Marketing Experts Reveal Top Strategies To

Arlen Robinson ([00:02].519)
Jared Ward is the Founder and CEO of Luminous, and is not your typical entrepreneur; he’s a visionary in the world of e-commerce, supply chain management, and business scaling. Jared boasts an impressive 12-year journey in e-commerce supply chain and operations. His entrepreneurial spirit led him to build multiple six-figure product brands in his 20s, culminating in his leadership role as CEO in a multimillion-dollar D2C brand by the age of 28. With a keen eye for business opportunities, he identified a critical gap in the supply chain market and founded Luminous. This groundbreaking software company has garnered support from influential VCs, including the renowned Serena Williams. Welcome to the podcast Jared.

Jared Ward ([01:03].041)
Thanks, Arlen. It’s great to be here, man.

Arlen Robinson ([01:06].227)
Yeah, and thank you for joining me. Yeah, I’m super excited to talk to you. I think this is gonna be a, I guess you could say kind of a best of, best of episode where we’re gonna kind of hit a lot of different points from somebody that’s been very successful in the game, in the e-commerce game. And so we’re gonna hit on a lot of different areas, I think, not only, you know, supply chain, of course, which is your bread and butter.

that’s going to be part of the focus, but we’re really going to talk about some of the things that you’ve learned in your career that have helped grow your e-commerce brand that you feel any e-commerce brand can, you know, apply those, those same tactics to grow to growing their brand. And, you know, before we dive deep into it, why don’t you tell us kind of a little bit more about your background and, you know, how did you happen to get into it?

In such an early age, I know you had a lot of success early on as I read in your intro while you were in your 20s. What brought you to this point?

Jared Ward ([02:10].909)
Yeah, I so I’m originally from Tennessee born and raised in small Hick town and Signal Mountain, Tennessee So very humble beginnings. Um I grew up in a family with like six kids so a big lds family I eventually I served an lds mission An lds for those who don’t know is it’s just mormon

Arlen Robinson ([02:21].054)
Okay.

Arlen Robinson ([02:29].715)
Okay.

Jared Ward ([02:41].169)
I served a Mormon mission, yep, exactly, in China, in Hong Kong. So that’s that, that was actually sort of my entry point into e-commerce because I learned Cantonese and Mandarin. So I learned Chinese, those two languages. And actually like my, that was my entry point into e-commerce really into supply chain, which led me to e-commerce, but it was just because I spoke Chinese. It was like, well, you know,

Arlen Robinson ([02:41].227)
Mm-hmm. Yep, that letter is this.

Arlen Robinson ([02:53].824)
I want.

Jared Ward ([03:07].401)
better do something with this language. Otherwise that’s a waste. So yeah, my first job outside of my mission, I actually ended up just dropping out of college and starting my own Etsy shop. So I was going to college and…

Arlen Robinson ([03:09].579)
Ready?

Jared Ward ([03:28].677)
My major was Chinese just like most people I had no clue what I was going to do with my career Um, I just knew I spoke Chinese. I was like, yeah, i’ll just do a Chinese major and halfway through my degree I was just like what am I doing like because I saw I saw that my fellow supply chain majors, um, and I saw them getting out of their I saw them graduating and moving on to like the caterpillars of the world or

Arlen Robinson ([03:37].72)
Mm-hmm.

Arlen Robinson ([03:57].091)
Yeah.

Jared Ward ([03:57].365)
you know, just like entry level supply chain jobs where they’re making 55K, maybe 60K. And I was already making that money from my own Etsy shop. And I was just like, what am I doing here? Like, this is completely worthless for me. Not saying that college is worthless, but for me at that time, I was like, this is worthless. I’m dropping out. So I dropped out, got my first taste in e-commerce, scaling an Etsy shop, also an Amazon store. And…

Arlen Robinson ([04:03].724)
Yeah.

Arlen Robinson ([04:07].456)
Oh wow.

Arlen Robinson ([04:11].31)
Mm-hmm.

Arlen Robinson ([04:19].851)
Hmm.

Jared Ward ([04:26].961)
Yeah, eventually I worked for a product development company called Viatech after that, where we brought a bunch of products to market and distribute them to QVC and HSN or Home Depot, Walmart. Um, eventually I found my way to Utah running a sourcing division. So white glove sourcing agency for made in China.com.

Arlen Robinson ([04:44].291)
Mm-hmm.

