Brittain Ladd (RTS #25)
Guest: Brittain Ladd
Topics: Pulse Integration, fulfillment centers
Transcript:
Chris Ressa 0:01
This is retail retold the story of how that store ended up in your neighborhood. I’m your host, Chris ReSSA and I invite you to join my conversation with some of the retail industry’s biggest influencers. This podcast is brought to you by DLC management.
Welcome to retail retold everyone. Today I’m joined by Brittain Ladd Britton is the chief supply chain officer at Pulse integration. He has been in the retail industry for over 20 years and has some interesting experiences like working at Amazon. And we are excited to have him on the show. Welcome to the show Britain.
Brittain Ladd 0:41
Oh, thank you so much for having me.
Ressa 0:43
So Bretton, why don’t you tell us a little bit about your career in retail, what you’ve done and what you’re working on today.
Ladd 0:52
So my, my career in retail really began when I was recruited by the retailer Michael stores. And I was recruited to lead a five year transformation for supply chain logistics, really enjoyed my time and Michael stores then moved on to Dell, and worked on programs related to retail at Dell, not only direct to customer but actual retail stores and other things retail related that I went into consult with former Deloitte and Capgemini consultant, with many large retailers globally supply chain strategy and so forth. Then I was recruited by Amazon. And at Amazon, I focus on Amazon global logistics, I focused on grocery and pantry. I’m the former worldwide expansion leader for Amazon Fresh and pantry. But what I really focused on at Amazon when I worked there, was getting them to better understand the value of Amazon acquiring a physical retailer. So I spoke a lot about research papers I’d written early in my career as part of my third master’s program, related to the fact that I believe that Amazon should acquire Whole Foods. And so that channeled me in a lot of things grocery related when I worked at Amazon, left Amazon opened my own consulting practice. I still do consulting today. And Kroger was the first company that recruited me as a consultant. And I’m the reason why Kroger and Ocado entered into an agreement. I pushed very heavily for Kroger to, to enter into agreement with Okada, when I actually wanted Kroger to acquire Ocado. So I’ve worked and lived globally, I’ve lived Saudi Arabia lived India, lived Germany, lived in China, and just really have enjoyed working with some fabulous people over the years in retail.
Ressa 2:45
So as of late over the last decade, you have been doing a ton in the grocery space. Were you at Amazon pre buying of Whole Foods or post buying whole foods?
Ladd 2:55
No, I was there pre buying. But in 2013, I started to write research papers that I would send to executives at Amazon, and that the press would cover and my 2013 research paper a beautiful way to save Woolworths. I applied game theory to the global grocery industry. And in that paper, I recommended that Amazon should acquire Whole Foods. But I designed one of the first micro fulfillment, automation systems. And I speak about that in the paper and I designed special stores that I believed Amazon should buy. And if you read that paper, and then you look at the stores, Amazon is building you can see those designs nearly mirror what I came up with in 2013.
Ressa 3:43
Very fascinating. What are you doing today at Pulse integration? What are you doing?
Ladd 3:48
So pulse integration is we’re a leader in robotics. But what we’re really a leader in is automation of logistics. So we work with some of the largest companies globally, and we focus on helping them better understand why they should have a Omar’s within their supply chain ecosystem, why they should have micro fulfillment, why they need to do a better job with their technology, why they need to apply the science of supply chain optimization throughout their network. But what we really help with them on is getting them to better understand the importance of innovation, and getting them to do what I speak about a lot, which is think big. Help them understand now more than any other time in their history. They need to think big to help transform their companies versus just doing incremental improvements. So we work with very, very large companies. We’re one of the most active in the market for installing microfilm engines and selling micro fulfillment solutions. And so I really stay pretty busy speaking with executives about this is really what you need to be doing as it relates to your business. but also your supply chain.
