This is why there's always a human component because in the end, someone's gonna have to take responsibility if there is a mess up. Right? Imagine if AI made that decision. Who's gonna take the fall? Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, wherever you are in the world. Welcome to episode 108 of the Resilient Supply Chain podcast. I'm your host, Tom Raftery. For decades, sourcing has been relationship driven, who you know, who you've worked with before, but in a world of tariff shocks, sanction risk, geopolitical tension, and climate disruption, that model looks less like resilience and more like concentration risk. What if AI could screen suppliers for compliance? Trace tier two exposure, monitor tariffs in real time and even handle supplier outreach for you? And if it helps make the call, who takes responsibility when something goes wrong? This episode explores how AI is reshaping sourcing, not by replacing humans, but by helping procurement teams diversify and to make faster risk aware decisions. To unpack that, I'm joined today by Ricky Ho, founder of SourceReady. Ricky, welcome to the podcast. Would you like to introduce yourself? Thank you Tom. It's great to be on the show. My name is Ricky and I'm the founder of SourceReady. I've been working in the supply chain space for over seven years now. I grew up in a manufacturing family, so witnessed both ends of both the retail side and the manufacturing side. And currently I'm building an AI solution to help retailers diversify their supply chain and find better manufacturers. And talk to me a little bit about the genesis of SourceReady, Ricky. I mean, you've just barely given it a one sentence intro there. Tell us what it is and why it is. Yeah, so the way people find factories now there's basically two things. One is they go to supplier directories like Alibaba or Global Sources, and anyone that's ever used Alibaba will tell you how bad of an experience it is because it's basically full of paid sponsor listings from suppliers paying money to list. And second of all, it's like a lot of the great suppliers around the world, like think about the supplier that works with Lululemon, or these established companies don't advertise their information on these directories. And for that reason, a lot of times sourcing is still a very relationship driven business. And that's why people still attend trade shows. People still ask around for relationships and introductions. And I think that's a shame because a lot of small businesses today don't have those relationships and can't find that great manufacturer. Why I started SourceReady is I think there are a lot of great manufacturers today that are very hard to find. And I think in the age of AI we're at this like genesis of the ability for AI to aggregate data from these hard to get sources and make it more available for people that don't have these relationships or established connections. And I think, with everything happening on the US China geopolitical front, I don't think anyone wants to just source everything out of China. China was the go-to place for people to find factories, and this is why Alibaba is so popular, because Alibaba made it very easy for people to find factories abroad. But, let's say you wanted to find a supplier in Mexico or a supplier in Indonesia or Vietnam, most of these countries don't have platforms like Alibaba. So if you wanted to find a factory in Mexico, it would be very, very, actually difficult for you to find suppliers there because there's, it aren't platforms out there like that. Our goal with SourceReady is we wanna aggregate the world's supply chain data. So we get data from like, customs data, government directories, we get data from trade shows and then make it easily accessible for anyone around the world to source the best factory regardless if it's in China or in Mexico or in Vietnam. And as a user, all you have to type in is a prompt, right? I can say I want to find a supplier that has worked with Lululemon has been in business for more than 10 years and is outside of China. And based on your requirements, our AI can search through the database. And find you the best factory for your criteria. So that was the underlying goal. And as I mentioned about my background I've been in this space for a long time and I think a lot of systems in procurement and supply chain that focus on process management. If you think about your SAPs and Oracles and these like ERP systems that big companies use, they've done their job over the past 25 and 30 years to standardise processes. But if you think about for the majority of the world's kind of small to medium sized retail businesses. They don't need another SAP or Oracle. If you ask them what's their biggest pain point for like supply chain and sourcing, the number one pain point is actually like finding the right supplier, negotiating the right terms, and understanding how to navigate this tariff situation. And these are not things that these traditional ERP systems do. Right now in the age of AI, like we need to build, a better way for people without the relationships and experience to find better suppliers, navigate this complexity, and ultimately, like I do believe that resilience and diversification of the supply chain is gonna be the next trend in the next 10 years. And I think AI tools are gonna be really important to really help more and more businesses do that. And talk to me a little bit about SourceReady itself. So you said you can just type in, so is it like a ChatGPT interface that you just literally have a, a box there that you type in your, natural language query. I want to find suppliers who are in to your example, Indonesia or Mexico, who make whatever it is I'm looking for, who for example, are because a lot of compliance issues come up in sourcing who are not subject to