Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 Globally consumer behavior has shifted so dramatically that supply chains haven't been able to adapt or keep up at a botics, was built from the ground up to address the fulfillment needs of digital commerce globally. We are building the solutions that will drive commerce in the future.
Speaker 1 00:00:21 Hello everyone. And welcome to the <inaudible> the robot industry podcast. I'd like to welcome the listeners all over the world from Apple Dorn in the Netherlands Prague and the city of St. Peter's and Omaha, Nebraska. Thanks for tuning in. So I am very excited to have Scott Greville from antibiotics today. And if you have not heard about antibiotics, they're one of the most exciting automation, robot and material handling companies specializing in inventory management systems. And they're located in Calgary. Alberta, Canada out of botics was named one of CNBC's hundred most promising startups in 2019. A mention on time's best inventions of 2019 and fast company's most innovative company in 2020. Scott is the CTO and CEO of antibiotics and welcome to the podcast, Scott.
Speaker 0 00:01:10 Well, thanks a lot, Jim. I'm glad we've had this chance to cock.
Speaker 1 00:01:15 Hey Scott, can you tell our audience a little bit about your background and what you've been up to and how you ended up leading a robotic material handling company?
Speaker 0 00:01:24 You know, it's, it's that textbook standard path of, of any technology CEO? Um, you know, a bit of time in the military, a bachelor's degree in nursing followed by years in residential construction, including kitchen cabinet design that ultimately led to skateboard manufacturing. Um, so I was being very sarcastic when I said there was this typical path. Um, I am the most unqualified person on paper for my job, but I, uh, I've been very passionate learner and, um, I had an idea and that idea came from my work in, um, actually consulting, uh, manufacturers in how to integrate digital manufacturing strategies, um, into their workflows and into their factories. And, uh, I tried, I took this idea that I had and I spent two years trying to get rid of it, cause it scared me. It scared me a lot. Um, and when I couldn't get rid of it, because I couldn't find a reason not to do it, um, we moved forward and raised, uh, raised a seed capital. We needed four and a half years ago. And, uh, we've been on an incredible journey ever since
Speaker 1 00:02:40 Antibiotics, 3d storage system. We're, we're inspired by ants. Cause I watched a little bit about you on the YouTube. Can you tell us more about kind of this interesting and humble beginning?
Speaker 0 00:02:51 Yeah, I, um, I saw the problem, which was a dramatic shift in consumer behavior e-commerce and, um, that was, you know, presenting massive challenges to traditional, not just supply chain kind of infrastructure technology, but to the algorithms needed to optimize when you move from a mixed pallet caseload distribution model to retail, you know, to bricks and mortar retail, and you go to it each item, you know, small order size, highly variable, um, now, and that's what e-comm is, you know, you're 2.6, 2.8 items, and they're always different. The automation technology that existed, wasn't going to support that. So I started looking at the problem and I just kind of figured out, you know, nature probably has some of this figured out it started with a thought experiment. So I went looking at the bees and, you know, and, and, and so many different kinds of natural systems.
Speaker 0 00:03:53 And, uh, what finally was the aha moment was seeing a researcher, Dr. Walter Chenko, who is researching leaf cutter ants in the jungle. And, uh, he was casting their colonies and then excavating them. And, um, I saw when with an excavated, uh, uh, casting of colony that, um, leaf cutter ants access their storage chambers vertically, and they wrap these storage chambers around this kind of vertical axis shaft. So in that moment, if we ever got a chance to meet face-to-face Jen, I'll give you one of my business cards because it's actually half the size of a normal business card, because in the very moment I took my business cards and ripped them in half. And I started playing with geometry layouts on, on the table. And there's this massive paradigm shift that kind of happened because I, you know, without, without many exceptions, really every automated system out there was a derivative of a human scale environment.