Ressa 5:02
So let’s stay there for a second, let’s talk about micro fulfillment. For those who don’t know, what is micro fulfillment,
Ladd 5:10
so many people think of micro fulfillment in terms of well, it must be a small building, it’s not the micro fulfillment, I’m referring to our actual automated solutions, their robotic solutions. Think of it this way, one of the most popular is called Auto store. And if you were to think of a Rubik’s Cube, and you take that Rubik’s cube, and let’s say you make it 20,000 Square feet, and you put robots on top that go back and forth, pulling things out of the Rubik’s Cube, that, in a nutshell, is what micro fulfillment is in the model of AutoStore. You take grocery, you take other retail products, you put them in a cube based system in these totes. And when an order is placed, the robots go back and forth, pulling out the product from the totes, moving the totes around. There’s another company called antibiotics, which really has a fabulous system. There’s a company called fabric, which is doing a lot with micro fulfillment as a service, and they have a shuttlebay system. But it’s actually a very good one for for micro fulfillment. So it’s the ability to automate online grocery fulfillment, versus what you see in many retail stores today, where you have pickers roaming all throughout the aisles of Walmart and Kroger and other companies. What retailers are realizing grocery retailers are realizing is it’s much better if we could automate this process and remove the pickers from our aisles. And these micro fulfillment solutions can do that they can automate picking groceries, but they can automate fulfilling orders to specialty retailers, big box retailers, warehouse clubs and department stores. So you will see micro fulfillment become one of the fastest growing segments of the supply chain throughout the rest of the 2020s. It’s frankly already happening
Ressa 7:05
outside of the robotics, explain to the audience the difference between the micro fulfillment and just a regular fulfillment center?
Ladd 7:13
Well, most fulfillment centers are rather large, they can be in excess of two and 50,000 square feet, the fulfillment I’ve worked in globally, some of them were as large as a million square feet. And micro fulfillment basically allows you to leverage these robotic system from auto store and antibiotics and fabric and others. And you can put them in about 20,000 square feet to 40,000 square feet. Now a lot of people are confused when they hear me say that they’re like, Well, why do these big facilities even exists? Why wouldn’t everyone go to micro fulfillment? Well, you need the larger facilities, because it helps you carry a lot of inventory. And you can go direct to stores and trucks and trailers, and so forth. But when you have a large customer base in a city, it’s better for you to fulfill as close to that customer as you can. And so the big thing that’s starting really to happen in supply chain is that companies are finding smaller sized buildings in downtown locations on the outskirts of cities, they’re putting these micro fulfillment centers in these locations. And then grocery retailers are finding out that they can build a small building and attach a micro fulfillment center right to their stores. They can even put micro fulfillment centers inside their stores. And that’s what Amazon is doing. Amazon’s building stores with the micro fulfillment center already inside. So what happens is it gives these companies the ability to fulfill closer to the customer faster to the customer, but they automate a lot of manual processes. And that greatly reduces their cost. And that helps them increase revenue and increase their profit.
Ressa 9:00
Really good analysis. Where’s the product coming from to get to the micro fulfillment center? Is that coming from like for a retailer, that’s not a grocer? Is that coming from China direct there? Is it going to the major facility, then go into the microfilm and, Senator?
Ladd 9:14
That’s a perfect question. It’s a really valuable question. So it depends on who we’re talking about. Most grocery retailers have groceries already in their stores. So they’re taking that inventory going to their stores, and just simply putting it inside the micro fulfillment centers. Okay, so those grocery fulfillment,
Ressa 9:36
let me ask one more question. Is that uh, is that people putting it in the microfilm and centers mostly today? And will that be robots in the future?
Ladd 9:45
Even better question. So today, it’s mostly people put the inventory inside these micro fulfillment solutions. But we actually are working with companies to where we can automate that. And that’s what’s going to happen in the next This year too, you’ll see more and more companies that automate this entire process of not only fulfilling orders, but fulfilling the process for putting inventory inside these micro fulfillment systems. Not all of them can do that. But the future of retail is robotics. Make no mistake of that the future of fulfillment is robotics. And that’s why you’re going to see so many retailers invest in this space.