any sanctions, who do not have slave labor who are, low emissions. I don't know if you can search for those kind of things. Talk to me about how that works. Yeah, that's a very great question. So first of all, one of the things that we have is certification data. So you can basically filter and find suppliers that have a certain certification, right? So for example, BSCI is typically used for a lot of social compliance, right? Making sure that factories they're not using, you know, child labor and they're, adhering to western labor standards. I would say the majority of these kind of large western brands care a lot about human rights. So there are certifications around that, that you can search suppliers for. And we have over 300 certifications data that we can search through, right? So you can have BSCI, there's like ISO 2701 for quality management. There's also other sustainability certifications that you can use for certain industries. So for example, Better Cotton Initiative and, the garment sector. You can use that to find like sustainable cotton, et cetera. And then to your other point about like sanction screening and, blacklists, this is actually something we're working on right now. Currently you can't, but we're actually working on integrating the US sanctioned database, which is actually something that you can integrate with. And in the future, it will make it easy for you to, basically you open a supplier, you click a button and it will basically run a 360 compliance check, to not only check if they've been flagged by US sanctions, but also check if their supplier has been flagged. Because a lot of times the risk exposure is not just at the tier one level, right? Let's say your supplier is purchasing raw material from a factory that is using North Korean workers. Like you don't want to be also like taking the risk of that. So the benefit of having like this customs data is actually being able to trace your supplier's supplier and then basically running this compliance check at multiple layers of the supply chain. And traditionally without, a system, an AI to do this, it's like, how would you even do this? Right? First of all, you would not even know who your supplier supplier is. And then It's just a lot of data to look through, right? Like your supplier might have hundreds of suppliers that they work with, and those suppliers might have each of their, dozens of suppliers. And I think the only way for this to be done is systematically through AI and through kind of this integration with all these different data sources. And then the other thing is also the custom side. So if you wanna look for suppliers that have fraudulent customs declarations. In supply chain, there's a common practice that a lot of Chinese suppliers do, which is called like they basically dodge tariffs through fan shipping. What they do is basically like, let's say Trump added tariffs on China, so that even though the product is made in China, they'll like ship it to Vietnam and then like use some like entity to then ship from Vietnam to us even though the product is actually made in China. This is one of the things that the US government is actually trying to catch, right? This is one of the big things that Trump's trying to go after. And if companies get caught for trans shipping, they actually get labeled as like a, a company that has that and they actually get fined. And you, as an importer, you also have risk exposure if you work with a supplier that has done trans shipping because first of all, your goods might actually get held at customs and you don't want that. And number two is you might actually get fined as well for working with a supplier like that. I would say that that's another data source that we're integrating with. And these are actually two different databases, like the, the sanction screening and the tariff and tariff avoidance are two different things that we have to integrate with. And the third part is actually the legal side of things. Let's say this factor's in China and they have a lawsuit ongoing with their supplier in China, or their employees are suing them for like not paying wages, et cetera. China actually has a, corporate ap, it has like this like legal database that you can actually search up a Chinese company and see if they have any ongoing lawsuits. Similar to in the US where if you search up a California state, you can actually search, like are there any ongoing lawsuits for a company? But you could imagine EV every country has like their own kind of legal database framework that you have to like know where to search and how to find legal data. Our goal with SourceReady is like, because we have suppliers in Vietnam, in our database, we have China, we have Cambodia. We abstract that complexity away. So let's say, you want to do an audit check on a factory in China, you click a button. We'll first check do they have any ongoing lawsuits in China, right? Or is any one in China suing them? Two, we search, have they been flagged by US customs for trans shipping or for other tariff avoidance or duty avoidance? And three, are they on a US sanction list or are their vendors vendor or their suppliers on any sanction list. And I think that's a comprehensive way to basically run a automated ESG and compliance check. And like, if you think about these big organisations they have entire teams whose job is to do what I just mentioned. The challenge however, is that for most small businesses, they don't even know where to get started. They don't even know where to search, how to check, or even know what to check. And I think our goal at SourceReady is like, you don't have to think about it. You just click a button and say run risk analysis or a compliance check, and then we do all these checks for you and generate a report for you. So that's, kind of the goal. Couple