Cascale Hosts Roundtable at Reuters Supply Chain USA in Chicago

June 16, 2025 11:10 PM AEST | By 3BL

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Cascale Hosts Roundtable at Reuters Supply Chain USA in Chicago — Image source: Kalkine Media

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At the recent Reuters Supply Chain USA event in Chicago, hundreds of manufacturing and consumer goods stakeholders convened under the theme “Navigate Complexity in an Era of Uncertainty.”

The two-day event brought together a diverse range of supply chain professionals across freight, logistics, and manufacturing for products in beauty, fashion, tech, and more. Acknowledged throughout the programming was the rapid rise of artificial intelligence across industries, as well as the impact of tariffs on global trade and sourcing.

Representing an apparel perspective, Cascale hosted a sustainability session titled “Reframing Resilience: How to Win While Still Greening the Supply Chain.” The roundtable drew executives from retail, private equity, supply chain planning, data, and tech, including Ulta Beauty and the B Corp-certified logistics company, Flock Freight. The session hit on critical points for today’s decision-maker, including sustainability commitments, supplier diversification, regionality in sourcing and climate risk, geopolitical awareness.

In another session, Nikhil Abuja, director of last-mile planning and supply chain at Amazon, a Cascale member, took the stage alongside speakers from FedEx and The Circular Supply Chain Network. Abuja spoke about scaling analytics and capturing customer data on deliveries to improve efficiency – noting that agility and adaptability are critical to logistical success. His team is also responsible for adding electric vehicles to the delivery fleet.

Similarly, Uber Freight’s Eric Berdinis, director of product management, focused on digitizing the entire supply chain – a $200-billion-dollar offshoot business for the rideshare app. By investing in guaranteed upfront pricing and bundled bookings, Uber Freight was able to reduce roughly four million empty miles. In his session, he played a video demonstrating new feats from Uber Freight like driverless semi-trucks and generative AI supply chain agents with uncanny likeness to humans because of “natural language” use, including pauses.

In a conversation that echoed one taking place in fashion Erik Lopez, chief supply chain officer at Ulta Beauty, introduced a concept of “fast beauty” wherein the beauty retailer is super responsive to changing consumer trends – not unlike fashion. Ulta Beauty also relies heavily on split-cart fulfillment, with some 40 percent of purchases being Buy Online Pickup in Store, or BOPIS. “It’s really about amplifying and enabling our team rather than replacing them,” he said. The conference closed with a session on workforce empowerment for building resilient supply chains.

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