Retail Archives - Page 2 of 3 - Supply Chain Game Changer™

The Target Canada Story and the Brand Impact of the Supply Chain!

Brand Protection – The Definitive Role of the Supply Chain!

The responsibility for protecting and promoting your product or company brand is often thought to be generally held by the Marketing Department. But in reality the Supply Chain organization has an enormous role to play as the Supply Chain can positively or negatively impact your brand in many significant and different ways. This was the case with Target.

One of the most pronounced examples of the role of the Supply Chain in serving and protecting your brand is found in the story of Target Canada. Faced with unprecedented plans for expansion in Canada Target had to close its entire operation only two years after beginning operations.

The performance of the Supply Chain was a central element leading to this massive failure and damage to the Target brand.

Get Ready for Holiday Now: Make It Boring (From A Supply Chain Perspective)!

Black Friday – If Your Supply Chain Isn’t Ready Now You Are In Trouble!

The Holiday season finished recently. And the next Holiday season may seem far away. But in the area of E-Commerce Fulfillment it will be here before you know it. Now is the time to begin implementing the improvements and strategies you need to make this coming Holiday season more successful than last year.

Having gone through the ups and downs and stresses of several Retail Holiday seasons myself, one January I gave this direction to my team. For the upcoming Holiday our theme was that we were going to have a BORING Holiday season … from a Supply Chain perspective.

Customer Returns State … And What to Do Next! (Infographic)

The Downside of Free Returns and Exchanges!

Customer Returns are an inevitability in retail.

People buy things, take them home and for various reasons, they will then decide to return them to the store they purchased them.

While retailers likely hate dealing with returns, they need to have a policy in place that all staff understand in order to ensure it’s a streamlined process.

Innovations in Offline Retail! (Infographic)

Augmented Reality (AR) is Set to Transform Retail and the Supply Chain!

There is no escaping the fact that offline retail has changed over the last number of years. The predominant reason for this is advancement in technology but specifically with the emergence of the Internet and associated devices which allow consumers to literally shop from the comfort of their couch.

The Amazon Effect is the New Walmart Effect!

Has Walmart Beat Amazon Using an Omnichannel Returns Strategy?

In 1994, Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos read a statistic that the Internet had been growing at 2300 percent annually. He fashioned that changing tide into a business plan that has been breaking barriers across supply chain and e-commerce that has left an indelible mark with the Amazon effect.

Beginning with booksellers, the e-commerce giant has expedited the closure of many retailers and threatens to redefine the standards of shopping in a digital world. Retailers are forced to lower prices, optimize their systems and processes, and reduce profit margins in favor of competition; meanwhile, Amazon continues its trek toward dominance.

The Omni-channel Approach to Customer Experience!

How to Synchronize Your Supply Chain!

In the last decade, the growing adoption of ecommerce has been swift–and ruthless. Huge retail market players like Best Buy and Toys R’ Us are shutting down huge chunks of their physical locations due to plummeting revenue and poor customer experience.

Not only is this a result of not embracing ecommerce early in its wave, they are also now competing with ecommerce giants like Amazon and Alibaba who sell the same or competing products online.

Traffic drought in physical stores could be attributed to the rising number of purchases made over the internet for certain customer and product segments. For some, the revenue drop is significant. And yet another part of the challenge big box retailers face as publicly traded companies is that they have to answer to their investors–and with ecommerce delivering superior results, the patience afforded to big box retailers is just not as generous.

So, where does the success of ecommerce lie?

Turn your Brick And Mortar Stores into E-Commerce Distribution Hubs!

Brick and Mortar Stores: Stand Up and Unite!

Retailers with Brick and Mortar stores continue to be under tremendous pressure. Competition is intense in the fast growing Omnichannel E-Commerce world. Every week there seems to be news about how one Retailer or another is closing more of their stores when they could be using them as Distribution hubs.

And very few Retailers with Brick And Mortar stores have been able to make a profit in E-Commerce. Competitors who only sell online without physical stores appear to have an advantage with lower overhead costs.

So how can Brick And Mortar Retailers turn their stores into a competitive advantage plus a source of greater profitability?

Challenges in the Cannabis Supply Chain!

The Cannabis Supply Chain and Logistics Map!