of things coming outta that. I guess first off, are there any particular industries or verticals that you're specialising in at the moment? And also to your point about, the big companies having big teams doing this and smaller companies not knowing where to go or how to do it. With that in mind, do I need to have, turnover of tens or hundreds of millions a year to be able to afford SourceReady? Actually no. My goal with SourceReady is to make sourcing something that is much easier for the, the vast majority of small businesses. So the core software is actually free. Today, if you were to go to SourceReady.com, you don't even need to sign up to do a search. Obviously there are certain limitations that we have where only the paid tier has, but even the pay tier is like $95 a month to get started. So this is not an SAP kind of software that only big companies can afford. However, actually a lot of big organisations actually use our software. So I'm not gonna name names, but a lot of these kind of top 500 retailers, their procurement team and sourcing teams are active customers of ours. But having said this. I do think that, with the advent of e-commerce and Shopify and Amazon, there's just so many small businesses popping in and out. Like there's just so many people wanting to start their own brand sell their own products. And I think that has created a huge demand for sourcing. And a lot of these people, these small businesses, they're great at understanding their audience, their customer, their content, their marketing. But I would say the vast majority of these small businesses are not supply chain experts. They don't have the domain expertise of understanding, okay, this is like a product that I should go to Vietnam for because the HS code is like 5601 and like Vietnam has a lower tariff rate than China, and actually Vietnam is better at making this product than China. 99% of businesses, whenever they start their own brand, let's say you wanna start your own clothing brand, by default they think, okay. I'm gonna go to China because China makes everything. But that's actually wrong. China is great at a lot of products, don't get me wrong. But you should definitely take a more analytical and holistic approach when thinking about where you wanna source your product. For example, actually there are a lot of great domestic US suppliers for certain categories. So for example, if you wanna make supplements. that's a very heavily regulated category because you're literally selling things that people are going to eat. You need FDA certification and certain health certifications to sell supplements. And I would say that, if I were a consumer, I would prefer to actually eat USA manufactured products because it's something that I'm gonna eat and I wanna make sure it's safe. And this is one of those things that's like highly automated. So actually US prices are not that much higher than China, assuming you can have the, the volume production. There are certain categories where certain countries are very good at and our goal with SourceReady is like, we think supply chain is a global thing. There are certain things that you should get made domestically. There are certain things that you should get made in China. There are certain things you should get made in Mexico or Argentina or Brazil. And for very big companies, they literally have teams of people, hundreds of people whose job every day is to figure out how to optimise and squeeze their margin and find the best factory in every country in the world. For the vast majority of businesses, they don't have the luxury of doing that. And I think AI is one of those revolutionary technologies of like, you don't have to hire a $200,000 a year procurement professional person to do this or hire a team. AI can obviously not replace a human, but it can do a lot of this analysis work for you spend a hundred bucks and get like a report. At least an initial report. So. I think that's what really gets me excited of just being able to get this thing in the hands of, millions of people. Can it help with emissions? I mean, if I, have suppliers and I've got a list of suppliers in different countries, all of whom are coming in around the same price for whatever widget it is I'm trying to source, can I then differentiate on the emissions factor? So right now we are working with a company called Carbon Sink that does that calculation. By itself we don't. and the reason for that is because calculating, like carbon impact is actually, quite complicated and there's a lot of variance, but yeah, I think there's tons of companies in this space and, you know, we are currently partnering with, with some companies in this space. And in the future when you use SourceReady, we will provide you that data. But that data is coming from like a third party, right? Like, we'll just tell you like carbon sink is helping you calculate how much emissions is generated from that. And how do you ensure trust and transparency in the supplier data? So first of all, like, I think showing the end user where we get the data source from is important. So we actually show you, like, for example when you open a supplier profile and you see that the supplier is working with Nike, we tell you that this data actually comes from US Customs records. Like we'll tell you exactly where the source of data is coming from. That way you, you can judge yourself like whether you believe for example, US Customs data. Some data could be self-reported. So for example, let's say you open a supplier profile and it says the suppliers was founded in 1978. It could be coming from the supplier's own website. And they say, we were founded in 1978. So it's up to you to believe, like, do you believe that, the supplier's self declaration? So I think number one, the first thing to do is, basically being transparent