Being Human in Business and Bringing New Products to Life with Zack Leonard

-Brought to you by Salim Omar, CPA and the Ecommerce Money Map Podcast.

Zack Leonard is the CPO, Chief Product Officer, President, and Co-founder of Gembah. The company helps Amazon and ecommerce sellers design, research, manufacture, and promote their products. Leonard started from the ground up, working for the 'unicorn company'-Instacart, helping build the Texas markets from zero to seven figures in weekly gross merchandise value.

Leonard has a Bachelor's Degree in Business Administration from Texas McCombs School of Business. He lives with his wife, daughter, and two dogs in Austin, Texas. He can be reached through LinkedIn and through his website.

Backstory: Zack Leonard

Leonard began his career after school, by leaping into a consulting position at KPMG. He helped banks assess their credit risk operations. He then moved on to Instacart. "I had an itch to get into the startup world and I got lucky."

As one of the first employees at Instacart he had the privilege of watching the company develop from Series A to 'unicorn status'. His experiences at Instacart helped foster relationships with other popular companies including Costco and Whole Foods. Most impressively, Leonard helped grow these markets from zero to seven figures in GMB on a weekly basis. 

Leonard went on to work for other startups in Texas before branching out on his own. 

"I got the itch to do my own thing. I was down in the last mile of logistics and supply chain and always thought that there was more value to be had higher up in the supply chain," says Leonard.

This is where he found that his purpose was helping others, especially small to midsize businesses who needed assistance and didn't necessarily have the resources to help them create products or find manufacturers. This led to the founding of his current company, Gembah.

Over the past 5 years, since the company's inception, Gembah has helped bring over a thousand products to the market and continues to thrive.

How do you maintain your purpose and your vision?

Our management team is purpose and value driven. Leonard explains that the name of his company "Gembah literally translates into the Japanese Kaizen manufacturing theory-the place where value is created. This is part of our main purpose- we always want to bring value to our customers.

Why the focus on Japanese culture and ideology?

Like many, Leonard finds Japanese culture extremely fascinating. He became more invested after a visit to Japan a few years ago. "I was blown away by how nice the Japanese were to everybody, how great the ecosystem and efficiency levels are and their deep-rooted culture," says Leonard.

Challenges that Leonard faced and how he addressed them

"I think the most obvious challenge that any business that's been around for the last few years has been the pandemic. We had to rapidly adapt. We fostered it from the get-go because we had a team in China. We wanted to have local support for small and midsize businesses in the countries that they're doing manufacturing. When China shut down, the US shut down as well. We had to move pretty quickly. From a marketing standpoint we were still, very early in our funding journey. We had to adopt a digital marketing strategy. While the pandemic was terrible for the world, it helped strengthen relationships during the ecommerce boom.

Current challenges

"Our current challenges are now focused more on ecommerce, including the slow down of the economy in real time. It's a seesaw that could go one way or another. Cool and calm heads will prevail in these kinds of uncharted waters," says Leonard. "The fact that we're still here and doing well is a testament to the team that we have created, fostered and grown over the course of the last five years. You have to tune out the noise and make sure that you can stay calm and focused."

Mindset, building a team and a culture that helps prevail through the downs

According to Leonard, when you bring people together you feel the culture of togetherness. This is priceless in terms of the ROI that you get from bringing people together at events.

How do you help your clients through the innovation process?

Budget and time constraints when adopting technology for innovation purposes

According to Leonard, this depends on how fast the company wants to move. "The easiest way to get something out in the market is to take something that exists and make some slight changes to it," he adds.

You can make slight tweaks to something that's already been created, allowing for time and budget that is much lower than if you're doing something that's completely new.



If you're bringing new technology to the world, you will have to go through a long expensive testing cycle that could take years.

How does the innovation platform at Gembah help ecommerce business?

• It matches the expertise to the product, into the client. 
• It shortens the time because you're working with people who've done it before versus trying to go do it yourself. 
• You are receiving expertise at the click of a button. 
• You are going to save you a ton of cost, because of the buying power that our team has in the factories. 
• We help your business scale faster by getting production moving.

Advice from Zack Leonard for ecommerce business owners

"Treat your manufacturing partner as they should be treated-with respect and dignity. People often overlook the relationship that they have with their factories. They are human, they're a business and they are trying to help you win as well," says Leonard.

Is there a book that you read or podcast you listened to that helped you in your career?

Leonard recommends The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. "I think it is the one book that you can constantly go back to and keep reading. It allows a deep understanding of what it is to be proactive. Begin with the end in mind," he says.

Closing Statement

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