Please tell us about yourself.

I love what I do and the people I work with! I’ve been in the CPG industry for over 25 years (started as a stocker as a teenager) and found my first eCommerce fulfillment company in the late 1990’s (where Gatorade was our first client). First and foremost, I am an entrepreneur with a passion for creating solutions to wide-sweeping challenges in the distribution, fulfillment and logistics industry.

I believe in working hard, being honest, shooting straight, having fun and only working with clients that get “my tail wagging” (my spirit animal is a Golden Retriever).

Let’s start at the beginning. How did LongTail come to be?

Amazon is growing and changing at a record speed. At the same time, it is one of the most challenging retailers to fulfill, process orders and just plan work with from an operations perspective. LongTail is the solution to this reality for brands big and small.  Although we work with many other retailers, both brick and mortar and dot com, it is our experience that if you can service Amazon effectively with their complex requirements and tight deadlines, you can efficiently fulfill every other retailer.

The name LongTail was inspired by the book, “The LongTail” by the editor in chief of Wired magazine Chris Anderson. The term LongTail comes from, “Long-tailed distribution used in statistics. The theory of the Long Tail is that our culture and economy is increasingly shifting away from a focus on a relatively small number of “hits” (mainstream products and markets) at the head of the demand curve and toward a huge number of niches in the tail. In eCommerce, and the new market “space”, it applies to selling a wide breath of SKU’s, different pack configurations and variety pack offerings in the unlimited virtual online “shelf”.

What is your guiding philosophy as an employer and business leader?

• Do what you love and love what you do.
• Always put the client first and you will never be irrelevant (or forgotten).
• At the end of the day it’s all about people.
• Focus on the long dollar, not the quick nickel
• It’s not the big that eat the small, but the quick that eat the slow
• Do unto other as you would have them done unto you
• Help clients to grow their sales, decrease their costs and make it easier to do business. If you continue to do all three of these things well for your client, then you can hope to keep their business.

Who inspires you?

CTL Global CEO, President, & Founder, Sharon Reese-Dalenberg

Please tell us about yourself.
Over the course of my career I’ve worked in many different areas around technology. For many years, I managed teams responsible to deliver high quality IT services to engineers. As part of my day-to-day work I’ve always been interested in how things and technologies work and how to build high performing teams to get the most out of technologies and systems. Transitioning to marketing and eCommerce has been an interesting endeavor and it keeps me learning.

What is your guiding philosophy as an employer and business leader?
I like to lead teams, and give and them space to grow, learn and improve. Empowerment is vital to allow teams to take ownership and drive our business, as well as our clients businesses forward

What part of your job do you enjoy most?
When I see a team start to lead themselves down a path that aligns with our strategy, I get excited. It shows commitment and understanding of where we are going.

Second to that, is seeing our customers product fly off the shelves in our warehouse. We are part of their supply chain, and to see our clients growing is a good sign that we are partnering for growth.

What’s the coolest thing you’re working on right now?
Our customers are always asking how we can do things faster and get their products to market faster. Over the past several months, I’ve been working with our teams to find ways to get our clients up and running more quickly. I’ve seen a tremendous impact from our work on shortening our on-boarding timeline, while delivery high quality services. These advances are coming as a result of the hard work of the team as they identify areas for improvement and strive to improve the way we work.