Many corporations have mission statements posted on their websites, but few firms live up to those ideals as closely as Black Rifle Coffee Co., a Salt Lake City-based startup that is founded and staffed by combat veterans.
Its branding begins with the company’s mantra—”Black Rifle Coffee Company serves coffee and culture to people who love America”—and extends throughout the photos, memes, and videos it shares on its social media accounts. The business was launched in 2014 by former Green Beret and CIA operative Evan Hafer, who describes his approach to business this way: “Black Rifle Coffee Company is quite literally the combination of my two favorite passions. I take pride in the coffee we roast, the veterans we employ, and the causes we support.”
Driven by that focus, the firm has been expanding at lightning speed. The company is on track to grow from $80 million in revenue in 2019 to more than $100 million in 2020, thanks in part to a spike in orders driven by the travel bans and work-from-home mandates levied during the Covid-19 pandemic, according to Chris Omer, Black Rifle’s vice president of information technology. With Americans turning to the online grocery sector to supply their food, Black Rifle has ramped up its operations from shipping about 80,000 one-pound bags per week during April 2019 to more than 140,000 bags per week in April 2020.
Until recently, the company had just 18 people in a single warehouse packing one bag at a time at manual stations. To keep up with soaring demand, it has now added another warehouse, a second coffee-roasting machine, a second work shift, and automated systems, Omer says. And to manage the increasing complexity of those operations, the firm has boosted its investment in technology and professional services. No longer operated out of the founder’s garage, the firm now uses an e-commerce platform from Shopify, contracts with third-party logistics specialist Geodis for fulfillment services, uses a warehouse management system (WMS) from Oracle Corp. (specifically, the warehouse module from Oracle’s NetSuite line), and uses a data analysis platform from Seattle-based SoundCommerce.
DATA MINING PAYS OFF
That last one has been a real game-changer, according to company leaders. The SoundCommerce platform allows Black Rifle to normalize data from many sources, aggregate it in one place, and see daily revenue models. That unified approach lets the company compare costs and revenues from several different departments simultaneously, such as marketing, order and inventory management, and financial reporting and business intelligence. By examining all those areas at once, the firm has been able to make better business decisions. “So when marketing wants to run a sale, it can run it by supply chain to make sure there’s enough product. And that’s a gift,” Omer says.
Another benefit was discovering the correlation between different variables, such as product freshness and customer satisfaction. “We found that when we were able to ship product within a week, our customer satisfaction scores went way up,” Omer says. “And that drove us to look at inventory turns and shelf life, so now there’s a just-in-time model between the manufacturing department and the fulfillment center.”
The ability to make those correlations also gives the coffee supplier a better view of the overall financial picture, SoundCommerce executives say. According to company CEO Eric Best, the platform, which tracks real-time operations and marketing events, profitability, and customer lifetime value (CLV), allows users like Black Rifle to optimize their marketing and media spend in relation to goals like profit and CLV, rather than just revenue and return on advertising spend.
Supply chain planning (SCP) leaders working on transformation efforts are focused on two major high-impact technology trends, including composite AI and supply chain data governance, according to a study from Gartner, Inc.
"SCP leaders are in the process of developing transformation roadmaps that will prioritize delivering on advanced decision intelligence and automated decision making," Eva Dawkins, Director Analyst in Gartner’s Supply Chain practice, said in a release. "Composite AI, which is the combined application of different AI techniques to improve learning efficiency, will drive the optimization and automation of many planning activities at scale, while supply chain data governance is the foundational key for digital transformation.”
Their pursuit of those roadmaps is often complicated by frequent disruptions and the rapid pace of technological innovation. But Gartner says those leaders can accelerate the realized value of technology investments by facilitating a shift from IT-led to business-led digital leadership, with SCP leaders taking ownership of multidisciplinary teams to advance business operations, channels and products.
“A sound data governance strategy supports advanced technologies, such as composite AI, while also facilitating collaboration throughout the supply chain technology ecosystem,” said Dawkins. “Without attention to data governance, SCP leaders will likely struggle to achieve their expected ROI on key technology investments.”
The British logistics robot vendor Dexory this week said it has raised $80 million in venture funding to support an expansion of its artificial intelligence (AI) powered features, grow its global team, and accelerate the deployment of its autonomous robots.
A “significant focus” continues to be on expanding across the U.S. market, where Dexory is live with customers in seven states and last month opened a U.S. headquarters in Nashville. The Series B will also enhance development and production facilities at its UK headquarters, the firm said.
