity is to share the same information with the suppliers, the Hanes, the fruits, the LG television sets, the Samsung's, the Goodyear tires, etc. I wonder if they realize the lost sales they may be experiencing because retailers are not necessarily knowing what they have and know where it's located, and what the implications to their sales are. Because, because clearly bopis has taken off, whether it's whether people want it or not. People want that time savings, and they want that frictionless experience. And nobody enjoys going and getting basic stock upitems, they do enjoy shopping in store. So I would I would suggest that I can connect them. And I will put a little link of this in this thing to of the Auburn University team who's doing this. Because I think suppliers would be extremely interested in looking at their say top five retailers. What is there about the scores, especially as it relates to how they're meeting customer needs? I think that would be a fascinating thing for the for the suppliers. Because there losing sales to

Yeah

There's not just the retailer.

Well, now. So Mike, let me let me do make one thing clear. So we're not promising something we're not delivering. So So I would never let's just take a retailer XYZ, right. So we'll take and we'll we'll do the scorecard for retailer XYZ and give them a little table showing, here's XYZ, here's your score. And here's those who, you know, the similar retailer like you and then here's industry. We do not now we put on our website, the industry numbers, we do not share that particular retailers numbers.

Got it.

Well, that's yeah, we consider that private to that retailer. And we're not we're not going to expose that to the world. So that's really for the retailer.

No, that's, that's perfect. I understand that. So how do you help the supplier, especially the suppliers who are making investments in technology, like RFID help them understand the value they're getting out? Because I would assume, and I don't want to make this an RFID discussion, but if I'm spending money to put a tag on a product, I sure would like to know, my bopis scores for the retailers that are using that technology is better than the ones who are not for example.

Yeah. Well, so. So one of the things there's, there's there's a couple of things to consider there, Mike with with what you just indicated. So so first of all, when when we talk about a supplier and let's talk about national brands

Okay

Right or international, however you want to look at the thing about bopis now, is that it if you're a retailer and you're not executing you, as a retailer, are likely to lose that sale because you know, and look I'm gonna put my own consumer hat on right? When I order something from bopis it means I want I want it pretty soon, what we'd normally see is when somebody orders from bopis they want to pick it up within two hours or at least later that day, right? They don't want to pick it up two days later, three days later, you know, they want it now. And if I go to my my favorite retailers website and say hey, I need these windshield wipers and and they don't show that they have it. You know what if I want this particular stopper windshield wiper in this particular car, I'm not gonna go ah, gosh, then you know, they don't have it that's too bad. I'm gonna go to another retailer.

Right.

Who has that brand. And I'm gonna go to that retailer who may have it in stock, who may show me online what they have. And so so the retailers have to be very careful because consumers now have the power especially national brands. They don't have to buy from your store.

True.

They'll find it.

We've had some funny conversation on here. I wonder how many retailers just take Walmart for example. I wonder how much Wi Fi bandwidth is being used by customers in their store to order stuff from Amazon because they don't have it. I mean, that's a funny thing to think about. But you're actually paying for the service that allows somebody to buy it from your competitor, because they came to buy it from you. And you disappointed them. And I'm gonna order had to order it and get it the day or two from Amazon. Great point.

Yeah, right. Yeah. And so so now to this point, then, of well, for the, for the suppliers who are tagging things, and if and for the retailer, so one of the one of the recent analysis we did was we were we've not collected enough data, we started teasing apart, what's the performance between those who are using RFID? And those who are not? Alright, so earlier, I gave you a kind of a simple metric, right? 35% of the retailers showed their inventory count online, right, the actual actual numbers for those using RFID, 100% of them.

Wow

Showed the count online.

Wow.

And why? Because they have confidence in what they have. Right? So the system says you have seven, you have seven.

So, so peel that back, you know which retailers are using RFID, and which categories they're using it for, can you can you demonstrate a sizeable difference in their bopis scores, if they're a retailer that's using RFID for some categories? Versus other categories? I would assume the answer was yes. Yes.

The answer is yes.

Okay, is that both in what they're confident exposing, as well as the on hand accuracy? Or both?

Both.

Both?

Yeah, yeah. Because that onhand accuracy, then lifts that confidence, right?

Gotcha.

Be able to give those numbers. And before we get too far down this path of bopis and focusing on that, let's also throw into this mix on how consumers behave with what's called robis research online, buy in store. 74% of consumers now, will research something online, before they go to the store to buy it. Now a good number of those will go ahead and bopis it. But there are many that do not. And again, I'm gonna put my own consumer hat on. There's a lot of times where, you know, while I'm getting ready to run to the store, I'm not going to go and let you we talked about I'm not going to go to Walmart unless I know they have it.

Right

I'll get online look. They don't have it. Okay, well, let me see if Target has it. Right.

