Disrupting 3PL Matchmaking: Inside Racklify’s Startup Success With Bill Carlin

One of the things that I found really surprising is that when I call A3PL cold, there is a 50% chance their sales number picks up. And from everything I understand, that was shocking to me.

Today we sit down with Bill Carlin, the co founder and CMO of racklify. We discuss Bill's journey from starting as an E commerce seller and to creating an innovative marketplace for three PL connections. Bill shares how personal frustrations and industry pain points such as difficulties with the fulfillment process and the overwhelming nature of finding the right 3 PL inspired him to launch Racklify.

The platform was built to empower merchants by simplifying the process of finding suitable 3 PL partners and making the market more accessible and transparent, especially compared to the traditional pay to win lead generation systems. Bill details the challenges he's encountered, notably the surprising statistic that many 3 PLs don't even answer their sales lines despite significant investments in advertising and business development.

He recounts reaching out directly to warehouses and finding that less than half of them even answered the phone. This realization further motivated Raclify's self service, information rich approach, focusing on ease of use for both merchants and warehouses and prioritizing connections for niche and specialized 3 PL needs.

We'll also discuss the remarkable growth that Racklify has achieved within its first year, rivaling established competitors in web traffic and rapidly expanding its global reach. Bill highlights the challenges of appealing to both novice merchants and sophisticated enterprise players, especially during turbulent times with shifting tariffs and industry uncertainties.

Looking ahead, Bill repeal reveals exciting plans for enhanced advertising options and increased outreach, all while maintaining a free ad supported model designed to level the playing field for both three PL providers and merchants alike. As always, if you found value from this content, please like and subscribe. All right, Bill Carlin, welcome to Beyond Fulfillment. Hey, thanks for having me Dave. Been a long time listener, first time caller. Awesome, awesome. We're excited to have you.

So Bill, you are the co founder and the CMO of Raclify and we're going to get into your journey with racklify, what it is, why, why you created it, how you went about it and and on through your journey, but just for everyone, so they understand. Can you just tell us what is racklify? Yeah. So raclify is an open marketplace that allows merchants to connect with three PL providers.

So we identified the need in the space for people to be able to go out, search for A3PL on their own, be able to see different capabilities and really take ownership of that whole process. Okay. And for those that may not know you've been in the 3 PL space for quite a number of years. Second Dave, the iPad's going off. I silenced my phone, but not the iPad. Yeah, how, how long have you had your 3PL? Yeah, so we've been in the 3PL space for. Since 2017. 2018. So that's what, now 8 years.

So it's, it's been a long journey. And you know, before that we were e commerce sellers. So, you know, the trajectory was, you know, pretty normal for what happens to a lot of people in the business. Okay, yeah, so you started off with the e commerce business. You had this big warehouse. You realized there was an opportunity to create a 3PL, so you did that. And now as your business has evolved, you, you created raclify, this open marketplace to where you're, you're solving challenges.

That makes it a lot easier for people to find the right three plus. So just talk us through that. Why, like, what was the aha moment where you realized this was such a problem and you set out to create a solution? Yeah, well, I think everything I've done in life is a direct cause and effect of problems. Right. So what got us into E commerce was the death of wholesale. What got us from E commerce to fulfillment was, you know, some issues with Amazon, their fulfillment process.

Started fulfilling our own stuff, right? Had some bad experiences with other 3pls and started our own 3pl. And the same thing comes true with raclify, right, is we have, you know, these growth problems just like anybody else has had. And we're having conversations all the time with other 3pls in the market. And everybody talks about how it's kind of pay to win, you gotta have major ad budgets. And we wanted to build a tool that's different, right?

Something that's free, something that's everybody can use and everybody can get value out of. Right? And we, and we saw this unique opportunity mostly from LinkedIn, right, because you've been part of the conversations. Other people have been part of the conversation. Somebody posts on LinkedIn, Hey, I'm looking for a 3 PL in Kentucky. All of a sudden, 150 people dogpile on that post.

And this was kind of the whole like, aha moment for me was, okay, whenever there's a lead, there's 150 people that want that lead, but that lead is overwhelmed. So if we can empower the merchant to go out and find their 3 PL by giving them the information, giving them the tools, giving them the access to everything in one place, that's going to create a Fairer market where everybody can win. Okay. All right.