Speaker 0 00:04:48 And what I mean by that is we're two dimensional species. We walk on the ground, we drive on the ground, so we need rows and aisles to access all of the storage. Um, so think about the grocery store, think about, you know, a Costco or home Depot or something like that. Um, but also think about the picture of the warehouses. You know, it's endless, it's endless pallet racking or shelving. And, um, when you switch it now to a vertical access in a three-dimensionally distributed matrix and not a horizontal axis and a two dimensionally distributed matrix, um, everything opens up. It's a completely different way of kind of thinking about things. So the foundation about robotics was on a huge new and unique geometry. Um, and once, once I had this geometry kind of sorted, then it was okay, how do you interact with it? What's workflow.
Speaker 0 00:05:39 How do you move around? How do you, how do you actually get the, um, and then once I had a workflow understood on how, how you would access this geometry and actually presented, um, then it started working on trying to figure if I could actually make a machine or a robot that could actually move in, in this matrix, um, to do so. And, uh, that's, that's what we figured out in those kind of first, you know, first two years that I've looking for reasons not to do it. Um, and we built a proof of concept and the first time we turned it on, it worked. So we filmed it and, uh, actually we never turned it on ever again. Um, we use that information to go build a business.
Speaker 2 00:06:21 Very exciting. We can't use pictures in a podcast at Cornell. So can you explain what your solution looks like? Yeah. First, first I need to explain kind of the gr
Speaker 0 00:06:31 So everybody has a piece of graph paper, um, or at least knows what one looks like. Um, if you take one square on a graph paper, there's four squares that touch it's it's long edges. And what we did is we created that, that central square is the place where we access the four squares around it. So imagine stacking, um, bins up on four sides around a vertical column. And then, and then what we do is we nest together that kind of, you know, four-leaf Clover shape or that cross shape, um, in a very, very dense matrix, um, by offsetting them, it's not a linear nest, it's like over to enough one. Um, but if you take a piece of graph paper that she can draw, pretty simply.
Speaker 2 00:07:20 So when you extend that up
Speaker 0 00:07:22 To the ceiling height of a warehouse, and you've got layers of, of bins, um, that four of them around a vertical or vertical shaft, we, we take a robotic shuttle. Uh, it was the first one ever designed to actually move, you know, purely in three dimensions. And we actually navigate it across the top of this storage matrix. So we need about a meter of clearance between the top of the structure and the rafters. Um, and then when we go, we get to the vertical shaft that has the next target bin in it that we need. And in a, in a 10 meter high warehouse, which is really difficult, um, we ended up with 96 bin positions wrapped around that vertical shaft. Um, but one of them is always empty. So we have 95 of 96 Ben positions, then the robot transitions from a horizontal mode, moving in X and Y to a vertical motor climbing mode.
Speaker 0 00:08:23 And it descends down the shaft and it takes its current payload that Ben had had on it before. And it goes and puts it away. And that one empty position doesn't matter where that empty position is. We just go put that bin away and then we will climb up and then pick the bin, the target bit we need from this vertical shaft from one of those four sides. So our robot has the ability to move in three dimensions, and it has the ability to pick bins from four directions. So when we drag the bin onto the robot and it sits on the top of the robot, um, once we have it, we then descend down to the bottom of the shaft and we have a, uh, a meter of clearance underneath all of this storage volume, um, at the bottom of this, of the shaft and for your, for your listeners familiar with, with automation, they've seen grid sorters.
Speaker 0 00:09:10 Um, so in essence, what we combined is the highest torch density in the industry, uh, because the geometry with two grid sorters one on the top one on the bottom. So once this payload comes out the bottom of this, we can now route this robot, not on a linear path, but on a grid, um, anywhere on the perimeter. And so if you think about econ as a problem, um, we need three bins with the three different items that you've ordered. And ideally we want to get to, to the, to one place. So we don't have to go through a sortation sequencing or a buffering or a consolidation event. We can go from order into the system to, uh, a single post where we can do a, pick a pack in a ship operation. And so our solution not only increase the storage density and flexibility, there's no defined linear workflows.
