Revolutionizing Packaging Supply with CEO Matthew Wright

In this episode, Cory Connors welcomes longtime friend and industry innovator Matthew Wright to discuss his newest venture, Forest, a platform designed to organize and modernize the packaging industry. Matthew shares the vision behind Forest, how it builds on his work with Specright, and why the packaging marketplace desperately needs better structure, transparency, and technology. Forest aims to simplify how companies find suppliers, manage data, track samples, verify certifications, and communicate all in one intuitive, AI‑native platform.

Key Topics Discussed:

• Matthew’s transition from Specright to launching Forest and the industry gaps he aims to solve
• The complexity of the packaging supply chain and the need for organized, accurate, accessible data
• How Forest uses AI not as an add‑on, but as the foundation of the platform’s capabilities
• The challenge of finding trustworthy, well‑matched packaging suppliers and how Forest addresses this
• How verified profiles, performance‑based ranking, and review systems improve supplier discovery and transparency
• Bringing consumer‑level digital experiences into the packaging industry
• Forest’s beta launch, ongoing development, and plans to evolve based on user feedback and real‑time data

Resources Mentioned:

• Forest Website
• Forest Contact: matthew@forest‑pkg.com
• LinkedIn: Matthew Wright 
• LinkedIn: Forest-PKG

Contact:

Listeners interested in joining the Forest platform, participating in beta, or learning more about how the system works can reach Matthew through the Forest website, email, or LinkedIn.