about our data source. And then the second thing I would say is like. let's say right now you have a specific requirement of like a price. Let's say you want to find a specific product for under $6, hypothetically. And a lot of suppliers on their website, they'll actually have like price listings for certain products, but I would say 95% of the time those prices are not actually accurate. And the reason behind that is because first of all, most suppliers will underprice, like, they'll quote a lower price on their website just to get you interested. And then if you actually like contact them, they'll give you a completely different pricing. And that's understandable because there's so many variables that come into play. Like how much like the volume in which you're ordering, are there specific customisations you wanna make? And that's why for us, one of the things that we care about is. We actually do the heavy lifting of actually getting you a quote instead of just showing you what's publicly available. So you think about the most time consuming part about sourcing a product is actually not finding just the, profile of the supplier. It's actually like reaching out to the supplier and telling them your requirements and being like, Hey, I wanna make 500 pieces of this thing. What is your best price? What are your payment terms? Can you meet my deadline? And this is just like a very time consuming back and forth email. Back and forth process that you have to go through. And imagine if you did that with five suppliers, you have to do this five times repeatedly. So the value of what we're trying to do is like, okay, our system will first build you a list, a preliminary list of like 50 suppliers that, at least on a high level match your requirements. And then the AI will reach out to the suppliers. And basically do the heavy lifting of like, asking those questions for you and getting the answers. And then based on those answers, then score each vendor on your criteria. Because as I mentioned, right, like the publicly available information is oftentimes not reflective. the most accurate data is actually like reaching out to the supplier and getting them to directly give you a quote. But that's very time consuming, right? So I think the value of having AI is like. Have AI do the heavy lifting. And going back to my original topic of like how big companies do this, like big companies employ people whose job and many of which are actually stationed in Asia. People whose job is to like do this email back and forth with like multiple suppliers and compare their prices and do this negotiation work. But for most small business owners, you don't have the luxury and time to say I'm gonna, like negotiate and talk with 50 suppliers. The value of AI is actually have AI do a lot of this repetitive, administrative work of okay, I have a list of questions I need to ask each supplier and I need to go back and forth, collect their answers, and then based on their answers, then evaluate which suppliers are the best match for my criteria. So our AI basically does the work for them. So your AI sends an email to the suppliers saying hi, I'm Tom. I wanna make X, you supply Y. Here are the criteria that I have. Yep. What are the answers to these questions? It sends that email, gets the answer back. Does the answer come to me or does it go into SourceReady and SourceReady collates and gives me a report? How does that work? So we integrate with your email. So the supplier does not know this email is a SourceReady generated email. They think it's coming from Tom. So like the email is still like Tom at whatever email you choose to integrate. Right? And then when the supplier replies you, you still see the reply in your inbox. But because we integrate with your inbox, we pull that data in and then we generate a summary report. And in terms of the data we, you've said you're making it more trustworthy by making it more transparent. How about how fresh it is as in we know, for example, the tariffs change from day to day depending on the guy's mood, or who he's talked to more recently. How are you dealing with those kind of swings and roundabouts with, tariffs as one example? But there are lots of other things that change day to day as well. Yeah, so for the high the things that change more frequently, like tariffs, we actually integrate directly with the USCBPs realtime like tariff database. So whenever they update that data, we immediately have the update as well. With regarding like the supplier's profile, we index that data around every four to six weeks. So we refresh the data. That data changes a lot less, right? Like a company profile, like a supplier is not gonna like change their information every, month or two. The data that we do update the most frequently, it actually customs data. That depends on the country. So for example, US data, we have it on a daily basis. So you can literally see like on a daily basis if a particular importer or exporter is shipping a new product into the US. So I can literally tell you like they just shipped a product from Shanghai Port arriving at Los Angeles Port on November 12th on this ship. The value of the goods is $946. It's, under HS code far for. So I can tell you at that granularity and that data is updated on a daily basis. But as I mentioned it, it's very nuanced because not every country's customs agency releases data at that frequency. So, for example, we currently also have data on Indonesia. They don't release the data on a daily basis. They release it on a quarterly basis, which is kind of a annoying, so we get a data dump every three months of all the customs data every three months. And that's something that we can control. That's just like, they just don't, I, I guess they don't have the system or API to like be able to have us, like, they literally dump