In this thought-provoking episode of Logistics With Purpose®, host Enrique Alvarez and special co-host Nathan Chaney sit down with Abby Nawrocki, Founder and CEO of Stock, to explore how excess inventory can move beyond warehouses and landfills to create value for businesses, nonprofit organisations, and communities.

Every year, businesses across industries face the challenge of managing surplus inventory, including abandoned goods, overstocked products, and customer returns. Abby shares how Stock is helping brands and logistics providers rethink inventory management by connecting excess goods with nonprofit organisations that can put those resources to meaningful use.

The conversation explores how technology, data, and intentional decision-making can transform inventory management while supporting sustainability and impact goals. Abby explains how brands can choose the nonprofit organisations they support, creating stronger connections between business operations, reduce costs, community impact, and corporate responsibility.

From evolving consumer expectations to emerging sustainability regulations, this conversation highlights why businesses are increasingly re-evaluating how they manage excess inventory and how purpose-driven logistics can create value for organisations, nonprofit partners, and the environment.

If you're passionate about supply chain innovation, inventory management, sustainability, reverse logistics, ESG initiatives, or creating positive impact through business, this is an episode you won't want to miss.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why excess inventory remains one of the biggest challenges facing supply chains today

• The three major categories of excess inventory: abandoned goods, overstock, and returns

• How technology can connect surplus inventory with nonprofit organisations to reduce waste

• Why sustainable inventory management is becoming a strategic business priority

• How data, accountability, and intentional decision-making can help organisations create value beyond the movement of goods

Additional Links & Resources:

Learn more about Logistics With Purpose®: https://logisticswithpurpose.co/

Subscribe to Logistics With Purpose®: https://logistics-with-purpose.captivate.fm/listen

Learn more about Vector Global Logistics: https://vectorgl.com/

Learn more about Stock: https://www.stockitbetter.com/

This episode was hosted by Enrique Alvarez and Nathan Chaney.

Welcome to Logistics with Purpose presented by Vector Global Logistics in partnership with Supply Chain. Now we spotlight and celebrate organizations who are dedicated to creating a positive impact. Join us for this behind the scenes. Glimpse of the origin stories, change making progress and future plans of organizations who are actively making a difference. Our goal isn't just to entertain you, but to inspire you to go out. And change the world. And now, here's today's episode of Logistics with Purpose.

Welcome, welcome, welcome to another exciting episode of Logistics with Purpose. I'm your host, Enrique Alvarez, co founder and managing director at Vector Global Logistics. And today I have an amazing guest actually with me.

And then we also have an incredible co host. This is the first time I'm doing this with Nathan, a good friend of mine. Nathan Chaney, founder Supply Chainy and supply Chain Social Club.

Nathan, how are you doing today?

I'm really, really good. You know, looking outside, we've got the sun up here in just North Texas and we're kind of entering in this weird period between spring and summer.

And so yesterday I was able to get out on the paddle board. Not a hot paddleboard ride, but you know, starting to work on that summer tan a little bit, building that base tan.

I don't know if you know how that works, Abby up in Chicago.

Yeah, we only get it a couple, a couple of weeks out of the year. Other than that it's, it's negative 20, so we, I should make more trips. Gone to see you.

I'll send you an invite here shortly. So Enrique, thanks for, for having me on.

You know, whenever I had you on my podcast, we kind of talked about, hey, let's maybe, you know, change things up and I'll come over and spend some time on yours.

So thank you for the invitation, but I think what's really important and what we really want to focus on today is talking about Abby and to Abby here. And so Abby's a friend of mine up in Chicago, as mentioned, who is now the founder and CEO at Stock.

She's actually been on my podcast as well where she came and talked about her history. And I think if anyone is looking to get into logistics, I would encourage you to go listen to her podcast because she really laid it all out there.

It gave a lot of like behind the scenes kind of looks at what goes on at some of the largest logistics organizations out there like Zara and Apple and Flex Support and DHL and Geodus and Shimon and like her resume all tightly packed into like less than 10 years, which is I think is the most Impressive part of it. And she goes, oh, that just sounds like a normal career. And I was like, no, that, that's not a normal career.

Abby, you, you're actually quite outstanding. And I think that, you know, the, the news releases that we' today where stock has been successful and we can get more into that.

But I think that all just goes to show that Abby's just a really exceptional person and I'm excited to call her a friend and to have her and have a little bit more of a chat with her today. So with that, I'll hand this back over to Enrique.

Abby. Well, welcome. Welcome to the show. It's a pleasure having you here.

We were talking a little bit in the pre show about how good of a person Nathan is, and I'm so excited that he actually recommended you to be here on our podcast as well. Logistics with purpose. The only podcasts with positive news.