So you see this problem and you mentioned your evolution through these various channels of business that you've been in. And then you see this problem in terms of the, the three PL landscape and the, the ability for, for shippers or customers rather to find the right three pl. And you have this idea to create something different.

But given that you're a 3 PL, you have a big warehouse, you have customers, and you're not really from the tech space, how did you go about putting this whole business together? Yeah, well, both my co founders are technical. Right. Both have a technical background. I have, you know, some degree of technical. Know how. Nothing to write home about. Right. So we're pretty familiar with software, right? Went from the 3 PL operation.

We've been building our own apps, applications to handle things for a long time and building that on top of our wms. So we, we've had experience with building things in the past and it just came to, you know, ahead where we were just like, well, we have the money, we have the resources, we have the time. Let's just go build this thing. Right? Let's go build something that we think is going to be very valuable and very successful. And so far it has been okay.

All right, so you make the decision to, to go and build this product and you mentioned your background and your, your partners expertise and experience. So when you started building it, were there any surprises that you didn't see coming? I mean the, the, the biggest surprise that I found since, and given that a lot of your audience is three pls, I think, I think this is really surprising is when you actually start to do the work, right?

When you start to get down to getting your first initial, you know, contacts, your first initial RFPs, things like that. And you get some of these weirder ones. I'm talking like chemicals. I'm talking, you know, wire, I'm talking, you know, pharmaceuticals. Right. Like things that are a little more difficult. A lot of times you gotta physically go out and call the 3pls to get them on the phone to sell them. You gotta physically get them on the phone to connect them with the lead. Right.

And one of the things that I found really surprising is that when I call a 3 PL cold, there is a 50% chance their sales number picks up. And from everything I understand, that was shocking to me. The fact that, you know, three pls spend all this money on advertising. You know, they are always talking about growth, they're always posting on LinkedIn. And then you go to call their sales department and they don't answer the phone. Right.

And this is something as somebody that's operated a 3 PL that's, you know, been in the space for a while. I was flabbergasted. Right. Like, you know, one of the hardest parts in this, you know, Racklify thing is actually connecting with 3pls to turn over the information that I do have. That is an absolutely shocking statistic. I know my phone's always on, especially when it comes from the sales line. Line. That's an instant. You're always taking that call. So, so that is, that is very shocking.

So you find that half, half or so don't even pick up the phone. It's probably a little bit of an exaggeration, but it's way more than what you would think. Right. Like perfect example is we had a lead for Delaware and they wanted to be in Delaware. I called 21 warehouses in Delaware and less than half of them answered the phone. Wow. Shocking.

Okay, so, so now going through that experience and while you're setting that up, like how did you iterate from there and what, what did that cause you to do with the product? Yeah, so the, the, the product has always been self service first. Right. So our thing is we don't want to get in the weeds. We don't want to do any consulting, we don't want to charge any fees related to that. Leads are owned by the people who those leads go to and they contact directly.

So that was one of the things we set out to do. Since then, what we've been doing is we've been strengthening our relationships with three PLs that have very unique specialties. Right. So think of like, like I said, somebody that has rail access and does industrial service, industrial storage. Right. So like we might get a little comfortable with that and go find that ahead of the need rather than retroactively. Right.

So this is one of the big things we've done is we've actually expanded our outreach. We're getting to know more people, we're getting to do more social networking and interacting. So that way when we do have one of these, like, weirder, more niche leads, we know who's gonna be the perfect fit for that right off the bat. But yeah, the self service model is what we push first.

And let me just ask you, because you know this from being in the 3PL space, there's so many lead companies, matchmakers, 3PL finders, you know, etc. I'm sure you know all the players just like I do. So when you're seeing this, you know, and even with that, there's still these challenges where it's hard for people to find the right 3 PL. So how did you know the current landscape and what that market looks like impact what you're doing to make Raclify different? Yeah, I'll touch on that briefly.

But basically I don't think it's a very fair market system right now. Right. So everybody's aware there's fees for when you win a lead or you want to talk to a lead, and those fees are usually pretty high. You can see the comments on LinkedIn that other people put out about these companies, and I just don't think they're fair. Right. So that's the reason why Raclify is a free to use platform and it's totally 100 AD supported. Okay. All right. And how.