Speaker 0 00:10:07 And what I mean by that is conveyors. You bolt a conveyor to the floor, and it is point a to point B at a fixed velocity. Um, and most fulfillment and distribution has always depended on sortation conveyor based solutions. Uh, as this parcel post, we don't depend on sortation based solutions. We do the sort as part of the pick. So we eliminate a number of touches, a lot of complexity and create a lot of, um, flexibility, um, because our workflow routing is now like setting up bolted to the floor, but it's a software assignment. So once we've, once we've presented the required bins to fulfill on any kind of batch ordering process or any single ordering process or kitting process or inventory or consolidation process or induction process, it doesn't matter. We just present bins and then we can present them in a very precise way and in a very precise order, um, the robot then takes that bin.
Speaker 0 00:11:07 That's now been completed and we don't need it anymore. And it climbs from the bottom of solution back up to the top. And, um, that's the only place that the robot actually encountered a system power. Other than that, it's entirely self powered. And, um, we charge up a bank of ultra capacitors and when it gets to the top of the solution, it's ready for its next task where we will send it over to go get its next bin and put the one that's got away. Um, and that cyclical nature, um, of, of the solution as well as the fact that we're routing in three dimensions now, uh, two planes and the vertical column then, and then the pick stations of the perimeter. Um, give us a great deal of opportunity for throughput density. And that's very small footprint because we don't end up with the routing constraints typically encountered in two dimensional routing solutions.
Speaker 0 00:11:55 Um, I know that was a mouthful. Um, and without pictures, it's a little kind of hard to understand. Um, but if you start with the idea that the shift was was, was geometry, um, and then we interact with this dense storage matrix. Um, you know, it opens up your mind to thought, and the reason I say this is early on, we made a bunch of claims of what we could do, and everybody we reached out to the industry basically told us bullshit. Um, and then I described for the one I just described for you. And they're like, Oh yeah, because if you think about it as a two-dimensional system or Ronelle based system, what we do is impossible, um, with, with the density, you know, we have the high storage density of any solution, um, ever made. And with that has, that has direct and unique access to every storage position. We don't have to move anything to get to anything else. Um, and then combining the sequencing sortation buffering, um, is unique, is unique in our solution. And we do that all in the same footprint. So we actually take the functionality of our fulfillment center and we can put it into about 12 to 15% of a traditional fulfillment center, square footage.
Speaker 2 00:13:04 Well, that's very cool and very exciting. And what you say you've got routing in three directions in three dimensions. So do you find yourself kind of having to explain, or like do a lot of education with your clients or do you think once they see that 3d animation, they get it,
Speaker 0 00:13:20 Um, the, understand the, understand, the opportunity that technology, most of our work is on explaining to people how it could integrate into their workflows because when you take away traditional workflows, and what I mean is you've got a picking right. Then you've got a, uh, material handling movement that goes to the sortation and from sortation, it goes to coalition and from coalition, it goes to pack out, pack out, it goes to shipping sort, that's a typical kind of workflow. You just dropping us into that workflow. Yes, has a benefit in each item picking and, and certainly in the utilization space utilization, but that's not the way we were built. We were, we were built to be a pick pack and ship, um, discrete picking solution for e-com and not just, uh, you know, higher denser shuttle. So most of our work is in, in understanding that a new technology derives a new operation to solve a new problem.
Speaker 0 00:14:23 Um, and, and trying to pull away from kind of the traditional, this is the way we've always done it, um, kind of thinking and, um, and then, and then managing, uh, managing risk for them. We, we were a new company and, and, and we are doing something unique and different with, with technology that's never been developed before. So showing them, showing them how the technology works, showing them that it works, um, showing them how, how, what our roadmap is moving forward. Um, you know, so good at understanding where we came from good understanding of where we are and a good understanding of where are we going is, is the bulk of our conversations.
Speaker 2 00:15:01 So what's on your customer's mind, is it, is it everything like I asked, I was going to ask you a question about, are they maximizing space or accuracy, speed, safety, security, uh, but I've kind of imagined it's everything.
