The Story Behind Fred Smith, FedEx's CEO

Supply Chain
Written By Rick Watson

If you know anything about Fred Smith FedEx, he's someone who's incredibly clear in his convictions, does not like to be pushed around, and is not afraid to stonewall the other side if he feels it's to his advantage.

Besides being a Marine veteran of Vietnam, he has stonewalled the increase of unions (outside of the pilot's union) at FedEx at every turn, threatened to pull a massive order of Boeing plans in 2009 if Congress passed legislation which included his employees in a new Labor Act.  He threatened to destroy the careers of Congresspeople who promoted the legislation."

And now, don't look so surprised when FedEx went its own way vis-a-vis #Amazon.  I expect we have two extremely strong-willed men in Jeff Bezos and Fred Smith.  Amazon likely had huge demands on both price and network flexibility and Fred Smith is not at all afraid to tell them to take a hike.

Kudos to one of my readers for shedding light on this thread of the discussion.

Rick Watson

Rick Watson founded RMW Commerce Consulting after spending 20+ years as a technology entrepreneur and operator exclusively in the eCommerce industry with companies like ChannelAdvisor, BarnesandNoble.com, Merchantry, and Pitney Bowes.

Watson’s work today is centered on supporting investors and management teams incubating and growing direct-to-consumer businesses. Most recently, in partnership with WHP Global, Rick was a critical resource in architecting the WHP+ platform, a new turnkey direct to consumer digital e-commerce platform that powers AnneKlein.com and JosephAbboud.com.

Watson also hosts a weekly podcast, Watson Weekly, where he shares an unbiased, unfiltered expert take on the retail sector’s biggest players.

In the past year alone, Rick has spoken at many in-person and virtual events as well as podcasts on topics ranging from retail/ecom to supply chain/logistics and even digital grocery including CommerceNext IRL, ASCM Connect, and Retail Innovation Conference.

https://www.rmwcommerce.com/
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