A Masterclass in eComm Logistics with Casey Armstrong, CMO at ShipBob

Kristen: (01:09)
Hey Casey, welcome to Playing for Keeps. Thanks so much for being on today.

Casey: (01:12)
Thank you for having me.

Kristen: (01:14)
How are you doing today?

Casey: (01:16)
I'm great.

Kristen: (01:17)
Living life, doing well?

Casey: (01:21)
I am.

Kristen: (01:21)
Can you tell the listeners a little bit about yourself and ShipBob to get us started?

Casey: (01:25)
Yeah, so I'm Casey Armstrong. I'm the CMO over here at ShipBob. Along with marketing, I'm fortunate to get to oversee all things partnership, so I get to work with awesome companies, such as Churn Buster and yourself. And over at ShipBob, if you're not familiar with us, we're a technology enabled 3PL. And what that means is we provide Amazon level logistics to direct to consumer brands. And so if you're a, whether you're doing, a hundred k a year or 50 million a year, and you're looking to provide that next day, same day, two day, three day shipping experience to your customers around the US and around the entire world, we provide that for you. To provide a little bit more information there as well, so along with ShipBob, you get your inventory and order management software, which you'd use. We actually own and operate our fulfillment centers around the entire US. Teaser, we'll be having a international presence very shortly and also the technology that powers the fulfillment centers is ShipBob IP as well.

Kristen: (02:30)
Yeah, that's awesome. And shipping has been such a really big topic in, in recent years, especially with Amazon really getting up in the game with the two day shipping and the same day delivery. So really going to jump into this topic today and why this is so important for DTC brands. So why are we really even talking about shipping this year? Why is this so important for brands? Why have we seen kind of the shift in conversation on fulfillment?

Casey: (02:54)
Yeah, it's interesting to see how the major players in the space are just really pulling the market up with them and changing the customer expectations on the experience that they deserve. And so Amazon, of course, is the major player in the space, and they've been changing the game for quite a while. And something that they looked at internally years ago was what do customers want more than anything? And that's free shipping. And then after that, it's fast and free shipping. And so I can't remember the exact year that they rolled out Amazon Prime and free two day shipping. I know that they had their order, it was over 35 and then $25, and you get the free two day shipping, but that's really set the standard for what customers expect when they're ordering things online. And they really made free two day shipping synonymous with Amazon.

Casey: (03:47)
And so following in their footsteps, a lot of the other major players in the space from, from Target and Walmart, Nordstrom, and others have also been pulling the market up with them as well. And so I know the Walmart and jet.com acquisition is getting a lot of time in the spotlight right now, as they try to figure out what to do with jet.com and some of their eCommerce acquisitions, but one of the first things that the then CEO of jet.com and then head of eCommerce at Walmart, Marc Lore said when Walmart acquired jet.com was his number one initiative was bringing two day shipping to Walmart. And so I think that really, and that was a couple of years ago. And I think that really exemplifies what somebody as smart as him and who was able to see it through so many different data points saw it in the market is what customers were expecting.

Casey: (04:40)
And a marketing person like myself, it's so easy to often think of ways to drive more top of funnel and optimize the top of the funnel, whether it be on the ads or the entire website experience, but you really need to think through that entire customer journey and that experience that they have. And then how do you start bringing in this? Actually ties in really well with Churn Buster is how do you get people to come back and buy again, or turn into somebody like in your subscription business. So you're providing, you're giving them again that Amazon level experience throughout the entire customer journey and in time that they're with that brand. And most people think, "Oh, well, I need to be a, I guess now trillion dollar brand like Amazon," but like a much larger player to offer that experience and you don't.

Kristen: (05:30)
Yeah, totally. And I really like how you talk about, it's actually thinking about the whole customer journey, because I think it's easy to think of free shipping as part of really the top funnel of things that are driving customers, but like you're talking about because there's been this huge change in customer expectations, largely because of Amazon and all the big Goliath businesses who have kind of been forced to follow in their step foots that really having that fast shipping is no longer really a sales item. It's just something that when you get to the conversion, if it's there, you're a lot more likely to buy it. I don't remember the exact stat. I'll try to find it for the show notes, but I just read that really one of the biggest reasons people don't convert is actually because they get all the way through checkout flow and at the very last step, they get hit with that 5.99 Shipping. And that's not always a really great feeling to say you've gotten all the way to the very end.