us at like a file every three months of a couple, a couple gigabyte file of like all the raw records. So it really depends. Right? And, and then there are certain countries in which they used to release data and they stopped releasing. So for example, Russia, like we have data, but from 2018 to 2021 of Russia's import export data. And then starting in 2021, they just stopped releasing it. It's a very nuanced thing, but I would say for the majority of our data that we want, we, we try to keep it as real time as possible. And you said that there are big brands already using SourceReady. What kind of results or efficiencies are they seeing? Yes. So I know a lot of customers at these big companies. They have like three year targets of reducing China dependency. Like that is their goal. Reduce China dependency under a certain percentage, right? So, for the vast majority of the retail names that, you know, like the Walmarts of the world, the Costcos of the world, I would say majority of them have at least 30 to 40% concentration in China. And that's just because China is just this massive manufacturing nation, and most of them have goals of reducing the dependency of this China supply chain, and this is where our value comes in because there are just so many factories outside of China that are super good, that just are very hard to find. So, for example, we we're helping one customer a European retailer. They're trying to find suppliers in Mauritius. Mauritius is like this North African country, close to Europe, and Mauritius I think has some sort of like free trade agreement with France. There are certain products that they manufacture there. We're helping another retailer in the US find suppliers in Egypt because US and Egypt have a free trade agreement and a framework for that. We recently helped an importer try to find cement suppliers in North Africa because the proximity requires that the supplier needs to be in European, dash north African region. So we get all types of requests every day of like people trying to find suppliers in all these like different countries. For these like big companies yes they have their established existing supplier base, but they are also trying to look for new sources of data or new sources of suppliers. And for them, let's say today, they don't have SourceReady. How would they find the Mauritius supplier? A lot of it is very traditional. They basically have to reach out to their own procurement network, reach out to people they know and be like, Hey, do you guys know any good vendors in Mauritius? Or they might have to go to trade shows, or they may have to purchase the data. Right. So the challenge with the industry is that most factories are not very digital. A lot of factories don't even have a website. They don't even have a LinkedIn page, like how would you even find their data. So that's the challenge, right? and I think our goal is to like find them even if they don't wanna be found. I could tell you right now, we have suppliers for Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman in our platform. You could literally see where Lockheed Martin procures parts for their F 35, in our system. And I'm sure a lot of this things like they probably don't want to be found or like want to be seen, but we have their data. So I think this is like one of the interesting use cases of how can we leverage big data to kind of index data that is traditionally very hard to find and index. So if I ever want to build an F 35, I know where to go to. Yeah, and I can tell you right now we have customers in Silicon Valley trying to build high-end robotics, like humanoid robots. So we have a customer actually they use our platform to search where Boston Dynamics and Figure AI and these other leading robotics companies where they source their parts from. Because a lot of these parts, there's literally only two or three companies in the world that can make it like these very high precision actuator things where like there's only this like one German supplier that makes this and this like one German supplier. Everyone if you know, you know, right. Like if you're in the industry, you know who it is, but if you're not in the industry, you can try Googling it, but you're probably not gonna find them. So I think that's like really what's really interesting about the world of procurement, it's like there are these like really high end, good manufacturers that are very low key. And if you're not in the network, you'll never find them. If you are, then, you know. And our goal is you don't need to be in the network. We will help you find that data. So we're shifting from who you know to what you know. Exactly. Right. So there are manufacturers out there who are suddenly getting phone calls who are wondering where are all these phone calls coming from? Actually, yeah, we have suppliers that come to our platform and be like, Hey, we just found a customer through you. Like, can we advertise on your website or something? We're like, sorry, we don't accept your advertising, but glad we helped you find a customer. Because a lot of these suppliers, they actually want to get their name out there. It's just that don't want to spend a lot of money like advertising. Right. Because their customer base are very narrow. You could imagine like for like a. this German high precision actuator supplier, there's probably only a very small handful of customers that actually need them. So how would they advertise themselves? Like it doesn't make sense for them to buy Google ads. most of the customers are probably not searching on Google for this type of factory So, this is why they just don't advertise digitally. But if you ask them like, are you not interested in new customers? Of course they're interested. It's just that it's just very niche. So I think our value is like, we don't