Commerce Beyond Borders

Supply chain used to be treated as a cost center. Hans Elmegaard, who has held leadership roles at Agility, DSV, Maersk/Damco, Panalpina and Scan Global Logistics and is now co-founder and CEO of Moddule, explains why that has changed. Renee Hartmann and Chris Baker talk with him about why knowing when inventory will arrive now matters more than how fast it moves, where AI is delivering value in logistics and where it is still hype, and why retailers need their executives closer to supply chain decisions.

n this episode of Commerce Beyond Borders, hosts Renee Hartmann and Chris Baker speak with Hans Elmegaard, co-founder and CEO of Moddule and a global supply chain executive with experience across Asia, Europe and North America. Hans explains how retail supply chains have shifted from a back-office cost to a strategic advantage, why end-to-end visibility matters more than speed in an unpredictable world, and what it takes for AI to be useful in logistics.

Key takeaways

• Supply chain is now a competitive advantage in retail. Retailers that invested in supply chain technology and flexible formats can keep stock available during a short selling window, while competitors selling the same product cannot.
• Predictability matters more than speed. Retailers that know where their goods are and when they will arrive can plan. Many still track this manually in spreadsheets, which is costly.
• Supply chain complexity feels harder partly because it is more visible. Hans notes that supply chain has always been about managing disruption. COVID, tariffs and port delays put it in front of consumers and executives.
• Chief supply chain officers are joining core decisions. Every organizational change affects the supply chain, so it needs to be part of the decision from the start.
• AI creates value when it works across fragmented systems. Logistics technology is spread across many systems, and AI can orchestrate workflows between them. Much AI in the industry is still fluff until it is tied to a concrete outcome.
• Data trust decides how much AI can decide. Today most AI output is a recommendation for a person to act on. Letting AI act on incorrect arrival data is costly.
• Siloed retail teams hurt the whole chain. Purchasing, shipping, sales and online teams often run on different KPIs. Hans recommends managing end to end, from factory floor to consumer door.

Topics covered

• How retail supply chains changed with e-commerce, new sales channels and global access
• What COVID taught retailers about their dependence on supply chain
• Speed versus accuracy and resilience in sourcing
• Spreading sourcing risk across countries
• Supply chain as a retail competitive advantage
• AI, data quality and decision-making in logistics
• Why executives need to be closer to supply chain operations

Frequently asked questions

Is supply chain getting harder, or does it just feel harder?
Hans Elmegaard says it mostly feels harder because it is more visible. Supply chain has always been about managing disruption, but the public now follows container ship updates.

Has supply chain moved from a cost center to a competitive advantage in retail?
According to Hans, yes. Retailers that invested in technology and flexible supply chain formats can keep products available when demand is highest.

What matters more in retail logistics, speed or predictability?
Hans argues predictability. Knowing when inventory will arrive lets retailers plan stock for stores and online, and lets them plan sourcing across multiple countries.

Where does AI help in retail supply chains?
Hans sees the most value in orchestrating workflows across the many separate systems used in logistics, and in analyzing which data sources are most reliable. He cautions that data quality determines whether AI can make decisions or only recommend them.

What is Hans Elmegaard’s advice for retailers?
Bring executives closer to supply chain operations, and align purchasing, shipping, sales and online teams on shared end-to-end objectives.

About the guest

Hans Elmegaard is co-founder and CEO of Moddule, a supply chain visibility platform. Born and raised in Denmark, he previously held roles at Agility (including time based in Hong Kong), DSV (commercial leadership for Asia-Pacific), Maersk/Damco (global head of the retail sector), Panalpina (supply chain solutions) and Scan Global Logistics (CEO of its Scandinavian fulfillment and distribution business).

About the hosts

Renee Hartmann is a retail strategist, author of Next Generation Retail and a Top 100 ReThink Retail expert. Chris Baker is her co-host on Commerce Beyond Borders. 

www.renee-hartmann.com

Related topics: retail supply chain, end-to-end supply chain visibility, supply chain as competitive advantage, AI in logistics, chief supply chain officer, global sourcing, ocean freight visibility, retail inventory planning

Most DTC brands pick their channel first and figure out the economics later. Jon Blair, Founder of Free to Grow CFO and founding team member of Guardian Bikes, says that's why so many struggle to scale. Drawing on work with hundreds of e-commerce brands, he joins Renee Hartmann and Chris Baker to break down the three "games" every DTC brand is playing (apparel, durable goods and consumables), why each needs a different playbook for CAC, channels and inventory, and how to tell a durable brand from a temporary arbitrage. Plus: why niche brands with loyal fans win, and how to measure growth across Shopify and Amazon.

The easy days of e-commerce are over. Five years after the pandemic-era asset bubble, DTC brands can no longer ride cheap customer acquisition and institutional capital. They have to build real businesses. In this episode, Renee Hartmann and Chris Baker sit down with Jon Blair, Founder of Free to Grow CFO, to talk about what that actually takes.

