How Blu Dot Is Optimizing Its Furniture Logistics and Last-Mile Fulfillment
Join Nate Shutes, VP of Global Fulfillment & Logistics at Blue Dot, as he explores predictive supply chains, AI-driven scheduling, and the challenges of furniture logistics. Learn how Blu Dot is leveraging AI, warehouse automation, and workforce strategies to optimize e-commerce fulfillment and improve last-mile delivery efficiency.
⏳ Important Timestamps:
- 0:00 - Welcome & introduction from Manifest 2025
- 0:47 - Meet Nate Shutes, VP of Global Fulfillment & Logistics at Blu Dot
- 1:15 - Overview of Blu Dot’s omni-channel furniture business
- 2:00 - Nate’s background in logistics & supply chain management
- 3:00 - Key takeaways from Nate’s panel on predictive supply chains
- 4:10 - What is a predictive supply chain & why does it matter?
- 5:30 - How AI & automation are shaping logistics strategy
- 7:00 - Investing in people vs. automation in big & bulky logistics
- 9:20 - How Blu Dot manages last-mile delivery challenges
- 10:40 - AI-powered scheduling and its impact on customer experience
- 12:00 - Future of home furnishings logistics & retail fulfillment
- 13:30 - Closing thoughts on technology, supply chain talent & AI innovation
Special thanks to our sponsors TGW Logistics for making our Manifest coverage possible. To learn more about TGW head here: www.tgw-group.com.
#manifest2025 #supplychain #homefurnishings #bludot #retailtrends
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Transcript
Hello, everyone.
Speaker A:This is omnitalk Retail.
Speaker A:I'm Chris Walton.
Speaker B:And I'm Anne Mazinga.
Speaker A:And we are coming to you live from Manifest, the Future of Logistics conference in Las Vegas.
Speaker A:And reminder, today's coverage is brought to you by TGW Logistics.
Speaker A:You can revolutionize your supply chain with TGW Logistics.
Speaker A:Their experts tailor warehouse automation solutions to your needs, ensuring you have the edge.
Speaker A:Work with TGW before your competition does.
Speaker A:Discover more@tgw-group.com all right, Ann, Last but not least, we have Nate Schutz, the VP of Global Fulfillment and Logistics at BlueDOT.
Speaker A:Nate, welcome to Omnitalk and thanks for joining us at Manifest.
Speaker C:Thanks for having me.
Speaker B:Nate, you Bluedot.
Speaker B:You don't know this, but it's one of my favorite furniture companies.
Speaker B:I love going there.
Speaker B:I love getting inspired by the product.
Speaker B:But for those who might not be familiar, do you mind sharing what bluedot is, what all you produce, and then a little bit about your role there and what's included in that.
Speaker C:Blue Dot is a modern furniture designer and retailer started in the late 90s by two co founders who were obsessed with good design and couldn't afford the things that they liked.
Speaker C:And the things that they liked, they couldn't afford.
Speaker B:Design out of reach is what I call that.
Speaker C:Slightly out of reach.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:Design out of reach.
Speaker A:That's funny.
Speaker C:They developed a passion to fill that niche and have built a successful brand and organization built on good design that's good to everyone.
Speaker B:So you have your own stores and then you're shipping directly to customers as well?
Speaker C:Yes, we have.
Speaker C:We're an omnichannel business.
Speaker C:The Blue Dot brand services direct to consumer.
Speaker C:We have 13 retail locations, an international presence, and then of course, a healthy B2B segment as well.
Speaker C:Wow.
Speaker A:And what's your background?
Speaker C:My background, I'm Minnesotan.
Speaker A:Minnesotan.
Speaker C:And really glad to be spending my time with some fellow Minneapolis.
Speaker A:He's an introvert too, folks.
Speaker A:He said.
Speaker A:He said the conferencing is not his game and so we're putting him in front of the camera.
Speaker C:I don't mind hanging out in small groups.
Speaker C:This is actually my favorite thing to do.
Speaker C:Large crowds can be a little dreaming.
Speaker C:But my background, I went to school for logistics in my late teens when it was kind of an emerging discipline and fell in love with it.
Speaker C:And the puzzle that supply chain is is never ending.
Speaker C:And got to build a successful career working as a 3 PL, spent time on the shipper side as well.
Speaker C:And through events like Manifest, get to spend time with all the participants in the entire ecosystem and grow the relationships.
Speaker C:And that's maybe the most satisfying part of all of it.
Speaker B:Yeah, excellent.
Speaker A:Well, I'm the same as you.