And I'll start by saying that I'm a big fan of you and what you're doing and you have helped donate millions of dollars of goods instead of sending them to the landfills. And we'll talk a little bit more about that. So, Abby, once again, welcome to our podcast.

Thank you so much for having me. And what a cool concept.

I mean, the supply chain and logistics industry is so huge and there's so much good work being done, but it has to be incredibly intentional. And so for you guys to go out and find those stories and highlight them is just amazing.

So thank you for the podcasts and the content and the work that you do as well.

Well, thank you for being here. And with that, tell us a little bit more about what excess inventory is for you and people that are listening to us.

I mean, most people usually think about discounts or warehouse clutter, but we all know, at least the ones that are in this, that behind the scenes, it's a huge problem. Tell us a bit more about that.

Yeah, and that's actually a really good place to start. Not often do you hear people from the outside asking, what is excess inventory? But when you get to trust customers of stock, we see that a lot.

And we bucket excess inventory into three categories. The first being abandoned inventory, which is super niche but very important and has a very large scale.

I talk about this on some of my LinkedIn posts.

There are 4 million brands that sell on Shopify, and 90% of those brands will go out of business within the first three years of opening a Shopify storefront. And when they go out of business, they leave their inventory with their 3PO. So we would categorize that as abandoned inventory.

All inventory from a brand being left at a third party logistics company for that third party logistics company to deal with legally, physically, etc.

The second type of excess is from thriving brands who may have SKUs that aren't selling, or they change artwork on their packaging, or they're a CPG brand and they do a run and that run is too salty, or the color isn't right, or they overproduce, whatever that might look like for each specific brand. But it doesn't mean the brand is going out of business or the brand isn't successful.

Every brand will have excess based off of a bunch of different use cases. And then the third type of excess inventory is returns. Right.

And returns is this massive $850 billion industry that everybody's always talking about and attempting to innovate in and solve for. But returns is also a very large piece of that excess pie. And was there a follow up to that question or.

Yeah, it's me. Okay, editor, thanks for cleaning this one up. That's me now, so thanks for. You know, Abby, you've clearly been doing this a minute.

I would probably kind of consider you a bit of a scientist in this space at this point. Right. But you've kind of worked in large logistics operations that we kind of mentioned earlier.

And I'm kind of curious, like, just how common of a problem is this? You know, I feel like it's been getting some traction in recent years where fast fashion has kind of gotten put on the naughty list and whatnot. And.

But obviously there's much more to it. But I'm just like, how. How common is this?

Yeah, this is a super common problem that all brands deal with and all warehouses deal with. On the high end, we see that 3 PLs will see 15% excess inventory in their networks.

And on the low end, probably 3 to 5% of inventory in any warehouse is considered excess. Again, returns, overstock or abandoned inventory. So it's every day. I mean, it's every warehouse. It's every day.

Well, and technology helps us speed up the problem too. Right. It seems that the more that we advance, technologically speaking, the easier it is to ship goods.

And then the more we get of this excess inventory that you so accurately described, tell us a little bit more about stock and what is it really, first and foremost, what do you guys do? And then operationally, what happens when a company decides to donate through stock from an operational standpoint?

Yeah.

And Enrique, that was like one of the major talking Points when I went out to raise the pre seed round was AI and a lot of investors said, oh, you know, it's hard to invest in this space because we're going to get so much better at demand planning and forecasting and manufacturing and shipping. And it's like, no, no, no. This is only going to become a bigger problem because of AI, right? What we're going to get better at is selling.

What we're going to get better at is distribution and marketing and producing cheaper.

And so what you'll see is more people attempting to be entrepreneurs, more people failing, which is just natural part of starting a D2C brand and US producing cheaper products at higher volume and trying to penetrate new markets.

So we'll actually see a higher amount of waste without solutions like stock due to AI than we will see, you know, tighter supply chains or better demand planning or less production. So it's a really interesting angle to answer your question about stock. So what we do is we are what is now called enterprise tech, right?

SaaS software as a service where we take inventory information from brands and 3pls and match it with nonprofits. And then we do the full orchestration of shipping, documentation, etc. And so in a use case, what happens is a brand will come to our platform.

They will log in and they will list inventory for let's say the brand is a home goods brand and they do pillowcases and sheets. They will log in and they'll say we have six pallets of pillowcases. Here are the SKUS quantities and warehouse location we would like to donate.

Our system will look at the 1.5 million nonprofits, 501 C3s registered in good standing with the IRS and determine which ones are best based off of physical location of the inventory, where is it, what warehouse, the SKU and the volume. It will then contact that nonprofit and say are you interested in this donation? The nonprofit will say yes or no.

