60 Asking the Bajillion Dollar Question with Erica E. Phillips, Business Reporter, The Wall Street Journal

Erica E. Phillips covers logistics and global supply chain for The Wall Street Journal, reporting on the latest news affecting retail, manufacturing, and consumer goods. Between increased online buying overhauling supply chain best practices and the escalating US-China trade war, we wanted to talk to her about the effects of ecommerce industry-wide.

On this episode of Well Made, Erica talks about the warehouse labor shortage, the ramifications of Amazon’s $15 minimum wage increase (2:16), and how businesses will stay competitive to fill a projected 425,000 warehouse jobs by 2019 (7:52). Erica shares how fulfillment centers are using emojis, Alexa, and applications to train new hires and boost operational productivity (19:44). Stephan and Erica consider why you’re buying stuff from companies you’ve never heard of (30:03). They dive into the security of supply chains as they discuss the Bloomberg article, "The Big Hack" (35:36). Erica talks about the tariffs on $200 billion worth of goods (45:30), the ways importers are dodging these taxes (47:20), and she questions the macroeconomic effects of the trade war (49:42).

Links and images from this post are on the Lumi Blog.