CHRIS: There may be some communication that happens with some of our buyers groups. There is a chat that's built in so there can be a dynamic kind of aspect to that. It may include showing lead times and show a visual representation of filling up a container or some form of shipment, on all on the product detail page. There may be an option for some of our buying groups that have customized their product detail page.
There may be an option to select from multiple manufacturers or distribution points to fulfill the same item. So the singular item that's on that product detail page could be fulfilled by multiple different distribution centers, and they can be different lead times.
I almost think of it as like a huddle or like a planning point. And this is a little different with group buying platforms than it is with a typical kind of product detail page, because usually with the buying group we are looking to take advantage of, as the name implies, buying as a group or a group purchasing organization and enabling the user to deal with the logistical overhead in a self-service kind of a way.
[It means] really making that intelligent requires that that product detail page match your business, match your buying group, and really match the schedules and the needs of the buyers, which typically just again means self-service. Depending on the way the business, this page is going to change a lot, right? We'll have very different outputs of what this page will look like.
RON: That makes perfect sense. You mentioned different distribution areas, so I'll give a quick example of that. And you're right, it couldn't be more different for buying groups because, if you think about it, group purchasing buying groups are usually buying at a discount. They're usually buying volume.
For example, we had one client of ours that sold railroad ties, right? And we were building a system. And so when these buying groups would come in and buy, these groups would be ordering 75,000 of these things. So you're talking intermodal shipping in not only multiple containers, but multiple train cars and multiple locations. And they can't obviously store 75,000 on their lot. They don't have that.
So what they'll do strategically is they'll say, “I need shipments over time. I need to schedule that out.” Or they may come back and go, “All right, for the first lot, we need 4000 of them for the east parking lot.” And they go look and—let's say they're in Salt Lake City and out of the Denver warehouse—there's only 2000. And they're like, “Oh, no, there's not enough to fulfill quickly. So where's the next closest warehouse? Seattle. All right.”
“Well, Seattle's got 25,000, so let's get the 2000 from Denver coming immediately and then let's source the other 2000 from Seattle. But because the lead time for Seattle is 14 days, we’ll be a little bit late on the east parking lot, we could get a jump start in the west parking lot. Let's go ahead and get half of the west parking lot ordered as well.”
So you can see the logistics of buying in groups, versus me going to Dillard's and buying a shirt—not even on the same planet, right? Buying group logistics can be extremely complex, and we definitely need that functionality.
So now that we kind of understand what that is, let's talk about the level of detail that needs to be on that page and talk about some of those features and things that are available. I know this will be a little bit difficult, because you and I will always hedge to go back to our product and go, “Well, these are all the details that we have in our platform.” So we'll kind of keep coming back to that, but we'll try to make it as vague as we can and just say, “These are the ones that we feel are the most important. If you're looking at other platforms also, make sure that it has the ability to do this additional level of detail whether it's custom development or not.”