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Transcript

0:06

Welcome to Sustainable Packaging with Cory Connors presented by Atlantic Packaging. I'm your host, Cory Connors. In today's episode, I connected with Mr. Matthew Wright, the founder and CEO of Forrest. He is a friend and mentor and has already successfully launched Specright. We are so excited to see what Forrest can do for this packaging industry. I'd also like to thank our sponsors, 3M and Specright. We couldn't do this show without them. Welcome to Sustainable Packaging with Cory Connors. I am so excited to have my very good friend and mentor, Mr. Matthew Wright on the show today from Forest. He is the founder and CEO of this new company that we're really excited to talk about. Welcome to the show, sir. Of course, great to be with you and you're always very kind to me. So thank you. We all learn from you too. You're a great innovator in this space. Thank you. Well, I've learned a lot from you and I'm excited to explain to the audience today what is Forest. But let's talk about first, what was the idea for it? you launch this kind of new platform? Well, you know, I'd have to say a little bit, it's just insanity, but, uh, know, pass there to your question about, the business side of it. You know, I, I had spent, I know it's about speak a little bit about spec, right. But spent years, you know, with spec, right. And amazing people and customers building, you know, the brand, private little retailers, data structuring, and obviously all that great stuff that's gone over there. And I always felt that there was still this, this nagging need to help organize the packaging. you know, side of the business. And, and while we've done amazing with specifications and packaging, but really making packaging a lot more easy to consume as it sounds interesting as this massive market, you know, trillion dollar market that's very interconnected, very layered today from raw materials to converters, to analysts, to consultants, to distributors. It's a very complicated world. It's not really well organized. And so I decided, you know, my next time and energy should be spent around trying to organize the business I love so much. Yeah, it makes perfect sense because Specright, if the listeners don't know what Specright is, it's specification management software and so much more. And it's a way for people to put all their information into one system and make it globally accessible. And it's not just packaging, it can be ingredients or systems, assembly instructions. There's so much more. And then I think we've talked about this at Spec Summit recently. how the number one question I get is, how do I collect my data? And what data do I gather? The number two question I get is, who should I go to for this? Meaning, which supplier is the right fit? Who do you trust, Cory? And that's uh often why people come to you and me is, hey, I wanna buy a million boxes in Oklahoma. Who should I talk to? And I think that's what, as far as I can tell, what Forest will do for the whole community. Can you walk us through what it is and how it works? no, and I think to your point, you we all get those phone calls. know, we were I was called a we're called craftsmen by a gentleman I really respect in the business. And he says the craftsmen are no more. And and what it was, you know, in the two phases of this conversation, one is, you know, in general, was much like the conversation about spec, right? Specs. Historically, there wasn't a ton of movement of, you know, material supply. And, you know, the world was less chaotic. was less the challenges with global supply, whether it was tariffs or global disruption, sustainability and the need not only to know what you're making, but make it better or different, to make it closer to home. All of these kind of needs have sprung up in very recent past, I'm talking about years, and it's really catching an industry off guard that was historically pretty easy in a way it did business. It kind of you knew. Joe down the corner, you bought your boxes for him for 20 years and it worked. Today with this disruption and the next generation coming in that likes to do things differently, the packaging world needs to be organized and sought after differently. And to your point, all the experiences that we have in the rest of our life, the way we inter-gauge with real estate, the way we engage with restaurants, the way we engage with e-comm. uh It's all very similar. And then you get to the packaging space and it's a packaging space and still very historically driven. And so all I'm doing with Forest is layering on kind of the known way we engage with technology with other things we do to the packaging space. So these questions that you and I get, hey, where do I find this strange product in this part of the world? A becomes very intuitive. The system looks for that. It's structuring on the back end. the expectations of data differently and I'll explain that in a second. Then once you have that information, then can you act upon it? So it's not just searching for restaurant. Can you make a reservation? And so it's not just searching for packaging. It's can I get a quote? Can I get a sample? Can I have a conversation about this? Can I share some information with you? Can you share some information with you? So doing this all on one platform and again in a very natural way that we engage with technology today is important. As I mentioned, the structure piece on the packaging side is, know, and it's not a knock, it's kind of back to this historical relevance. If you search packaging sites, typically you're going to see equipment, you're going to see trucks, you're going to see history. That's kind of what we needed historically in the way we did business. Today we need to know what industries, what materials do you have? you like big orders, small orders? How far do you ship? How do you ship? These are the type of questions that I'm helping build to make that intuitive search better today for both sides. Yeah, well said. I think the days of randomly Googling things and asking things like that are coming to an end or just changing. And I wanted to talk to you about how you'll use AI in this platform because that's what everyone is talking about is AI this and AI that. And I think it's absolutely critical to the future of a successful business to be at the leading