Maybe you can answer this because I've heard various estimates or figures, but how, how many 3 pls are there within the United States? Yeah, so I've identified 5,500 so far. If I was to guess, I would say that the number is probably between 8 to 10,000. Now, most estimates you hear around 15,000, but I think that includes the trucking three PLs. Right. So companies that are basically trucking brokerages. Right. As well as a lot of people that are out of business.

So you know, and I know that there's been, you know, quite a bit of three PLs that have fallen off in the last two years. And those I think are still in the numbers because their websites are still up. Right. So a lot of that gets caught in the data. Okay. All right, so the, I've heard that the, the figure I've heard the most common is about 10,000. And I. That's without the, like you said, the truck brokerages, that could be considered a three plus. Okay. And so you've identified 5,500.

Is that the, like the number you have live on Racklify right now? Yeah, so that's the number I have for the US so right now we're approaching 9,000 warehouses on Racklify across 50 different countries. So we're really pushing the whole global thing. We got some great partners in Canada, some great partners in Mexico, some great partners in the uk. Right. And we're really trying to expand into those other markets like Germany, Poland, Italy. Right. Japan. Right.

So we're always pushing that envelope. Right now we have about, I want to say 600 to 700 warehouses claimed on RACLIFY. So about 10% of our warehouses are claimed and operated by the three PLs. Okay. And just explain. Why don't you explain? Just because again, it sounds like you're almost building like a, a modern day digital yellow Pages specifically for 3Pls. But what's your process like? I mean, are you personally reaching out to everybody and establishing this connection?

Yeah. So the process is, you know, kind of, kind of organic. I think we finally hit our stride where we're getting a lot of people reaching out to us and we're getting a lot more inbound. But what our process looks like is we're identifying these three PLs and we are making the effort to connect with them, whether it be through email, through social media, a lot of different various ways to make contact. Right. Trade shows. Right. So we're always looking to meet new 3pls and get them on board.

What we did is we have a very simple one click claim process, which is if we've identified your three pl and we put some basic information on our site about it, you can click claim and you can take control of that entire profile. So we've made it as simple and as fast as possible. Okay. All right. And so you've had Raclify up and running for about the last year or so, is that right?

Yeah. So we went into a beta about a year ago and we invited a handful of three PLs that we knew on board to get some initial feedback, test things out and really, you know, prove out the model. As of January, we've been launched publicly and we've been, you know, marketing and inviting everybody onto the platform. Right. So Racklify has grown pretty quickly. We've been growing about 30% a month ever since January.

Okay. And if I'm recalling correctly, you, your traffic is rivaling some of the, your website online traffic is rivaling some of these, these bigger established players that have been at this for a number of years. Is that right? Yeah, we're number two in web traffic right now in the category of, you know, people that I would consider a competitor. It's growing every month. Last month we had a huge spike, I think probably because of the trade shows.

But yeah, we're, we're always scaling, we're always growing and you know, we're getting out there, we're networking and we're, we're doing what we can to bring people to the site. Okay. All right. And I mean, was there ever any. I mean, it sounds like you really hit your stride quickly. You really, things have taken off and you're, you're really, like you said, great Grabbing the attention as far as, you know, coming up to number two in web traffic so quickly.

I mean, was there any challenges or hiccups or things you didn't see coming that you had to, you had to pivot or adjust through throughout this last year? Yeah, I mean, the, the biggest thing for me has been when you interact with merchants and you understand that they're all at a different level, right? You have some merchants that are still literally in their garage. They don't know what A3PL is, they don't know what UMS is, they don't know what A TMS is. Right. They don't know what an RFP is.

Right. All these words are alien to them. And then you have other people that are very quite advanced, right? They're using all the softwares, they're attending all the webinars. They, they know their stuff, right? And the real challenge has been getting messaging that resonates with all these levels, right? Because you want messaging that can apply to that first time seller, but you also want messaging that can attract those big giant, you know, industrial fortune 500 kind of accounts, right?

And everything in between. So you got to have messaging that can appeal to all levels and making sure that this information you're giving is, quote, unquote, dumbed down enough that anybody can understand it, but at the same time still has a level of, you know, a level of. What's the word I'm looking for? I, I don't know about the word, but a level you basically.

