Supply Chain Moves (Official Move Supply Chain Podcast) – Details, episodes & analysis

She thought she had a 72 percent gross margin best seller.Two years later, it was barely breaking even.

In this episode, Lara walks through the exact invoice and data set that stopped a fast-growing DTC founder in her tracks. What looked wildly profitable on paper collapsed to an 8 percent contribution margin once every hidden cost was accounted for.

You’ll hear a full, line by line teardown of real unit economics, including the eight costs most founders underestimate, miscalculate, or completely ignore between the supplier invoice and actual profit. Freight, duties, fulfillment, shipping, returns, customer service, CAC and more.

This is the math that turns “hero products” into silent cash drains. And it’s the framework Lara uses to help brands stop scaling busy businesses and start building profitable ones.

By the end of this episode, you’ll know exactly where to find these numbers in your own systems and how to build a unit economics spreadsheet that tells the truth about every SKU you sell.

If this episode helped make your supply chain a little less painful, share it with another founder because nobody deserves to learn these lessons the hard way. Follow Supply Chain Moves wherever you get your podcasts.

Connect with Lara & Move Supply Chain

Want to keep learning and connect with Lara and the Move Supply Chain community?

Follow & Subscribe:

• ⁠LinkedIn – Move⁠
• ⁠LinkedIn – Lara⁠
• ⁠X – Move⁠
• ⁠X – Lara⁠
• ⁠Facebook⁠
• ⁠Instagram⁠
• ⁠YouTube⁠

Get more insights:

• ⁠Unboxed Weekly⁠ – Lara’s newsletter on DTC supply chain moves
• ⁠Lara’s AI Brain⁠ – Ask Lara’s AI anything about supply chain
• SC Lounge⁠ – Join Move Supply Chain's free Slack community for DTC founders

Most founders know their gross margin by heart.

Sixty-five percent. Seventy percent. A number that sounds healthy and investor-ready.

In this episode of Supply Chain Moves, Lara explains why that number is often lying to you.

Gross margin only tells you what it costs to make a product. It says nothing about what it actually costs to sell it, ship it, return it, and acquire a customer for it. And at the $500K–$3M stage, that blind spot quietly destroys otherwise great brands.

You will hear real examples of DTC founders scaling their “best sellers” straight into losses, including a hero SKU with a beautiful 68% gross margin and a negative contribution margin once the real costs were counted.

By the end of this episode, you will know exactly how to calculate the one margin number that actually matters and how to use it to make better decisions across marketing, inventory, and product strategy.

In this episode, we cover:

• Why gross margin is a vanity metric at the growth stage
• The difference between gross margin and contribution margin by SKU
• A real example of a best-selling product losing money on every sale
• The seven costs most founders forget to include in their margin math
• Why your “hero product” might actually be your biggest problem
• How to build a simple contribution margin calculator in a spreadsheet
• What to do with products that have low or negative contribution margin
• How to realign marketing, finance, and supply chain around one shared number

Key takeaway:

Gross margin is for pitch decks.
Contribution margin is for survival.

If you are making decisions based on gross margin alone, you are flying blind.

Action step:

This week, calculate contribution margin for your top five SKUs.
Just five. The results will probably surprise you and tell you exactly what needs to change next.

If this episode helped make your supply chain a little less painful, share it with another founder because nobody deserves to learn these lessons the hard way. Follow Supply Chain Moves wherever you get your podcasts.

Connect with Lara & Move Supply Chain

Want to keep learning and connect with Lara and the Move Supply Chain community?

Follow & Subscribe:

• ⁠LinkedIn – Move⁠
• ⁠LinkedIn – Lara⁠
• ⁠X – Move⁠
• ⁠X – Lara⁠
• ⁠Facebook⁠
• ⁠Instagram⁠
• ⁠YouTube⁠

Get more insights:

• ⁠Unboxed Weekly⁠ – Lara’s newsletter on DTC supply chain moves
• ⁠Lara’s AI Brain⁠ – Ask Lara’s AI anything about supply chain
• SC Lounge⁠ – Join Move Supply Chain's free Slack community for DTC founders

In Part 2 of our Warehouse & 3PL series, Lara dives into how founders can save money, improve warehouse performance, and get ready for what’s next in fulfillment.

