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Chain Reaction

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Every product carries its supply chain inside it. The materials a designer picks, the factories that can make it, and the miles it travels are decided long before anything ships. Chain Reaction follows one everyday product per episode, link by link, to show how those early choices set the cost, the speed and the risk of everything that follows.

supply chain basics, tier-two visibilityAll six stages: Design to Service

Chain Reaction · Ep 1 · · Episode, 6:30

Where Your Products Come From

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The supply chain lesson

A supply chain is three flows, not one: goods move forward, money moves back, and information moves both ways. Most surprises start at tier two and beyond, the suppliers your suppliers buy from, where most companies see much less. Question for your team: who are our critical tier-two suppliers, and who here knows their names?

Key points

  • Global container volumes hit a record of about 17.46 million TEUs (twenty-foot containers) in August, the most ever in a month. Source: FreightWaves, "Global container volumes hit record 17.46 million TEUs," Oct 8, 2026 (data: Container Trades Statistics).
  • One late part can stop a whole production line, which is why factories care about suppliers being on time, not just cheap. Source: the episode's own explanation (no figure).
  • Small changes in demand at the store turn into big swings up the chain: the bullwhip effect. Source: the episode's own explanation (no figure).
global sourcing, returns and reverse logisticsAll six stages: Design to Service

Chain Reaction · Ep 3 · · Episode, 1:10

Your Hoodie Has a Passport

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The supply chain lesson

A plain cotton hoodie crosses several borders before it reaches a store, because fiber, spinning and sewing each happen where they make the most sense. The trip doesn't end at the door: online orders come back more often, and the return leg is a supply chain of its own. Question for your team: do we plan and cost our returns as carefully as our outbound freight?

Key points

  • In 2025 the U.S. imported $7.35 billion of cotton knit sweatshirts, pullovers and similar tops. Vietnam supplied 20.7%, Cambodia 10.8% and China 8.7%. Source: UN Comtrade, U.S. imports of HS 611020, 2025 annual data (pulled Oct 19, 2026).
  • Online sales were 17.1% of U.S. retail in Q2 2026, growing 12.2% year over year against 6.7% for all retail. Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Quarterly Retail E-Commerce Sales, 2nd Quarter 2026, Aug 18, 2026.
  • Retailers expected 15.8% of 2025 sales to be returned, about $849.9 billion, and 19.3% of online sales. Source: National Retail Federation with Happy Returns, 2025 Retail Returns Landscape, Oct 15, 2025.
sourcing concentrationAll six stages: Design to Service

Chain Reaction · Ep 2 · · Episode, 3:49

Your $7 Latte's Hidden Supply Chain

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The supply chain lesson

A single drink depends on coffee, milk, pumpkin, four spices and a cup, each with its own chain, all planned to meet at the same moment. Some of those links rest on one region or even one plant, and that's where the risk sits. Question for your team: which of our inputs comes from a single site, and what's our plan if it goes down?

Key points

  • One plant in Morton, Illinois packs about 85% of the world's canned pumpkin. Source: Investigate Midwest, "Where do your pumpkins come from? Illinois keeps the crown," Oct 13, 2025.
  • Illinois grew about 533 million pounds of pumpkins in 2025, slightly more than the next four states combined, and nearly 70% of its pumpkin acres go to processing. Source: USDA Economic Research Service, "Pumpkins: Background & Statistics," updated Sep 29, 2026.
  • Spices are concentrated too: China, Vietnam and Indonesia grew about 90% of the world's cinnamon, India grew 48% of its ginger, and Indonesia grew 74% of its cloves. Source: FAOSTAT 2024 data, via Commodity Origins (cinnamon, ginger and cloves pages).
spend audit, contract complianceSource & Procure

FSA Scout · · Video, 2:08

Meet Scout: It Audits Every Line Your Accounts Payable Paid

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The supply chain lesson

Most accounts payable tools look for duplicate payments, but most of the leakage sits in price terms nobody enforces after the contract is signed. FSA Scout reads the exports your systems already produce and checks every invoice line against the contract, so each claim points to the clause, the invoice line and the file row behind it. Scout's results so far come from AI Stress Tests, not live client data.

Key points

  • In AI Stress Test 1, run on fictional data with planted leaks, 71% of what Scout found was in price terms no one enforced. Duplicates were 1.2%. Source: FSA internal test write-up (unpublished), "FSA Scout: How It Works, How It Helps, How It Is Tested," Oct 21, 2026.
  • The test data held 17 planted leaks and 19 decoys. Scout matched all 53,894 answer-key rows to the cent, flagged 0 of the 19 decoys, and claimed $0.00 on a clean copy of the data. Source: same FSA internal test write-up (unpublished), Oct 21, 2026.
  • In the same test, one planted, unannounced 4.6% price increase made up 38% of everything Scout found ($354,747 on $37.4 million of fictional test spend). These amounts show what Scout can find and prove, not what a typical company loses. Source: same FSA internal test write-up (unpublished), Oct 21, 2026.

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