The New Warehouse Weekly Vol 41
The New Warehouse
Your source for logistics, distribution and transportation insights and ideas.
The marathon continues!
Last week I was at the Retail Supply Chain & Logistics Expo USA which was a very interesting conference. There was a very diverse mix of attendees and exhibitors because it was also combined with White Label World Expo USA and some other events. Note: If you're looking to connect with 3PLs this is not a bad place to do it. I believe I counted about 6 or 7 there and not the big guys you see at every conference.
I gave two talks during the conference, one entitled "Data is Your Foundation" and the other titled "The Intersection of Physical Retail & Online Fulfillment" which was a great experience. Believe it or not, this was my first time speaking on stage solo. Usually I'm with a panel or one other person doing some type of interview (makes sense for a podcast I guess!) so it was a great experience to get the motivation to do that and also receive some great insights from the crowd.
During my talk about physical retail and it's relationship to online fulfillment I covered how some retail stores are essentially becoming fulfillment centers themselves with many different options for the consumer to get their goods. In my opinion, I think that Target is the best example of this. If you pay close attention when in the store, you will see fulfillment workers in the aisles picking orders and you will notice the multitude of ways a customer can receive their order. According to Daryl Glass in his talk at The American Supply Chain Summit two weeks ago, Target fulfills 95% of their orders from their stores. Quite impressive I must say.
One of the biggest highlights of my talk was inventory management in this scenario. At the end of the day, inventory is the backbone of your supply chain and it can make or break you in some cases. Inventory is both a pro and con when it comes to leveraging your physical stores for fulfillment. On the plus side, your online customers have access to more inventory than what typically would only be at the fulfillment center and you can be a little more agile because you have more nodes to fulfill from creating more possibilities to have stock available. However, on the negative side, it is more inventory points to manage and inventory control within a retail store can be challenging.
Think about when you were a kid or if you have kids, what happens when that kid picks something up and you don't realize they have it with them? Well, it gets put on a random shelf most of the time. This makes it difficult for an employee to find this item now and ultimately it may not get fulfilled if it is the last item in the store.
No matter what the pros and cons are, your organization should be thinking about how it can get more creative with fulfillment and leverage these different nodes. Consumers want flexibility and if you can leverage these multiple nodes then you can certainly give them much more of what they want.
Tomorrow I'm off to Manhattan Associates Momentum Conference in San Antonio. We'll be going live twice on Wednesday and once on Thursday morning so be sure to tune in and get your questions heard. If you'll be at the conference be sure to connect with me!
Have a great week!
-Kevin
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Monday's Episode:
“We designed our company completely around customer experience… It means that when the customer receives the box, it’s not only about visibility but having full control.” - Itamar Zur
Welcome to The New Warehouse Podcast! In today’s episode, we are thrilled to host Itamar Zur , co-founder and CEO of Veho , a company at the forefront of revolutionizing e-commerce delivery services. Today, we will explore Veho’s innovative approach to logistics, focusing on enhancing customer experience and solving prevalent delivery challenges. Veho’s story is particularly compelling, given their unique model that integrates advanced technology with flexible gig economy logistics, aiming to redefine the speed and quality of delivery. Join us as we delve into the intricacies of modern e-commerce logistics, customer expectations, and the visionary leadership driving Veho.
Wednesday Episode:
Consumers are constantly buying products online creating tons of data points but consumers desire to have as much information as possible to make their buying decisions easier. - Jay Group
For this new episode of the podcast we had the pleasure of being on site and recording on location at Jay Group in Lancaster, PA. Kevin sat down with their President and COO, Blake Dudek as well as 📦Ryan Millman of UnDigital and Akhilesh Srivastava of Fenix Commerce to discuss the end to end e-commerce order and how all of their solutions play a part to improve the customer experience and drive further value for brands.
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