Arlen Robinson ([04:55].257)
Mm-hmm.

Jared Ward ([04:55].681)
And for those of you who don’t know who mainchian.com is, it’s like an Alibaba competitor, they’re a massive company in China. So I ran their white glove sourcing division. I scaled that from zero to 10 million. Um, eventually I moved on from that and that’s when I started Luminous and also became a CEO of a multi-channel e-commerce brand that was doing about $15 million a year in revenue. Um, that’s, that’s a whole story in and of itself, but that’s kind of.

Arlen Robinson ([05:03].055)
Okay.

Arlen Robinson ([05:21].847)
Gotcha.

Jared Ward ([05:25].717)
That’s my background in supply chain e-commerce and then now in Luminous.

Arlen Robinson ([05:31].691)
Yeah, that’s awesome. And thank you for sharing that. And I can definitely see when you first mentioned, you know, you lived in China and you learned Cantonese and Chinese. That’s what I immediately thought. I was like, okay, great. Then that makes you kind of prime to be able to be a good, you know, supply chain guy and being able to forge those relationships overseas. Knowing the language, I know it gives you a big leg up for sure, as opposed to others that aren’t.

not only fluent in the language, but you of course having lived there being knowledgeable about the culture because I think you know I know with the little that I do know about doing business in China and directly dealing with you know business professionals there you know there’s certain cultural norms that you really have to be informed about.

just the way you’re addressing people, just little small things that we think we probably take for granted here in the US because things are a little bit more relaxed but they have kind of strict things that you kind of have to follow. And if you’re not really up to speed to a lot of those things, I’m sure you could rub people the wrong way and then your reputation can be tarnished.

Jared Ward ([06:28].493)
Absolutely.

Jared Ward ([06:46].467)
Yeah.

Jared Ward ([06:50].779)
Exactly.

Arlen Robinson ([06:52].427)
So, yeah, interesting. Well, what I really want to start off today is really with your 12 years of experience, I want to see what would you say would be your top three that you see top three, not only challenges that you may have faced in e-commerce business, but in businesses overall, what would you say would be the top three challenges? And then you starting Luminous, how would you say Luminous has addressed those?

Jared Ward ([07:18].845)
Yeah. So for I would, yeah, e-commerce companies, um, running my own e-commerce company, a small one and scaling it, launching products, and then being CEO of a $15 million a year e-commerce company. And then now, you know, interacting meaningfully with all of my clients at Luminous who are all multi-channel e-commerce, um, ranging from a million all the way to $80 million in revenue. So I would say the number one thing as I’ve been able to sit back.

with that experience and then now, you know, bringing a solution to a lot of problems. The three things that I would say is number one, a lot of e-commerce companies don’t understand themselves. And what I mean by that is the evolution of a e-commerce company is a, it’s a very new thing actually. And as e-commerce companies expand to wholesale, they expand to big box retail, they start selling on fair.com.

Basically, they say, yes, to all these revenue opportunities without first fundamentally understanding who they are, like their attributes as a business and thereby that, that would tell them what solutions they need to put in place as they scale. I can give you a couple of examples later, but that’s number one is just not fundamentally understanding who they are, um, which that should dictate the

Arlen Robinson ([08:21].678)
Mm-hmm.

Arlen Robinson ([08:35].565)
Yeah.

Arlen Robinson ([08:41].058)
Mm-hmm.

Jared Ward ([08:46].537)
The yeses that you say to like your channel expansions or, you know, expansion to big box retail, or should I sell wholesale? You know, um, number two would be dirty data. I see in a lot of e-commerce companies, the, the number one problem that’s common amongst everybody is, um, unless you have like an ERP system that’s totally dialed in a lot of, a lot of these companies have dirty data, which

Arlen Robinson ([08:50].638)
Yeah.

Arlen Robinson ([08:55].24)
Mm-hmm.

Jared Ward ([09:16].969)
that cripples you with forecasting, with replenishment, with marketing analytics, with, you know, any… if you have dirty data, it’s very difficult for you to scale and make good decisions. And then number three, I would say this is more of a trend that I’ve seen with e-commerce operators and founders that I think is different than SaaS, SaaS companies. This is…

Arlen Robinson ([09:32].492)
Yeah.

