Ten Years of Supply Chain. One Thing That Never Changed.

Year one of Izba was buses from New Jersey and sandwiches for lunch.

Aaron would take the bus into Manhattan — no job, no office, just a laptop and a theory that someone needed help. He'd take the subway down to SoHo to meet whoever was willing to talk, then walk back to Midtown instead of paying the $2 fare. Ten, twelve hours a day of walking through the city, testing ideas, meeting founders who were hitting supply chain walls. If the conversation went well, maybe he'd eat. If not, he'd keep walking.

He was trying to save for a house. The plan was to consult on the side while staying full-time at Unilever, then see what happened.

What happened was Izba.

The Gap in the Market

2016: DTC was taking off. Money was pouring into subscription businesses and product ideas. Founders were building brands, but they didn't have supply chain backgrounds. They didn't know what they didn't know — and the traditional consulting firms weren't built for early-stage companies with tight budgets and urgent problems.

Aaron kept seeing the same pattern: smart founders stuck on operational problems they couldn't solve themselves. There was no one in their corner who understood the mechanics of actually moving product — someone who could step in fractionally, fix what was broken, and not charge McKinsey rates.

So he started filling that gap. One client, then two. Then a few retainer projects that stacked. He hired the first person. Then the first cohort from Columbia and Unilever — people who saw something in what he was building and wanted to be part of it.

Warren joined as one of the first senior hires. He'd spent 30 years at Elanco and another 10 years at a private company before coming to Izba. For Aaron, that was the first signal that this might actually work: when people with more experience than him were willing to bet on what Izba was becoming.

What Changed

Today: 21 people. Five countries. Two sister companies (Sourcify and Slotted). A partner network that spans logistics, fulfillment, tech, and sourcing. AI-integrated workflows. Five newsletters. Two podcasts. A team in Pakistan and Argentina alongside the US, Canada, and Mexico crew.

The company that started as one guy walking Midtown to save subway fare now works with brands at every stage — from pre-launch founders to billion-dollar exits.

Jen, who's been at Izba for over five years, says it plainly: "We've grown up a lot in the last five years. The way we're doing business is more sophisticated, and the results we're delivering continue to improve."

The tools are different. The scale is different. The sophistication is different. But the core work? That hasn't moved.

What Hasn't

Joel, a partner at a fulfillment provider, has watched Izba from the outside for years. When asked what stands out, he goes straight to the work itself:

"They're still operator-focused at heart. The conversations still feel very practical and grounded in real operational experience."

Glenn Gooding, founder of Gooding Supply Chain Advisors and a longtime collaborator, puts it even more directly:

"Their DNA hasn't changed. That really starts with Aaron at the top."

Izba isn't the type of consulting firm that drops a deck and leaves. It's the firm that gets embedded — running RFPs, negotiating with 3PLs, cleaning up ERPs, building SNOP models, covering for parental leave. The work is operational, not advisory. It's fixing what's broken, building what's missing, and training the team to run it themselves once Izba steps away.

The name still fits. Izba means shack in Russian. It was a joke at first — a placeholder while Aaron figured out if this thing would last. But it stuck because it was honest.

A shack is scrappy. It's not trying to be a mansion. It's shelter when you need it, built from what's available, designed to get you through the storm.

Ten years later, Izba is still a shack. It just has running water now. And power. And Starlink. And a door that opens when founders call because something broke and they need someone who's been in the room before.

The Work

Founders don't call Izba because they want a consultant. They call because they're in the middle of something messy and they don't know how to fix it.

The freight network is leaking margin. The 3PL relationship is broken. The ERP implementation went sideways. The retail launch is three months out and the ops plan doesn't exist yet. The founder is wearing twelve hats and can't figure out which one to take off first.

That's when Izba shows up. Not to give advice. To roll up sleeves and build the thing that needs building.

Margarita, who's been on the team for four years, describes it this way:

"We're not a typical strategic deck type of company. We are the roll-your-sleeves-and-fix-it type."

The goal isn't to stay. It's to leave the company better than Izba found it. To turn the chaos into a system. To build something that lasts after Izba walks away.

Aaron still celebrates every time payroll clears. Even now. Even after ten years.

Because the work is still the same: show up, fix what's broken, make the team better, and move on to the next founder who needs help.

The shack is still standing. And the door is still open.