edge of that. I'm assuming you will, I know you will use AI in your platform. Can you talk us through that? Yeah, for sure. It's interesting too. You know, historically, and it was just, would just have this conversation yesterday, we built spec right in a time that people was before AI. Now we're bringing AI into the mix and kind of integrating those technologies. Forest has built in an era where AI drives all developments, right? All new developments. So it is not only AI enabled, it is AI. It's where the origins of all the technology come today. AI though, the criticality, especially in the packaging space, has to be trained upon models of data that don't really exist today. So we, to your point, we may be able find 20, 30 % of the data we need and kind of open source, which was how people do it, but we have to teach it the rest of the way. So back to my points, what are criticality? Get those answers and then start searching against that. And that builds that muscle around kind of that. type of building so that AI can enable the full landscape. And so that's what our part of our job is, not only to develop and build the product through AI, but also to bring information that may not be readily available, to make it readily available, to make the system flow and operate. It's amazing that as you know, the tools out there today, but it still needs data to operate and breathe off of. And that's the value we're bringing is teaching it what data it needs to know. I love that. Yeah, we have to tell it what's right. And that's the main thing here is having great data and value add companies be a part of this. There are a lot of packaging companies out there that really aren't the best to work with. And I know this from 30 years of experience of, geez, I won't go through that again. How uh are you focusing on that? How do you keep those kind of companies off the platform? Yeah, it's interesting when I had a lot of things have done over time. takes, know, you Cory, it takes me a while that I've actually get there. But I was as fun as reading on LinkedIn one day and I was seeing a negative reviews about a packaging supplier. And I'm like, I stopped from it. If this is the only methodology of which we have to share that kind of information, there's a problem. Right. And so it's not the reason for some existence, but it is an outcome. And so just by natural again, models that we follow everywhere else in our life. We know good restaurants and we know bad restaurants. Immediately what we do, I was asking the other day, hey, you think that's a good restaurant? What do we do? We went on and looked what the reviews were, right? And so that's gonna be the same thing with force. Over time, these searches are built to know how active those searches are, how accurate those searches are. We're gonna verify the data that people are saying that they're doing. If you say you're 99 % delivery rate on a 10-day backlog, whatever the answer is, we're gonna make sure that's accurate. you're going to have the ability to influence that over time. You're not going to get a search criteria based upon Google, which is paid for play, but you are on performance. You're going to have the best profiles, the most accurate profiles. You're to get good feedback from your customers. Your priority or your leveling is going to raise. And so it's going to be very similar, again, to the experience that we've seen in other parts. And it will, by definition, call those out that need to change behavior or performance. Which is great, which is necessary and will be beneficial to those companies that participate. I think we all could use straightening out every once in a while and a reminder that we can do better. And I think I've personally over my career experienced that, know, had customers say, hey, this could have been better, man. Like, let's do it differently next time. No, and think a lot of cases people want to know that. I was watching a show the other night that was kind of an undercover show and I'm like, you know, actually probably the CEO of those companies would love to know that's the experience the consumers getting in their restaurants or whatever it is. And so I think very similar. It's going to give an opportunity. Also, I think to find companies that have really cool stuff or really cool services. That's a really hard time. How do you get that information out there today? It's very hard. You hire reps, get to, you small pool of information or uh potential customers, but how do you make vocal that you've got a great product, a great service, and so it's also going to elevate, I think, great stuff that's going on out there that may not get the voice it needs. Yeah, well said. I think that that often takes years to build that reputation. And with a platform like Forest, I think that will shrink that time frame down and allow people to say, hey, we're great. Check us out. uh look at, mean, again, a human interaction with Amazon. You get companies you never knew existed or products you never knew existed and never would have if it wasn't a platform like Amazon that makes it aware to you as a consumer. It's pretty amazing what's available nowadays. How far along are you in the process with the development of Forest? And is it about ready to launch? Yeah, you know, it's a, I don't spend a lot of time trying to get ready. spend a lot of time getting ready. And, and, you know, so we have, we're in beta. So you have the ability to sign in if you want to be part of beta. We take a look at who those are. We're trying to get the right collection of people to give us feedback. I spent a lot of time talking to people like yourself and others early days of trying to get some feedback in the loop. I've always done that with Specright I'm going to do it with fours. to really make sure we're hitting the point that people need both from a provider of value and a seeker of value, make sure both are getting what they need. So we're just going to balance that in the beta and then we're hoping to come out of beta with early product in the next month or so. And in that case, again, back to your earlier statement about how we're building it, the system is going to build on itself and the idea is every day you go into the system, it will be better than it was yesterday. And we'll just kind of drive that towards adoption and utilization of system for the next year, and