even need you to spend money. Even if you don't want to be found, we're, gonna make your information available to people that want, wanna find you. So if AI is freeing people from the grunt work, I guess what comes next for, for humans and sourcing? Let's say we look three to five years out, how do you imagine sourcing will work? Will AI fully automate supplier selection, or will it look like more a human AI partnership? I think as a partnership, and the main reason is because supply chain is a very complicated, It's a very nuanced. There's always trade offs of every decision. So like, let's say three suppliers provide a quote, the one with the lowest price does not mean they're the best supplier. So how do you decide which one to choose? It actually is very nuanced. It depends what are your priorities? So for example, would you prefer to work with a supplier that's cheaper but less established? And do you wanna risk the supplier messing it up, or would you rather pay a premium and have the, the safety of knowing that like this vendor is gonna be a, a more stable partner to work with. And there is no right or wrong answer to this, and this is why there's always a human component because in the end, someone's gonna have to take responsibility if there is a mess up. Right? Imagine if AI made that decision. Who's gonna take the fall? I think what AI is gonna be good at is AI is going to ingest all this data and help you analyze. They'll tell you the pros and cons of choosing each decision. It'll tell you like, Hey, vendor A is cheaper, but blah, blah, blah, blah. Vendor B is more expensive, but blah, blah, blah. Based on your requirements, we think that A could be better for whatever reason, but ultimately it is your decision, right? So I think what AI is gonna be, it's gonna be like this all knowing, very smart, analytical thing that has very bad intuition. Like I think humans have really good intuition and it's very hard, for AI to have intuition because it doesn't have the context of what a human has. But I think AI is actually much better at humans at being very analytical and ingesting this huge volume of data. The AI can, very quickly tell you the exact different tariff rates across these different countries and like tell you the estimated landed costs and pros and cons of working with different suppliers. As a human I'm pretty sure most people, if I gave you a hundred quotes from suppliers in 30 countries, your mind would not be able to comprehend all the variations of pros and cons and I think AI is gonna actually be much better at humans at doing this. But in the end. It takes a human to understand the nuanced and, and make the hard calls of like, okay there's definitely a trade off with each decision. Which decision makes the most sense at this moment? And I think humans are always gonna be in the main seat of making that decision. What about something like a role for generative design, like going from product ideas straight to supplier shortlist. Yeah, actually that's a very good question. I think AI is gonna be a huge enablement for people who have an idea but don't have the design capabilities. And to be frank with you, most brands are not really doing innovative design. They are copying what is existing in the market and making very small variations and changes to it. And I think in that world, AI is gonna be really great. AI is gonna be good at, like, let's say you like a Ralph Lauren polo shirt, but you want to take your own, you wanna have your own change to it. Maybe like you wanna change the material and you want to add your own company logo and you want to make it more fashionable, right? AI can generate a hundred variations based on this concept, but it still takes the final human to like make the call of which one you think makes the most sense. There are gonna be certain more design oriented companies that will not be able to fully leverage AI because their entire company is, is a design. So like, the less commercial, I guess your brand is like the more design heavy, like imagine your designer brand. I don't think they're gonna be using AI to generate. To be honest, this is my, my belief, like I think you're still gonna have that artisan approach of like doing it, but that's like the 0.1% of retail. 99 .9% of all consumer products are just people copying each other and like making small changes. So I think AI is gonna be a huge, huge, huge enablement of that. And, and going from that to, like I say, a supplier list? Yeah. So I think the, first of all, like build, building that list AI is gonna make it much easier because it's gonna be able to tell you which exact vendors can actually make that specific spec, that material at the price point and MOQ that you need to. And then after building that list of a hundred, it's gonna be able to do the heavy lifting of reaching out to all a hundred, doing the back and forth communication across time zones and languages get you the quotes, analyzes the pros and cons of each quote and each supplier, and then you just make the final call. It's gonna democratise it. A lot of people today don't start their own brand or their own or do their own sourcing because. it's just the amount of work it takes. Even finding the list of suppliers and then reaching out to each of them, and then understanding the nuances of tariffs and how do you negotiate, how do you know you're not getting ripped off, et cetera. Like this is hundreds of hours of work and even then you could be making a huge mistake. The example I like to give is like, vibe coding is like a super popular term now, like Lovable and these things are allowing non-software people to create software very quickly. I think our goal with SourceReady is to allow anyone with an idea to manufacture anything without being a supply chain expert. So let's say today I want to