The supply chain is no longer a back-office problem Ecommerce brand owners used to treat fulfillment as an afterthought. Shipping times, supplier reliability, and inventory accuracy now show up directly in customer reviews and repeat purchase rates. A brand can run a strong ad campaign and still lose the customer at checkout or in the two weeks after, simply because the product arrived late or wrong. Shelton Powell is the founder of Cart Capital, an ecommerce infrastructure company that has been involved in building hundreds of online brands. He is currently developing a separate product sourcing and fulfillment company built to give brand operators more control over their supply chain.