Jared Ward ([09:46].905)
This, this third thing, which is most e-commerce founders and operators, they, they keep their heads down in the sand. Meaning an issue comes up and they have to be the solution. They have to find the solution or be the solution. And something that’s that SaaS being in SaaS has taught me is, dude, you’re not that smart, like, like get your head out of the sand. There’s.

Arlen Robinson ([10:13].703)
Thank you.

Jared Ward ([10:16].869)
a hundred, there’s a thousand people solving that exact problem or something really similar and they’re doing it better than you. Like get your head out of the sand. There’s 16 different softwares that could solve this problem. Like, and it’s, it’s why so many e-commerce operators, they get stuck in a Google sheet or they get stuck in, they get pigeonholed in this one way of doing things, or they don’t consider the options of outsourcing something. And that can ultimately be to the detriment of a brand.

Arlen Robinson ([10:23].435)
Yep.

Arlen Robinson ([10:31].168)
Yep, yep.

Arlen Robinson ([10:40].239)
Mm-hmm.

Arlen Robinson ([10:47].183)
Mm-hmm.

Jared Ward ([10:47].201)
not poking your head out of the sand and seeing like what’s out there. So yeah, those would be the top three things.

Arlen Robinson ([10:51].585)
Yeah.

Yeah, those are great. Yeah, thank you for sharing that. And that last one definitely resonated with me as a SaaS founder and having SaaS products for the past almost 20 years or so. Those are lessons we’ve learned as well. Like you said, the tendency for a founder to try to get in there and try to get everything solved in-house, us to figure it out, it’s easy to try to do that and have that tendency. But we’ve now over the years learned that,

You don’t have to. And it’s becoming more and more apparent these days just because of the way things are globally and the access to so many other people, access to so much more information. There’s no reason that you have to keep your head in the sand and figure that if you don’t solve it, nobody’s gonna solve it. Because yeah, it’s like you said, there’s a million and one other companies doing what you’re doing, but even better. And you’ve got to…

you know, learn how to and when to ask for help outside of your circle. So, yeah, very great key point.

Jared Ward ([11:57].865)
Yeah. And those three things lead to e-commerce companies implementing the wrong solutions for their business. And I’m, I’m particularly talking more about like your back end systems, like inventory management, order management systems, a warehouse management system, maybe ultimately an ERP. And that that’s where Luminous solves those problems is we come in from a sales perspective, we really understand your business and we put you in a bucket.

Arlen Robinson ([12:05].236)
Yeah.

Arlen Robinson ([12:11].64)
Mm-hmm.

Arlen Robinson ([12:27].948)
Mm.

Jared Ward ([12:28].257)
based on your attributes as a business. And we will come, it’s, in our sales process at Luminous, a lot of times our prospects get, we have an aha moment where they’re like, where we can come to them and be like, okay, I understand who you are. All of the things that you’re complaining about with like inventory, oh man, I keep overselling, or man, this one guy, he keeps.

putting in invoices wrong or man, I wish this could be like all of those are symptoms. A lot of times in our prospects with Luminous, we understand their business, all of their attributes and we’re like, okay, hey, these are actually your problems right here. Like you might think there’s 20 separate problems, but really it’s all coming from these one or two minor issues that come from us, just understanding who you are as a business and the specific problems that we need to address. And then here’s how we address them.

Arlen Robinson ([13:10].959)
Mm-hmm.

Arlen Robinson ([13:17].603)
Mm-hmm.

Arlen Robinson ([13:21].028)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Jared Ward ([13:26].089)
We, the second thing we help clean dirty data. We literally built a data auditing tool that’s part of onboarding. And then at number three, like, we encourage operators to get their head out of the sand, even in our sales process. We will recommend multiple tools that they go and check out. Like if I’m demoing somebody with Luminous, I’ll get them two other inventory management systems to go and demo.

Arlen Robinson ([13:52].239)
No worries.

Jared Ward ([13:54].389)
Cause I really do just want the best solution for their business.

Arlen Robinson ([13:58].107)
Yeah, that’s, that’s good stuff, man. You don’t hear that often, you know, a lot of times, of course, you’re going to be apt at a brand is apt to just push, push the brand as the one and only solution. But yeah, it takes, um, it takes someone that’s very humble to realize that, yeah, your solution may not be the best fit for every e-commerce brand out there. And being able to knowledge us is really good. Uh, for sure. Um,

You know, speaking of supply chain management, you know, with global trade and all of these supply chain issues and everything that’s always, that’s been evolving over these past few years, how would you recommend an e-commerce brand stay, stay agile and adaptive in their inventory management so that they can avoid, you know, stock outs and overstock situations.