You’ll learn

In this first part of the Warehouse & 3PL series, Lara breaks down what founders really need to know before outsourcing fulfillment. From the moment to stop self-fulfilling, to choosing the right 3PL partner, to spotting hidden costs that quietly drain margin, this episode helps you get logistics in order before BFCM chaos arrives. If you are still packing boxes yourself, consider this your sanity check.

What You’ll Learn

- The real role of your warehouse or 3PL: It is not just storage. It is the foundation of your customer experience.

- When to move from self-fulfillment to a 3PL: If you are packing 200 to 400 orders a month, start evaluating your options.

- What founders often get wrong about 3PLs: 3PLs specialize. A generalist partner can be the wrong fit for apparel, cosmetics, or oversized goods.

- Hidden costs to watch for: Watch storage models, minimum pick and pack fees, and returns handling so you do not bleed margin.

- How to check if your warehouse is healthy: Track these KPIs: order accuracy > 98%, on-time shipping > 95%, storage < 15% of logistics spend.

In this episode, Lara dives into how DTC founders can turn their supply chains into a customer experience advantage — and even uncover hidden money in the process. From preventing wrong-item tickets to claiming refunds from vendors, she breaks down practical, real-world steps you can implement before Black Friday–Cyber Monday chaos hits.

What You'll Learn

- How to prep your warehouse for fewer support tickets → Double-check SKUs, product data, and barcodes to avoid “wrong item” issues.

- How to reduce “where’s my order?” tickets → Use tools like AfterShip or automated SMS tracking to keep customers informed.

- How to simplify and speed up returns → Build a clear, automated returns process to protect your CS team and improve resolution times.

- How to get money back from your vendors → Use defect and returns data to file vendor chargebacks and recover costs.

- How to turn CX + supply chain data into a growth advantage → Empower your support team with real supply chain visibility so they can respond with confidence and transparency.

- A candle brand cut 40% of WISMO (“Where’s my order?”) tickets by automating SMS tracking.

- An apparel brand reduced return resolution from 10 days to 3 using Google Sheets + Zapier.

- A fitness brand recovered $15K in vendor refunds by tracking defect data.

In this episode of Supply Chain Moves, Lara breaks down one of the most overlooked connections in DTC operations: how customer service issues often start in the supply chain. As brands gear up for BFCM, Lara reveals why ticket volume spikes, the top three supply chain problems that drive those complaints, and how fixing warehouse accuracy alone can cut tickets by up to 40%.

From delayed shipments and defective products to incorrect orders and costly returns, this episode shows how solving upstream inefficiencies can protect your brand’s margins and reputation, especially during the busiest time of the year.

Listen in to learn:

- Why 80% of customer service issues trace back to supply chain errors

- How one DTC brand slashed support tickets by fixing warehouse accuracy

- The hidden cost of not linking returns and defects to vendor claims

If you’re preparing for peak season, this one’s a must-listen.

Explore more and plug in:

Supply Chain Moves podcast hub: movesupplychain.com/supply-chain-moves

Vendor Visits (China & Vietnam): vendorvisits.movesupplychain.com

Lara’s YouTube channel: youtube.com/@supplychainlara

Supply Chain Lounge (free Slack): tinyurl.com/move-supplychain-lounge

You don’t need a massive ops team—but you do need the right roles.

In this quick episode of Supply Chain Moves, host Lara Guevara breaks down the must-have players behind a smooth, scalable DTC supply chain.

Whether you're flying solo or growing fast, this is your cheat sheet for who to hire, what they do, and how each role pays off in time, margin, and sanity.

You’ll learn:

✅ What a supply chain manager really does (spoiler: they end the chaos)

✅ Why forecasters are the unsung heroes of cash and inventory health

✅ How a logistics coordinator saves you from missed cutoffs and bloated freight bills

✅ The game-changing magic of a strong procurement/NPD lead

✅ When to hire these roles—and what happens if you don’t

If you’ve ever said “I’ll just handle ops myself a little longer,” this episode will change your mind. Because every delay, stockout, or freight fire drill has a root cause and usually, it’s a missing role.

