Welcome to Second and Command, brought to you by C.O. Alliance, where top-level COO-O-O-O-Sher insights,

where top-level COO-S share the insights, tactics, and strategies that made them the chief behind the chief.

And now here's your host, Cameron Herald. Ben Smith is the CEO at Sugarfina True True Omni Channel luxury Candy Boutique.

Previously, Ben has held positions as CEO for Fame and Partners

and General Manager in Operations for William Sonoma.

Ben is a supply chain and logistics and operations

expert who is incredibly passionate about bringing technology and

operations together. He's a people focused and strongly believes that

supply chain is a characteristic of your product that drives brand

loyalty and profit margins. He's originally from Australia but he's also lived and

worked in the UK and China before moving to the US and I'm actually really interested in learning a little bit about this.

I have a couple of CEOs that I coach that are struggling with some of the supply chain areas.

So Ben, welcome to the Second and Command Podcast.

Thanks for having me, really glad to be here.

Yeah I'm looking forward to learning a little bit.

So why don't you tell us a little bit about your journey as to kind of where you got some of the skill sets along the way and how that brought you to where you are today with Shagrafina.

I'm not sure if many people who were in supply chain and operations really sought out after to get into that.

I think a lot of us fell into it through a number of different ways.

My journey started by me working on a factory floor and being lucky enough to say the right thing at the right time and being curious enough about how a business

operated. I've always had a genuine interest in how does something get from A to B,

what are all the moving pieces in this and being lucky enough to say the right thing at the right time

enabled me to sort of start to move throughout different parts of an organization but

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