Twill is a story of innovation and growth. We aim to innovate the user experience of buying freight in order to make it as easy as buying a pair of shoes on Amazon. For industries not familiar with shipping, this may sound kind of unambitious, however for those working with shipping everyday this would sound like a figment of a child’s imagination.
It is indeed a tall order and it will take lots of new ideas and lots of energy to defy what is commonly understood to be ‘how we do things’.
An impossible task?
In a recent speech from our (Maersk) Chairman Jim Hagemann Snabe, he told a tale of the sun-powered flight “Solar Impulse 2”, which successfully circled the globe 100% powered by the sun.
To succeed in this task the plane itself had to have a massive surface and at the same time be super lightweight. When talking to engineers in the aviation industry this task was defined as impossible. Not accepting this answer, Bertrand Piccard reached out to the sailboat building industry – and the rest is history.
The plane was built and it succeeded on its mission of circling the globe. When Piccard was asked why the engineers of the sail-boat industry succeeded on a task that the aviation engineers had deemed impossible, he answered (very simple actually) that the engineers from the sailboat industry did not know it was impossible – they had never tried it before.
That is how I see Twill. We don’t know it is impossible and therefore we will succeed.
Keep focused every single day
I feel very lucky to work in a company where our focus is innovation and growth.
Every day we try to make it just one tad simpler for the customer to buy freight online, and keeping this mentality coupled with a portion of energy and not knowing what is impossible – who knows where we can take Twill. That is for me an amazing thought and the sole motivation to make sure we do a great job.
The pace of development
Lately, I read a piece by Warren Buffet on the topic of Optimism in TIME magazine.
He says: “I was born in 1930, when the symbol of American wealth was John D. Rockefeller Sr. Today my upper-middle-class neighbors enjoy options in travel, entertainment, medicine and education that were simply not available to Rockefeller and his family… Two words explain this miracle: Innovation and productivity.”
This comment made me stop in awe. He writes about the development from 1930 until now, which is an astonishing development, but I truly believe that when I sit in 2050 and look back from 1985 (my birth year) the development will have been even greater. Our globe will be wealthier, safer and more equal.
I’ve no doubt that enabling no-fuss, one-click, available to all international trade will have a massive role to play in this development – and I am proud and honored to know that the innovation we are part of in Twill could actually make a difference. This is innovation that matters!
The future of freight forwarding
Taking a slightly shorter term view, I would say that in just five years from now, the concept of freight forwarding will already be forgotten.
Instead of the industry demanding that the customer must know what ANS, VGM and HBL stand for, as well as knowing enough about geography to get an A+ in university, thanks to innovation a customer will just click ‘please deliver’ and get back to her real work of creating value for her customers.
Shipping Made Simple.
-Troels Stovring, Twill CEO