Speaker 0 00:15:13 It is everything the world's changed. The world's changed so dramatically, um, that, that there's so many things that need to be considered. So let's, let's break this down to kind of, you know, the, the, the, the basic problem set. And the basic problem set is we, as consumers used to provide the picking labor and the transportation labor for our purchases, we used to go to the wall. We used to go to the store, we used to pick it off the shelf. We'd go to the cashier, we'd pay for it, we'd get it in a bag. And then we would drive it home and deliver it to ourselves. Um, that's not e-com, uh, now, now you've got to figure out how to go pick a single item off a shelf and get it in a package and get it to the consumer and do that. We'll try to figure out how you're compensating for all the free labor and transportation that used to be, you know, in, in, in, in the system.
Speaker 0 00:16:14 Right. And, um, it is a big problem. And if you think about the costs of, of e-commerce fulfillment, it's, uh, it's 70% transportation. Um, and then on top of that is as additional cost and packaging, because it's not just in a bag anymore, it's in a cardboard box, mostly full of air, um, you know, and, and, and tape and, and labels and, and all this stuff that you never did before. And, and now also you have to set up a, you still have to set up a facility that doesn't send a box of t-shirts to the backroom of a retail store. It sends a single t-shirt of a very specific size in a box with maybe the canis shoe Polish. And I know a Lego set for your kid. It's like the variability is, is an unfathomable actually with, with, uh, the amount of selection that's available now.
Speaker 0 00:17:11 So the algorithms that used to support the optimization of, of automation technology that was doing mixed caseload pick for retail distribution, um, and doing it once a week, you know, cadence is the other thing that's shifted is, is we don't, we don't accept, you know, that we'll get our stuff in two weeks by mail anymore. We don't accept that we'll get it in a week anymore. Like we want it today or tomorrow. And so all of these problems really can't be supported by traditional supply chain infrastructure, because you can't put, you know, a can of shoe Polish in a, in a cardboard box 10 times too, for it, and put it on an airplane, get it tomorrow. Cause Shannon can issue pause. There's only $4 and you're going to spend $19 shipping. And like the unit economics are completely, completely impossible. So not to mention, you know, environmentally, you know, flying a can of shoe Polish and it created a huge cardboard box.
Speaker 0 00:18:17 It just, this is all unsustainable. And I'll say the reason that we're even in this problem is, is that we, as consumers are not bearing the cost of e-commerce, um, I will say for the most part, subscribers to AWS are bearing the costs of sure, because Amazon and I have a great deal of respect for them. They are not a building in this in any way, stretching the imagination. Um, the, what would that company done is absolutely amazing, um, to be a supply chain company that, that now is driving retail, um, and certainly in North America and in large parts of the world, as well as a technology company and a distributor entertainment, um, there's, there's a great opportunity there to take, you know, areas that are generating large amounts of cash and move them to areas that are trying to build large amounts of market and not every retailer has that.
Speaker 0 00:19:21 Right. So, you know, it depends on the scale of your retailer, their volume, but it could cost them, like I said, up to $19 to, to fulfill an e-commerce order. Depends crazy. It is. It is. Um, and it's not supportable, right? We could dive into the grocery industry as well and cause that problem the bigger, so we, we didn't just build robots and I want to, I want to kind of make that clear. Yes, our solution was inspired by the way, ants build colonies, but our solution was expired, inspired on a broader sense by successful natural systems. And we can use ANSYS example, um, biomass events on this planet exceeds the biomass of human beings. So to break that down, if you put all of the human beings on the planet, what are we seven half billion and put, put us on one side of a scale and you put all the ants on the planet on the other side of scale.