Speaker A:I could do this all day, but put me in a crowd with a lot of people and I'm hating it too, but.
Speaker A:Yeah, right, so, all right, so.
Speaker A:But to that point, to some degree, you were on stage earlier today, right?
Speaker A:I was speaking to a larger audience of people.
Speaker A:What did you share with them?
Speaker A:What was the topic?
Speaker C:Our topic today was enabling predictive supply chains.
Speaker C:And we had a panel of four members of large enterprises down to startups and really unpacking how they think about predictive supply chains as leaders of their organizations at the enterprise level and as a founder on the startup side.
Speaker C:And how do we wrestle with the ambiguity and uncertainty that the real world holds?
Speaker C:Leverage technology to tame some of that uncertainty and then build highly functioning teams that can execute in any conditions.
Speaker A:How do you define that term, predictive supply chains?
Speaker A:I mean, our audience, there's a lot of supply chain folks, but there's a lot of people that maybe aren't as familiar with supply chains.
Speaker A:What does that exactly mean?
Speaker C:Most of supply chain, I'd say 70% of it historically, has been just figuring out what just happened.
Speaker C:15 or 20% is kind of what's happening right now, and then 5% is what do we think is going to happen.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker C:And a predictive supply chain inverts that.
Speaker C:And we should have really strong tools that tell us what already happened.
Speaker C:We've got a larger percentage that tells us what's happening right now, but we're really being strategic and forward looking for the other 70% of the time of how do we anticipate the future needs of our customers?
Speaker C:How do we build tools, processes, and teams that can speak to those challenges no matter what they are in?
Speaker C:Again, a highly volatile world.
Speaker B:Nate, we've talked to a couple people today who have been talking about how they're using technology to help with some of the things you're talking about.
Speaker B:Predicting.
Speaker B:Doing their best to predict and be prepared for what's ahead of them, especially as it pertains to supply chain.
Speaker B:What technologies are you looking at as you kind of help piece together that puzzle for you and your team?
Speaker B:And what did you share with the audience?
Speaker C:I break it into a couple of categories.
Speaker C:One is just the blocking and tackling, the getting the basics and fundamentals right.
Speaker C:And for those, it's everything from a WMS to a TMS to any kind of analytics platform that helps you Define and describe again what's happened and what's happening right now.
Speaker C:Then there's another whole side of it that's more aspirational and, and that's where AI can play a larger role.
Speaker C:And it is dealing with problems that are larger than our individual ability to grapple with large data sets, multivariate problems that we can't as humans.
Speaker C:We haven't evolved far enough yet to be able to do that kind of math.
Speaker C:And so I see technology playing a really valuable role in advancing our own understanding and thinking of supply chain.
Speaker B:And are there moments that, that you're really proud of where your team did that this year as you kind of reflect back on the last year?
Speaker C:Yeah, I would say of the things I'm most proud of in the last year, it definitely is my team, we've built a very diverse group of talent that have decades of experience in certain disciplines.
Speaker C:And then we have a lot of younger folks that are learning and they're much more adept with technology than I am.
Speaker C:And when you get a group of people together that have kind of functional matter expertise and varying life experiences.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker C:They bring to the table a well round.
Speaker C:You get a team that has a well rounded perspective on that and then they can meet any challenge, whether it's tactical and we have more trucks that need to ship today.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker C:Or it's long range.
Speaker C:How do we get better and add capabilities to the organization that can help our customers and improve the customer experience?
Speaker B:So who, who are the perfect hires for a supply chain and logistics team?
Speaker B:Team right now if they aren't 18 year old Nates who are just like supply chain, let's go do this.
Speaker C:Those are the nerds self.
Speaker C:Admittedly, I love puzzles and I love solving supply chain through the lens of it being a puzzle.
Speaker C:So I'm always looking for people that are super curious, know they don't have all the answers, but they see something, they see an insight and then they want to test that insight.
Speaker C:We don't make decisions based on intuition, but I like people that have an intuition of where they think there's an opportunity.
Speaker C:Then we have to test that with data, validate that it really is an opportunity.
Speaker C:And so that's more of a mindset than it is a skill set, in my opinion.
Speaker C:And so I'm always looking for the people who are insatiably curious and never stop learning.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker A:That's always a good trait.
Speaker A:All right.
Speaker A:So one thing I got to ask you about too, because I remember back in my days running home furnishings for target.com.
Speaker A:and actually working with Bluedot back in the day, this was like God, 12, 15 years ago.
Speaker A:Now, Nate, furniture is not cut from the same cloth as other product categories.