If they say yes, ideally then we will look at shipping, logistics, transportation of moving that inventory.

Once the brand approves what nonprofit they would like the inventory to go to, then we provide them with a bol for pickup and transportation, inventory, ships and then tax documentation is provided. So really it's the full end to end orchestration of moving the inventory, matching the inventory and providing all of the documentation.

We like to say we make inventory as easy as E Com fulfillment. They place an order and we find the quote unquote buyer and then move the inventory.

Of course, the inventory is always 100% free for the nonprofits as well as using our platform. Being a member of stock is free for the nonprofits as well.

That's actually a really good segue.

You teed it up perfectly there, Abby, Unintentionally, which is, you know, you've raised some capital to support this idea, which means there is a commercial end, I guess, to this. And, you know, you've gotta put food on the table for your family and whatnot.

So I'm curious, like, how is it that you get a return out of this, even though you're doing really good with, you know, the operations? I kind of guess where is the revenue generated, you know, for you and for stock?

Yeah. So we have two different models that generate revenue. One is we sell into 3pls and help them white label the product and offer it as VAs. Right.

You have 20,000 3 PLs in the US and they offer services like returns processing, custom packaging, subscriptions, subscription fulfillment, et cetera. And so what we do is we say you should also offer donation as a value added service in your contract with your brands.

This allows the 3 PLs to generate revenue and profit off of the same service offering, and also helps us put food on the table, keep the company alive, and keep growing and scaling. The second option is like the true marketplace, where brands come and transact.

If a brand is coming on their own behalf, they're either paying a $500 per transaction fee every time they list or a per pallet fe. So we tend to structure the revenue model as it makes sense for the brand, because, again, the mission here is to move inventory out of the landfill.

The mission here is to provide a business solution for excess inventory, Better dispositioning channels for brands. And so we want to make it make sense from a cost perspective.

I think this is also like a super interesting topic because you have the alternatives, right, which is liquidation and disposal or destruction.

Brands will spend more renting dumpsters from waste management and throwing away inventory, getting the certificate of destruction and doing that process than they will with us at $500 a transaction or $50 per pallet. The other nice piece about that is it covers transportation. Brands and 3pls are not paying the cost of transportation to move it into the nonprofit.

Because we're doing this work to geolocate the nonprofits and match them with the appropriate inventory. We keep the cost of transportation incredibly low, and that can be covered by the nonprofits. So, like, it's a win, win, win. We're making money.

The three PLs are becoming stickier, offering better services and diversifying the brands have solutions and the nonprofits are getting access to inventory they otherwise wouldn't.

Wow. It's amazing how you can capture so much value in such a straightforward, great idea.

And I love the fact that you're sitting in a really interesting corner for us where you're in supply chain, but then you're also in pur driven organization. So you're trying to take inventory or excess inventory out of the landfills at the same time helping non for profits and donating products.

And that's just been. It's amazing. So congratulations, Avi, what has been the most surprising thing to you so far?

Trying to kind of operate, just make generosity more operational and helping this non for profits.

I think what has been the most surprising is how many niche nonprofits there are. You could find a nonprofit for literally anytime type of product and they are all serving such specific communities and such specific missions.

When I built the company right, I came from the supply chain side. I really built it because I needed a solution.

As an operator who was running multimillion square foot buildings, I wasn't exposed incredibly well to the nonprofit world.

As I started to build and as I started to learn more about their space, I was blown away at some of the organizations who, like I said, serve 300 youth in San Antonio for a very specific need. Or there's a phenomenal nonprofit in Canada called Girls Cameras for Girls.

And their whole mission is to provide girls with camera equipment so they can start blogs and podcasts and generate revenue out of that and pull themselves out of poverty.

And so it's like when they're using the platform, they're looking for very specific electronic accessories, cases and screen protectors and chargers, et cetera. So I think that was what was most surprising to me was how many nonprofits there are doing incredible work in very, very niche spaces.

Wow, that's so exciting. And it's also very, very inspiring for a lot of people that I'm sure are listening to you, to your this conversation. As to your point, there's.

There's a need for everything and I'm guessing there's excess inventory for everything as well. So it's a good match, a good marriage. What is the biggest challenge? Matching this inventory with nonprofits?

What has been, what have you faced as the biggest challenge so far?

Yeah, I think transportation right now is the biggest challenge in that we do really want to, on top of keeping things out of landfills and using inventory for social impact, we want to reduce carbon emission and keep inventory close to where it is, where it's sitting in warehouses.

And so even though there are millions of nonprofits across the US and tens of millions globally, we want to do a better job of keeping donations within 100 mile radius of where the physical inventory sits at the moment of donation.