Ressa 10:25
Okay, these micro fulfillment centers you talked about, like the grocery stores that might attach it right to their building, do you see these fulfillment centers, going into what some might consider retail real estate today, like me, I own a integrated shopping center. And it might be Kroger, TJ Maxx, you know, pick the tenants, some small shop tenants. And let’s say Stein marches fall beverages Stein Mark goes out, do you see that getting replaced with a micro fulfillment center,
Ladd 11:00
factually already happening today, I work with some of the largest real estate companies. And one of the things that they’re investing in, is identifying the shopping centers, identifying malls, and what they’re doing is investing in these micro fulfillment centers. So that they can have the micro fulfillment actually take place on site at a shopping center or in a mall location. And they can make these facilities, these micro fulfillment centers, they can make them as large as they want, they can have larger bin sizes to put even bigger inventory in it sporting goods, apparel, shoes, department store type products, not just groceries. And the value of this is that many of your stores then become showrooms. So you would go in and showroom products, but then when you purchase it, the fulfillment takes place inside the mall or the shopping center. And then you just pull around and it goes in your car, or you just goes to a pickup window, you drive around and you pick it up. So these, this technology is absolutely revolutionising retail, retail real estate.
Ressa 12:08
And in those scenarios,
who is operating the micro fulfillment center, because it sounds like in that scenario, there might be multiple retailers using the same fulfillment center. So is that the landlord, who is managing that
Ladd 12:25
know, what’s happening is that you we are seeing companies, these real estate companies, these real estate facilities, contract, a micro fulfillment company to set up the micro fulfillment solution and actually run it. So fabric, for example, has had an awful lot of retailers reach out to them to do that. But I’m confident that you’re going to see AutoStore, you’re going to see Adam Phottix, you may see a company called alert innovation. These are the leaders and micro fulfillment. And what they realized is that micro fulfillment as a service is really something that’s needed. And so landlords don’t want to own robotics and have to run these facilities. But they absolutely are more than willing to contract someone and have them installed this technology on their, at their location, run it manage the inventory, everything. And that’s exactly what’s already happening. It’s small, it’s young, but it’s absolutely happening. And it’s going to be really something very common that you’ll see in just the next year or two guarantee.
Ressa 13:33
So fabric, let’s say they’re out, and they’re going in, I guess marketing to different retailers to say, hey, we have this micro fulfillment center, you should be using it. This is what we have, blah, blah, blah,
Ladd 13:47
correct. And how they do it is is they make the argument that do you, as a retailer, want to own this technology? To you you have software to where you can integrate what you do with this technology platform? And do you have the people? Do you have people who can do the maintenance and so forth? And most retailers are saying no, we don’t have that. And that’s why we’re not interested. And so fabric to their credit. What they came up with is, well, why don’t we set up these facilities, and then we charge you a fee for everything that we pick for you. So in essence, they’re the retailer’s charge, a transaction fee for orders that are fulfilled by fabric. So if a retailer isn’t taking up all the space inside the fabric, micro fulfillment center, then fabric can sell that capacity to other retailers. And so fabrics running these fulfillment centers, 24/7 365 days a year would be the goal, but they have multiple retailers that are putting their inventory inside their facilities. Now fabric is first to this and I think they’re doing a great job. But I know that the other microfilming companies see this as a growth area and that’s why this will become more common.
Ressa 15:01
Well, in that that’s really interesting. So fabric sets up with with these retailers, one of the things that I have learned not about retail, but about businesses in general,
Unknown Speaker 15:17
is they typically
Ressa 15:21
don’t like to do things in piecemeal, they say we’re going to bring on a solution we want to do with company wide, owning this micro fulfillment center, you know, you let’s say a retail used to work for Michaels. Michaels has, you know, three stores in a market, you pick the market, but they have 1500 or 1000 stores in the entire chain, they have to go now and make all these different micro fulfillment deals. Is it are you seeing that they’re coming on board to do these in piecemeal like that, obviously, groups like the big groups, the much bigger ones are making, as you call it, the transformational changes. But I would think that even though they see the value, it’s hard for them to onboard this.