Explore more and plug in:

Supply Chain Moves podcast hub: movesupplychain.com/supply-chain-moves

Vendor Visits (China & Vietnam): vendorvisits.movesupplychain.com

Lara’s YouTube channel: youtube.com/@supplychainlara

Supply Chain Lounge (free Slack): tinyurl.com/move-supplychain-lounge

Because the right team isn’t overhead—it’s your engine for growth.

Finance isn’t just bookkeeping—it’s oxygen for your supply chain.

When the cash stops flowing, production stalls, warehouses choke, and ads can’t move inventory.

In this episode of Supply Chain Moves, host Lara Guevara sits down with Judy, a controller who’s seen firsthand how missing financial visibility can quietly collapse even the strongest supply chain.

Together they unpack the decisions that tie your numbers to your operations—forecasting, purchase timing, cash allocation, and the messy realities that make or break peak-season readiness.

You’ll learn:
✅ Why finance and supply chain aren’t separate worlds and what happens when they operate in silos
✅ How weak cash-flow forecasting leads to delayed deposits, missed cutoffs, and “rush” freight that kills margin
✅ The early-warning signs in your numbers that reveal brewing supply-chain problems
✅ How to set optimal inventory levels without freezing cash or over-stocking slow movers
✅ The bare-minimum dashboards every founder needs: real inventory balance, cash runway, and SKU-level margins
✅ Why having “too much” money can be just as risky as not having enough and how to plan around both

Real examples include a founder who lost weeks of production waiting for budget approval, a team that paid for inventory but couldn’t afford the ads to sell it, and brands that scaled faster only after syncing their controllers with their supply-chain planners.

Explore more and plug in:
Supply Chain Moves podcast hub: movesupplychain.com/supply-chain-moves
Vendor Visits (China & Vietnam): vendorvisits.movesupplychain.com
Lara’s YouTube channel: youtube.com/@supplychainlara
Supply Chain Lounge (free Slack): tinyurl.com/move-supplychain-lounge

If you’ve ever treated “finance” as something separate from “ops,” this episode will change how you run your business.
Because every supply-chain decision is a financial one and visibility is your real profit margin.

In Part 2 of our logistics mini-series, Lara gets tactical: how a simple carton optimization project can save ~$2/order, why 3PL SLA audits beat “surprise fees,” the no-bloat visibility stack (AfterShip + clean exports/Sheets), and the playbook for disruption-proof routing (split ports, split forwarders).

We wrap with what’s next: nearshoring (MX/LatAm) and AI-driven logistics for predictive tracking and auto-rerouting. If you want faster, cheaper, calmer ops, start here.

Explore more and plug in:

Supply Chain Moves podcast hub: movesupplychain.com/supply-chain-moves

Vendor Visits (China & Vietnam): vendorvisits.movesupplychain.com

Lara’s YouTube channel: youtube.com/@supplychainlara

Supply Chain Lounge (free Slack): tinyurl.com/move-supplychain-lounge

If logistics has felt like a black box, this episode gives you the vocabulary, the gotchas, and the practical moves to run it on purpose, not by accident.

For this Supply Chain Moves episode, it emphasizes that real stories don’t just happen at the fair; they happen in factories.

In this episode we’ll have China–Vietnam deep dive, where Lara shares field-tested lessons from supplier visits: why you never skip the factory tour, how polish often signals higher costs (and better standards), what hesitant body language reveals, why bringing your own interpreter matters, and how showing up with real numbers—not mood boards—moves MOQs.

Meet the QC and R&D leads, ask for peak-season capacity plans, find a factory’s “hero” product, and don’t skip the dinner where deals close.

Explore more and plug in:

• ​Supply Chain Moves podcast hub: movesupplychain.com/supply-chain-moves
• ​Vendor Visits (China & Vietnam): vendorvisits.movesupplychain.com
• ​Lara’s YouTube channel: youtube.com/@supplychainlara
• ​Supply Chain Lounge (free Slack): tinyurl.com/move-supplychain-lounge