And so that's, that's been part of the growth and the scale right as we, as we start and we have one donation on, on day one, we can't be as picky as to where that nonprofit is who accepts. As we grow and we have multimillion unit donations, we can build the demand corridors and have better nonprofits geolocated closer to the inventory.

I like that.

It's almost like you are able to measure not only kind of like the public good that you're doing, but also with what carbon footprint are you, you know, generating with that?

Abby, as you've been talking and, you know, it's kind of occurred to me that there's a quote that I think really, I think encapsulates kind of what you've done. And it's by Mark Twain and I'm just going to read it here just so I don't mess it up. But basically it says there's no such thing as a new idea.

It is impossible. We simply take a lot of old ideas and put them into a sort of mental kaleid scope and we give them a turn and they make new and curious combinations.

We keep on turning and making new combinations indefinitely. But they are the same old pieces of colored glass that have been there all like the whole time.

And so, you know, if you look at, you know, what you're doing with stock, like, the problem has always kind of been there. The solutions and the tools and the ability, the marketplace concept is all there.

It's, it's your kind of unique ability to take all of that, jumble it all together and come up with a different way of solving the problem with a lot of the technology that's existed out there. And so I just, just kudos to you for, for having that insight and being innovative.

I'm curious, you know, for a lot of folks that are listening to this podcast and they're thinking like, well, I don't know if I'm the kind of person or company that can really identify with this. Like, they're using a lot of words.

Can you kind of like boil this down to like a really relatable story or an example that kind of captures exactly what this mission is all about?

Yeah. So good example would be better than booze, which is a brand that does Mocktails and THC beverages. They're out of Nashville.

And they came to our platform and said, hey, we've been trying to contact ourselves a bunch of nonprofits to see if they can take some of the flavors that haven't been selling. But we're not getting anywhere.

It's really difficult to communicate, figure out transportation, understand pickup and drop off schedules, do they need a lift, gate, all this stuff. And so we were wondering if you could help us. So, yeah, perfect. No problem.

And so we listed it and within a couple hours we had multiple nonprofits in different sectors who wanted that inventory. For instance, you might think like THC or mocktail, like, where is this? Like, what nonprofit is this going to go to? Who's going to take this?

But you have cancer research trials and organizations who are working with cancer patients who may take it. You have certain nonprofits who are working to decriminalize marijuana who may take it. You also have, like Burning man is a 501. They may take it.

Right? And so we were able to present the brand with multiple options as to where their specific inventory can go.

And within days, that inventory was shipped to nonprofits across the country and being utilized in very specific communities. And so that is like, you know, a use case that just perfectly encapsulates, hey, we have this stuff, we want to do better with it. We've tried our.

We can't figure out the logistics around it. Can you help us?

Amazing. Amazing. Okay, all right, I get you. You know, mocktails are definitely a thing these days, for sure.

You know, Abby, when you were on, on my podcast, you, we dug into a little bit of your upbringing, your background and understanding, just like where you came from. And you shared like some really good insights about just like how you kind of got inspired to get into logistics in the first place.

You know, can you kind of go back to those days a little bit and kind of just reflect back on, you know, what initially kind of pushed you into the logistics and operations side of the. Of. Of.

Yeah, and it's actually perfect timing because when we announced the pre seed round, right, Indiana University did this press release from IU Ventures, and they truly are the ones who exposed me to supply chain and essentially allowed me to fall in love with logistics and the big puzzle that is distribution and transportation and warehousing, et cetera.

I want to go back to one of the points you were talking about earlier, even like the Mark Twain quote when you mentioned in the beginning, hey, you know, you packed all this into a 10 year career and you have been successful in a short amount of time. I think one of the things that drove that is always asking the question, like, how does that work? Right? Like how does that work?

And that's how I was able to take an idea that already existed. Excess inventory. We need end of life dispositioning.

But pull in the marketplace dynamics and pull in the venture backed startup and pull in the logistics and supply piece. Because in every environment that I'm exposed to something new, I'm asking like, how does that work? How does venture capital work?

How do marketplaces work? How does being an entrepreneur work? And that's what helped me grow my career. And like iu, right.

Was, was the originator in my, in my college years to have that mindset in that they had structure. Sophomore or junior year called integrated curriculum, where you take one course from every major in the business school.

You're required to take an accounting class, a marketing class, an operations class, an entrepreneurship class, et cetera. And that professor really gets you to understand what the future of that program or that major looks like.

And as I was taking the supply chain and operations classes, I was like, this makes sense, right? I love this. This is something that I could see myself doing and then going into roles at DHL or at Radial or at Giottis.

Continuing that lifelong learner. Right? Like trying to figure out how it works is what got me promotions. More responsibility, more influence early in my career.

Also just helping the people above you. Right?