Speaker 0 00:20:16 Wow. But we don't know they're here. They just distribute themselves through an ecosystem, not overwhelming, whereas human beings, we come in and we centralize. That's just what we do. And fulfillment was always operated under the same model, um, which was let's centralize fulfillment. And, and in the spoken hub model problem was spoken. However, it works great if you're filling trucks full of cases and gloving the once a week to a store, that's a very model, not so great if you've got to get a t-shirt or the cat, a shoe Polish to someone tomorrow. So start thinking about the ecosystem required. It, is it just a technology solution? It's a network solution. It's it's, it's, it's about pre deploying inventory. Now, most retailers can't fathom support have the volume or the CapEx or the real estate footprint, um, to put, uh, like a, a micro we'll call, micro fulfillment center, or a small, uh, small fulfillment center in every major market, within two hours of their consumer.
Speaker 0 00:21:26 It's just not, it's not feasible. It's not possible. Um, now there's a few companies that can absolutely, and we all know who they are and they have massive real estate footprint. Um, they, they have massive volume. They have exceptional people, um, and they can develop networks, supply chain solutions to support their business and their customers and, and are doing so, um, well then that leaves everybody else. And so when we started thinking about the problem, yes, we wanted to provide a solution, the best solution for distributed networks, supply chain. I believe we are. We are leading the world in developing networks, supply chain solutions. Um, and it's not just a software solution. We gotta move at them and at the end of the day, and, and, and then, but looking at the problem holistically, we didn't want to be just better than the warehouse we wanted to address.
Speaker 0 00:22:22 Um, the operational costs. Of course, uh, we wanted to address the complexity, um, of automation required for e-commerce and make that as simple and as flexible as possible. We want it to be able to put this solution where the people are when I, one of the biggest advantages for us of being, you know, 12 to 50% of the square footage. Um, isn't about the saving rent in a warehouse. It's about putting a warehouse right in the city, right. Downtown, right downtown and, um, or, or right in that area, just outside of downtown. And every city has it that, you know, the buildings are being converted to restaurants and condos because they were warehouses back in the forties and fifties to sixties and seventies. Um, but that, that now has like an obsolete kind of real estate asset when it comes to supply chain because of, you know, they thought a million and a half square feet, you know?
Speaker 0 00:23:20 Um, and that's, you know, but you gotta build that million half square feet an hour and a half out of town now. Right. So, so we started looking at this and it addresses a number of problems. And I think, you know, we're very fortunate. And when I say fortunate, we're damn lucky. Okay. Let's look at one of the biggest problems right now. And this is kind of unfathomable to most people, um, in the U S this is where most of the data is coming out of high unemployment rate due to COVID, but 10 years of accelerated consumer adoption for e-commerce, what they were expecting 10 years from now is what's happening now after a year of COVID. Um, and, but they can't find enough people to work in the warehouse. Absolutely. So, so how do you address all of these compounding problems? Um, our solution is a distributed supply chain network that the in-market, so it'll lower transportation costs.
Speaker 0 00:24:13 It will increase the service level to the consumer. Um, it takes up a fraction of the square footage, but it's on a bus route. It's close to population densities it's, which means we can deliver to our customers, but we can also actually open up labor possibilities that aren't available to those places that are an hour and a half out of town. We've also made the, the, the interaction, cause we're always gonna need people. We're not, we're not totally replacing people. Um, but we've made the jobs, the most human they can be in the fact that we're asking people actually now to, you know, pick a variety of, of different items and get them into a container in a variety of different configurations. And that is a problem that machines are not good at doing. And, um, you can always put a box it's way too big to make it easy to pack it, but that's not efficient either.
Speaker 0 00:25:00 Um, so I believe we've addressed, you know, the, uh, the options for open to a labor market. I will also say that we're developing our solution. So you don't need to either need to be able to speak or read English. Um, you don't need to be able to speak a read, um, period, um, to, to interface with our, with our technology. You'd be productive as an associate. Um, are you all icon driven? Is that image, image, driven image driven and using, um, you know, it's not, it's not available today, but, uh, using point cloud vision systems, um, for validation. And then the, the, the point of this is if you can walk into an Amazon go store, pick something off the shelf, it could bill your counter and have you walk out. We could make sure the right thing comes out of a bid. And it goes into there into the right stuff.
