Hello, everyone.

This is omnitalk Retail.

I'm Chris Walton.

And I'm Anne Mazinga.

And we are coming to you live from the Manifest Future of Logistics conference in Las Vegas.

I can feel the future, Ann.

I don't know about you.

We want to give the total future or just the future of everything, Anne, but it always starts and ends with logistics.

And before we get started, I want to give a big shout out to our sponsor and to TGW Logistics for making our coverage here at the show possible.

Revolutionize your supply chain with TGW Logistics.

Their expertise tailor their experts.

Excuse me.

Their experts tailor warehouse automation solutions to your needs, ensuring you have the edge.

Work with TGW before your competition does.

Love that.

Discover more@tgwgroup.com all right, and kicking it off today with us is one of our sponsors, a representative from our sponsors, I should say, Blake Neal.

And Blake is the Director of Business Development at tgw.

Blake, welcome to Army Talk, and thanks for being at Manifest.

Can you feel the future?

I can.

Still getting over the jet lag, but doing all right.

Yeah.

Because you were in the future yesterday, right?

Essentially.

I guess you could look at that way.

Not just a futurist, but a time traveler as well.

Well, let's start out by just getting to know you a little bit.

Give us a little bit of your background, your role, and then take us into kind of TGW and what TGW does.

So I've been in the material handling industry for about nine years now.

Spent years in the airport baggage handling world and then moved into warehouse automation, which has been fun.

Really?

Yes.

Tell us more.

I've not met someone in the airport baggage hand.

I will tell you, I did not lose your bag, if that's your next question.

What did you do in that industry?

I did everything from pricing jobs to designing systems and then got into sales.

Okay, okay.

Did you ever work the baggage line?

I got close a couple of times.

Okay, got it, got it.

During some startups, there was a couple moments, but no, interesting.

All right, cool.

That's crazy.

Okay, well, now what are you doing at tgw?

So now I'm a director of business development and my role is to work with new clients and existing ones to talk to them about what their plans look like in the future and where we can help assist them with automation, whether it's robotics or lifetime services, wherever we can help.

And take us into a little bit about what is all, what TGW does, like, what's.

What's under that Umbrella and what, what you're helping clients with.

Potential clients.

So we are a manufacturer of automation equipment and we're also an integrator.

So we do everything from the design, the manufacturing, implementation, and then we'll do.

We have a full service package.

Our, our team can go on site, they'll maintain the system, operate it, anything a client needs.

So I think what kind of makes us special is we are a, we're an Austrian based company.

Our headquarters in the US is in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

And what I like to say is we're, we have a small company feel, but with a large company resources.

Okay.

So our team really likes to dig in and figure out what it is that a customer needs and what they're trying to attain.

And that kind of gets us going.

So that the tagline was really great.

It said, work with us before your competition does.

What is the secret sauce that you think you do better than anyone else?

Ooh, that's a really good question.

I think it's.

Listen, honestly.

Okay, so what we try to do is really understand where you are right now in your journey and where you're trying to get to what your pain points are.

And instead of just immediately starting to draw on a piece of paper what that design looks like, let's do some calculations.

Let's figure out what it is you need within your budget, your space constraints, whatever that is.

I imagine your startup background comes in handy there too.

Kind of figuring out how to get scrappy a little bit and figure out.

Like, how do we do this?

How do we test it?

Well, I've got to turn off the engineering brain from time to time because my job is to bring something in, not design it, even though I want to.

That takes some work.

Yeah, develop business.

That's your job.

That's your job.

I'm always surprised at how many of the companies that specialize in what TGW does come out of Austria or Germany too.

It's absolutely wild.

Europe just has automation down.

I have to say that's most of it came out of that area.

And I won't lie, the US a little slow to adopt automation.

I think we've had such a large workforce that was available.

Now we're starting to see people moving into different industries.

So automation is becoming key, especially with how fast things are moving with E.

Comm and just challenges throughout the world.

You know, automation is key at this moment.

Got it, got it.

Okay, so let's, let's turn the, turn our attention now to this conference manifest.

Have you been here before?

This is our first year.

We're excited.

So what brings you here and what are you excited to do while you're here?

Oh, man.

Really, what brought us here is we just started looking at the sponsor list and the speakers and a lot of them aligned with the verticals that we like to tackle.

Fashion's a big one, cold chain, grocery retail.

So we saw a lot of customers here that we thought we'd like to interact with.

And then some of the talks seem like they're going to be very interesting.

AI is always a great topic to sit down, so that kind of brought us here.

