eCommerce Influencer Series: Dominic Lozano – ShipWorks
Reading Time: 5 minutes In this installment of our eCommerce Influencer Series, we are thrilled to have ShipWorks General Manager, Dominic Lozano join us.
We appreciate the time Dominic took out of his schedule to talk with us about eCommerce fulfillment and how ShipWorks is helping online merchants to be more productive.
ShipWorks was founded in St. Louis, Missouri and soon established itself as one of the premier shipping solutions for online retailers. In 2014, Stamps.com acquired ShipWorks as the company expanded its presence in multi-carrier eCommerce shipping solutions.
Last year, Dominic joined ShipWorks as General Manager to lead the execution of ShipWorks growth strategy.
Under his leadership, the company recently launched The Works, a single piece shipping workflow designed to simplify warehouse shipping.
Let’s get to know Dominic and talk with him about how ShipWorks can make your warehouse operation more productive and easier to manage.
Q: How did you get started in the eCommerce industry?
I started in eCommerce by supporting eCommerce businesses with managed hosting services. The need for supporting services, reliability, and 100% uptime were evident early on. We saw eCommerce businesses struggle to execute in delivering the core products and services of their business, especially as their operations scaled.
Our mission centered around allowing customers to focus on what makes them unique by doing what makes us unique. When we really understood the demand, need for expedient order processing and delivery, requirement of 100% availability of their services to their clientele, and order fluctuation demands that come with seasonality, we were able to create solutions that seamlessly scaled, keeping them focused on what really drove their success.
Q: Amazon Prime continues to redefine delivery expectations by US consumers. The average consumer today expects online orders to arrive within 2 to 3 days. What can small business merchants do to compete at that level and how can ShipWorks help them?
The name of the game is driving efficiencies, especially as volume increases. Efficiencies in both process and cost drive the potential scalability of the business. This is where ShipWorks can play a really big role.
As orders scale and you grow your business from a small eCommerce store processing 10s of orders a day to a multi-store eCommerce company processing 100s or even 1,000s of orders a day, every second matters.
Having a multi-carrier solution that marries all of your order sources with multi-carrier shipping offerings allows you to stay organized and process your orders in the most efficient way possible, saving seconds, hours, and minutes in the overall process. And with visibility of multiple carrier solutions, you can easily make use of the most cost effective options to fulfill each individual shipment, providing scalable shipping savings you can reinvest back into your growing business!
Q: In January, you introduced a new workflow product called The Works. What are its main features and benefits to help online merchants?
It really is all about efficiencies. The Works is a high-volume warehouse processing solution that provides an efficient way to combine all decision-making attributes onto one screen where an employee can manipulate the fields as required.
This allows warehouse workers to avoid unnecessary mouse and keyboard activity. As an installed multi-carrier solution with extensive workflow automation capabilities, The Works leverages ShipWorks inherent speed to allow warehouse employees to maximize their time and produce the right label at the right time.
Q: Returns are a big pain point for many online retailers. What does ShipWorks offer to make the return process easier for both consumer and merchant?
The return process is time consuming, costly, and potentially detrimental to the overall customer experience. Traditionally, a customer has to interact with support who approves the return and then generates and sends the return label and instructions.
Manually processes like these increase the time it takes for a consumer to reach their desire outcome, simultaneously adding cost to the equation and decreasing their overall satisfaction with the seller. To make this easier, ShipWorks provides the ability to automatically create carrier specific return labels for your orders based on your predefined rules.
Q: Artificial Intelligence is the big buzzword in eCommerce. What areas in shipping and order processing do you believe will benefit the most from technological advances in AI?
It’s a big buzzword and I believe we, as an industry, have barely even scratched the surface of understanding the value AI can bring to eCommerce. It’s really about finding ways to add unique insights that help businesses see opportunities they may not have otherwise seen and make the most of the resources they already have.
Where are marketing dollars producing the best results and how can that scale with additional investments? Where are the pain points in the order fulfillment process? How can we maximize our layout, use, and operations within a warehouse environment? How do we ensure we know, and can leverage the best shipping option on an order by order basis? How do we increase the quality of execution by reducing mistakes and rework?
Q: Looking at the next five years, what do you think will be the biggest challenges small online merchants will face?
With the increasing availability of eCommerce store solutions that help small merchants get their products in front of potential customers, the biggest challenge seems to be in fulfillment. Amazon has set the bar for delivery speeds, which will continue to decrease over the next several years. The question is, how can we better help small merchants fulfill orders like a larger warehouse and in a cost-efficient manner?
Q: ShipWorks is located in St. Louis, Missouri. For someone visiting the city for the first time, what are the three restaurants you think they should visit to get to know the city?
While there are many great lists on best restaurants in St. Louis, I love exploring some of the great smaller establishments that people often miss. Plus, as a beer enthusiast, I’m always on the lookout for eateries that combine great food with a great beer selection! Three of my favorites include:
City Coffee House and Creperie is an unbeatable breakfast location. Come in for the family friendly atmosphere and return time and time again for the food.
Dressel’s Public House is a beautiful neighborhood bar that pairs unique upscale bar cuisine with any number of fantastic craft beers.
Pearl Café – With a great beer selection and even better Thai cuisine. It’s a great stop, especially if you love spicy food!
We want to thank Dominic Lozano for sharing his insights on eCommerce and how ShipWorks can help small business online merchants make their warehouse operations more efficient.
ShipWorks offers marketplace and shopping cart integrations which include eBay, PayPal, Amazon, Etsy, Shopify, BigCommerce, Volusion, ChannelAdvisor and Magento.
Its shipping solution integrates with all major delivery carriers including UPS, FedEx, US Postal Service, DHL, OnTrac and more.
To learn more about ShipWorks and take advantage of a 30-day free trial, please visit their website at www.shipworks.com or contact them by phone at (800) 952-7784.
READ MORE: ShipWorks Launches New Workflow Features to Make Shipping Easier
Connect with Dominic and ShipWorks on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn
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Richard Meldner
Richard is co-founder of eSeller365. He has over 17 years of experience on eBay which includes tens of thousands of sales to buyers in over 100 countries and even has experience with eBay’s VeRO program enforcing intellectual property rights for a former employer. And for about two years Richard sold products on Amazon using Amazon FBA in the US.
To “relax” from the daily business grind, for a few weekends a year, he also works for IMSA as a professional race official.
This article is a part of our Leadership Series, which features industry experts sharing valuable insights for small business owners who sell online. The opinions expressed in this contribution are solely those of the author(s).