Ladd 16:05
Well, it’s hard for them to onboard it now. Because it’s so new. We’re really at the beginning of this trend. And so what I’m finding is that most of the retailers are taking a crawl, walk run approach, well, let’s think back 10 years and 15 years, when ecommerce came along, look how nervous retailers were, and they didn’t really want to embrace e commerce. And so they did a crawl, walk run approach. Well, now everybody has ecommerce, every retailer knows the value of E commerce. So what’s going to happen is through I can state with 1% certainty, there are several large retailers about to make announcements in January February timeframe that they’ve entered into an agreement with micro fulfillment companies to have large scale rollouts of these micro fulfillment centers. And as other retailers see that there are companies rolling out many of these micro fulfillment centers, it’s just going to do what well, it’s going to cause everyone to say we want to be part of that we want, we want to have that capability. But it also is something where they say now how do we compete? Well, we can only compete if we have micro fulfillment. So it’s going really slow and a little peek. And then it’s just gonna go up like that. That’s just the way technology is usually embraced, and becomes popular for retailers. But there’s also something else I want to point out. Behind the scenes are many companies that read my articles, and they reach out to me, and companies that have really embraced this have done so because I’ve been making arguments for two years about they have to do this. And so I can stay on your show, I guarantee you Instacart is going to go down the path of micro fulfillment. And I estimate that when they roll it out, they’ll probably roll out 80 to 100 within a year or two. And then it will be several 100. After that. I’m convinced Postmates and Grubhub DoorDash, and the restaurant delivery companies are going to all go down this path. Because I’ve argued to these companies that they need to deliver groceries for grocery retailers, they need to become an alternative Instacart. But they need to think bigger than Instacart. And so they’re gonna they’re looking, they’re actively looking at installing micro fulfillment centers throughout their network. So now let’s fast forward two or three years and you can’t pick up a newspaper, you can’t pick up an industry publication, they can’t listen to your show without you talking about micro fulfillment. That’s what we’re really looking out over the next couple of years. So I agree with you that it’s it’s troublesome for these retailers to roll it out today. But there’s a lot of good companies out there that can integrate these systems and install that. And frankly, they’re becoming experts at this. And it gives them the ability to have multiple installations going on at the same time. The real challenge is a lot of executives still have that. Let’s wait, let’s wait and see what’s happening. Now they don’t have that luxury anymore, because more and more retailers are saying yes, this is the future of our company.
Ressa 19:20
Okay, that that’s helpful. Do you think it is better for the micro fulfillment center to be as close to the store as
possible? So in a scenario, like for as I am a landlord, does it make sense for my retailers? Like if the micro fulfillment center is in the same shopping center? Is that better than a mile and a half down the road?
Ladd 19:44
For the example you just gave? Yes, I would absolutely put the micro fulfillment center in the shopping center. Because again, it allows the retailers to say I don’t really need to have my own inventory in my store. I can simply I place my inventory in the shopping centers micro fulfillment section, area, and my inventory can go inside the micro fulfillment solution. So when my customer something, I just have them pull around, and there’s a pickup window or pickup door, and the micro fulfillment solution fulfills their order and sends it right to that. But let’s look at say, a large grocery retailer. Let’s look at Albertsons, for example. So Albertsons has around 2500, grocery stores, they have lots and lots of stores, they would never say, and I would never recommend Albertsons put a micro fulfillment center next to every single store. But what I would do is run analysis that would identify all of the stores in a region in a city state, where should I put one of these in the middle of a cluster of stores, and what stores can this one micro fulfillment solution fulfilled to. And so you have this opportunity now as a grocery retailer to say, I can remove grocery fulfillment from my stores. And I’ll simply put a dark store within the middle of radius of different radiuses of my stores. So maybe I put a dark store in the middle of where I have 25 stores, or 15, stores, that one dark store that has a micro fulfillment center inside of it, that will fulfill orders for those 15 grocery stores or more. So they start to install these dark stores that are automated throughout their network. But they’re not putting a dark store in every grocery store or not, or micro fulfillment center. And inside every grocery store, they’re just simply saying, let’s put a micro fulfillment center in a dark store, let’s put the dark store among the cluster of stores. And then that micro fulfillment center fulfills maybe to 1520, or even 25 stores. So it’s changing how Microsoft grocery retailers are going to fulfill their orders. It’s one of the most valuable things a grocery retailer can do. For this reason, on average, grocery retailers lose up to $25. On every single online order that they fulfill using the current methods, using an automated solution will significantly significantly reduce their cost.
