[00:00:05] Speaker A: Hey, guys.
[00:00:06] Speaker B: Hey, Adam.
[00:00:07] Speaker A: Welcome to Distribution Unpacked, our brand new podcast.
[00:00:10] Speaker B: Exciting stuff this is.
[00:00:12] Speaker A: And you guys are the first kind of SPR associates to be with us
[00:00:15] Speaker B: today because we do a lot of firsts around here, as it should be,
[00:00:18] Speaker A: and I think that’s a great topic because, Christie, tell us about your new role.
[00:00:25] Speaker B: Well, Chief Operations and Technology Officer, the coto. The coto, yes. As I have been told, I’m still figuring it out.
[00:00:37] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:00:38] Speaker B: A lot to learn, A lot to learn. But a lot of good stuff. A lot of opportunity and a lot of opportunity to work with great people from this company and together making us move forward in the right direction.
[00:00:52] Speaker A: And Christie, you know, listen, I’ve been here six and a half years since I’ve been here. You’ve been a huge supporter of everything we do in marketing. But what’s been great over these past couple of years is you have an innate way of simplifying what we do, because when everything’s running around and everything’s crazy, you always are like, well, let’s. Okay, this is why this is important, because this sits on top of this and this sits on top of that, you know, so taking I think the IT knowledge into the operations space and how it all kind of comes together. And I think one of my favorite conversations with you is always when we talked about, like, product content, which is now part of your world, you know, why it’s important to know that something is flammable for our distribution centers and what all that, the downstream all the way through. So that’ll be exciting.
[00:01:30] Speaker B: Yeah, I think my IT background’s gonna help. One thing I loved about it is that we kind of sit on top of the organization.
Everything comes through it. If you think about it, every single order for the entire company comes through it every day. So we’re kind of forced to understand all the different departments and not just understand them, but how they work together and how they complement each other. So I think that that skill set and that knowledge is what I’m looking forward to be able to help me bridging some gaps. And I hate to say what we’ve heard before, silos and knocking them down, but we still have a few left, so a good opportunity to knock some of those down.
[00:02:08] Speaker A: It’s so funny as we all three of us will talk about our respective departments, we all think we’re the most important department.
[00:02:12] Speaker B: Of course.
[00:02:13] Speaker A: You know, I always think marketing, everything runs through marketing at some point, and it may or may not, but it does run through it.
[00:02:18] Speaker C: I kind of disagree. I also feel like we all have a good perspective on how we’re maybe not the most important fair because we support every other function.
[00:02:27] Speaker B: That’s right. Right. That’s right.
[00:02:29] Speaker C: So I think we’re so integrated in it. We have that perspective of touching all the different areas.
[00:02:34] Speaker A: So true. And Heena, you know, we at SP talk about being a people first organization and all that, and at the end of the day, you’re kind of that chief people person. So what’s.
[00:02:44] Speaker C: I got a new title too. The Chiefs People first.
[00:02:46] Speaker A: That’s what you do. So the last couple of months have been crazy for us and it’s been exciting.
Talk a little bit about that. The growth of how that’s impacted the HR world.
[00:02:56] Speaker C: I mean, I think, as you said it, I think our number one asset is talent. Right. People. Right. And what we do with our people is so crucial. So, yeah, we were lucky to onboard. About 35% of our staff right now is brand new. Right. They haven’t even been here five months with sp. Right. So we have a great. I know we have such a great opportunity to build, just getting culture.
[00:03:18] Speaker A: I mean.
[00:03:18] Speaker C: No, that’s true. 60 days in. Yes, that’s true. Yeah.
[00:03:22] Speaker B: I mean, he and his team did a fantastic job just traversing the nation to get us to where we could be even halfway staff to the levels that we’ve done. They just. She did a fantastic job.
[00:03:34] Speaker C: Well, you know, we work, you know, we work in HR a lot with operations since we have primarily most of the people there. So looking forward to working with Christie, even more so in her new operations role. But, yeah, I mean, onboarding all those people is such a great opportunity for us to build. Build our culture and to change it. Right. So we’ve evolved. We evolve every, I don’t know, every day, every month. But as with this influx of people, it’s a completely different story. It’s a clean slate. Right. We have an opportunity to say, okay, we are SPR, here we are today. We forget about what we did yesterday. Right. We’re looking forward.
[00:04:07] Speaker A: Well, they don’t even know.
[00:04:08] Speaker B: Yeah, they don’t know.
[00:04:10] Speaker A: They don’t. I mean, I think we. You know, Christie, you and I have talked about this and Heena, you and I have talked about this.