Yeah, a level of sophistication there it is a level of sophistication that, you know, also shows that you know what you're talking about, you know your stuff and can attract those larger players. So it sounds like you want it to be universal enough to encompass everybody, but not be so kind of low rung that it's gonna alienate the people that actually do know their stuff. Yeah, that, that's very fair.

Yeah. And it's, it's been really hard to like work that messaging because what you find is you lose certain levels of merchant throughout the process. And really our big thing has been how can we get more conversion, right? How can we get more people to click, submit a form, submit an rfp, right? And do that at a higher rate because we have the traffic, right? We're getting leads every day, but we want more, right? We want a higher conversion rate.

So that's really been the big, you know, the big thing we've been tackling for the last couple months. Okay. And so clearly Right.

We're, we're recording this in, in mid June of 2025, but clearly this whole year we've been dealing with the tariff issue and all these changes around that whole thing. How have you seen impact the, the process of people searching for three PLs? So it's been rough seas, Right. So what I've noticed is there's been a lot of peaks, a lot of valleys depending on the news cycle. Right.

So all of a sudden, tariffs go up, certain people panic, some people contract their business, maybe you see some foreign business push in. Right. Tariffs go down. All of a sudden you see people domestically open their wallets up again. They start importing. They need new places to put things. Right. The big one has been bonded. Right. Bonded's been going nuts this year because of that uncertainty. Right.

It's because people don't know what the rate's going to be next week versus, you know, three weeks from now versus a month from now. Bonded warehousing has been in high, high, high demand. It's become very difficult to find across the US So, you know, I've really seen the ups and downs that change almost on a whim with what's in the news cycle. Yeah, I mean, we've seen the same thing. And so with that being said, right.

It seems like we're, we're hopefully getting some clarity and some certainty coming into some of these deals being announced. And at least the, the stuff with China, you know, apparently there's a framework of a deal in place. So ideally, if everyone has certainty, then that will allow people to make the decisions that, that they need to move forward. Forward. In Trump's words, there's a concept of a plan. Right. For better or worse.

But, you know, I, I'm hopeful that there will be certainty at least before we get too, too close to Q4. Right. Like, you know, late summer is usually when people start bringing those Christmas containers. So I, I'm really, really hoping that we get some clarity and get something locked in. But if not, I just recommend people keep dollar cost averaging in their, you know, their, the cost, their goods. Yeah, yeah.

And that, that seems to be what most people are doing, too, just to, to get some, some, like you said, some certainty on their cost so they can plan. Okay. And so given what you've done the last year and how much you've grown racklify organically from idea to implementation so quickly, what's.

What' the. For the next 12 months and beyond. Yeah, so our, our plan for the next 12 months is really to just Take what we're doing and ramp it up three or four or five fold. Right. So we got the groundwork of, you know, our processes. The software is in a really, really strong place. We're launching our ad platform here at the end of the month, so people will be able to buy ads on individual keywords. So let's say somebody wants to rank for cold storage in Hawaii, Right.

Where they want to rank for pharmaceuticals in Kentucky or industrial in New Jersey. Right. You can buy those specific filters to come up higher in the search results. Right. Similar to any other marketplace. So I'm real excited about that. And that's going to, you know, I think, going to be a game changer for the whole industry. And, you know, as this thing begins to scale, we're going to be going into more and more global markets.

We're going to be expanding the team further and we're really ramping up outreach here. In the next month or two, we're looking to 2 or 3x our merchant outreach. So a lot of exciting things on the horizon. There's also some things I can't talk about, obviously, but those are going to be groundbreaking. So I really hope people stay plugged in and continue to follow the journey. Okay. All right.

And Bill, if people want to reach out to you to learn more about raclify, how they can be a part of it potentially or get in touch for any other reason, what's the best way people can reach out to you? Yeah, you can email me at bill@racklify. You can also find me on LinkedIn. I'm very, very active and I'm probably friends with somebody, you know, so, you know, come up there.

Pretty high in the search results, but yeah, we're always looking to talk to people, get conversations going, build relationships. And like I said, racklify is free to join and it's ad supported, so there's no surprises. Okay. All right, we'll link all that in the show notes for everybody. And Bill, thank you so much for taking the time to be here and sharing all these valuable lessons from your journey with our audience. We greatly appreciate it. Awesome. Thank you so much for having me, Dave.

Have a great Tuesday. All right, likewise. That's all the time we have for now. Sam.