Ressa 22:24
That’s That’s great to hear. Is that going to change for my wife who might like to go to the grocery store and do her normal grocery shop?
Ladd 22:34
Oh, no, not at all. It the beauty of this system is that, frankly, it allows grocery grocery retailers to increase the customer experience, because they’re pulling the shoppers out of their stores, who today go around pushing carts, and they’re fulfilling online orders, they can pull all that activity out of their stores that can go inside a dark store, or a micro fulfillment center next to their store. So when your wife goes shopping, and her friends go shopping, and they’re friends, they have the aisles to themselves, they have the aisles with other shoppers. So the traffic, the congestion, the fact that these third party shopping companies like Instacart, and shipped and others that today roam around the stores pulling product off the shelf, all that goes away. So now your wife will find you know what, there’s better in stocks in the store. There’s they’re not running out of product as fast as they used to. So this doesn’t stop anyone from going to a grocery store and shopping. What I’m talking about is the way for retailers to fulfill online orders using automation. But also fulfill, click and collect orders that can customers phone in and say I want to go to the store and pick this order up. They can do click and click orders in this automated system as well. And then they just simply will stage the order. So when you would pull up or your wife pulls up, it goes in the trunk of their car, you have no idea that that order was fulfilled through automation.
Ressa 24:07
Got it makes a lot of sense. We’re going to take a quick break
here. And now a word from one of our sponsors. Lease pilot is a cloud based platform that connects your drafting language and asset information to a powerful data driven back end that understands the underlying logic of your entire document. So when you add, say an extension option, lease pilot will adjust the term, recalculate the rent tables and update the assignment provisions automatically. In short, drafts get out the door faster, and the critical information in your lease is always online providing instant abstracts in direct connection to your existing CRM and ERP systems. To learn more Visit lease pilot.co.
I just wanted to say I can’t say enough about lease pilot, we are a customer of lease pilot at DLC, the software’s phenomenal their service is incredible. And we are now getting leases out the door much faster than we ever could without this product. I want to thank lease pilot. And if you haven’t checked them out, you need to go to their website, lease pilot.co.
You mentioned something that by and large groceries lose about $25 per online order grocery stores, which is interesting stat given that to purchase an online grocery to have it delivered is more costly to the consumer than going to the store. If they even if they brought that cost down to the break, even on an online order, is it still going to cost the consumer more money to get it delivered to their home than then go into the store?