Speaker 0 00:25:49 It's that technology exists. It's not our technology, we're just implementing it in our service. So, so we're trying to make this solution solve all the problems, uh, as many as we can. Um, but the biggest problem that needs to be solved. And this is where as a CTO I get very, very excited is how do you coordinate this? If you're in one building, you can coordinate it all very easily. If you're in more than one, does Amazon have 200 fulfillment centers, then how do you coordinate best practices in the highest efficiency across hundreds of sites? Yes. So the next step for us is, and we're, we're deep into this. We, we right now have Canada's first private LTE installation, um, because not only bandwidth with the security of information is super important when you want to a trusted, timely and transparent supply chain. So the acquiring of information, the transmission of information, the management of that aspiration consolidation of that information, and then the inferences from all of that information use to maximize the efficiency of a supply chain.
Speaker 0 00:27:02 But also with all of that data, now we can start leveraging predictive analytics that can help us decide how many pairs of size nine black suede Adidas, Gazelles need to be in Calgary, right? Because we don't need a hundred pairs. We probably need two or three to be able to meet the customer expectations of same day next day delivery. Um, and then once we've fulfilled the customer expectation, now we can optimize the network to backfill to make sure that there's going to be enough. Um, and it's not about having everything in one place. It's about distributed inventory and distributed at a service level model defined by our retailers. If they want same day service, we gotta be closer. If they want next day service, we could get a little bit more, um, you know, um, less, less granularily distributed. Um, just still meet the expectations of the consumer and do it as the lowest cost possible because now we're moving stuff in aggregate down to these, these nodes and not moving them singularly in the belly of a plane with a parcel post carrier. So, you know, yeah, we're, we're cool robots that climb around in 3d and I'd love to show you cause they, they are damn cool. Um, but their piece in a very broad puzzle to solve a very complex problem, the simplest way we can. And, um, that's, that's the fun part for me right now.
Speaker 3 00:28:44 It sounds like it's a very exciting, I'm just, I just needed to go find more and check in and even more on YouTube. So what are some of your big challenges now, and I kind of assume it's talent attraction for yourself?
Speaker 0 00:28:55 Well, the first challenge we had to overcome was gravity. Um, uh, gravity, gravity is pretty unforgiving. Um, it's yeah, it's a bitch. When you building 3d robotics that just developing it. Um, we had to solve, we had to solve that biggest challenge and we have, which is nice. There was a, there was a pretty, there was a pretty steep learning curve there, um, talent. Absolutely. Um, but I'll also say one of our, one of our bigger challenges is getting people out of a traditional mode of thinking. And, uh, both, both, you know, with our internal teams, you know, we're all used to doing things a certain way. Um, and when you do something that's different, it gives us opportunity to kind of look at everything again, through a new lens. So internally certainly that, but also with the customer opportunities and partnership opportunities and stuff like that is there's a world of possibility here that we haven't even discovered.
Speaker 0 00:29:58 And anybody that has, I don't know what the word is, you know, the internal freedom to think very broadly, um, are the people we want to work with both within our organization and within, within our partnerships with our customers. And, um, that, that, that one, that one's a challenge. You know, people, Calgary has a huge talent base here, but there's not enough software developers in the world satisfy demand right now. Sure. Um, you know, we now like many, many companies, like almost all companies, you know, COVID and remote work is open the door to possibilities. And, um, so now we're able to look at talent opportunities, um, much broader than just local market, but in the same breadth, every other company in the world can look at much broader talent opportunities beyond their local market as well. So now as a technology company, we're not just competing with the other companies here in Calgary, where we're competing with every other technology company in the world.