make my own skincare brand and I need to source a factory that can make. UV skincare that can, also, for example, act as makeup. So with that idea, how can we have AI help you actually find all the factories in the world that can make that specific material or that ingredient, and then have AI reach out to them and then give you, the answers that you need. And I think like it's just gonna create so much opportunity for people with ideas but don't know how to get started and don't understand supply chain. And of course, this being the resilient supply chain podcast, you want to be able to have multiple suppliers in multiple regions such that if there is some kind of, let's say, climate, catastrophe, flood, fire, whatever, you have backup suppliers in other regions who can swoop in so that you don't have downtime. I think the common thing I wanted to mention is like, you want to be proactive instead of being passive. So I think what a lot of companies do is they, they scramble too late. So they, always think things are, going well until they're not. And they realise, oh my God, we need to quickly, like, restructure. I think what's gonna need to happen is, first of all you need to take a resilience and diversification approach to sourcing even when things are going well because it's, of course, it's easy to just source everything in from one place, but that's only the case when things are going well, right? And I think what's interesting about where AI is gonna come into play is it can start monitoring your supply chain proactively for you. So it could tell you, like right now, 60% of your production is happening overly concentrated in China. Let me recommend three vendors in Vietnam that can make the same thing for you that are similar to your, your current vendor in China. And this kind of concept of like monitoring the supply chain and proactively giving you recommendations of what to do, I think will make this resilience much, much easier because a lot of people just don't know where to get started, right? Like I already have six suppliers in China that I work with. I don't even know how to switch. So our goal is like, we'll just analyze it for you and we'll just recommend these alternative options without you having to like be super knowledgeable and spend all this time. If you could give one piece of advice to procurement leaders trying to future proof their sourcing strategies, what would it be? I think the first thing, as I mentioned since we're talking about resilience, is like source for multiple cos. And then another advice that I would have is like don't only look at price. There's a over tendency especially for commercial brands, especially even for big companies. They get over fixated on, the, the unit economics, but they actually fail to realise that there are other costs, indirect costs that are associated outside of production costs. So for example, tariff risk is a cost, sourcing everything from one place is a cost that you will inherit eventually. It's just delayed cost. Time is a cost, right? Sourcing from China is great, but 14 days of shipping is a long time. If you were to source this in Mexico or US, you could cut that to three days. So there are a lot of different costs that I think hard to quantify and because it's hard to quantify people tend to underemphasize it and they overemphasize the things that are easy to quantify, which is just like the direct cost. And I think with AI, this problem is gonna be much, better because AI is gonna bring up all these different variables and tell you proactively like, even though the supplier is cheaper, but here are all the reasons why, like, it might actually end up being more expensive working with them because of all these other factors. I don't think it should be a race to the bottom. I guess. Like you should not just be like sending out a hundred quotes and choosing the first vendor with the lowest cost. You should take a multi-factor approach to sourcing. Understand there's a pros and cons of each decision and choosing the most balanced decision is oftentimes the best one. We're coming towards the end of the podcast now, Ricky, is there any question that I didn't ask that you wish I had, or any aspect of this we haven't touched on that you think it's important for people to be aware of? Nope. I think we, you mentioned most of the things and just to emphasize SourceReady is completely free to try. So anyone that needs to source any product feel free to try it out. And, and yeah, I hope I really do hope that the tool can make a lot of small businesses lives easier. Cool. Great. Ricky, if people would like to know more about yourself or any of the things we discussed in the podcast today, where would you have me direct them? They can go to my LinkedIn or they can go to sourceready.com directly. and we have customer support so they can also ask questions through that. Ricky, that's been really interesting. Thanks a million for coming on the podcast today. Thank you so much. Okay. Thanks everyone for listening to this episode of the Resilient Supply Chain Podcast with me, Tom Raftery. Every week, thousands of senior supply chain and sustainability leaders tune in to learn what's next in resilience, innovation, and transformation. If your organisation wants to reach this influential global audience, the people shaping the future of supply chains, consider partnering with the show. Sponsorship isn't just brand visibility, it's thought leadership, credibility, and direct engagement with the decision makers driving change. To explore how we can spotlight your story or your solutions, connect with me on LinkedIn or drop me an email at Tom at tom Raftery dot com. Let's collaborate to build smarter, more resilient, more sustainable supply chains together. Thanks for tuning in, and I'll catch you all in the next episode.