Jared Ward ([14:47].837)
Yeah, I mean this, I actually, I do a lot of content about this. And one of my, one of my pieces of content is the, it just goes over the modern e-commerce brand and there’s two big changes that we’ve seen over the past five, 10 years, which is e-commerce companies, they go multi-channel real fast nowadays and number two, they have a lot of multifaceted distribution. So let’s go over both of those. Number one, multi-channel. So.

Arlen Robinson ([14:51].701)
Okay.

Arlen Robinson ([14:58].103)
Hmm.

Arlen Robinson ([15:08].847)
Yeah, yeah.

Jared Ward ([15:17].105)
most e-commerce companies, they sell Shopify, Amazon, and some type of wholesale, or maybe even a big box retail contract. That makes inventory management really complicated, and you need a system that can handle those complexities. Number two, the multifaceted distribution. Along with multi-channel, 70% of brands outsource their fulfillment to a 3PL.

Arlen Robinson ([15:26].232)
Mm-hmm.

Arlen Robinson ([15:32].5)
Do yeah

Jared Ward ([15:47].537)
Most of those brands also do FBA. As soon as you introduce two distribution centers, you now have multifaceted fulfillment and multifaceted replenishment and forecasting. So that’s where a lot of things break for brands is, and they’re confused like why it’s so hard to forecast and well, yeah, it’s because of those two things. You said yes to all of your channel mixes, your new channels.

Arlen Robinson ([16:13].911)
Yeah.

Jared Ward ([16:14].825)
And you said yes to multifaceted distribution without thinking like, okay, wow, now I need to forecast for FBA for our West coast, three PL and my East coast three PL. Yeah. You, you need, you need a special software that can segment out all those data pieces or, hmm, I started selling wholesale that’s growing. Why is it so hard to forecast? Oh yeah. Because now you need to see doing wholesale is a totally different side of the business and allocating inventory to that.

Arlen Robinson ([16:18].109)
Hmm.

Arlen Robinson ([16:29].241)
Mm-hmm.

Arlen Robinson ([16:37].356)
Mm-hmm.

Jared Ward ([16:44].833)
but also forecasting out your wholesale business and your direct consumer, two separate things. So I would say as brands, as modern and commerce brands do those two things, expand channels, expand distribution, you keep in mind you have to have a system, an inventory system that can handle that. Otherwise you are just gonna be wanting to, I don’t know, you’ll be wanting to pull your hair out.

Arlen Robinson ([16:45].014)
No.

Arlen Robinson ([16:48].915)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Jared Ward ([17:13].958)
every single day, especially in Q4. So.

Arlen Robinson ([17:16].548)
Yeah, yeah, that’s just what I was thinking as well. Yeah, I mean, these days brands, I mean, I don’t blame brands for going across, you know, doing the multi-channel route, like you said, jumping to.

Jared Ward ([17:26].677)
Absolutely.

Arlen Robinson ([17:28].791)
They may be e-commerce, then they jump to the big box retailers and then the Amazon third party logistics, all of that. Yeah. I mean, these days you got to be, you got to be in a lot of places in order to keep the revenues up. So, I mean, I don’t blame brands, but yeah, when you do that, yeah, you got to make sure.

you have the ducks in order and you have systems like, you know, what you can provide and what you can suggest as far as managing all of this. Cause yeah, like you said, I could just see it being a nightmare if you don’t have everything in place and, you know, literally pulling your hair out and just figuring out, you know, how you’re going to make it happen. Yeah. So, yeah, good stuff, man. Now with supply chain in mind, you know, we talked a little bit about, you know, the technologies, you mentioned Luminous and the things that you do for your clients.

Jared Ward ([18:01].36)
Absolutely.

Arlen Robinson ([18:15].367)
I wanted to see how do you see the integration of technology overall and specifically AI because you know that’s the big thing these days. AI revolutionizing supply chain management for you know for e-commerce brands in the next five years.

Jared Ward ([18:31].025)
Yeah, sorry, it’s funny enough. I actually have a video about this too. I do a whole video about the future of AI in e-commerce for supply chain. And my hook in the video is basically like, hey, brands, I know it sounds really cool that AI is gonna be running your supply chain, but you guys won’t even be able to use it.