Jon was on the founding team of Guardian Bikes, now a multi-hundred million dollar DTC-only brand, before launching Free to Grow CFO five years ago. His firm has around 30 e-commerce CFOs and accountants and works with about 50 brands at any time, helping them scale from roughly $10 million to $50 million and beyond. Having seen hundreds of brands succeed and fail, Jon has developed a framework for why some scale profitably and others don't.

At the heart of it is the idea that every brand is playing one of three "games": the apparel game, the durable goods (first-purchase dominant) game, and the high-LTV consumables game. Each has a different playbook for product expansion, CAC management and channel strategy. For durable goods brands, physical retail is where lifetime value finally shows up, because the retailer becomes the repeat buyer. For consumables, it's subscription and the LTV-to-CAC equation. For apparel, loyalty builds slowly over years, and excess inventory is the silent killer. Jon says 100% of the apparel brands his team audits have too much of it.

The conversation also covers why Amazon-first brands often struggle to move into DTC, how marketplace expansion complicates attribution and strains the balance sheet, and why blended cohort models across Shopify, Amazon and TikTok are essential for consumables brands. Jon shares how one client grew from $800K to $5 million a month using this approach.

Jon also introduces a key distinction: arbitrage versus durability. Some brands succeed by being early to a nascent product category or ad channel, like AppLovin, but those windows can close within 30 days. His advice: know which game you're playing, and if you're benefiting from an arbitrage, build durability proactively before it disappears.

In this episode:

• Why e-commerce isn't harder, it's just back to business fundamentals
• How to define a DTC brand today: digitally native vs. brick-and-mortar native
• The three growth marketing games and their different playbooks
• The jump from Shopify to Amazon, retailer marketplaces and physical retail
• Why Amazon-first brands often should skip DTC entirely
• How successful brands set CAC ceilings and manage acquisition costs
• The inventory trap in apparel and why clearing it takes 12 to 24 months
• Spotting arbitrage, and why windows can slam shut in 30 days
• Why niche brands with raving fans, like a gothic apparel brand for customers in their 40s and 50s, often outperform mass-market plays
• How founder-led, mission-driven brands achieve exceptional three- and four-year retention
• What GEO and AI-driven product research mean for brands with long consideration cycles
• Building blended cohort models across Shopify, Amazon and TikTok
• Health and wellness consumables, clean beauty and the Grüns story
• Jon's core advice for founders: you don't choose your product's consumption pattern, so build your business around it

About the guest:
Jon Blair is the Founder of Free to Grow CFO, a fractional CFO firm specializing in scaling e-commerce brands. He was previously on the founding team of Guardian Bikes.

Hosts:
Renee Hartmann and Chris Baker, Rethink Retail Top Retail Experts and hosts of Commerce Beyond Borders.

Korea has just 51 million people and a GDP under 2 trillion dollars, yet it was the fifth-largest luxury market in the world in 2023 and continues to export culture, from beauty to fashion to retail experience, at a scale far beyond its size.

On this episode of Commerce Beyond Borders, Renee Hartmann and Chris Baker sit down with Dominika Kustosz-Lee, a Rethink Retail Top Expert for 2025 and 2026 with nearly two decades of experience across Korean e-commerce, luxury, and business development.

They dig into why Korean consumers move as one, how Olive Young became the infrastructure behind K-beauty's rise, why Seongsu is now known as Korea's pop-up capital, and what global brands consistently get wrong when they try to enter the market.

Roshni Nambiar, Senior Director of DTC Analytics & Strategy at Unilever Prestige Group, joins Renee Hartman and Chris Baker to unpack how AI, social commerce, and shifting discovery habits are reshaping the customer journey in beauty and CPG.

Roshni brings a rare full-circle view of e-commerce, having built marketing technology at companies like Oracle, run analytics for automotive brands at an agency, and now leading DTC and Amazon analytics across eight luxury beauty brands. In this conversation, she breaks down why the path to purchase has become a "zigzag line" with no predictable pattern, how TikTok and Instagram are outpacing legacy retail channels in growth, and why content, not tactics, is becoming the new currency of discovery as AI search and generative engine optimization take hold.

The conversation also digs into where agent-to-agent commerce is heading, what that means for brand loyalty and lifetime value, and why first-party data and a solid attribution model remain the anchor points brands need no matter how fast the landscape shifts.