Kristen: (06:20)
At least for me as a customer, I don't like getting to the end of something feeling like, "Okay, I'm going to spend 55 bucks" only then to be told I'm going to spend 65 bucks. It kind of kind of changes the flow and it interrupts really that easy conversion. And so I like how you're saying, this is not just about driving top funnel growth. This is about actually driving repeat purchases and getting people to come back because you've given them an experience that's really good and really quick.

Casey: (06:45)
And not just are you paying, let's say 10% plus for shipping that you were not expecting to, but it's also telling you that you're going to get it in like five to seven business days. And so before joining the ShipBob team, I was actually over at big commerce. And there was a quarter where the entire business from product and engineering to sales and marketing and the business development team, we were all focused on digital wallets. And I know that especially this last holiday season, there was a lot of talk about the impact of digital wallets and helping brands, especially on mobile, improve the checkout process and conversion rate, which is 100% true. And so whether it be the Amazon Checkout or PayPal one-click, Visa Checkout, and a handful of others, on your website, again, you're providing this Amazon level experience where I can go through the entire journey, whether it be on my computer or on my cell phone.

Casey: (07:48)
And I get to the checkout and it's really easy because there's a digital wallet where I already have everything uploaded. I don't need to go downstairs or do whatever to get my wallet and I can check out in seconds. But then I get to the shipping and fulfillment side of it. And it's just very disjointed because I have this Amazon experience at the top. And then at the checkout time, it says, "Great. It took you two seconds to purchase this. You're not going to get your product for five to seven business days." And it's just not really the best experience throughout the entire journey.

Kristen: (08:19)
Yeah. It really feels like it can fracture that experience and really bring it to a halt. But I do have to kind of ask where do you see the sustainability movement that's coming in with, with longer shipping times and thinking really, really smart and environmentally conscious about our shipping. Where does this tie in to the quick shipping movement that's going along with sustainability?

Casey: (08:43)
Yeah, I don't really have a good answer for that right now, because that's going to be just a tough question that a lot of companies ask themselves, us included, and just from the sustainability side on the speed while also needing to run a profitable business. So a lot of these brands, it probably starts with the core elements of the brand and what they stand for and the customers that they attract. But a lot of times people will ask for those things, but then when it gets to the actual purchase, they want what they were ordering extremely quickly. Or I know personally for myself, it's for better or worse, maybe I was procrastinating on buying like a birthday gift or something for the holidays, and I actually need it in a day or two. And so it's just a fine balance. I don't know. It's something that I'm thinking about a lot and I'm talking to different partners of ours.

Casey: (09:43)
And of course, internally to think of how we offer that to our customer base and how we think about that from a more macro level. But I think a lot will unfold this year and it'll be interesting to see as well what some of the major players in the space like at like Amazon and others do as well to shift the customer expectations.

Kristen: (10:01)
Yeah. I want to highlight something you said, which really it comes down to the core elements of the brand you're building. So that comes back to this idea of knowing your customers. Interestingly, I talked to Bite Toothpaste Bits last season, and they don't do rush shipping specifically because their customer base comes to them as zero waste enthusiasts. And so that works for them. But on the other side of things, you really have to look at your brand. You have to talk to your customers, you have to go and look at what customers are doing in the conversion. See how many times say a shipping thing is stopping somebody, send out customer surveys before really even thinking, okay, we need to change our shipping based on sustainability, figure out if that's actually what your best customers want and then go from there, because there are other ways you can start introducing sustainability into your business if shipping is this important to your customers, which I think a lot of times it really is.

Casey: (10:53)
Well, and also there are ways you can still provide that fast or fast and free shipping in a more sustainable manner. And, and some of that starts with how are you distributing your inventory from once you receive it from your manufacturer, whether that be overseas or over here in the United States, because if you're shipping, for example, let's say you're shipping everything from California or in the other end of the spectrum, you're shipping everything from Miami or New York. You're naturally going to have customers on the opposite sides of the coast. And so no matter really how slow you're shipping it over there, that's a long distance to travel. And we've had customers, there was one of the more popular weighted blanket customers or companies out there. They were based down in Florida and they of course had a lot of customers on the West Coast. And it was costing them $100 to ship across, let's say to Oregon or to California, and just by distributing their inventory throughout the Midwest and the West Coast, they were able to cut their shipping costs by like 75%.

Casey: (12:05)
But outside of that, they're also able to ship a much shorter distance as well. And so that's one of the many ways by distributing the inventory upfront, they were able to have a much better sustainable impact on the planet.