Arlen Robinson ([18:36].172)
Okay.

Arlen Robinson ([18:39].621)
Mm-hmm. Yep.

Arlen Robinson ([18:52].728)
Yeah.

Jared Ward ([18:58].313)
because your data is so fucking dirty. I’m sorry, am I allowed to swear on this? Okay, yeah. Your data is so fucking dirty and you guys don’t even know it. And I speak from experience here because even when I was running my e-commerce company, I didn’t even know how dirty our data was. And what I mean by that is, like, I’ll give you an example. I…

Arlen Robinson ([18:58].538)
Right.

Arlen Robinson ([19:04].235)
Oh, no, that’s fine. You’re good.

Jared Ward ([19:23].901)
I ran Qualtree, we were that, we were a multi-channel brand, had like 2,000, 3,000 SKUs. And…

There, when you sell across multiple channels.
We built out a tool called purgatory for this simple reason, because all of our order data coming through was it, a lot of it was not mapping correctly. It wasn’t getting recognized in our forecast correctly. It wasn’t getting recognized as kits or bundles. Excuse me. Correctly.

Arlen Robinson ([19:50].424)
Mm-hmm.

Arlen Robinson ([19:58].223)
Mm-hmm.

Jared Ward ([20:02].217)
We weren’t forecasting out our raw materials properly. And all of that, you’ll start seeing things break. Like your replenishment reports will break. Your forecast is incorrect. Your seasonality and your forecast is all wrong. It’s typically it’s, those are just symptoms of bad data. And so the future of AI, one thing I, again, I go back to bad data is as you guys are scaling.

Arlen Robinson ([20:23].181)
Okay.

Jared Ward ([20:30].289)
And you’re really excited to take advantage of AI because yes, AI could, could run your replenishments. It, you could auto replenish FBA. You could auto replenish. You could auto draft a purchase order. That stuff already exists actually. And, um, but you, you first have to have clean data, like, and you have to capture all the data points, like, so a brand a lot of times they’ll

Arlen Robinson ([20:39].undefined)
Hmm?

Arlen Robinson ([20:44].844)
Mm-hmm.

Arlen Robinson ([20:52].545)
Mm-hmm.

Jared Ward ([20:57].645)
they’ll probably think like, yeah, man, they’ll be so awesome. I can guarantee that I’m never going to go to stock. All right. Well, a couple of questions. Do you keep track of production lead times projected versus actuals? Do you keep track of actual lead times for your C freight and your F freight? Do you keep track of, do you have min maxes set for every single one of your distribution points? Do you know what buffer stock is? How do you calculate days on hand? Is it?

Arlen Robinson ([21:03].605)
Mm-hmm.

Jared Ward ([21:26].721)
45 day sales velocity is a 30 day sales velocity. Like if you, if you don’t keep track of this data right now, AI is not going to be able to run shit. It’s so it’s, it’s something to keep in mind. Now when you get clean data, yeah, I think the future of AI and supply chain is, man, I think it’s going to start with replenishing. If you have all of your data dialed, um, we’re not too far off from

Arlen Robinson ([21:37].515)
Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Jared Ward ([21:55].497)
just being able to auto replenish a lot of things, especially if you’re a really basic brand.

Arlen Robinson ([22:00].315)
Okay. Yeah, that’s, that’s good to hear because, uh, yeah, I mean, I can see that being that, that’s a huge pain point for, for most of these brands being able to predict, you know, when to purchase, when to replenish certain things, you know, yeah, of course you can do that these days, manually looking at your numbers, looking at the histories, doing all the, all the forecasting, but with AI here, like you said, you do see that if it has the right data, the right

then yeah, I can see that being, like you said, never being out of stock of anything, knowing when to purchase, and just really being a powerful tool for e-commerce businesses. So really good to know.

Jared Ward ([22:47].5)
Yeah.

Arlen Robinson ([22:48].371)
Yeah, so, you know, as far as, you know, you’ve had, of course, obviously a long, long history, as I mentioned in the intro from the different business ventures that you had. And this is a question I always love to ask e-commerce entrepreneurs or just any entrepreneur in general. So when you think back and you reflect on your journey, what would you say is like one piece of advice you wish someone had given you when you were starting out in e-commerce operations and why?