Speaker 0 00:31:10 Um, so it's changed the paradigm and adapting to that is something you want to, you know, we want to be excellent at, and we're just learning and trying to figure that out. Um, the one thing I guess I can say is from a talent point of view, is where we have this opportunity to do some very unique, disruptive things. I always tell the team, we, we have a big opportunity to put a pretty significant dent in the world. Um, and that's not an opportunity afforded by, by many, you know, and if you want to be part of the foundation of, of what's to come, and I believe there is significant opportunity to make meaningful change in the world with technology. Um, that's, that's what I think the, the best opportunity we have antibiotics, you know, consumer behavior is not changing. No one wants stuff faster.
Speaker 0 00:32:13 And, and I think we're going to want more choice, and I'm not saying selection. I'm not saying, you know, selection from a single retailer. I think one of them from my own experience, and I've talked to a few other people that share this experience, but it might not be, it might not be a global experience, but where we're a brand where we're tribal animal, we, we, we align ourselves with those things that we feel aligned with us. And, um, I don't necessarily make my buying decisions off of how many stars are put on it. I make my buying decisions off whether or not I feel understood and the stuff that's being presented me is something that I'm attracted to. So curation of product and the understanding of consumer, um, I believe are really, really important. And that's where I see retailers fitting in the future is, is retailers need to focus on the curation of their product and really deeply understanding their consumer or at least the consumer that's attracted to their brand.
Speaker 0 00:33:16 Um, because, and, and I'm not making any judgment in this at all. And, but if, if you, if you buy your men's wear at an expensive, you know, store with custom tailored suits downtown, you might be a different customer than the guy that's really comfortable buying his men's wear at the work where a store in the strip mall. Those are, and one's not better than the other. They're just, we got to admit that they're different and, and the stores, these brands now need to understand deeply their consumer, um, and, and curate product for their consumer. Um, so the decision making process and introducing of new things, um, is still managed. And then we want to help them making sure that the little, the playing fields completely leveled equalized now when it comes to, you know, fulfillment delivery. Um, so you can actually start spending your dollars at the brands that, that, that align with your sensibilities, um, and not who's going to get it to you.
Speaker 0 00:34:20 The quickest, because that's the, that I think is a variable that needs to be leveled. That's fascinating. And, and if we level that the consumer ends up with more choice and better choices. Um, and so as a consumer, that's important to me. And the other thing I'd like is I'd like to be able to just put my money and I spend my money where, where I'd like, you know, where I'd like to support, of course, um, those organizations and those brands that I feel identify with, but I don't want 14 boxes at my door. Right. I would like to get my, all my purchases correlated and in the most efficient way possible, not only for my time, but also cost. Um, and, um, the environmental impact walk down. Like I live in a condo building, walked down to the garbage room and look at the amount of cardboard boxes with smiley faces on it down there is it's staggering, it's staggering. And that's not supportable parcel post should not be the foundation of retail commerce. It's not going to work. Long-term,
Speaker 2 00:35:27 I think you're all over sustainability because it sounds like it's the perfect solution to this ongoing worldwide problem.
Speaker 0 00:35:34 Well, yeah, and China's not taking our garbage anymore, so we've got to figure it out herself. Now, can I ask you, should I ask you the question of who is your best, like your bull's eye customer? Yeah. You probably, it's not going to answer you think it is, um, early on when we were raising money, um, venture capitalist, so you really stayed venture capitalist one a very, very, very narrow focus. And they, I think they wanted me to say that we are going to focus on online athletic footwear sales, and I frustratingly told them that anybody that needs to store any and anybody that can store stuff in our bins that needs to store more efficiently, anybody else. So your audience is interesting for this because we have done a lot of work, um, and not, not, but looking at, and the scoping projects for, um, manufacturing, um, our solution is ideal for taking a bin of single items and making a kit of, of, of differentiated, differentiated, single items.