Yep.

Let me see if so and so has it.

Yep.

And I'm gonna go there because I want to research it online to see if they have it before I ever go. That is a huge one that's impossible to measure. Because we don't know what that consumer right? If they look, if they go to your store and try to find something they don't you know whether they still come or they don't come. But that's one that you know, it's kind of a hidden loss by having inaccurate inventory and hiding that inventory in your store and not showing it online.

Yeah, yeah. There's, there's got to be a switching pattern here too, because let's walk through this example. If I'm going in and they don't have, I'll just make it up Bounty paper towels, and my wife said, bring home paper towels. I'm not going to target. I'm not going to Harps, I'm gonna buy a different brand of paper towels, right? So certain categories, I'm willing to switch.

Yeah, that's right.

I'm not willing to switch on dog food because I don't want to get the dog sick. I'm not willing to switch on printer cartridges. Because if you got 1000 printer cartridges, but you don't have the black one for my printer, I'm walking away. So how do you distinguish switching? Whether the retail is going to suffer, i.e. going to another retailer, or whether the brand is going to suffer, i.e. going to switch to another brand within that retailer.

Yeah, that that was a tough question, Mike, you know, to really tease apart because of buyer behavior, right? But but we do know, especially across, you know, categories and even brands, what the what the buyer behavior is and I'll take an example and use a good example of paper towels where you might go Yeah, I want a bounty, but I just need a paper towel. Let's take something like ketchup because we know like ketchup, people like a particular brand. And if I go in and I say I buy Heinz tomato ketchup, and if they don't have the, and I like the 24 ounce bottle, if they don't have the 24 ounce bottle, I don't buy Hunts.

Right.

I buy either a smaller or larger bottle of Heinz. Well that's still a form of switching behavior but but you see, it gets very complex to see well, well Did you know Did Did you really get hurt? We'll even as a retailer if they wanted that particular size. Right? Maybe if they bought the bigger size the margin is smaller. Where if so your margin is not as much maybe on the bigger bottle. And now the consumer is gonna have a bottle that lasts longer. So they're not going to come in as often for that. I mean, so there's all kinds of, I mean, all the ripple effects of that, you ask a good question, and I'm kind of dancing around? Because it's really, it's a good question. It's a very difficult one to tease apart because the buyer behavior, we looked at a lot of areas, like apparel is not one that has a lot of switching behavior, right? If, if I wear size, you know, 33, 34 jeans, I'm not going to buy a size 40, 40 Because they have it in stock, right? I'm gonna buy in even style, I'm gonna buy, you know, like this brand, this style and this size. So there's not a lot of switching behavior in that. And so we looked more at things that didn't have a lot of switching behavior.

Yep. So I got another question for you. This won't be easy, either. But it's a question that I struggle with. And I know a lot of people in the industry struggle with, you already said, as part of your bopis research back in 2009, that inventory wasn't accurate. People were hiding inventory, you're standing there looking at the shelf, they have product, but they say they don't have product. For people who are out there trying to make investment decisions on technology. RFID could be worn, but there are other technologies as well. How do you correlate on hand accuracy to sales? Because that's really what everybody wants to know, can you? Can you? Are we far enough down in the academic research to be able to make a correlation that says getting on hand to this level will generate this kind of incremental sales for you?

Yeah, so. So Mike, I want to correct you said, 2009. I wanna make sure we had 2019.

I'm sorry, yes.

2009, we've been really

So sorry, whats 10 years

you know? You know, we do know that inventory accuracy impacts sales. And in a non omni channel environment, there's a lot less things that it impacts, you know, inventory accuracy impacts, you know, inventory availability, which impacts customer satisfaction, which impacts sales, and it's a it's, you know, there's several variables, but you can you can, you can start working on those with an omni channel environment. And when I've got a I've got a model, and I, you know, it's too complicated really kind of go over here. But but it basically triples the number of variables that are considered because now you've got the buy online pickup in store and the ship from store and the research online buy in store and, and all that that start factors in from inventory accuracy, and how it impacts those things. Right. So so we do know that there's a link between inventory accuracy, and sales. And one of the projects that we're starting to undertake here, and it's a very, very ambitious project is what is that link with all these variables in there? So that, for example, if we can increase inventory accuracy by 1%? What is the impact on sales? We don't know the answer to that question right now.

Okay.

But we but but I think we do need to answer it. And we do know, it's going to be really difficult to answer because all the factors that but you know what? We need to try, because I think for sound investments, especially once you get to a certain point out, you know, look, if you're 30% inventory accuracy, you need to be better, right? But once you hit 90%, or maybe 92%. Well, what if how much, you know, if I can invest another $10 million to get 2% of direction? What does that mean to my sales? So you really start looking at those incremental investments and the incremental increase in sales? We cannot answer that question right now.

