"Now in its 15th year, the GeekWire Awards are one of the most hotly-anticipated events in the Seattle tech community. Past winners have included Auth0, Tableau, Smartsheet, Remitly, Swype, Redfin, Convoy, and Zulily."

"Automation solutions reach across categories on this year’s list as retailers and brands look for tools to make their operations faster and smarter."

"It doesn’t matter much to retailers, who used the early holiday sales to try to offload products before most shoppers had even picked out their Halloween costumes. But it signaled that shoppers are motivated by deals, no matter what they’re for. "

“To be able to provide them a very clear date when their package is going to get delivered is very valuable to customers,” Mr. Shankaran said.

"The Information selected 50 companies that have the potential to be the most valuable businesses in their categories based on their current revenue, business model, and growth prospects."

"For many people, the word automation conjures up images of machines. But Murray believes the real opportunity in today's technology lies in applications for improving decision-making on a real-time basis. Part of that solution includes the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning, which can lead to better forecasts and greater agility to responding to changes in the marketplace and supply chain. With such tools in hand, Murray says, retailers can be better prepared for the next crisis to come along."

"Murray has a deep understanding of what is required to build fast shipping into a business. He spent almost 20 years at Amazon, managing an operations group that included Prime. And he said that being able to deliver items quickly was now table stakes for retailers."

"Get predictable — tell customers when their package or item will arrive. Nothing is more frustrating than a multi-day delivery window."

"Shipium is building that tech stack so that e-commerce retailers can have that supply chain coordination layer that enables them to have fast and cheaper shipping, too. This comes as the global e-commerce logistics market is poised to be valued at more than $3 trillion by 2028."

“The general playbook for the post-2000s with retail is that everything is about obfuscating prices,” said Jason Murray, who worked at Amazon for 20 years and is now chief executive of Shipium, an e-commerce start-up. “This is the game that companies are playing by removing the reference points so people think they’re getting a good price.”

"Combined, perhaps the most visible and lasting impact the pandemic will have on supply chains will be the way it accelerated an aggressive migration to modern technology. As a consumer, I sure hope so."

"Envision the shoe or chocolate startup doing less than $10 million per year in sales," Murray said. "Companies like Ryder, Rakuten, XPO, and others will be trying to buy their way into that market more and more and hope that those customers grow with them."

Lately, the problem has been electricity shortages that have limited Shenzhen factories to one shift a day, said Jason Murray, chief executive of the ecommerce logistics company Shipium.

“Shippers and fulfillment networks have been signaling for months that 2021's holiday season will be even more constrained than 2020,” noted Jason Murray, CEO of e-commerce logistics company Shipium. “Major national retailers like AEO are frantically looking for alternatives to handle projected shipping volumes.”

"If a retailer had inventory in California that needed to be delivered in New York, regionals had little value because of the long-haul middle mile requirement," Murray said. "But with this merger, you can see a future where LaserShip+Ontrac take care of cross-national transport between their regional networks, thus turning them into a true ‘national carrier' option for most of the U.S. customer base population."

"I think the advantage Amazon had was that we were able to coordinate all these steps," Shipium cofounder Jason Murray told Insider.

A conversation around simple ways operations can help improve checkout conversion. The CMO needs to merchandize the innovations of the COO in order to compete for consumer dollars.

Shipium’s idea is to provide tools to improve the customer experience and reduce fulfillment costs in the e-commerce channel. “Our observation, and what we’ve been hyper-focused on, is to make the trade-off on optimization – how much is a company willing to pay to provide specific SLA’s and do they want to do that across the board or in a targeted way – and then to improve the way a site communicates relevant information to the costumer,” Murray says.

“If the current high level of demand Amazon is facing continues, it could decide that its doesn’t want to further boost demand with Prime Day sales, said Jason Murray, a former vice president at Amazon who is now the co-founder and CEO of Shipium, a startup that is working to help direct-to-consumer companies modernize their supply chains.”

“Investment capital is following the critical mass of leaders coming out of Amazon, said Murray, who along with Shipium co-founder Mac Brown is a former Amazon employee.”

“Murray and Brown are experts when it comes to fast shipping. They know that outside of giant retailers such as Amazon, most e-commerce brands don’t have the same capability to offer that perk to their customers. Enter Shipium, which aims to make two-day fulfillment possible for any online retailer.”

“Both are experts in the field of rapid shipping, and they realized that when a company doesn’t have the clout of Amazon, it’s hard to promise customers anything when it comes to fast shipping.”