Jared Ward ([23:21].438)
I would go back to my third point at the beginning which is

You don’t have to be the solution.

Arlen Robinson ([23:29].23)
Mm-hmm.

Jared Ward ([23:31].693)
pull your head out of the sand. There’s so many people out there that know more than you. And it’s what I’ve learned in Luminous is like, man, so many software providers know more than me and across different industries. Like there’s always a solution that you just don’t know. You don’t know what you don’t know.

Arlen Robinson ([23:50].415)
Mm-hmm.

Jared Ward ([23:56].433)
So always, you know, be willing to learn. And I think that would have saved me so much as an e-commerce operator. If, if I would have just poked my head out of the sand, done a lot of research, asked around to local e-commerce companies, I could be running into the same issues. I would have learned so much, so much faster.

Arlen Robinson ([24:02].754)
Hmm.

Arlen Robinson ([24:12].727)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, yeah. That’s a great piece of advice. When people ask me that question, I give a similar answer as far as early on asking for help and not just sticking your nose, like you said, in your head in the sand, because it’s a tendency I see so many business owners have in trying to just do everything, solve everything.

I mean, like I said, we can go on for hours and hours about how there’s so many things available to entrepreneurs, so many resources, so many employees, so much information. Yeah, you don’t have to be the end-all be-all solution to all of your brand’s problems. It definitely doesn’t have to be like that. So yeah, great piece of advice.

Jared Ward ([24:57].07)
Exactly.

Arlen Robinson ([25:04].359)
And Jared, as we get ready to wrap things up, you talked of course, a little bit about the technology and how AI can be, is gonna be a huge tool, I see, at least to the brands that have the right data. And I can definitely see that, that’s gonna be very powerful. And it’s gonna be interesting to see what are the brands that really take hold of that and are really gonna be able to grow and get to the next level. But I wanted to see…

Are there any disrupt other disruptive trends that you’ve seen or you could kind of forecast that we all should be prepared for as e-commerce business owners?

Jared Ward ([25:41].993)
Yeah, it’s a good question. I think…

for e-commerce businesses, I think the next wave of tools is probably going to be, again, number one, reminder, you gotta have clean data. I have to stress that. Once you have clean data, I think the next tools coming out are going to be auto replenishment, auto purchasing, which there’s a lot of tools like that sort of in beta right now. And I would also say,

Arlen Robinson ([25:57].56)
Yep.

Arlen Robinson ([26:12].866)
Mm-hmm.

Jared Ward ([26:18].101)
It’s just my prediction. I feel like there’s going to be a lot of marketing tools as well. Where once you have that, an AI tool, or once you have a database that has the whole picture of the supply chain, I think we’re going to have a lot of AI tools that auto adjust pricing to maximize margin or to maximize inventory control to make sure you don’t get out of stock. And it’s something that we’re working on at Luminous as well.

Arlen Robinson ([26:23].171)
Mm-hmm.

Arlen Robinson ([26:39].292)
Hmm.

Arlen Robinson ([26:45].987)
Okay.

Jared Ward ([26:46].233)
And I know other people are for sure going to be working on it. But I mean, just imagine, imagine if. You just figured out that your, your product, your drinks, um, coming in for Q4 were delayed and imagine if you had an AI tool that could raise the price so that it slows down sales velocity, so that could actually get in time and meanwhile, maybe, or.

Arlen Robinson ([26:49].611)
Wow. Yeah.

Arlen Robinson ([26:59].96)
Mm-hmm.

Arlen Robinson ([27:11].215)
Mm-mm.

Jared Ward ([27:14].802)
It sees that you have a local supplier with lead time X and an auto drafts a PO to make up for that. Like, just imagine…

Arlen Robinson ([27:21].16)
Mm-hmm.

Jared Ward ([27:24].009)
Imagine an AI tool that has that.

has all of that data and can make these decisions if you’re prioritizing margin or you’re prioritizing best sales or if you’re prioritizing never going on a stock.

Arlen Robinson ([27:39].899)
Yeah. I mean, that’s the, yeah, all of those things I can definitely see coming for, you know, for sure. And just how it’s going to really propel some brands just really, really to, you know, to the next level that are going to really grasp that. And you mentioned a couple of things also quick was the, on the marketing side of it, being able to make adjustments on, on pricing and that kind of ties into like almost

Jared Ward ([27:40].173)
I think that’s our next wave.