Speaker A:Particularly it's big and bulky.
Speaker A:So how do you think what intricacies are there to the job that you have to think about that maybe other people don't?
Speaker A:And does that make you approach manifest differently than say, others of your peers?
Speaker C:Great question.
Speaker C:The differences of big and bulky are first, automation, physical automation is difficult, right?
Speaker C:Conveyors, material handling systems aren't built for that.
Speaker C:And so you end up being more dependent on people.
Speaker C:And people are inherently flexible.
Speaker C:And they're the Swiss army knives of the supply chain.
Speaker C:So in a distribution center, wrestling a 200 pound couch on a cherry picker 30ft up in the air while it rocks back and forth.
Speaker C:We haven't built technology yet that can do that.
Speaker C:And so what it offers to me is I always want to honor the people that do the work, right?
Speaker C:And the front lines of the people that do the work rarely end up in front of a camera.
Speaker C:They don't get the spotlight, but they should.
Speaker C:And so how I respond differently as a leader is I invest heavily in the people that do the work.
Speaker C:I need to know them by name and honor the work that they do because they are the ultimate solution to non standard big and bulky handling until we get to a place where that market is large enough that somebody's going to build a solution.
Speaker C:But yeah, let me take that thought.
Speaker A:Experiment in another direction too, because I'm curious then, would you also say that in addition to focusing on people which are flexible and with cost the way they are, that's probably a good idea.
Speaker A:Does that mean you also lean more into the software side of things too?
Speaker C:It does.
Speaker C:You have to be very prescriptive in the work that you're going to do in an environment that's that variable.
Speaker C:So mostly that means reverse engineering a process for what you want at the end and then starting all the way at the beginning.
Speaker C:Technology is very, very good at that.
Speaker C:So if I have a five stage math problem, certain technologies can solve individual parts of that.
Speaker C:There's not always one tool that does every, every piece of that.
Speaker C:And so I can use technology to reverse engineer the output of a process, taking into account what came before and what came after.
Speaker C:So I love walking around here.
Speaker C:I get to meet young entrepreneurs that are developing technology for the next generation that are those curious people that I described.
Speaker C:And they're programmers and they're tech designers at heart.
Speaker C:And that is a Just another skill set that I'm drawn to because they think in similar ways.
Speaker C:And so I like to.
Speaker C:I don't know what I'm going to get from a conversation other than maybe a new relationship, a new friendship, but I'm willing to chat with just about anybody because I want to keep learning.
Speaker A:Nate, does that mean.
Speaker A:Does that mean that the applications of AI are kind of tailor made to the home furnishings business from a logistics standpoint?
Speaker A:Like, do you think it'll find root in your category quicker than others, or am I over extrapolating that?
Speaker C:I don't know if I would compare it to other verticals, but I think there definitely are a lot of applications.
Speaker C:Agentech AI.
Speaker C:When you're.
Speaker C:When you're interacting between a customer and they want to have a delivery appointment schedule, for example, that's a highly variable thing.
Speaker C:Depending on their schedule and a bunch of other things, an AI agent can ask and answer those questions over the phone with you much more helpfully sometimes than a chatbot could, or dialing into a customer service line, who's then going and looking it up into a system.
Speaker A:And so scheduling trained and all that stuff too.
Speaker C:Yes.
Speaker C:So scheduling in this vertical in particular has a ton of opportunity.
Speaker C:With AI, one of many.
Speaker A:Scheduling.
Speaker B:Okay, well, Nate, Chris and I haven't been able to hit the floor yet, but you mentioned that you like to go have conversations with new startups and entrepreneurs out there.
Speaker B:Is there anybody, so far, any technologies that have you thinking and have you thinking about the next puzzle that needs to be solved?
Speaker C:I wouldn't tip my hand too much on that one, but I would tell folks that if you want to get access to that yourself, you should be here.
Speaker C:This is the conference to be at.
Speaker C:And if you want to talk to the people that are buying that technology, they're walking around.
Speaker C:They're not always advertising it, but we know who each other are.
Speaker A:It's so funny we've never heard that answer before.
Speaker A:I mean, we've probably asked that question a hundred times and no one's ever said that exactly like that before, so.
Speaker A:Well, that was wonderful.
Speaker A:Man learned a lot.
Speaker A:Thanks for spending time with us today.
Speaker C:Thank you, Chris.
Speaker C:Thanks again.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:Thank you so much again to TGW Logistics for making all of our coverage here at Manifest possible.
Speaker B:Again, you can find out more about tgw@tgw-group.com and until next time, be careful out there.
