A packaging change is a data change, and most brands don't treat it as one. An item profile gets built months in advance, pitched to a retailer as a 12-pack, and then a new channel wants six or eight to a box. Nobody updates the profile. The POs arrive at the warehouse and the unit measures don't marry.

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Matt Johnson and Floyd Blaikie sit down with Leo Rodriguez, VP at River Plate, Inc., a 3PL in Southern California. Leo took the data side, which is a more interesting position than it sounds coming from the person whose team physically touches the box.

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Floyd opens by reading a line from his LinkedIn back to Matt: the operation is only as clean as the data behind it. What follows is what that looks like at the end of the chain. Bad mapping that shows a green check mark. ASNs going out wrong for two weeks. Chargebacks that surface six months later, when corrective action is no longer an option.

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👤 Guest Bio

Leo Rodriguez is Vice President at River Plate, Inc., a family-owned third-party logistics provider in Simi Valley, California. The business started as local trucking and freight in Los Angeles and now runs a 138,000 square foot facility covering e-commerce fulfillment, wholesale and retail distribution, value-added services, cross-docking, and freight logistics. Leo has been there 17 years, going into his eighteenth. He joined without a supply chain background, took courses online, and learned the operation on the floor.

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📌 What We Cover

• Why the item profile and the purchase order stop matching, and why the 3PL is the last to know
• What happens when a brand sets up a 12-pack, then sells the same SKU as a six-pack on a different channel
• Why a green check mark on an integration doesn't mean the data arrived correctly downstream
• The mapping change on a tech provider's back end that nobody communicated until Target sent an email
• Chargebacks that don't surface until six months after the mistake, and what that does to corrective action
• The onboarding red flag: five bullet points sent to a brand, two of them answered
• Pre-mapped connections to Walmart Marketplace and Shopify versus a REST API and what each one lets you control
• The reverse logistics client who built his own returns dashboard with Claude and connected it in 15 minutes
• Leo's advice: test the reality, not the PowerPoint, and go past go live before you believe it works

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🔗 Resources Mentionedㅤ

• River Plate, Inc. (RFQ page and discovery call)
• Walmart Marketplace
• Shopify
• Claude
• Target
• Kohl's
• Amazon
• Salesforce