Kristen: (12:22)
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense kind of having these multiple fulfillment centers around the United States. So you still can offer that free and fast shipping, but at the same time, you're reducing the length of all those shipping routes. And so thinking, carbon emissions from the shipping trucks, just the routes of the trucks, the distance that that takes to go, it's actually helping with sustainability as well. And so I think that there's a way that even if you do offer this fast and free shipping, you can actually tie in a little bit of storytelling into how you're thinking about it in a really strategic way. So you're hitting kind of both of those points for customers. Again, this all kind of comes back to the, add it with a grain of salt, that if it's the right story for customers to talk about sustainability, here's a way you can kind of have both.

Casey: (13:05)
Yeah. And some, I mean, something that brands obviously have to think of and know extremely well, just similar to like how Churn Buster really focuses on the financial side of the business and helping these companies run a more efficient and effective business, something that a lot of brands need to think of. And I come across many who I'd say are probably earlier in understanding this best is what are the unit economics and the gross profits that they're generating. What is the true cost of goods sold and how much are they spending truly on advertising because that also helps dictate what you can and cannot charge for things such as standard shipping or expedited shipping. And know also the improvements that you can drive within the business on a percentage and total perspective from distributing your inventory. I mean, so something that we think about on the shipping and fulfillment side a lot is what is the dimensional weight and what are the total zones that it's crossing?

Casey: (14:07)
And so if you're shipping something in zone one or zone two, meaning in a rather close proximity versus let's say zone seven or eight, which you're often shipping across the entire US, that could cost you an additional 35 to 60% just in the shipping costs alone. So that's something that the brands definitely need to take into consideration.

Kristen: (14:29)
Yeah. This is something that I kind of talked about actually in the last webinar we did together was thinking of the customer experience in all of the layers of your business. A lot of what we talk about is really the top layer, the branding. It's what most of the interviews here on Playing for Keeps are. It's really kind of like the floaty, fun stuff, the content that drives retention, the community that drives retention, how you present your brand, the storytelling, all this stuff. Kind of that middle layer then works into things like, we're going to talk to companies like Recharge and stuff later this season, it's the platforms that you're using that are running the experience the customers are having. And then really at the bottom layer is actually thinking about your operations in relation to customer experience.

Kristen: (15:11)
So the way we're running business, the way we're doing things like fulfillment and packaging and shipping, and even all the way down to like, how is the team organized? Is it all transitioning into the light of making a really good customer experience? And it's not one of the sexiest things to think about fulfillment in terms of customer experience. And it can almost be like a really big disconnect, but I see a really big connection here. Like what you're saying is these little things, like how much does it cost to get all the way across the country? Can you save money on that so that you can then invest more into the customer experience on the top layers of things? I think...

Casey: (15:49)
And then, sorry, just to jump in there real quick, as well is thinking through the services that you're providing, let's say shipping and fulfillment, less as like a cost center and more of a revenue driver. And some of that goes with what people are paying, let's say for a Recharge or Churn Buster as well, because what is it actually doing to drive a better business. And something that we've seen time and time again, and I'll give you actually an example from a customer I was talking to yesterday, is that not only does offering that free shipping, two day shipping, or better than all, free two day shipping. And again, not every company can offer that. I totally get it. So it's very easy for me to say, "Oh, just offer free two day shipping with something like ShipBob," but you need to understand your business and see if it makes sense for you based off of unit economics and your typical average order value and where your customers are located.

Casey: (16:41)
But we've seen again, time and time again, improvements in conversion rate. And that's by surfacing up that shipping experience, maybe even in the ads, definitely within the website before they even get to the checkout experience. And so, and a very simple way to look at your business, excluding things like subscription, when you're trying to calculate from a revenue perspective, it's what does it cost to get somebody to your website? What are the conversion rates? And what's the average order value? And that really gives you a simple view of the revenue that you're going to drive. And if you're able to improve those conversion rates, that, of course, puts more money in your pocket. And then another thing as well that we've seen time and time again is improvements in average order value. And I think that's because people see, I was very happy to see this, but I was also kind of surprised, but I hear this time and time again, where, and I think it's because you're providing that confidence to your customer that they are getting that Amazon level experience, that they're actually purchasing more.

Casey: (17:46)
And I was talking to a customer yesterday. They have a unique spin on and a great story on their brand on something that's much more of like a commodity, such as like toothbrushes and other items that you'd find in your bathroom. And so for them to charge more than, let's just say your typical toothbrush or body scrub or something like that, is a little bit difficult. And that's why the branding aspect really comes into play. And they do actually have a subscription model as well, which is pretty interesting, but they have noticed when, when they've looked at, okay, what does the average and the median cart value, and especially based on different regions or different channels that people are coming through, they started experimenting with free shipping or free two day shipping over a certain threshold. And they were actually able to increase their average order value by 33%, just by increasing the cart minimum to get that free two day shipping.

