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I tried to be a good dad on Sunday night. My ten-year-old Grace had finally saved up for a Michael Jackson record (don’t judge me), and I did my best to point her at Bondi Records. Good price, five to ten days delivery. She wasn't having a bar of it. Same record on Amazon, five bucks more, there tomorrow. She immediately picked tomorrow, then asked if it'd turn up before school. That's the customer we're all selling to now.
So this one felt timely. It's Shippit’s Exclusive on their annual 2026 State of Shipping Report, and I've got Rob Hango-Zada back on with David Bauer, GM Customer at Amart Furniture. Dave and I go way back to our Super Retail days, where he laughed at my team working out of a windowless shed in the car park (he tells that story better than I do). Rob brings the data across the whole fulfilment market. Dave brings the perspective of a large, growing omnichannel operation where delivery is a personal experience. They get into the gap that's quietly costing retailers sales, and why Amart counts a late delivery as a broken promise rather than just another logistics stat.
Cheers
Bushy
EXCLUSIVE CHEAT SHEET
How Amart Holds Itself Accountable for Broken Promises: Inside Shippit's State of Shipping Report
⏭️ SKIP TO THE GOOD BITS
Why the last ten metres can make or break the brand (06:19)
Four in five retailers still expect growth in 2026 (09:01)
How Amart differentiates without racing to the bottom (10:13)
The two report stats that surprised Dave (13:14)
The Amazon-trained customer (and Nathan's Michael Jackson story) (16:51)
Broken promises as a weekly leadership metric (18:55)
The promise gap, and why it's a fulfilment problem not a carrier one (22:11)
The rattle surcharge and where delivery pricing is heading (33:35)
💬 QUOTE OF THE DAY
"Your last best experience is your new expectation."
🧠 THE BIG LESSON
Stop measuring orders. Start measuring promises.
Every business makes a promise at the point of sale and then either keeps it or breaks it. Most retailers measure the operational version of that promise (orders outstanding, SLA adherence) and wonder why nobody in the building seems to care. Amart measures the human version, and it changes who pays attention.
Step 1: Find your promise gap
The gap between what you tell a customer at checkout and what actually happens is where conversion leaks. Shippit's 2026 report puts the average checkout promise at 5.2 days, compared with an actual delivery time of 2.2 days once an order is in the network. That difference isn't poor performance; it's retailers guessing conservatively because they can't see where the stock will ship from.
There's a whole cohort of retailers that only know where an item is going to be fulfilled from after a purchase is made.
Step 2: Rename the metric so the team cares
Amart doesn't track unfulfilled orders. They track broken promises, and they put the graph in front of leadership every single week. Same data, different language, completely different level of accountability.
It's not just another metric. It actually has some emotion and some meaning behind it. We've made a commitment, and as a business we have to honour that.
Step 3: Fix it upstream, not on the road
Speed isn't won by the courier. Once the couch is on the truck, Amart is good. The gap sits earlier: inventory visibility, stock in the right place, and store teams who treat an online order with the same urgency as a walk-in. Amart now puts online transactions into store P&Ls, so the incentive lines up.
Sometimes it's not even the systems. Sometimes it's the culture of the business and how able the store staff are to serve the mission of the online.
Whatever you sell, find the gap between what you promise and what you deliver, give it a name people can feel, and review it where decisions are made. Shippit's data backs the payoff: shoppers shown an accurate delivery estimate are almost 30% more likely to buy.
✏️ ECOMMERCE ACTION TIPS
Get an accurate delivery date live on your product pages and checkout, not an eight-hour window, because precise promises convert. (~14:55)
Rename your fulfilment metric to "broken promises" and review it weekly at the leadership level so the whole room gets it. (~18:55)
Include online transactions in store P&Ls so that store teams fulfil web orders with the same urgency as they do for walk-in customers. (~25:34)
Look at a premium white-glove delivery tier for your signature range, where the loyalty payoff outweighs the service cost. (~39:01)
Turn off free returns and invest in easy returns instead, using store credit or exchange to keep the dollars inside the brand. (~41:37)
🎧 OTHER EPS YOU MIGHT LIKE
Why Most Ecommerce Brands Get Fulfilment Wrong (And What It's Costing Them) | EP622
Dave's point that the hard part sits upstream, before the courier ever turns up, runs right through this one. SKUTOPIA founder Talea Bader goes deep on where brands get fulfilment wrong, when to move to a 3PL, and what it costs you to get it wrong.
8-Minute Deliveries?! The APAC Retail Trends That Will Blow Your Mind | EP504
The promise gap is really a story about expectations resetting faster than retailers can keep up. Ryf Quail, the man behind NRF Retail's Big Show Asia Pacific, zooms out to the APAC trends, eight-minute deliveries included, that are doing the resetting.
It's Not Digital, It's Just Retail with Freedom's Paula Mitchell | EP624
If the broken promises idea landed, so will the argument that certainty beats speed for big, high-consideration purchases. Paula Mitchell, Digital GM at Freedom, takes you inside one of the country's most awarded omnichannel furniture operations and why chasing faster delivery can be the wrong focus.
💬 CONTINUE THE CONVERSATION
This episode (and report) is full of things worth arguing about. Does your business track a promise gap, and would you dare put it in front of leadership every week? Have you turned off free returns yet, or is it still too scary? Is a white-glove delivery tier a genuine loyalty play or just a cost you can't recover? Existing members and newcomers welcome.
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