The “series B” funding round was led by DTCP, with participation from Latitude Ventures, Wave-X and Bootstrap Europe, along with existing investors Atomico, Lakestar, Capnamic, and several angels from the logistics industry. With the close of the round, Dexory has now raised $120 million over the past three years.
Dexory says its product, DexoryView, provides real-time visibility across warehouses of any size through its autonomous mobile robots and AI. The rolling bots use sensor and image data and continuous data collection to perform rapid warehouse scans and create digital twins of warehouse spaces, allowing for optimized performance and future scenario simulations.
Originally announced in September, the move will allow Deutsche Bahn to “fully focus on restructuring the rail infrastructure in Germany and providing climate-friendly passenger and freight transport operations in Germany and Europe,” Werner Gatzer, Chairman of the DB Supervisory Board, said in a release.
For its purchase price, DSV gains an organization with around 72,700 employees at over 1,850 locations. The new owner says it plans to investment around one billion euros in coming years to promote additional growth in German operations. Together, DSV and Schenker will have a combined workforce of approximately 147,000 employees in more than 90 countries, earning pro forma revenue of approximately $43.3 billion (based on 2023 numbers), DSV said.
After removing that unit, Deutsche Bahn retains its core business called the “Systemverbund Bahn,” which includes passenger transport activities in Germany, rail freight activities, operational service units, and railroad infrastructure companies. The DB Group, headquartered in Berlin, employs around 340,000 people.
“We have set clear goals to structurally modernize Deutsche Bahn in the areas of infrastructure, operations and profitability and focus on the core business. The proceeds from the sale will significantly reduce DB’s debt and thus make an important contribution to the financial stability of the DB Group. At the same time, DB Schenker will gain a strong strategic owner in DSV,” Deutsche Bahn CEO Richard Lutz said in a release.
Transportation industry veteran Anne Reinke will become president & CEO of trade group the Intermodal Association of North America (IANA) at the end of the year, stepping into the position from her previous post leading third party logistics (3PL) trade group the Transportation Intermediaries Association (TIA), both organizations said today.
Meanwhile, TIA today announced that insider Christopher Burroughs would fill Reinke’s shoes as president & CEO. Burroughs has been with TIA for 13 years, most recently as its vice president of Government Affairs for the past six years, during which time he oversaw all legislative and regulatory efforts before Congress and the federal agencies.
Before her four years leading TIA, Reinke spent two years as Deputy Assistant Secretary with the U.S. Department of Transportation and 16 years with CSX Corporation.
Serious inland flooding and widespread power outages are likely to sweep across Florida and other Southeast states in coming days with the arrival of Hurricane Helene, which is now predicted to make landfall Thursday evening along Florida’s northwest coast as a major hurricane, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
While the most catastrophic landfall impact is expected in the sparsely-population Big Bend area of Florida, it’s not only sea-front cities that are at risk. Since Helene is an “unusually large storm,” its flooding, rainfall, and high winds won’t be limited only to the Gulf Coast, but are expected to travel hundreds of miles inland, the weather service said. Heavy rainfall is expected to begin in the region even before the storm comes ashore, and the wet conditions will continue to move northward into the southern Appalachians region through Friday, dumping storm total rainfall amounts of up to 18 inches. Specifically, the major flood risk includes the urban areas around Tallahassee, metro Atlanta, and western North Carolina.
In addition to its human toll, the storm could exert serious business impacts, according to the supply chain mapping and monitoring firm Resilinc. Those will be largely triggered by significant flooding, which could halt oil operations, force mandatory evacuations, restrict ports, and disrupt air traffic.
While the storm’s track is currently forecast to miss the critical ports of Miami and New Orleans, it could still hurt operations throughout the Southeast agricultural belt, which produces products like soybeans, cotton, peanuts, corn, and tobacco, according to Everstream Analytics.
That widespread footprint could also hinder supply chain and logistics flows along stretches of interstate highways I-10 and I-75 and on regional rail lines operated by Norfolk Southern and CSX. And Hurricane Helene could also likely impact business operations by unleashing power outages, deep flooding, and wind damage in northern Florida portions of Georgia, Everstream Analytics said.
Before the storm had even touched Florida soil, recovery efforts were already being launched by humanitarian aid group the American Logistics Aid Network (ALAN). In a statement on Wednesday, the group said it is urging residents in the storm's path across the Southeast to heed evacuation notices and safety advisories, and reminding members of the logistics community that their post-storm help could be needed soon. The group will continue to update its Disaster Micro-Site with Hurricane Helene resources and with requests for donated logistics assistance, most of which will start arriving within 24 to 72 hours after the storm’s initial landfall, ALAN said.