In the past six and a half years, the organization has transitioned so much. People don’t even remember the GPC days or they don’t remember, you know, the first acquisition. And they’re kind of looking at this as a brand new space. I mean, I think it’s going to be great in probably three to five years that they’re not even going to know that there was a competitor on the op side of our business. And that’s so interesting.
I found you said 35% new folks. 30% of that is sitting in Christie’s New World.
[00:04:37] Speaker C: Absolutely, absolutely. Yes.
[00:04:39] Speaker A: But it is true, I think, you know, we sit at HQ and we spend some time thinking about this where there’s a couple of hundred people sitting in the HQ office.
That’s the smallest portion of our business. We are a frontline driven organization. It’s the folks in the warehouses every day making it happen, making the orders come in and go out and orchestrating all that movement.
So, you know, Christie, you’ve been here the longest at 18 years, Heena four and a half, me six and a half.
[00:05:04] Speaker B: Now I sound old.
[00:05:05] Speaker A: No, no, it wasn’t meant to old. It’s just, you know, you’ve seen the change. But if I’m looking at this from the SP customer perspective or our suppliers perspective, it’s a fun fact about SP that nobody would know.
[00:05:15] Speaker B: Oh, my goodness. That nobody would know or just, you
[00:05:17] Speaker A: know, outside of us would know in your perspective.
[00:05:22] Speaker B: You know, I don’t, I don’t know if you call it a fun fact, but the one thing that has stayed with SPR from the day I started, it’s truly that family, ish type atmosphere. It’s the people that you work with that keep you here. And I think those of us that have been through it a lot are excited to have some of the new people to come in to bring along with us. And we’re open to that.
So to me, I think it’s just the culture, it’s building that culture. I think getting that culture back to where everybody is excited to come to work, they’re excited about what’s going on.
I’m excited about that. Yeah, we’ve missed that for sure.
[00:06:04] Speaker A: Heena, how about you?
[00:06:05] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, I think, I don’t know about a fun fact about sp. Yeah, just, you know, what I would say is, I think at the core of what we do is the people, right? But I think everyone is truly excited about the future now. I think we’ve always had this hope, right? And like, okay, maybe we’ll get there. And the people are so great. And, you know, I always say this at any job you have, if you don’t love who you work with, you’re not going to stay because you’re at work more than you’re at home.
[00:06:36] Speaker B: That’s Right.
[00:06:36] Speaker C: That’s right. And so they don’t. If you don’t think of them as family, is like, I think of you guys, you’re not going to stay. Right. So I think that we do a really good job of building that family very quickly. Like, even me being here four and a half years, I feel like I’ve been here a decade.
[00:06:49] Speaker A: No, I think that’s, you know, Christie, that’s. For me, when we meet new associates, like, why? What has to be? And it’s. It’s true. I mean, we’ve all had some tremendous growth. We’ve also had some tremendous loss on a personal side.
And, Christie, you and I have had moments together. We’ve talked, and it’s just. It’s. You get it. I mean, and I know for me personally, there’s always those moments where it’s like, I just, you know, I’ll go into Christie’s office, or I’ll go to your office, and we’ll have these discussions, and you’re like, well, let’s frame it a different way. Or, you know, we could sit there and I’ll hold hands and just plow through together on the craziness. So it’s a great experience. It’s great. And I think we’re starting to finally see that throughout the organization as people are taking on new challenges and we’re dealing with new customers. And, you know, I think. I don’t know about you guys, but the last couple of months, people have really held hands together as we’ve grown and we’re experiencing new things. And, I mean, think about what’s going on with our distribution centers. We’re onboarding four distribution centers in probably what, 60 to 90 days, if not even less.
[00:07:44] Speaker C: Yeah. And, I mean, it’s all hands on deck, right?
[00:07:46] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:07:46] Speaker C: Christie and I were packing orders in Carol Stream just last weekend.
[00:07:49] Speaker A: Right. And then we’re all getting ready to go. Some of us are going to be spending Valentine’s Day together.
[00:07:52] Speaker B: That’s right.
[00:07:53] Speaker A: In the greater Pennsylvania Philadelphia area. So it’s fun. But that’s what also makes it fun.
[00:07:59] Speaker B: That’s right.
[00:07:59] Speaker A: Is being there together and joking and, you know, laughing and you remember this time when and all that kind of stuff.
[00:08:04] Speaker C: Absolutely.
[00:08:05] Speaker A: Awesome, guys. Thank you so much. This was so much fun.
[00:08:07] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:08:08] Speaker B: Thanks for having me. It was fun. Thank you.
[00:08:09] Speaker A: Thanks. I appreciate it.
[00:08:10] Speaker B: Okay.
