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What are the best brands doing to stay relevant, build trust, and create content smarter?
At Share Your Genius, we have the same questions, so we're tapping the best in the space for their answers—one voicemail at a time.
Join us each week for quick hits of insights from b2b marketers and leaders.
Adam (00:09): Anthony DeFilippis is the co-CEO of Cargo Trans, and he knows a lot about both transportation and, you guessed it, cargo. Something that he is deeply focused on is helping small and medium-sized businesses mitigate tariffs. You'll hear in this voicemail that he left me, he has a lot to say, which is important because there is a lot to know.
Anthony and his team at Cargo Trans are constantly helping simplify complex logistics, navigating global trade and understanding the seemingly daily shift in tariffs and what it means for your business. I asked him a simple question with, as you'll hear, a deeply complex answer. How do you create stability and supply chain with the ever-changing global economics of today?
Anthony De Filippis (01:08): No, so that's a pretty common question these days. And I would say, obviously, as we all know, there's a lot of uncertainty geopolitically. Conflicts are all really adding to the complexity of what really, pre-liberation days about a year ago was pretty much free trade.
For me, think the most important thing when trying to create stability or approach solving for stability is optionality. Optionality is, I would say, something that's easier for organizations. If you're in a smaller to medium size organization, I would say it can be a little more difficult to achieve and sort of design and create that architecture of optionality across the supply chain. So there's a few different areas that I think about when in terms of optionality. So the first is going to be like a flexible sourcing strategy. So just having a nimble kind of
foundation to approach and maintain multiple suppliers, multiple relationships can produce even like the same
geographic diversification. So maybe you have one supplier in Asia, if you're based in the US, maybe you're doing near-shoring and maybe somebody somewhere in Latam. It's just really, really important to think about all the different scenarios that could play out then kind of pick the geographies that you best suitable. And you might run into challenges with certain products where there really aren't that many options. In those scenarios, would say really consulting with sourcing agents or sourcing consultants can be really helpful
Of course, I'll say that the T word tariffs are really, really important and being proactive with your tariff mitigation strategy. Just always thinking about your clients and your suppliers. This should be like a three-way conversation between all parties. That's really, you need to be really transparent with this. I think that's where you see the biggest success, because we know, tariffs change minute by minute, day by day. Definitely something that should be an open, transparent, and fluid conversation.
And then I would also say in terms of tariffs, like being close to your customs broker is really, really important today. People have really good relationships with their accountants, and your CPA is for taxes. And what we like to say is your customs broker is for tariffs, which is a type of tax. Chances are tariffs are a much bigger line item in terms of expense and cost of goods sold than what most companies are paying in corporate taxes.
It's a big lever to pull. So you should really consult with your customs broker. should be involved also really further up upstream in terms of production or product development. I always say like if you've already placed the PO, it's too late.
You really need to be thinking about tariffs at the board level, at the C level, at the product development level, not when it's time to ship the product.And so I really, really urge people to consider talking to your customs broker or really honestly, even sometimes maybe. Opening up that process of finding the right customs broker, because what we're noticing is that the market is really underserved currently, especially for small and medium sized businesses. The larger Fortune 500 companies, the billion dollar businesses, they have in-house trade experts, they have attorneys on retainer or in-house. the smaller to medium sized businesses and organizations or startups that are sort of just learning how to manage this.
And last but not least, I would say it's regulatory and geopolitical and intelligence. Again, compliance and trade volatility isn't something that most businesses had to deal with. So it really requires a different lens, a different skill set, a different partner. I'm not saying that companies need to hire for this internally unless you have the need and the resources, but having a structured process monitoring these issues, to understand what's happening or what could potentially happen.
Compliance actually is something that we hear more and more about lately and border protection here in the United States, but honestly, even globally, every country is acting in a more protectionist way. They're thinking about compliance, they're thinking about regulation, they're much more vigilant, asking where things are made, if forced labor is involved. having documentation, having bills of material. And that really goes back to, again, the relationship with the suppliers, like making sure that there is good information flow in the event someone asks for information about your product and how it was manufactured or where it was.
I know that was a lot, but I hope that was helpful.