Like the thing you can do more than anything, as you are very early in your career that will help you be successful later is to always be asking your boss, like, what can I take off your plate? What can I do for you? Where can I support? Where can I add value?

Wow, I love that. And that's just very practical advice. Go ahead, Nathan, what are you going to say?

No, I was going to say, I remember specifically part of that story was also in the entrepreneurship class. I was like, no, I don't want to be an entrepreneur. And then fast forward a little bit. Right?

Yeah. Because it's like it feels forced if it's not the right solution. And I think that's super important too.

It's like for me personally, there was no intention of becoming an entrepreneur for an entrepreneurial sake. Right. I wasn't thinking, oh, I'm going to start a business just to sell it and make money. I got to go find a problem.

It was like it all originated at Radial while running Zara's account. Zara is incredibly well known for their inventory turns and their supply chain infrastructure and just how they bring product to market.

We have all this inventory that we push into the secondhand market or into liquidation, but we still have inventory left over that even liquidators don't want.

And so it was really just like me picking up the phone and calling angel at the local Salvation army and saying, like, hey, can you take this inventory? And they were blown away. They were like, yeah. And that grew into me understanding there's a business need here.

And also there are multiple ways to solve this, which then said, okay, I can be an entrepreneur because the business makes sense, the problem is real, it's palpable. I understand it, and I want to solve it.

Well, abhi, I used to love the way that you explain things. You're very factual, very straightforward, and it sounds to me that you're incredibly structured and smart.

So I know that people that are listening to us today are really taking a lot of notes how to advance in their careers. And it sounded to me that the key is to Mark Twain's quote.

Right.

It's things that we already have.

You just have to pay attention, you have to be curious, and then you have to make sure that you want to help your boss and take on more challenges every day. And it's amazing how so easy to understand ideas have actually brought you to where you are today.

And so I wanted to thank you for sharing that with us and our audience. And then I wanted to change gears a little bit here, tell you a little bit something.

We're recording this episode two days after Mother's Day, and so I wanted to keep that in mind for everyone that's listening to this in the future. But you openly added mother to your LinkedIn profile and you spoke about motherhood as a leadership experience.

And this is amazing because not a lot of people openly talk about this, and probably Nathan and I are not the best people to be talking about motherhood. But I did wanted to point it out and how has becoming a mother changed the way you lead teams and build companies?

How do you incorporate this motherhood, which is incredibly important and sometimes undervalued, I would say, into the business realm?

Yeah, I think there's two sides of it, right? There's the, the intangible soft skill and then there's the tangible hard skill.

And so from a soft skill perspective, I think the importance of having the experience of motherhood, which is incredible and I'm so lucky to be a mother, has given me the ability to, while interacting with other adults, step back and say, if somebody was treating my child this way, speaking to my child this way, fly on the wall, how would I react, right? Because I, I think sometimes in business, as adults, we lose perspective that we are humans, right? And that we need to interact and engage as humans.

And I know I have experienced plenty of situations in my career where there wasn't the most, the highest level of emotional intelligence from the person that I was interacting with.

And so I think it's being a mother has given me the ability to take a pause in certain situations and say how treating my employees, is it a way that I would want my children to be treated? And that just doesn't mean with empathy and with grace and with sympathy. It also means with rigor and with grit and with perseverance.

I want my children, as they become adults, to be pushed, right? And to be held accountable and to be guided and to be mentored.

And so always having that lens to think through of am I doing what's best for the people on my team, our clients and customers, our partners, our investors, has given me that, that incredible perspective. The other piece of it, the tangible piece of it, is like ruthless prioritization.

As a mother, you are often making trade offs between like, am I going to wash this child's hair or am I going to feed this one dinner, right? Like, you have to constantly be making ruthless prioritization or doing that exercise. And it's like the same in business, right?

Am I going to take this call or this podcast, or am I going to go to this conference or what am I spending my time, how am I structuring my day and my schedule?

And that's incredibly important, as I'm learning as an early founder, because you're wearing so many hats, just like in motherhood, where you are the marketing department and the operations department and the finance department, and you're doing all these functional roles. And so being able to deprioritize certain things early on and delegate and prioritize later is, is a skill that I learned through motherhood.

Well, thank you. Thank you for saying that.

And I know that Nathan has another question for you, but before I do that, I just wanted to say that thank you to every Single mother out there and of course my mom and my wife. Because you're right, it's one of the hardest jobs in the world for sure. I don't think I could survive as a mom for more than maybe a couple of days.

So. Thank you.

Thank you very much for bringing it up and for saying it and for candidly addressing it, because I think it's important and it's a really great analogy. Nathan, what do you think about, like, about this? Any reactions to, or any congratulations that you want to send to someone?