We'd never been and it just seemed like a nice big show to get involved in.

Yeah.

Well, what do you think?

Based on some of the topics that intrigued you about coming to manifest, what do you think are going to kind of be topics of interest for the supply chain and logistics industry?

What's going to be kind of on the top of people's press priority list as they're heading into 2025?

You know, I think what I've started to see a lot of is we're getting into the cycle where, say, 15, 20 years ago, a lot of companies invested in automation and it's starting to age out.

Yeah, we're getting to the point now where it's like, we need to do something and now we're going to see these brownfield projects, not the big greenfield ones that had nice, clean, big building.

And I think that's where we're starting to go.

And I'm hoping some of the talks today might kind of help with that a little bit to understand where some customers are, where maybe the competition is.

But I think that's where we're starting.

To go and like flexing their existing space and assets if possible.

And that's, that's the hard part is how do we.

How do we install a brand new system or upgrade without interrupting your current operations?

Yeah.

So what have you seen?

What have you seen?

Like, we've heard that sweating the assets approach a lot recently.

What have you seen work either in the apparel industry or in the grocery industry?

Like you mentioned before, you guys support both of those.

What have you seen work, if that is the approach that a retailer wants.

To take, like upgrading an existing system.

Yeah.

Like, where are they focused?

Should you be focused on the software side?

Because AI is very big here.

Software should be more focused there than on the hardware side.

What do you think?

If you have an upgraded software, I think that's the first place to really get involved in.

Good.

Because that could tell you anything from where your trucks are, where they need to be, to what's happening within your warehouse.

And then the next, I think is starting to look at your infrastructure within those four walls.

So basically like using, using the software to understand what needs maintenance or whatnot.

So then you know what you need to upgrade before upgrading that first and putting the cart before the horse.

Agreed.

Yep.

Yeah.

And Blake, what are some of the things that I imagine you say that because you've seen people be able to launch that hopefully like without, with little interruption to their day to day deploying software versus deploying new hardware.

What are some of the things that some clients of yours or that you've heard from other experiences like Manifest, what are some of the things that they've uncovered or they've been able to determine based on the data that they're collecting from those software?

I think a big one is from the trucking logistics side of things because we were having dinner with a consultant last night actually, and a number of their clients were bringing in containers, dropping them off, and the trucks were just turning around and leaving and they were empty.

And that's just a lot of wasted time and money of having a truck just leave completely empty.

So I think that's a place to really look into that.

If you're not properly scheduling your outside logistics, that's something to really look into.

Got it.

So you, as an expert in the field think AI is, is particularly applicable to your scheduling operation?

I think so.

And I, it's such a broad topic too.

I think it needs, there's, I think people need help to understand what it is they're looking at.

Because if you just say AI or like we talking about chat, GPT or we talking, you know, something else.

100%.

Yeah, 100%.

Well, where do you think those, I mean, that's one.

But where else do you think those opportunities are?

If, and get specific on the types of AI too.

I, I, I won't lie.

Let's use your engineering background.

That is one area that I could say I am, I'm still learning about.

Okay.

Hence why you're at Manifest.

That is.

So I don't really want to speak on that if I, unless I have the correct information.

So we respect that a ton, man.

That's kind of our motto too.

Don't talk if you don't know what you got to say.

I don't like being wrong.

Right, exactly.

Right, exactly.

All right, so let's get you out of here on this.

So what are you, what are you looking at or what are you focused on as you.

You go in?

I mean, it's the beginning of the year.

What are you focused on trying to accomplish in your role this year?

I think this year we're just trying to be a little more strategic about the conferences that we're attending.

There's a lot of potential work coming up for us that we're excited about.

So I think it's going to be filled with engaging with customers, sitewalks, showing them projects that we've done currently or what's in the future.

So, yeah, just really getting engaged with new and existing customers.

Amazing.

Well, Blake, thank you for making time with all that you have going on at your very first meeting Manifest.

Thank you for coming to hang out with us.

That's Blake Neal of tgw.

Thanks to all of you who've been following us along today.

We have so many more interviews coming up.

Again, thanks to our partnership with tgw.

And, Blake, one more quick thing here.

If people want to get in touch with you, they're at the conference or they want to get in touch with you after this to get one of those tours or to have you take your engineering brain and, like, help them sketch out what they should be doing.

What's the best way for them to get in touch with you?

Email is probably the best.

Okay, so it's Blake Neal at TGW Group.

Com.

Amazing.

I think about that one.

Yeah, right?

I know.

Right?

Well, thank you so much.

And until the next interview, be careful out there.