Casey: (18:41)
And so, they're working on another experiment where they're going to increase it even more. And it's just by playing with those different levers, can you not only improve your conversion rates, but improve the checkout as well? And so the same thing goes with, let's say like a Churn Buster where people don't really view it as necessarily as interesting as I don't know, maybe Instagram ads or something like that. But if you're spending all this time and money to get people to your website and get people to purchase and then get people to get on the subscription, if you're not making sure that they're not churning for a very unnecessary reason, that's just not a good use of your time. And the same thing goes for something like Recharge where you're like, "Oh, well I have to pay Recharge or Churn Buster X," but it's, I'd say, viewing it more of what is the additional value and dollars that you're putting into your pocket from all that the time and the money and energy that you spent up front to get those people in the first place.

Kristen: (19:35)
Yeah. And that's a really good point. I love how you're explaining this kind of thinking of fulfillment and things like tools like Recharge and Churn Buster and ShipBob as not things that you're spending money on, but it's a good way to kind of prioritize picking a tech stack and tools is also thinking, okay, not just what can I spend money on, but the money that I'm spending on these tools, are they driving revenue later down the line? And so things like your Recharge is going to drive a subscription. So that's obviously driving revenue. ShipBob is going to drive fast and free shipping, which is going to drive revenue as we're talking about. Churn Buster's going to recover failed payments. That's driving just straight to revenue.

Kristen: (20:12)
All these things, I think it's a really good way to kind of put a lens to the tools you're using and the tools you're considering using and not always just thinking, "Okay, what's the input versus the output of this tool?", but thinking even later down the line, "I'm putting all this work to get customers. Are the tools supporting me to get more revenue from the customers that I've already worked so hard to get?" I really, really like that approach. I also find it really interesting that you see a higher average order value with free shipping. It doesn't surprise me. And I think, I just want to toss out something that I'm like feeling this might be why, I feel like if you know you're going to get these products in two days, me, like my perspective is I'd be a lot more willing to try multiple products, knowing that in two days I can decide if I like them or not versus seven days you get all these products by that time, your excitement's kind of calmed down and you're like, "Eh, do I really need this or not?"

Kristen: (21:06)
And then by then, you're just like, "I'm just going to order what I came here for, get it in time and then go on." The two day shipping, I think, drives that feeling of instant gratification and like, "Hey, I can figure out if I like this really, really soon." So it kind of entices you to add more to your cart and get to know the brand a little better since it's going to be in your house in two days.

Casey: (21:23)
Yeah, I completely agree.

Kristen: (21:27)
Yeah. So, I mean, I think we've kind of touched on this like 10 times now, but can you just explain your process of thinking on how this kind of fulfillment, how fast and free shipping, actually really plays into a good retention strategy?

Casey: (21:41)
Yeah, again, it's something that's helped our businesses. And I think a lot of the consumers, ourselves included, have enjoyed is it's so much easier now to, to spin up a brand or a direct to consumer company. And so our options out there are seemingly unlimited these days, and there's new brands. There are so many brands popping up every single day. And so the competition continues to get more and more difficult. And a lot of that can be seen in just what people are paying now on, let's say the performance marketing channels such as Facebook or Instagram or Google Shopping. And all you have to do is ask any decent sized direct consumer brand that's been around for over two years what they used to pay and what they pay now.

Casey: (22:30)
And I was talking to a customer of ours the other day. They're interested in, they have a subscription business as well. They actually launched with an iOS app with the first Apple watch. And so they've done a lot of very interesting things and their head of eCommerce was telling me that what their cost of customer acquisition is now two x what it used to be on Facebook and Instagram, just in the last 18 months alone.

Kristen: (22:56)
Wow.

Casey: (22:56)
And so, again, that's just where you can't just focus on the top of funnel, but you need to think of how do you make these customers customers for life or for as long as possible. And so that's just on the retention side. And again, if you're providing that fast and reliable experience to your customers, that's, I think, an extension of your brand and that being an extension of your brand will help with retention. And that's also going to help with word of mouth, which is the most effective and cost efficient channel, and also the most difficult to build and generate. But that's, again, what's going to build up their retention strategy. There's a friend of mine, who actually I saw them tweeting about it earlier today, how he ordered some furniture on, gosh, what was it? I think it was Macy's and somewhere else, not to throw them under the bus, but he just bought a house like a month ago and he ordered a couch and something else. And it took two weeks for one of the items to arrive and the other one was not expected for another several weeks.