Well, no, I, you know, I've, I think a lot of people will say it that, that mothers are kind of like the ultimate logisticians. Like the original three pl that's in house, actually.

Um, and, and you know, so because of, like you were saying, of juggling priorities, of having to be efficient with your time and, and in many cases where if you're a working mother, you know, you've got multiple, you know, you've have multiple bosses all, all over the place. I'm curious, you know, I think are passionate about women in the working place, you know, just mothers, but women in general.

And that there's, I think there's, it's important that, that lower. More early career folks or folks that are out in warehouses see women being successful and, and moving to the corner office and whatnot.

And, and I feel like that you're kind of like starting to be on that path of being one of those inspirational women that are going to impact the trajectory of careers for other women in the industry. But can you just kind of speak about your journey and your insights of being a woman in the industry?

Yeah, I think, you know, we talked about before I went right from college to starting as a supervisor at dhl, right. Like one of the earliest or lowest on the totem pole roles that you can take.

And I think that's really what also helped my career is being in, in a very tangible, very physical environment and showing direct results on a daily basis or moving the needle. But when we talk about women in the workforce, it's all about representation and it's all about reach and engagement. Right.

Because it's like we have to pull each other up.

You can, you can be somebody who speaks about it on a regular basis, but if you're not directly working with women in roles that are entry level roles, women with ambition to move up, then and what are you truly giving back? Right.

And so I think here the important piece is going and making the connections with women who are in entry level roles or who are looking to advance their career, even mid level roles and working with them directly on what is their vision, where do they want to go and how do they get there.

Even if you're not part of a structured mentorship program, it's just consistently having those connections in that community to say, hey, I'm a resource, right? If you see me posting on LinkedIn or you see me walking the warehouse floor, stop me, talk to me. I'm accessible. Don't be afraid.

Don't feel like there's a barrier or there's any type of shame in asking for guidance or advice or any type of communication. And so it needs to be intentional both from, from both sides. Right.

The women who are earlier in their career and want to move up and also the women who are successful in their career and want to give back. But the most important piece is that that connection, that engagement, the relationship and the direct mentorship, if you will.

You know, folks that attend conferences and kind of just stay in tune with the industry have probably seen kind of the proliferation of women's groups and women's luncheons and breakfasts and all this sort of like intentional spaces being built out there.

I'm curious within your career, like how you've kind of seen kind of advocacy and support and growth of women and in the supply chain industry street.

Yeah, I think it's come a long way and we still have a long way to go.

What we've done an incredible job of, or I should say what the women leading those organizations have done an incredible job of, is that sense of community, that sense of inclusive inclusivity and the access that they give to other women.

And one of the opportunities, there are a few women who do this very well, but I think one of the opportunities that we still have is education around the space in general. Right. Like we create these rooms for women and it gives them access to other women in different levels of their career.

But we also need to create the content and the education for the women who are wanting to advance or for the women who are wanting to grow and develop. So the community is one thing. Right. The actual people in the room is one thing.

And then the content of what is being discussed in that room is the second piece of that.

Absolutely. And thanks, thanks for saying it out loud. I'm sure a lot of listeners are paying attention to what you're saying.

And we'll put some of those groups, if you know of any of these groups, we'll put them on the notes so that women in supply chain and Women in logistics can continue to build this communities because we, the industry definitely needs more women. And of course, the world needs more women. And there's a lot of women leadership that I think will make this world a better place right now.

So thank you for saying that. Switching gears now, ABHI and I want to talk a little bit more about sustainability. How does stock approach sustainability and what do you think?

Most organizations misunderstand about what it takes to build a circular supply chain.

Yeah, I think this is a really interesting space right now and always has been. But sustainability as a topic will ebb and flow. There are years or decades where sustainability is. You know, they talk about greenwashing.

It's a buzzword, right? Sustainability for companies becomes something that they need to make sure they're talking about just for show.

And where we're going right now is companies are realizing that sustainability is actually part of a really strong and solid P and L. Right. You can make really strong financial decisions in a sustainable way that help elevate the business and take it to a next level.

The smart companies have known that for a very long time.

But I think again, in the age of D2C and E commerce and the independent entrepreneur, right, people who are starting companies from scratch at home may not be considering this.

So you have the enterprise businesses that have always understood that sustainability is beneficial for them, both on the P and L and in the way that they operate, in the way they brand and present themselves. But in the generation where you have all these up and coming new businesses, they also need to take that into consideration.

And they also need to leverage sustainability to make better business decisions and then use it as a branding and marketing tool. And I think too, like, that's what stock encapsulates is like. We were born as a business solution to excess inventory.

