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Why would Amazon open up a bricks & mortar store?

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Why would Amazon open up a bricks & mortar store?

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Next Big Thing - Beacons: What they'll do for retail

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http://cnet.co/1syCytN ​Brian Cooley discusses retail beacons and how retailers and customers plan to use the Bluetooth devices in stores.

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Unilever's online sales are outpacing the global ecommerce market, propelled by growth from the UK, Ireland and France.

The world's second biggest ad spender said ecommerce sales across its business were growing at 40 per cent compared to 20 per cent for the global market. While it's still early days, early gambles have the company on track to see its volume ecommerce sales account for around 6 per cent of its retail sales this year.

A large chunk of its ecommerce spurt is coming from the UK and Ireland, which are growing in the "mid-teens", according to the company, with ecommerce now accounting for 7 per cent of the business in the former. Its third biggest market is France where the business is seeing gains from alternative and "highly pop-up" models.

The boost helped lift Unilever's underlying revenue by 5.7 per cent in the third quarter - its strongest quarterly jump in almost three years and more than analysts' predictions. Chief executive Paul Polman rued the impact of "fragile" demand on its inability to grow faster in the period but backed innovations like Ben & Jerry's Cookie Core ice cream and Marc de Champagne-flavoured ice-cream alongside its burgeoning direct-to-consumer business to bring in new business.

It goes some way to justifying the investment Unilever has already pumped into ecommerce, that's already seen it explore sharper personalisation as well as direct-to-consumer sites. All these efforts are grouped in one of five difference ecommerce models, with markets like the UK and China having dedicated teams to capitalise on the early momentum there.

Unilever is chasing 40 per cent growth in online sales this year as it quickens efforts to build direct relationships with shoppers that have traditionally been facilitated by retailers. Companies worldwide are struggling to adapt to the disruption caused online sellers, with many reluctant to rock the boat (too much) when it comes to relationships with supermarkets. Diageo, Mondelez and Heineken are among a growing number of global players trying to overhaul the way they sell to consumers in an attempt to unearth new growth opportunities amid slowing sales worldwide.

At the Dmexco conference earlier this year WPP boss Sir Martin Sorrell highlighted the transition, pointing out the changing dynamic between manufacturers like Unilever and retailers. "We see a great shift in the balance of power between retailer and manufacturers," he added.

"Over the last 20 years the big retailers - Tesco, Carrefour, Walmart - had the power. Today that's changing. The direct relationship that you can establish online with the consumer is critically important and manufacturers have the ability now to correspond and relate to the consumer. The threat is from Amazon, Alibaba and Ebay in terms of them becoming the new Tesco, Carrefour and Walmart - they could establish that direct relationship and destabilise the manufacturers. Manufacturing plus ecommerce plus retailing is important."

It's a thought not lost GlaxoSmithKline (GSK). The company's global head of digital media Khurram Hamid revealed at the Ad: Tech London conference this week that exploring programmatic ecommerce was his priority for 2016. "I'm focused on how our digital investments can drive digital online working with ecommerce media providers; that's programmatic ecommerce," he continued.

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Unilever's online sales are growing at twice the rate of the global ecommerce market

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Unilever's online sales are outpacing the global ecommerce market, propelled by growth from the UK, Ireland and France. The world's second biggest ad spender said ecommerce sales across its business were growing at 40 per cent compared to 20 per cent for the global market.

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Superdry - have they got the right balance?

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Superdry - have they got the right balance?

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The fashion chain and British success story SuperGroup has ended its expansion in the UK, according to its chief executive.

Euan Sutherland said the brand behind Superdry, which started out on a Cheltenham market stall 30 years ago and now has 100 sites, had enough stores in the UK and would be focusing overseas.

He said: "We're getting to the point where we're at our optimum UK estate. There are very few new cities we are targeting and most of our growth is in Europe.

"The UK is a very web-savvy population so the balance between e-commerce and retail is about right.

"Going back five years, the plan was to have 150 stores, but that's changed and 100 has been on the table for a little while.

"E-commerce is doing so well that you need fewer stores and we only have 30 stores in Germany, where there's a bigger market to grow in."

The comments come as the company revealed a stellar boost in sales, up 22.4 per cent in the six months to 24 October, to £254.9m.

Sales in its stores grew 17.2 per cent on a like-for-like basis and there was 8 per cent growth in its wholesale business, in which its garments are sold by third parties.

Shareholders were impressed, sending the shares up 9 per cent to 1,619p, a level not seen for 19 months and the highest since Mr Sutherland replaced Supergroup's founder, Julian Dunkerton, a year ago.