Kristen: (23:59)
Oh, God.

Casey: (23:59)
And so when you think of him returning to purchase from them again, it's pretty low. And of course, as Twitter often drives his people freaking out sometimes for no reason at all. But that's just more negative press, even at an extremely small scale. But again, that's how a lot of things start is promoting them in a negative light. And so again, it's just something to really take into consideration there.

Kristen: (24:25)
Yeah. And I want to share just an anecdotal piece of evidence on this. My husband recently bought something from a brand that we both really love. He's a super fan of the brand. He bought, I think, three or four more things than he planned when he finally went to purchase. And it was standard shipping, I think, three to five business days. And it was pretty soon after the holidays, but it ended up taking a good eight to 10 days to get to him. And just that expectation of, he didn't think it was going to be there in two days, but he did think, probably within the same week that I bought it, that's the expectation. The eight to 10 days. It takes a lot for my husband to get annoyed with something. And it was, I could, I could see the brand affinity deteriorating over the days, every day he was coming home and he was like, "Wait, did the package come?"

Kristen: (25:13)
And I was like, "No, not yet." And he's having issues. He's going and looking at the shipping confirmation. And it is stuck in Denver for a day. And then it was, the date just kept changing. And it was daily by daily you just saw it. And I was just watching it, as my job, I'm like, "I'm studying you for market research. Thanks, bud." And I'm just watching it like, wow, it's really powerful how that expectation, how falling short on an expectation that even sometimes is out of control of a brand can really start to deteriorate and get below the skin of a customer, which I just thought was so interesting watching him go from super excited about this order to when he got it, he was just kind of like, "Well, good, it's here." It was, he really didn't have that magical experience he was thinking he was going to have.

Casey: (25:58)
Yeah. I love that your husband, unbeknownst to him was a case study for you.

Kristen: (26:03)
He is all the time.

Casey: (26:06)
But that's again where I think brands also, whether it's going to come in a couple hours or come in a week and a half is just that transparency and communication as well, just so that the customers know what to expect, because if you do send the signal that it's going to come in x amount of days and it doesn't, sometimes there's a good reason for it too. Like I know with the holidays, we're not beyond that now where there can be crazy weather storms. And so sometimes things might take an extra day or two, but people are often as long as you're open and transparent about it, people usually have empathy for that and they're fine with that, but they just don't want to be blindsided.

Kristen: (26:49)
Yeah. And I think that was the big thing was in his case, there was no communication from the brand and there was such an error and he was just feeling really kind of left behind and let down by the experience. So just wrapping up, we've got a few last questions for you. First up, what are you most excited to see in the DT space in the next few years?

Casey: (27:09)
So like we touched on briefly earlier with companies like, let's say Shopify and big commerce on the platform side companies like ShipBob and Churn Buster. We mentioned Recharge. The solutions and the technology out there for brands to come online and people from anywhere to launch a business has made it so easy that the competition's also going off the charts. And so one, people younger or again more easily are launching brands and so the creativity that we're seeing is off the charts. And as a consumer, I love that because we have seemingly endless options, but with that, we're seeing such an increase in customer acquisition costs again on, on Facebook and Instagram and Google Shopping or wherever else. And so these brands are having to get more creative in the ways that they build the brand and the ways that they try to create maybe like an offline experience or get in front of the customers.

Casey: (28:09)
And so just what I love watching is how these brands try to build themselves and the creativity that that comes out from there. And yeah, I'm not going to lie. I love stealing some of these ideas from different brands and the stuff that they're doing and just seeing how like the market reacts. And things just change so quickly and what does resonate and what does not resonate. And so mostly just somebody again in the middle of it, helping support a lot of these brands, but also somebody on the sideline, he's there as a consumer or just watching D to C at large, because I do find it extremely interesting, I'm just very excited to see how these brands start to grow and separate from the pack when the competition is just growing seemingly exponentially every day.

Kristen: (29:00)
Yeah. It's super exciting to watch kind of these young brands come out and try to break the playbook a little bit and create a really unique experience for our customers. What do you want to see more from brands heading into this year? What do you think needs to be a really big focus for DTC?