Hey, we can't sell this to a liquidator, but we need to move it from the warehouse. Hey, we don't want to dispose of it. It's too expensive. It's bad for the environment.

We offered another solution, and that solution happened to be sustainable. And that solution was driving social impact. And as I mentioned, you know, CO2 emission reduction and other things. And so it is this building block.

You need both the business sense and the sustainability angle.

I appreciate the shout out to capitalism there, Abby.

You know, like, it is amazing to have nonprofits and folks that are chasing a mission and raising, you know, donor money to go accomplish that mission with.

But I think there's something to be said to use, you know, good old, you know, father Capitalism to help fuel and maintain and have an organization that, that is always getting better, always adding more functionality, always adding and delivering more value for the folks that are part of its ecosystem.

So, you know, I, as a business school student as well, like Enrique and ourselves, like, we, there is a way that you can use business for good, you know, and so, so just, you know, cheers for that.

But I'm kind of curious in this day and age, you know, you've thrown out probably 15 different statistics already during, you know, just the short amount we've been talking. So I have to ask, is there a reporting mechanism, you know, that you kind of back. Because these brands need to report how sustainable they are.

And I think that you're probably in a really good position to be able to share some of that feedback so they can go use that for PR or for their own internal reporting.

Yeah, there's two different plays to this. Right. And going back to like the capitalism piece. Nonprofits are running a business, just as you mentioned. Right.

Like, they also still have to maintain strong businesses that make sense from a financial perspective.

And what we see happening is the data that we're giving them in terms of how much inventory they're getting in what categories and what impact it's having is helping them raise more funds, raise more cash from donors, from philanthropists. And so it's been super beneficial to the nonprofit as well as the brand when it comes from.

When it comes to like the branding and the marketing piece. To your point, yes.

From a brand perspective, we see that consumers will spend 9% more dollars with a sustainable brand and are 40% more likely to shop with sustainable brands, packaging up that data for the brand and giving it and marketing team to use as part of their campaign, as part of their narrative and brand is a huge part of what we do to be able to say these are how many nonprofits you guys have serviced or donated to. This is the impact it's had.

Here are images, here are documentation around that for them to then drum up however they want to, you know, spin it into a story for the brand.

Well, thank you so much.

And abhi, as you mentioned before, sometimes, and it's surprising to a lot of people, it's easier and sometimes cheaper to just destroy inventory and donated. And so what would you like to see change in the next couple years? How can you resolve this problem?

What part of the problem do you think we should tackle going forward to make sure that what you're saying, which is a win, win, win situation, continues to be the norm and Continues to be aligned with what would be supposed to use. Simply destroying, which leads to a very, very wasteful economy and tons and tons of just random shipments that are just useless.

They're basically just shipping waste. Waste.

Isn't it? It's nuts to think that, like we manufacture something overseas.

It's crazy.

Put it on an ocean container, we bring it here to the US we put it in a warehouse, and then we put it directly in the landfill after nobody buys it. It's like the concept is mind blowing.

And then if you go for a drive in the Inland Empire or, you know, the Chicago suburbs, and you see just warehouse after warehouse after warehouse and you're like, oh my gosh, this is insane. It really is. The, the, the. I lost my train of thought. Now, what was the question?

No, the. So what do you think will happen? Or what do you think we should do to prevent this from happening in the future?

Are you optimistic about the future or do you think that the companies are starting to realize that this is really a race to the bottom and this is just going to end up destroying the planet and ourselves?

I think a huge piece of this is going to be legislation. Right? You're going to see a lot of legislation come into play.

It already is in California and Massachusetts is following around track and TR of garments or product. Right. Brands and manufacturers are going to be held legally liable for knowing where the inventory ends up and why it ends up there.

And they're going to be responsible for reporting on that. There are going to be specific incentives and credits to brands who are more sustainable and who follow specific government policy.

And there will obviously be penalties and financial implications for brands who don't.

And so, so having government play a role in monitoring or checks and balance of how we scale capitalism in general and the creator economy and DTC&E commerce is going to be huge. And so I think that's a massive area where this is going.

You know, today I think we look at in the context of AI and we think that, oh my gosh, we used to like Google things things. And that was like a thing you Google things. And now like within the course of a year or two, it's like, oh my gosh, how did we Google?

Like, why didn't you just ask the question using normal language?

Come on, I'm curious, like, what is going on, like kind of in the four walls of warehouses and distribution centers today that, you know, you think like five or ten years from now we'll look back at and be like, oh my gosh, why? How did that ever happen? That was the most ridiculous practice. Do you have an example of one of those?

I think honestly, like renting dumpsters. Most 3 PLs will have, have 3 to 10 dumpsters backed up to dock doors at any given time just to be using as a place to throw out inventory.