Speaker 0 00:36:35 Um, so that could be a grocery order. Certainly that could be an e-commerce order, um, that can also be the tape reels for an SMT pickup place machine. It could also be the screws and hardware needed to build a steering wheel. It could also be, um, parts needed for the cockpit of a, of an airplane. Um, the idea of a storage conveyance, um, kidding, buffering sequencing delivery, um, or create any commerce and work great in, in just in time manufacturing. So who's our customer, who's our target right now. I can say our customer is, is the retail sector, uh, grocery, and, um, each item e-commerce fulfillment, but that isn't the limit of what we're doing. And I would say the customers we're also targeting are the customers that are already sharing an ecosystem, um, for group efficiencies. And what I mean by that is if you're already in a shopping mall, cause you don't own your own real estate assets across the country and your throughput doesn't justify a couple of hundred thousand square feet.
Speaker 0 00:37:51 It justifies a couple of thousand square feet. Um, you know, I think we have an aggregated solution, um, for you in a shared ecosystem. Uh, if you're a big box retailer and you have all those volumes and you have the real estate footprint, um, I believe we have the ultimate way to network that together and automate your back room if you're a grocer and you're trying to figure out, cause when I talked about the problems of e-comm, the problems of grocery e-comm are, are magnified. Um, when you think about the labor to pick a grocery order before and the delivery of that grocery order, um, and the size of that grocery order, um, it pales in the, you know, probably econ pales to the problem of grocery cart. Um, so groceries and, and it comes down to that first thing is if your stuff fits in the bin, then you need to store stuff in and create orders more efficiently.
Speaker 0 00:38:46 Anybody else that we want to talk to you? So, you know, recently we announced a partnership with FedEx out of Vancouver. Um, food X has an amazing software platform for graffiti com and we have it, uh, you know, the ideal automation system progress Chico. So it's nice to work with another Canadian company to deliver a solution to the market as quickly as we can. We have installations, you know, in, in wholesale food service with good Gordon food service and Nordstrom in both retail distribution and, um, e-comm fulfillment. And there's another other, a number of other customers that I get in trouble with the lawyers. If I, if I tell you about right right now, um, but we're working with, you know, some of the biggest kids and, and excited that there's at least, you know, an alignment on a shared vision of what the future could be and should be, and, uh, excited to actually start delivering solutions like real solutions, um, and not incremental solutions and real solutions to a market that desperately needs it.
Speaker 1 00:39:54 Scott, thanks for coming on to the podcast. How do people get ahold of you and find out more about Adubato
Speaker 0 00:40:01 Out of botics.com? Um, that's, that's the best way it's, uh, we'll will apologize. We're working on it. We've been building robots, not websites, there's information there there's lots of stuff that's been published. A Google search of antibiotics will bring up, uh, a nice kind of cornucopia of information and perspective. Um, and, uh, of course you can reach out to us on LinkedIn, um, or directly just, uh, directly through info antibiotics.com.
Speaker 1 00:40:29 That's wonderful. Thank you again. Our sponsor for this episode is Earhart automation systems. Their heart builds and commissions turnkey solutions for their worldwide clients. With over 80 years of precision manufacturing, they understand the complex world of robotics, automated manufacturing and project management, delivering world-class custom automation on time and on budget contact one of their sales engineers to see what Earhart can build for you. I would also like to thank our partner, a three, the association for advancing automation, 83 is the umbrella association for the R I a AIA, M C M a N a three, Mexico. These four associations combined represent almost 1300 automation manufacturers, component suppliers, systems integrators, and users, research groups, and consulting firms throughout the world that are driving automation forward. I'd also like to recognize our partner painted robot painted robot builds and integrates digital solutions. They're a web development firm that offers SEO and digital social marketing and can set up and Kara connect to CRM and other ERP to unify marketing sales and operations. And there are painted robot.com. If you'd like to get in touch with us at the robot industry podcast, you can find me Jim Beretta on LinkedIn. We'll see you next time. Thanks for listening. Be safe out there. Today's podcast was produced by customer attraction, industry marketing, and I'd like to thank my nephew, Chris gray for the music, Chris Colvin for audio support my partner, Janet, and our partners, a three and painted robot and our sponsor Earhart automation systems.
Speaker 4 00:42:04 <inaudible>.