Casey: (29:16)
So I don't know if it's that I necessarily want to see it more, but I think what company, I'm assuming most people that are listening to this have followed to an extent everything that's going on with, with WeWork. And then of course, part of that is what's happened with Uber and some other companies where the amount that they were losing was increasing every year and sometimes far greater than the amount that they were making. And so we're not even talking about getting into profitability. We're just showing like improvements in their unit economics, running a long term sustainable business. And again, I know that the levels of scale that they're trying to get to are much different game than many others are playing. And so I'm not trying to get into like the nuances there.

Casey: (30:00)
I realize that, and it's something that we think about a lot at ShipBob, of course, as well as we build a hypergrowth, scalable business, but anyways, and then on the other end, because that's more technology or with WeWork, it's pseudo tech, and then with Casper, let's take them for example. And just, I think it actually benefits the entire ecosystem by them trying to go public and release their S1 and show some of the economics that they were showing that people were seeing there and, and people can now compare some of, let's say Purple, the Purple Mattress, P and L and cashflow compared to something like Casper. And I think that people do need to spend time and dig into there and compare the businesses and see some of the differences that they're making.

Casey: (30:46)
And again, it's not something that I necessarily, I guess it is something I do want to see more from like some of these DTC brands, but it's being more thoughtful in how they're running their business. And sometimes that creates more pain and it's more difficult to grow as quickly, which is not a bad thing, but just being able to build these brands that will last a long time. And sometimes some of these brands are venture scale businesses. They should go that route and sometimes they're not. And so it's just thinking through what is the best route for them and how can I build a brand such as you think of like the Nikes of the world or the Patagonias or the brands that have been around for so long. How can you make sure you're just not like a fly by night company?

Casey: (31:35)
I mean, and we've seen this at ShipBob as well, where sometimes there'll be some extremely savvy marketing people and this is actually the businesses that they run, where they see a pocket for Facebook or Amazon arbitrage, and they just buy a bunch of more or cheaper items and they just pound the ground and they make their 100 k, $1 million, $10 million. And then the company's dead six to nine months later, but it's really thinking through how do you spin up a brand that you want to be behind for a long time and make sure that it lasts?

Kristen: (32:07)
Yeah. And I really think that's what consumers are starting to look for. I think the kind of unicorn businesses are, I heard the saying that it's not about unicorns anymore. It's about zebra businesses. I think that especially Gen Z, Gen Z doesn't have these legacy brands that were really made for them. So they actually are looking for brands to come out and start building those really, really longterm longevity, built relationships and branding that they can feel like they stick with through the rest of their life. That's what I'm obviously, I'm hosting a podcast about retention, so I'm obviously really excited about this, too.

Casey: (32:43)
Yeah. Not just retaining your customers, but retaining your business.

Kristen: (32:47)
Yes, exactly. Look at that full circle. I love it. I got to ask you one personal question, because I was told that you traveled the world when you were 25. So I got to ask, where was your favorite place to visit in the entire world?

Casey: (33:01)
Oh, that's always the toughest thing.

Kristen: (33:02)
I know.

Casey: (33:04)
A lot of it comes to it's obviously a beautiful world we live in and there are so many unbelievable places to go and see in it. I just feel like the education that you get from traveling the world is I don't even know how to put a thought or a number behind it, but some of it comes down to the people you meet. And so I'd say that some of the countries that really stood out to me was I got to spend about a month in Nepal. The people there were just so friendly and outgoing and this is a few years ago. And so I think people, maybe there was less of a Western presence there, but like people would come up to me out of nowhere in like coffee shops and just be like, "Can I practice English with you?" And next thing you know, they're taking you on a tour of their city on like motorbikes and you're seeing things you never would have.

Casey: (33:58)
Laos, which is next to Thailand and Cambodia, that's another city or country, sorry, that was just a beautiful country that I think very few people think about. I took this slow boat from Thailand into Luang Prabang and to a handful of other places, just you see parts of the world you never thought you'd experience. And then those are both in Asia. And then Peru is another country that really stood out to me. Again, some of it comes down to the people that you're fortunate to meet when you travel, but I don't know. I could go on forever about travel, but it was an amazing experience.

Kristen: (34:38)
Yeah. That's awesome. Just to wrap up, where can people find more about you and ShipBob?

Casey: (34:43)
Yeah. So of course, ShipBob.com, nice and easy to spell. Check us out. You can always email me, CArmstrong@shipbob.com and find me on Twitter @caseya.

Kristen: (34:54)
Perfect. And we will add links to the show notes to all those places you guys can follow. Casey, thank you so much for being on the show today. This is wonderful.

Casey: (35:01)
Thanks a lot, Kristen.