In this episode:

• Why the post-pandemic e-commerce boom slowed in early 2025 and what's driving the rebound
• How TikTok and Instagram evolved from content platforms into product discovery and social commerce engines
• The difference between impulse-driven buying in color cosmetics versus retention in skincare
• Why authentic content, not SEO tactics, is becoming the key to visibility in AI-driven search
• Where the line sits between useful AI-generated content and content that backfires with consumers
• How agent-to-agent commerce could change the role of brand websites and reshape customer loyalty
• Why CAC to LTV ratio remains a non-negotiable fundamental, even as checkout increasingly moves to AI bots
• How fragmented discovery and checkout across platforms is breaking traditional attribution models
• Why clean first-party data is now essential for segmentation, personalization, and predictive analytics

About Roshni Nambiar
Roshni Nambiar is Senior Director of DTC Analytics & Strategy at Unilever Prestige Group, where she leads customer analytics across .com and Amazon for a portfolio of eight luxury beauty brands. She previously led analytics for an automotive marketing agency and spent time at Oracle and various startups building marketing automation, CRM, and customer loyalty platforms.

Guest: Casey Lau, EVP at Web Summit and Co-founder of Startups HK

Casey Lau has spent close to 30 years in Hong Kong building community at the intersection of startups, tech, and global innovation. As EVP at Web Summit — which runs flagship events in Lisbon, Vancouver, Rio de Janeiro, and Doha — he has a rare vantage point on tech ecosystems around the world. He is also co-founder of Startups HK, a pillar of the startup community in Hong Kong and the Greater Bay Area.

In this episode Casey joins Renee and Chris fresh from a month-long tech tour across five Chinese cities — Shenzhen, Chongqing, Hangzhou, Beijing, and Shanghai — his first time back on the mainland since before the pandemic.

What we cover:

Casey's global view from Web Summit — why the only race that really matters right now is US versus China, and why Europe is watching from the sidelines

What shocked Casey most about returning to China in 2026 — from frictionless payments to the sheer pace of change on the ground

Inside the Geely/Zeekr factory — a dark factory the size of a city block with 1,000 people doing last-mile work while robots assemble cars that were ordered online just days earlier

China's generative video AI scene — why MiniMax, Seedance, Kling, and Alibaba's Happy Horse are the models people aren't talking about enough in the West

Pop Mart Land in Beijing — why Casey thinks Labubu has barely scratched the surface globally, and what a full-scale Pop Mart theme park looks like in practice

The F&B wave coming West — Heytea, Mixue, Luckin, and why Luckin buying Blue Bottle could spell real trouble for Starbucks

Why China is forward-looking and the West is backward-looking — and what that means for the pace of innovation and adoption

Chinamaxxing — why everyone at Web Summit Lisbon wanted to talk about China, and what the cultural shift toward Chinese brands, food, and culture means for global commerce

The one through line across every category Casey visited: speed of iteration that no one else in the world can match

Dr. Sumit Mitra is CEO of Tesco Business Solutions and Tesco India, overseeing a team that spans payroll and finance to AI, property, supply chain, and customer contact — serving 90 million shopping trips a week.

In this episode he gives us an inside look at how Tesco is applying AI across the business, what's actually delivering results, and what India's retail revolution is signalling for the rest of the world.

We cover:

• What Tesco Business Solutions actually does — and why the CEO calls it Tesco's key competitive differentiator
• How Tesco structures AI into three buckets and why prioritisation matters more than technology
• The 50K / 60-day rule: how they cut failing projects before ego gets in the way
• Real AI use cases delivering triple-digit million returns in cash flow and personalisation
• Why AI for operations means reimagining the whole process, not automating a step
• India's leap from kirana stores straight to quick commerce — and what's driving it
• Whoosh, Tesco's 30-minute delivery service, already a £400M business
• Omnisol: how Tesco is now taking its proprietary AI tools to market for other retailers

Guest: Dr. Sumit Mitra, CEO, Tesco Business Solutions & Tesco India Hosts: Renee Hartmann & Chris Baker

Most companies are pretty good at writing strategies. Far fewer are good at executing them. That gap — and what to do about it — is exactly what Kevin Ertell has spent his career studying, and now he's written the book on it.

Kevin brings a rare perspective to this conversation. He started as a clerk at Tower Records and worked his way up to Senior Vice President over 20 years. From there he held senior roles at Borders, Sur La Table, and Nike, where he led digital and retail operations globally. He has seen strategy succeed and fail at every level of an organisation.

His new book, The Strategy Trap: Why Companies Fail at Execution and How to Get It Right, lays out a six-part framework he calls the Six Cs, built around two phases: setting the stage (co-creation, clarity, capacity) and showtime (communication, coordination, coaching).

In this episode Kevin, Chris and Renee dig into why execution breaks down, what leaders consistently get wrong, and why the first step of execution is actually writing the strategy itself. They also get into the role of outside consultants, how OKRs done right can transform alignment, and why stack ranking priorities beats high-medium-low every time.

Plus the NASA janitor story. You'll want to hear that one.

Key takeaways:

• Strategy writing is the first step of execution, not a precursor to it
• Co-creation drives commitment — the IKEA effect is real
• Capacity has to be created before a strategy is launched, not found along the way
• Communication should be early, loud, and continuous
• The bigger the organisation, the more structured the approach needs to be — but smaller organisations need it too

The Strategy Trap is available now on Amazon.