Short On Everything But Service

Ports are backed up. Chassis are in short supply. Chip shortages are stalling car production. Truckers are aging out of the workforce and nobody is lining up to replace them. When the entire logistics chain is under this much strain, the thing that still separates one shipping partner from another is not price. It is whether they actually pick up the phone and solve your problem.

Pearl Ausch, Chief Operating Officer at First Choice Shipping, joined Michael Maher to talk about running an Amazon global expansion logistics business through the worst supply chain environment in recent memory, and why service, not just software, is what earned her company Amazon's trust in the first place.

From a Brooklyn Back Room to Amazon's Referral List

First Choice Shipping helps Amazon sellers expand from one marketplace, usually the US, into the 18 other marketplaces Amazon operates worldwide, handling everything from product approvals to labeling, licensing, and tax registration. Pearl Ausch told Michael Maher how her tiny, five person company operating out of 1,300 square feet in Brooklyn ended up as Amazon's number one recommended provider for global expansion. It started with Amazon reps meeting First Choice clients at a CES show in Vegas, asking what made their onboarding process work, and emailing Ausch the same night.

"We were this tiny little company in Brooklyn, that like, literally 1300 square feet, like five of us... the rest is history."

— Pearl Ausch, Chief Operating Officer at First Choice Shipping

One team's referral led to another, then another, until First Choice was working directly with Amazon to help build the shipping model for new marketplace launches like the UAE and Singapore.

Service Is Not a Nice to Have in an Old Fashioned Industry

Ausch was blunt about the shipping industry's reputation: it is old fashioned, and customer service is often an afterthought. She built First Choice around the opposite premise, refusing to accept that a company has to choose between being a strong technology provider and being genuinely responsive to clients.

"Service for me is literally the number one thing, like nothing else really matters."

— Pearl Ausch, Chief Operating Officer at First Choice Shipping

That discipline cuts both ways. When First Choice offered ocean freight services but felt its technology for that offering was not ready, the company pulled it from its lineup entirely rather than deliver a mediocre version. It only came back once the systems supporting it were solid.

Inside the Supply Chain Mess

Michael Maher pressed Ausch on what was actually driving the chaos making headlines. Her answer: a mix of real shortages and real price gouging. Container and chassis shortages left freight sitting at ports. Ocean carriers that once offered a cheaper, non guaranteed shipping option saw that option effectively disappear as demand spiked, leaving shippers stuck paying premium rates with no alternative. Ausch pointed out that ocean carriers posted historic profits as a result.

"It's a disaster... there's a shortage of containers, the prices are astronomically high, which, you know, to be quite honest and frank, based on insider information, there's a lot of price gouging."

— Pearl Ausch, Chief Operating Officer at First Choice Shipping

She also flagged the labor side of the problem: many truckers are in their fifties and sixties, and government mandates pushing for round the clock operations do not account for the fact that the workforce needed to staff those extra hours simply does not exist yet, even with higher pay on offer.

The Pandemic Didn't Create Ecommerce Adoption, It Forced It

Michael Maher and Pearl Ausch agreed that the pandemic didn't just boost existing online shoppers, it pushed reluctant, often older, customers into ecommerce for the first time, and many never went back. Ausch pointed to her own seventy year old grandmother, who learned to order through Amazon and her local grocery app during the pandemic and still uses both today. Maher connected this to Amazon's own data: in its 2020 shareholder letter, Amazon reported that 28% of purchase decisions happen in three minutes or less, and 50% in fifteen minutes or less, a pace that puts pressure on every brand to tell its story fast.

Running the Business Through the Chaos

Ausch credited the Entrepreneurial Operating System, EOS, with keeping First Choice functional and accountable while conditions outside the business kept shifting. Weekly leadership meetings track scorecards and quarterly priorities, called rocks, and give every department a structured way to raise issues and solve them together rather than letting problems sit in scattered emails and unproductive meetings.

"I don't want you to be perfect. I'm not perfect... I want you to mess up, because that's how we're going to learn."

— Pearl Ausch, Chief Operating Officer at First Choice Shipping

What This Means for Brands

• Don't assume shipping delays are only about capacity. Some of the cost increase is pure opportunism, so shop your logistics partners.
• Build relationships with logistics providers who pick up the phone, not just the ones with the lowest quote.
• Diversify beyond one marketplace or one channel. Volatility in any single channel is now the norm, not the exception.
• Assume customers are deciding fast. Your product story needs to land in minutes, not paragraphs.
• Run your own operations with the same discipline you expect from your supply chain. Structure and accountability internally make external chaos easier to absorb.

To hear the full conversation between Michael Maher and Pearl Ausch on navigating the toughest supply chain environment in years, watch the full episode of The Longer Game.