Arlen Robinson ([28:07].795)
and AI controlled, really AB testing, really. You’re almost kind of, you can almost let AI take control of your testing because it will be able to see the results of prices at a certain point based on that, based on timeframes, based on traffic, all of that it can just analyze in a split second and then determine, okay, at this time, I need to switch these products to this price and then just do all of that on the fly. Cause you know, these days, AB testing, or you know, five years ago,

Jared Ward ([28:11].881)
Yes.

Jared Ward ([28:30].628)
100%

Arlen Robinson ([28:36].883)
All of that, you know, just kind of manual. You were looking at, of course you had data, but you had to manually look at that and then see, okay, does it make sense to go up this amount? Yeah, I mean, you could figure it out using, you know, the formulas and doing your own math there, but yeah. Little bit time consuming and it was more of a guessing game, I guess you could say. So yeah, I could see that being really huge. AI controlled really, AAB testing and allowing that to really…

Jared Ward ([28:52].717)
Absolutely, man.

Arlen Robinson ([29:05].527)
tie into your marketing and figuring out the right price points. So yeah, I can see that being really, really huge. Well, Jared, this has been an awesome conversation. I definitely love talking to you. You’ve had a wealth of knowledge and experience that, you know, we’ve been able to learn from you. And I think this episode is going to go a long way with our listeners and our viewers. Lastly, before we do let you go, I always like to switch gears just so our audience can get to know you a little bit better.

If you don’t mind sharing one closing fun fact about yourself that you think we’d be interested to know.

Jared Ward ([29:40].697)
Huh?

Jared Ward ([29:48].809)
I, uh…

One of my favorite shows to rewatch is Vampire Diaries and the originals. I also rewatch the Twilight movies every single year. It’s just, it’s a guilty pleasure of mine. I don’t know why, but it is what it is.

Arlen Robinson ([30:00].162)
Okay.

Arlen Robinson ([30:04].215)
Gotcha, gotcha, okay.

Arlen Robinson ([30:08].619)
Okay, gotcha. Those are two shows that I don’t think I really ever got into the Emperor Diaries and Twilight but a while back maybe I Kind of started it and then never got into it. But I know it was a huge fan base There’s a lot of people that loved that series a lot of friends of mine’s were really big into it as well So yeah good stuff man. Yeah, thank you for sharing that. I appreciate that Lastly before we do let you go

Jared Ward ([30:25].677)
Thanks for watching!

Arlen Robinson ([30:34].835)
Yeah, if you don’t mind sharing some of the best ways for our listeners and viewers to get in contact with you if they want to pick your brain anymore about supply chain management, inventory management, or just all things e-commerce, what’s the best way for them to reach you?

Jared Ward ([30:49].501)
Yeah, absolutely. So go to my website joinluminous.com. J O I N L U M I N O U S. So joinluminous.com. My, uh, my YouTube channel is, so I’m across all platforms, TikTok, Instagram, but connect with me on my website. My website has links to all of this. Um, if you just go to the media page, but on, um, YouTube it’s Jared underscore ward. Um, uh,

TikTok, same thing, LinkedIn, just search me Jared Ward. And I also have a podcast as well. It’s called Ops Unfiltered, Ops Unfiltered, where we talk to, where we focus on e-commerce operations. So less on the marketing side, but more like on the ops, like in the warehouse.

Arlen Robinson ([31:32].943)
Gotcha.

Arlen Robinson ([31:37].687)
Gotcha, gotcha. Okay, great, good stuff. Yeah, thank you for sharing that. I will definitely have the link to your website and the show notes and I would definitely encourage everybody to check you out there and across all those social platforms. And I definitely encourage people to check out some of those YouTube videos that you referenced early on where you kind of break down a few things regarding supply chain management. I think I’m gonna check out a few of those myself. They definitely sound interesting and I would love to hear more of your take on some of those subjects.

Well, Jared, this has been a great conversation. As I’ve said, I’ve definitely learned a ton. I know our listeners and viewers have as well. And we definitely love to have you today on the e-commerce marketing podcast.

Jared Ward ([32:18].381)
Okay, yeah, thanks Ben, this has been great.

Arlen Robinson ([32:21].375)
Yeah, thank you for joining us.

Podcast Guest Info

Jared Ward
Founder and CEO of Luminous