And I think once we're so well integrated into a majority of the three PLs and there's these very dedicated process flows that are standard within the warehouse. Like, okay, we don't need this anymore. Even when it comes to packaging, like we don't need this anymore. It's going to stock.

We're just going to list it, ship it and get it out of here.

We'll be thinking like, can you imagine we had 10 dock doors constantly occupied by, you know, waste management dumpsters and we were doing all this compacting and we had a capacity plan for that and we had to have mhe to, you know, constantly be moving inventory. I also think too, like, if you think about it at scale, it plays a big part in how we design and build warehouses.

Our pick pack paths, our optimization around inventory, storage, put away and pull. And so, so I think we will be more intentional about how we look at velocity, ABC movers and slotting within racking.

You've kind of made me go back to a day when I was spending some time in some warehouses at a big Fortune 500 company.

And in the back there were actually, and this was actually a manufacturing company, there were bins where everything that was kind of like an output from the manufacturing process in this plant was categorized in what kind of outbound waste stream it was going, going through. And it was all being measured.

How much is going to the metal recycling, you know, direction, how much is going to a biodegradable bio sort of place, how much is going to, to the landfill and all sorts of.

So I have to imagine that you're kind of looking at that kind of waste stream coming out of a facility and thinking how much of that can we divert from those other streams into, into the stock stream, basically.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And it's like not to say that those other streams will, will go away way. This is a sister stream, right?

This is a complimentary stream to other disposition channels. There will always be liquidation, there will always be destruction, There will always be recycle and upcycle and resale, et cetera.

But we just haven't brought donation to the forefront yet in a way that is incredibly intentional and at scale. And so that that's the intention.

But yes, like to your point, there will be a stock bin, there will be a donation bin and we will be able to measure that and, and incredible data and stats and analytics around that specific stream. I mean, think about the ip, right?

Like we will be able at scale, we will have information for three PLs on what categories most often are being flowed through donation in terms of brands.

We will have information on what SKUs within certain product categories like cosmetics or apparel are more successful than others and which ones are being donated at a higher rate. Right. And so like yes, the data around it is going to be incredible. Incredible.

You know, there's, there's folks that kind of publish like here's the most popular toy this season sort of list. I feel like you're going to be able to be like, here's the least popular thing going on in, you know, in reseller e commerce this season.

Yeah, it's like I'm like the grim reaper. I'm like coming in with. I think this is what you shouldn't try to manufacture. This is what you shouldn't try to sell on Shopify.

This is what is not working. These are the brands 3 PL shouldn't pair with because they're going out of business at such a high rate.

Right.

Data. Data is king.

Yes.

Abhi, once again, it's been a pleasure to having you here. It's been a masterclass at many, many different levels.

I've been trying to keep up with some of the notes and there's a lot of information that you have unpacked for us. So thank you once again for taking the time and your busy schedule to be here with logistics with purpose. As we wrap up things. I wanted to ask you.

So what does the phrase logistics with purpose meaning to you?

I think that is such a good question. In that logistics with purpose really for me means intention.

Intention in how we operate, intention in how we innovate, intention in how we move inventory.

And I think one of the key parts of stock that, that I hope is very impactful and valuable for the brands is that we offer the option for them to pick which nonprofit they want to move inventory to. So yes, we can do the matching blind, we move the inventory, we can solve the excess problem. That's all great.

But when you put intention behind it and brands start to become emotionally connected to the non profits that they're working with and they are choosing what missions to support, that's where intention comes in. That's where purpose comes in. And that's what as humans, when we have that intention and purpose. That's where we see real impact.

You know, I think that a lot of listeners and stuff, stuff kind of probably can find you on LinkedIn. And, you know, like, we're all very visible out there. You know, being out in the public eye is kind of like a purpose. You.

If you're going to build a business, you've got to be accessible. But I'm kind of curious where else and how else can folks connect with you and learn more about Stock?

Yeah, we're launching the new website in a couple weeks, so that'll be a great resource. They can go now. Still. There's a form on the website they could fill out. One of us at Stock will be in touch. Touch within, you know, a couple hours.

You can find us on LinkedIn.

Nathan, it's always a pleasure seeing you. Thank you for doing this. It's been fun. We should definitely do it again. And of course, Abby, thank you so much. It was incredible talking to you.

Congratulations on the amazing company that you are building and I'm sure you're going to be very, very successful as you continue to grow it. So thank you for being here. Thank you to the audience.

If you like to learn more about how logistics can be a force for good, get inspired by leaders creating a positive impact like Abbo. Please remember to subscribe to Logistics with Purpose. Thank you so much and I'll see you next time.

Thank you guys for having me. Really enjoyed it.