Everyone knows that the cannabis industry is a boom market: it’s worth $7.3B in the U.S., and expected to reach $24.5B by 2020. Closer to home in Canada, sales are expected to reach $5.7 billion by 2020 creating cannabis challenges as a result.

Banks like BMO are investing hundreds of millions of dollars in cannabis companies, and publically-traded producers like Aphria, Aurora, Canopy Growth Corp, MedReleaf and others are spooling up massive operations ahead of legalization in October 2018.

Is The Retail Industry Melting Down?

Turn your Brick And Mortar Stores into E-Commerce Distribution Hubs!

It doesn’t take a genius to see that the retail industry has changed over the past decade and a half. The arrival of Amazon and other eCommerce platforms on the scene has caused a sea change in the way people shop. Is the Retail industry melting down?

Retailers have increasingly been forced to sink or swim based not on marketing or product differentiation – as in the past – but on the success of their Supply Chains and eCommerce operations.

It’s kind of a wild west, and the most successful players being those who can harness Omnichannel distribution, and avoid excess inventory that will leave them in the dust.

Last Mile Delivery Explained! (Infographic)

Keys to Success in Warehouse Management/Order Fulfillment! (Video)

Get OUR

EBOOKS HERE

Every stage of the logistics process of delivering goods is crucial from the time a parcel leaves the hands of the Sender up to the moment it arrives at its destination. This is called last mile delivery.

While each step of the way should be taken seriously, there is no point more high-priority than that of the last mile delivery stage, where the goods from a transportation hub move to their final delivery destination.

The goal of last mile delivery is to transport an item to its recipient in the quickest way possible. This has been driven by the continuously evolving market and demand for convenient customer experience across industries such as e-commerce, food, retail and many more.

Virtual Reality (VR) is Enhancing E-Commerce Shopping! (Infographic)

Augmented Reality (AR) is Set to Transform Retail and the Supply Chain!

Virtual reality (VR) is something we’ve been hearing a lot about recently, but did you know your shopping experience could be influenced by this in the not too distant future? Or perhaps it already has?

Anatomy of the Perfect Unboxing Experience! (Infographic)

Last Mile Delivery: Stop Shipping Air and Empty Boxes!

In today’s eCommerce landscape, the majority of customers interact with you only two times, once when they make a purchase on your website and then again when the product is delivered. Improving your website’s conversion rate is very important and gains a lot of attention in the eCommerce industry, while the anatomy of the unboxing experience is too often overlooked.

As the marketplace for physical products continues to transition online, the customer experiences far less interaction with the actual company. These lost opportunities for a business to impress through exemplary service will need to be compensated for in other ways.

Value Stream Mapping the Future State Process!

We had completed value stream mapping the current state processes across some very significant business processes in the company. It took a fair amount of time even though we had the active involvement of subject matter experts and leaders from every functional organization.

When all was said and done the current state involved hundreds of process steps, almost 200 pain points, and dozens of iterative, repetitive loops. The company was just being introduced to Lean process improvement techniques. And as challenging as it was to reach a common understanding of what the current processes were the difficult part was about to start.

How were we going to define and map the Future State process?

The Complexities of Being a Small Retailer! (Infographic)

Complexity in the Retail Supply Chain!

The advent of the internet and the growth of multiple chain stores means that with being a small retailer or an independent retailer you now face a number of challenges to their survival.

However, it’s not all bad news. Over the past five years, the small specialty retail store sector in the US have grown by 1% to reach revenue of $41 billion in 2018.

So, it’s clear that there is plenty of opportunity to not just survive but thrive.

This infographic from Storetraffic looks at some of the complexities of being an independent retailer and offers a comprehensive survival guide for 2019.

The Amazing Supply Chain of Your Morning Coffee!

Peeling Back The Orange Juice Supply Chain!

Even though modern coffee machines offer an attractive variety of caffeinated drinks like cappuccino or latte macchiato, for me it is a simple cup of black coffee that helps kick-start my productivity when the clock strikes 8 am.

This “kick-start”, or boost aspect of coffee was randomly discovered between the sixth and the ninth century. A widespread tale sets the scene in the kingdom of Kaffa, in Abyssinia – which today is Ethiopia – where a shepherd one day observed that his sheep were unusually cheerful after eating white blossoms and red cherries from a previously unknown plant.