Ladd 26:15
It should but remember, a lot of grocery retailers actually ended up eating that cost. They’re not passing on a delivery charge to the consumer, a lot of retailers do that. But here’s what’s happening. More and more consumers are embracing online ordering. And what I argue with grocery retailers about is the importance of increasing density of orders, not volume of orders, and so many grocery retailers today, what they’ve done is they’re applying much more science to how they fulfill orders. And what they’re doing is that they’re bundling orders together, they’re not doing the one to one ratio today, one online order to one driver making one delivery instead, there are lots of retailers out there. This United States, I work with retailers in Russia and Europe. And they’ve already figured this out, they hold a lot of orders. And they don’t give customers the ability to choose the delivery time, they just maximize out the capacity and the delivery vehicle. And they say to the customer, we will be in your area, your neighborhood between this time and this time. If you give us that opportunity to deliver, we can save you 10% or 15% on your overall order. If you want us to make the delivery sooner, it’s a $7 or something like that. So that’s something that these retailers are doing. But here’s something else that you really need to be aware of. There are two new concepts out there that really didn’t even exist more than two years ago. One company called Robo Mart. And what Robo Mart is doing is they created the concept of hell a store. So instead of helping an Uber, you pull out your phone and there’s an app on your phone. And it will tell you where the robo Mark vans are tells you what products are on the robo Mark vans and you just hail it and it comes to your store apartment complex or where you work. And that provides you an opportunity not to have to order groceries online. Then there’s a company called tortoise. And tortoise is one of the coolest companies out there. They’re the first company with self driving scooters that actually can drive with no one standing on them. They can drive themselves to the customer. But they created this little tortoise cart, which is a little plastic card can hold up to 150 pounds of groceries. And it’s designed to do deliveries of groceries within three miles of a grocery store. It’s not autonomous. It’s actually driven by people sitting in Mexico. It’s tele operated, they have a camera, and they just drive it to reach a customer. Now what makes this so special is that they’ve been able to reduce the cost of an online order to about $2. From what it costs them today. So they are greatly saving retailers money. But the thing that’s interesting when we split our research, we found that over 40% of online orders are within three miles of a grocery store. So tortoise cart, gives retailers this opportunity to just have these things going up and down the sidewalks. They’re approved in 13 states already, the majority of the states will approve it in 2021 and 2022. And their little vehicles that people sitting in Mexico are driving from one customer to another and that’s something that’s going to be commonplace again within just a few years. So really watch Robo Mart and really watch tortoise there are two really really special companies.
Ressa 29:56
I will check them out I wasn’t aware either and I’m pretty plugged in or retail. So that’s interesting. One of the things that I’ve been talking about that I think is really helping retailers, I’ve been saying it’s going to be a large part of the future, you called it click and collect, buy online pick up in store. Couple years ago, there was a study done, I think, by CareerBuilder, where 78% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. So majority of Americans cannot pay one more dollar for a surcharge to deliver. And it seems no matter how autonomous we get to get it from the store to your home, there’s got to be some cost involved with that passed on to the consumer for the retailer to make money. And there’s a huge cohort of the population that really can’t afford that.
And
it seems for that cohort, the answer has been buy online, pick up in store, they get to order online, and they get to the benefit of the cost because they can go get it in the store. What do you think of buying online pickup in store as part of this, the grocery experience in the future?
Ladd 31:05
Well, it’s not only the grocery experience, but it’s really the retail experience. And I absolutely agree with everything you’ve said. But here’s where I take it a little further. I wrote an article where I make the argument that grocery retailers and all retailers should turn their stores in the big vending machines. And what I mean is this, when we had COVID hit, you were either essential, or God forbid, you are a non essential retailer. And if you are not essential, they shut you down. And I wrote an article, you can go to Britain lad.com, you can read all the articles that I write, I write articles for Forbes, as well. And I researched this and I’m like, so what could have prevented those stores from shutting down. And what would have prevented them from shutting down as again, if they had micro fulfillment, either in a store, or a cluster among a cluster of their stores. Customers could a place their order, instead of a being fulfilled from a mic from a fulfillment center. It’s actually just fulfilled from a dark store or fulfilled from within their stores. And all they would need is a pickup window. So not only do I agree with you that bogus buy online pick up in store is going to increase. But my argument to the retailers is why in the world do you allow a system do exist, where your stores only can generate revenue when they’re open, yet you have customers placing orders online, throughout the day, throughout the evening, throughout the early morning hours. In essence, your customers on placing orders 20 473 and six, five days a year, so ye opportunity to just place an order and fulfill it from one of your stores or fulfill it from a store and they just go over and pick it up or for a nominal fee, they could hire a gig worker who would just simply pick that up and then take it to your home. So I absolutely agree with you that focus is going to increase. But what I really think see is the adopt technology, where retailers can have nano technology for fulfillment, nano fulfillment, and micro fulfillment, to allow them to operate those stores 24/7 and be able to fulfill orders. That’s what I really see is going to happen. But what I also see happening is because of focus, you’re going to see retailers figure out if I have so many people buying online and picking up in store, why do I need to keep building the same type of store. So I think we’re going to see some really interesting new store formats throughout 2020 being built as well.
