The headlines are touting Target’s store fulfillment numbers, but Home Depot’s right behind, fulfilling 55% of online orders from stores. This is particularly advantageous for Home Depot, which sells goods that are more often heavier and bulkier than its retail counterparts.
The best-in-class retailers navigated well, and managed to grow inventory considerably in the first months of the year.
This is an excerpt from Monday’s (5/13) Point of Sale retail supply chain newsletter sponsored by ArcBest. There’s a startup that was first created to deliver essentials to college kids but is quietly capturing the imagination (and venture capital) of the tech world, and it’s time the logistics world took notice. Gopuff, founded by two friends at Drexel […]
Consumers reversion to services has not come at the detriment of durable goods spending. Over the past four weeks, the mix of durable goods-to-services spending has remained stable.
In addition to improving margins and boosting brand image, cutting ties with retailers simplifies Under Armour’s supply chain at a time when its needed most.
Peloton stated it expects to incur $50 million in refund expenses from its treadmill recall. What will the logistics costs be?
The biggest changes Bed Bath & Beyond must make are in the supply chain, which has been referred to as “noncompetitive” by management.
The best-in-class retailers are aggressively pursuing logistical control over their products while trying to avoid patchwork responses to final-mile delivery.
In 2020, Amazon nearly doubled: its workforce, its number of facilities and its logistics square footage. In 2021, it plans to double its truckload fleet.
Improvements will come in the form of more ship-from-store, but mainly more ship-from-dark-store as retailers realize the unnecessary complexity of the method and seek to transform more stores into localized fulfillment centers.
This clever twist on micro-fulfillment centers offers a futuristic model for urban retailing and fulfillment. And it comes as companies test out a bevy of automated, unmanned service models, from dark stores to drones and autonomous delivery fleets.
It’s not that companies can’t operate without China, it’s just that for now, said companies will not grow as fast as they could with it, and will likely do so with lower margins. In a retail world constantly balancing sales and profit, avoiding China is giving up both for many Western brands.
The battle between brands and retailers is not new, but it’s more acute than ever because of the options each side has. For brands, it’s never been easier to own and operate sales channels both online and IRL. For retailers, there’s never been more digitally native brands seeking out offline homes than there are right now. And giants like Target, Walmart and Amazon have proven that consumers are willing to purchase and even be very loyal to private label brands.
This is an excerpt from Monday’s (3/29) Point of Sale retail supply chain newsletter sponsored by ArcBest. Yee-HAW, people. The third round of fiscal stimulus is causing an immediate and significant boost to the consumer economy. Due to the sharp contraction in spending this time last year from COVID-related lockdowns, the one-year change is distorted and not as […]
Volatility in trucking markets has prompted shippers to assess different ways of securing reliable capacity. For DG, that means more reliance on in-house transportation, but that’s certainly not the only option. Some retailers are looking to diversify their transportation partners to avoid delays and secure truck space. Others are debating streamlining their transportation needs by signing over their private fleets to logistics specialists.
Add Nike (NYSE: NKE) to the growing list of retailers being severely hampered by port congestion and supply chain bottlenecks. The congestion at West Coast ports in particular strained Nike’s supply chain and negatively impacted revenue, which declined 11% yoy in the quarter ending Feb. 28.
COVID-19 forced dramatic change at the end of the supply chain seemingly overnight. Retailers had to adjust quickly to succeed, and those that did are looking at a recovering consumer economy with the best balance sheet in decades on top of a real estate market reeling from store closures. Pair this with an e-commerce acceleration of five years and a movement to DTC and you have a market ripe for innovative physical expansion.
As the number of places where product flows increases, naturally, smaller, more frequent inventory replenishment runs are created. Whether it’s middle-mile solutions from DC to store or DC to DC or it’s home delivery, the location of endpoints is dispersing and the size of shipments is decreasing.
Brands big and small want more control over the customer experience, including data and service, and technology firms and logistics providers can now offer brands an Amazon alternative. The tension between retailers and brands is nothing new, but the battle between them has never been this acute thanks to the likes of Shopify, ShipBob, XPO and others.
Retailers are stuck between playing the waiting game and risking delays that wreck quarterly results or ponying up and taking to the skies. The goods will arrive quickly, but at what cost?