then look to expand. We got some really interesting stuff that we plan to expand and add to the platform as we go forward. That's exciting. And you're right. It's a different mindset now than it used to be, where it used to be, oh, we updated our website. We'll do that again three years from now. Now it's daily. It's by the down to the minute. uh Like you mentioned, those reviews and those comments will be added. And, you know, as a podcaster, I can tell you every five-star review is very much appreciated. We watch those numbers tick up slowly. but we appreciate that feedback and the comments that people give on the podcast, things like that. So I can see that on your platform, it's gonna be really exciting. How do people, like Atlantic Packaging, how do we get in touch with you? How do we say, hey, we wanna be on Forest platform today? Yeah, well, you know, you guys have the direct line. My phone range is out of it. But no, mean, everybody else, it's really easy to to methodologies. You know how I've always operated is I'm highly accessible. you know, LinkedIn, obviously you can capture me, but also Matthew at forced dash PKG dot com. can email me and you go directly to the website forced dash PKG dot com. And there's a uh I did there to sign up or to get more information or to get a demo on the site. There'll be some demo videos to give you a little taste, a little flavor of what it looks like from a different experiential model. So again, very accessible, linked in the website or email and happy to engage and answer questions and get you your role. Let's get into the weeds a little bit more. What kinds of services will Forest provide other than kind of that matchmaker service, which is so valuable? Yeah, and so two, you know, twofold. So one is you have existing vendors that you enjoy today and you want to get them certified on the platform. That's very easy to be done. And in doing that, which will be a certified, you'll be a certified, you know, buyer or seeker of packaging that also has to be by, but could be a student looking for more information. So you will sign up, you'll get uh allowed to be part of the system to make sure you're legit. a person that's in the packaging space, you know, included in our forest. And so it's a very simple profile build. And same thing on the resourcer. You know, if it's a testing lab or it's a manufacturing company or it's a distributor or a designer, you'll have a profile build that will be authenticated and certified. And in there, some of the things you can do is have your certificates. If you are saying, hey, I'm FSR certified, I'm ISO certified, whatever it is. What's nice about it is as a vendor or a provider of resources, you can just point everybody to there. You don't have to send an email to every customer asking for it. You don't have to answer 10,000 times. You just say, all my certifications are sitting in forest. You can go view them there and realize they're legit. So just from that standpoint, there's a lot of value in knowing that you're in a world that's truly accurate, certified, and connected. And then actions and activities, whether it's a new vendor, current vendor, you can search. Obviously, as we talked about, deep analytical searches. We're also looking to have chat. So you can have conversation with your vendor in the solution. Quit having emails and texts and just have it in the platform. You can compare multiple different offerings. You can look for alternative options to something you have. And then you can request samples. can track the samples. That's one of the most nuanced things I hear from people is like, I just asked for samples. I don't know where it is. And so the in there is a communication method for tracking by shipping where it's at process. Once you get it, proving it. Same thing on quotes. You can ask for quotes or bids or information and track it back and forth. And then ultimately, you know, a lot of people have their own ordering systems. You can either integrate with one of those or order through a forest. That's not the primary function, but that functions there for those that may not have that function today. And so we're really looking at kind of full, full communication between people. Again, whether that's looking for research, looking for product, looking for solutions, all that communication should be managed through a forest or can be. That's excellent because I can I can attest to that the frustration of hey supplier X I need that box sample or I need that packaging piece. Where is it? You know it's been three days. Is it hasn't been shipped? You know it's like the first time I saw Domino's pizza tracker. I thought wow that's brilliant. You know OK it's in the oven. Okay, it's in the box. It's on, it's, in the car. It's on the way to us. You know, this, this, this is the new way of doing things. It's not, it's such a, it's been so frustrating. And now it sounds like you're going to take a lot of that stress out of the process. Yeah, mean, you just nailed it. If we can do that with dominoes, we can do that with your detergent being delivered the same day, and you can see it on your app, why can't you see that with your sample for packaging? It's the same concept. So we're just layering that experience that should be there into the world you and I live in. Right. Well, very exciting stuff. Anything else that you wanted to mention before we call the show here? First of all, I always appreciate the time with you and always enjoy it. would say for you know, everybody It's educational, you know get in learn try it be part of it This is just to help enhance the great amazing things you all do today Just like I use it. I've never you know, my analogy is never great But you know if the Italian restaurant down down the corner can quit worrying about advertising Their wares and they can just do a really good job at making Italian food and the customers will be there and they'll do it in an automated method. And the same thing in this world is just keep focused on the great things that you all do and really let Forest take over the challenging non-value added activities that we're all chasing today. Great, thank you, sir. Appreciate you, Matthew, for joining the show again and always uh thankful for your wisdom and insights. I'm sure this new venture will be just as successful, if not more, than your last ones. Thank you. Cory.