Great perspective. Great point. Well, I'm glad you're working on it because I do believe it's an industry problem. People have asked me that 20 years I've been working in this space, hey, well, if I invest in this to get my on-hand at 98%, what's it going to do in sales? And my answer is typically, I know it's gonna get better, but I can't really give you an answer. So I think that'd be helpful. I have one more question for you as a closing question. And this will be an easy one for you, because I know what we've talked about this a lot. Even if I'm 100% accurate. Let's just say I've got 50 SKUs, and I am 100% accurate. There's this concept called serialization, whether it's leveraging RFID. How important is it for serialized inventory to know the status of an item, our examples always televisions, I've got three televisions, yeah but one of them's on the TV wall showing customers how they work. One just got returned by a customer because it's broke. So it's back in claims I really only have one to sell, but my onhands has three, don't want to specifically talk about RFID. But the value of serialization, everybody just looks at a UPC and a count. What is the importance for the future roadmap of the people listening about being able to serialize the products you have in the store?

Well, there's, there's a lot of implications from that, you know, and let's just take a couple of simple ones. One is returns, why is it so difficult now for returns? Or why is that such a painful process is because when I buy this coat, well, it has a UPC, that's, that is not unique to this coat. And so if I take this coat back in without the receipt, they don't know, who bought it, how much it was paid for where it was purchased. But if it's serialized, then they would know Oh, well Hardgrave bought this coat at at this retailer and paid this amount for it. The returns process and even the reverse logistics become so much simpler. And from a theft perspective, you know, we, you know, the shrinkage that we have in the stores is incredible. And a lot of the theft occurs because people steal something, only to take it back to another store to get a refund, that's how they get cash for it. Well, serialization cuts out that major avenue for that organized theft, because when they take it back in, and we clearly say, You know what, this product was actually stolen from this other store, it was never purchased. You think about things about recall recalls. Right? Right now we have a trouble with recall, because, again, let's say that they recalled some pick a, pick a product, right, UPC and say, Yeah, this, we got 50,000 of them out there, we need to recall them all. Well, now we probably don't we know which, if it was serialized, we would actually know which batch and where the store was, it would save a lot of time and energy there. There's just so many benefits to the consumer, if we can get to that serialized level. It's long overdue, to get there, RFID and carry an electronic product code, the EPC really is a huge step towards doing that. And that's one of the major advantages of RFID and EPC. And I know you didn't ask for particular about that. But serialization is kind of that underpinning.

Yeah. But you could do you doesn't have to be RFID. It could be 2D barcode, but the bottom line is knowing that unique item, here's the only other thing, or the one I'll tell you and I'll close is counterfeit. I know exactly what items are my let's just take Nike, Nike spends a lot of marketing money on that swoosh, right? Really easy to copy that with a printing press and sell for half price. And you know, just go crazy selling stuff. Now I have the ability to say all of the legitimate Nike products have the serial numbers, if you're getting anything else, it's counterfeit black market, don't accept it, or whatever you want to do with it. I think that it'd be pharmaceuticals, drugs, etc. I think there's a huge opportunity for serialization in that market as well.

I completely agree. And I'm remise I didn't mention that. But counterfeiting is a huge, huge use case for serialization.

Well, here's the deal. I had about seven questions. I sent you beforehand of things. We didn't talk about one of them except give me your experience with bopis. And that's the way our relationship has been for the last 20 years. It's just conversational. I have to go back and look at what questions I said I was going to ask you, because I guarantee I didn't even come close. But that's okay, because this was a meaningful pump. The bottom line is bopis is the future if they didn't take anyway, anything else from that. Number two is you've got to know what you have and where it's located if you want to meet that bopis need. And thirdly, the folks at Auburn are doing some pretty cool work around researching bopis, and trying to connect on hand accuracy to that very important nugget that everybody wants, which is sales. So, Bill, any other closing comments before we wrap it up here?

No, I just say first of all, thanks for having me on here, Mike. And you look, you and I've known each other very long time. You shouldn't be surprised that we didn't get through any of the questions beyond the first one. Because you know, you you start talking and you know, you and I have so much history and, and so much you have so much knowledge in this space. It's easy to have a 30 minute conversation about just about one thing. And so I love love to be back on mic at some point. If I got any value. It's certainly an honor to be on here with you.

Awesome. Well, thank you very much for your time.

All right. Thank you, Mike.

Thank you for taking the time for this epic discussion. And special thanks to Mike Graen for leading the retail supply chain initiative. On behalf of the Walton SCMRC, we are delighted to lead with you as we learn, engage, address and develop all things supply chain to lead the world of commerce from Northwest Arkansas. Have a great day.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai