A Q&A with SVP - Head of Sales,
Steve Towarnicki
Steve Towarnicki joined our team in February of 2023 as Deliveright’s SVP, Head of Sales, bringing with him his background managing sales around the globe and his passion for using data and technology to help companies better serve their customers. Read on to learn how he uses his experience to help Deliveright streamline the supply chain.
Your career in sales and marketing has encompassed work at companies of all sizes and taken you all over the world. What skills do you bring from this background to your work at Deliveright?
I’ve been in sales and marketing my entire career, and, thanks to my experiences in start-up-like environments, I’m passionate about having a hand in building a company during crucial growth phases. I began my career at dunnhumby, and I was a key part of launching the company’s operations in both Canada and India. At Deliveright, we have an incredibly solid base and cutting-edge technology, but we’re always continuing to lay new infrastructure as part of the nation’s supply chain—this year we expanded our network to cover all 50 states. That means I get to use my experience at rapidly scaling companies every day. So much of working in the logistics sector is understanding the human impact of the supply chain on everyone from the warehouse workers handling an item, to the drivers transporting and delivering it, to the customer receiving it. I have spent my career working to create environments where both clients and team members feel empowered, which gives me unique perspective into how we can leverage our technology to create a better supply chain for operators and retailers, and a better delivery experience for customers.
How did you become interested in the supply chain?
I had been paying attention to the rise of digital commerce and the move away from a brick-and-mortar model for a while, which drove my interest in the technology facilitating residential deliveries. I knew it was a sector that would only grow, and I wanted to know what the most innovative consumer supply chain solutions looked like.
“I’ve been in sales and marketing my entire career, and, thanks to my experiences in start-up-like environments, I’m passionate about having a hand in building a company during crucial growth phases.”
What really clinched my interest, though, was my most recent move. I’ve lived and worked all over the world, from Canada, to the United States, and so you can imagine I’ve done my fair share of moving. But in 2020 my wife and I decided to buy a single-family home in the northern suburbs of Chicago, which was a big change for us. Of course, 2020 was a time of chaos and over-burdening throughout the logistics sector. My family was ordering and shipping a lot of items, and our experience with big and bulky shipping in particular was very stressful. It highlighted the importance of an effective supply chain and showed me first hand how important fully integrated, end-to-end logistics technology is for both retailers and customers.
What do you think the future of supply chain innovation holds?
I think the future of supply chain innovation will be a more interconnected network of retailers, manufacturers, and logistics companies, linked by a streamlined technology- I’m sure it’s no surprise that I believe Grasshopper is that technology. This kind of synchronicity, implemented at scale across the supply chain with the integrated end-to-end OMS/WMS/TMS technology of Grasshopper, will remove friction while saving companies time and money. This ultimately ends up improving the experience for every stakeholder along the way.
Everyone feels better when they have transparency and access to information. The same principle is true for those making purchases online, and for those managing the delivery of those purchases: Everyone wants to know where a product is, when it’s expected to arrive at its next location, and any other pertinent information. In the future of the supply chain, which we’re working to help bring about through current and developing features on our platform, this information needs to be automated, integrated, and easily available—all of which is true within the Grasshopper platform.