Ressa 33:41
Alright, this has been fascinating last last question. Where does the local retailer fit in all of this, given that they can’t afford to play in this transformation game that you’re talking about? How does the local retailer continue to succeed?
Ladd 34:01
Well, I would hope that by now, local retailers would have realized they have to have a digital experience. They have to have truly informative content on there. But what they really should have done by now is realize that they can’t have store associates and their stores, they need to have knowledge workers, they need to go back to the days of the 30s and 40s and 50s. Where when you walked into a store, you talked to good old Bob, because Bob could tell you everything you needed to know about wine and cheese and meat. And you talk to Mary because Mary could tell you everything you needed to know about cosmetics and so forth. So the
Ressa 34:43
way for the local men Yeah. And then if I’m sitting at the dinner table, and I’m talking to my friends and they’re talking about something that I go, you gotta go see Bob over at such and such store.
Ladd 34:54
And that’s really what has to happen. The local retailers have to go back in time. but they also have to be up to date with technology, because it’s that experience, that personal experience that they provide, that’s going to keep them successful. But I’ve been very honest about this topic, you will see many retailers that no matter what they do, they just simply are going to close. Because so many people’s behavior has changed, that you’re going to see more and more micro fulfillment centers open, you’re going to see smaller format stores being opened, and the pricing is going to be better than any of the local stores. So not all local stores will ever be able to survive. That’s just not going to happen.
Ressa 35:38
All right. Well, listen, Britain, this has been fantastic.
I want to move on to the last part of our show called retail wisdom. I have three questions for you. You ready? Yes.
Question, one fan favorite. What extinct retailer, do
you wish would come back from the dead?
Ladd 35:57
You know, that’s a great question. I’d have to say blockbuster. And the reason why I say that was is not only was blockbuster, an interesting store to go into. But many people don’t know this. But blockbuster could have acquired Netflix for $50 million. And they didn’t do it. And I would love to see blockbuster come back with the same executive team that existed when it first opened. And I would want them to see what’s going on with Netflix, what’s going on with other streaming services? And I’d love for them to tell us. Why didn’t you see this? Why did you pass on Netflix? So that’s why I’d like to see blockbuster come back. A fascinating discussion.
Ressa 36:41
Okay, question two. What purchase over $20 Have you made in a store lately? What was the last purchase you made in the store over 20 hours.
Ladd 36:52
I bought a box of protein bars because I’ve worked out so much. That’s the last thing that I can remember ever purchase in a store. Most stuff I just purchased online. But I was so hungry that I went to the store and I bought my protein bars instead of waiting to order them online.
Ressa 37:09
And which in which store. I went to a GNC. Awesome. Last question. If
we were at if we were at Walmart, and I lost you in Walmart, what aisle would I find you in at Walmart?
Ladd 37:24
Ah, more than likely you would find me in the sporting goods aisle where they have the heavy bag and the speed bag. Boxing is my favorite sport. It’s the only sport I competed in. And no matter when I go into a Walmart, I find that I gravitate towards that aisle because I just have to hit the bag. Or I’m trying on the weightlifting gloves or something. So just being honest. That’s where you’d probably find me on that. Ah,
Ressa 37:50
awesome Britain.
This has been great. Where can people find you?
Ladd 37:55
You can find me on LinkedIn. Or you can go to Britain lad.com I write a newsletter, you’re more than welcome to sign up for it. And you can reach out to me on LinkedIn. I always respond to people and I always love it when people reach out. It’s great to network and I really appreciate you having me on your show.
Ressa 38:14
Thanks so much Britain. This has been great.
Ladd 38:16
Thank you so much.
Ressa 38:19
Thank you for listening to retail retold. If you want to share a story about a retail real estate deal that you were a part of on our show. Please reach out to us at retail retold at DLC mgmt.com This show highlights the stories behind the deals from all perspectives. So it doesn’t matter if you are a retailer, broker, entrepreneur, architect or an attorney. Also, don’t forget to subscribe to retail retold so you don’t miss out on next Thursday’s episode