Mr Sutherland said the company had been helped by a sharper focus on womenswear and by the introduction of better new ranges, while the Rugby World Cup had inspired shoppers to snap up casual rugby shirts.

SuperGroup will offer some Black Friday deals and Mr Sutherland also suggested that the shopping event imported from the United States could start to infect parts of continental Europe.

He said: "The UK embraced Black Friday fully last year for the first time, but we didn't see it embraced in Europe and we think there will be more European countries that adopt it."

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SuperGroup signals end to UK store growth

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The fashion chain and British success story SuperGroup has ended its expansion in the UK, according to its chief executive. Euan Sutherland said the brand behind Superdry, which started out on a Cheltenham market stall 30 years ago and now has 100 sites, had enough stores in the UK and would be focusing overseas.

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VIDEO: Amazon opens its first book store!

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VIDEO: Amazon opens its first book store!

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Amazon opens their first physical Bookstore in Seattle

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Amazon Books is the very first mass market bookstore the company has ever launched. It opens today in Seattle and will stock thousands of bestsellers that are rated 4+ stars on GoodReads and the Kindle e-book store.

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With the days falling off the calendar leading up to the holiday season, the ongoing influence and emergence of e-commerce on supply chain management shows no signs of stopping.

That was a major takeaway of a keynote speech given by Henry Maier, president and CEO of FedEx Ground at the University of Rhode Island's Supply Chain Management Forum earlier this week.

"The North American transportation industry is both mature and stable, however, for those of us who derive our livelihoods from this business, we have never seen a market more chaotic and challenging than the one we are in now," he said.

Maier pointed to e-commerce as a major driver for changes that are occurring in supply chain and transportation. He likened it to a National Geographic movie that traced the advent of airplanes and how they radically changed the world over the last half-century. And he explained that in the not too distant future it would not be surprising to see a similar documentary on another revolutionary shift in society focused on living in the age of e-commerce.

"E-commerce is the biggest driver of change and growth in the transportation industry, this year it will top roughly $300 billion, which only represents a little less than 10 percent of total retail sales. It is fast outpacing the growth of traditional brick and mortar"

From 2012-2014, Maier said e-commerce sales increased by about 102 percent, whereas during that same period the number of "Web," or e-commerce-type stores shot up by 1,354 percent, with much of those changes being driven by consumer behavior and expectations.

What's more, he noted that the cost of shipping represents the number one driver of whether or not an online shopper makes a purchase or not. But at the same time, if a consumer is presented with free shipping, that does not mean he or she is willing to wait a long time for their order to come.

And he went on to explain e-commerce is going through what could be called a revolutionary change in which customers will ultimately have more control than retail shippers. This will likely continue, he said, as FedEx has always thought the true value of transportation ultimately benefits the receiver of goods and not the shipper. This is in tandem with customer expectations in that they want to order from anywhere, send to anywhere, at any time of the day or night.

"This makes omnichannel a key priority for retailers, particularly brick and mortar retailers, and drives a lot of changes in proponent strategy which impact all of us in transportation with serious implications for retailers' customer service and order management systems as well," noted Maier. "Every brick and mortar retailer today has an Amazon strategy that runs the gamut from 'how do we compete with these people?' to 'how do we survive?'"

The subsequent impact of that is the increase in online orders being shipped to retail stores for pick up with retailers' objective being that consumers will purchase additional items once they are in the store.

eCommerce Has Gone Global
Global eCommerce is growing across a variety of regions and countries, with online buying behavior currently representing over $1 trillion in sales per year and forecasted to nearly double within four years.

Through forces such as rapid growth in emerging markets and the proliferation of digital channels through which to search for and engage with businesses, consumers all around the globe are becoming online shoppers. Beyond the products and brands consumers know locally, the Internet is introducing them to new merchants and unique products not readily available in their own markets. The Internet, therefore, has unleashed a new global shopping reality: Not satisfied with what is around the corner or online locally, shoppers from all corners of the earth are going crossborder seeking hard-to-find items and great deals.

Source: Seizing The Cross-Border Opportunity - How Small And Medium-Size Online Businesses Can Go Global

Another emerging trend he pointed out is shipping goods from store locations, which he termed "genius" because effectively using a store as a distribution center works well because stores are closer to customers and reduces transit times, which, in turn, make this type of approach more competitive with something like Amazon Prime, as it is quicker than Prime's two-day delivery window.

"But it also comes with serious challenges as most stores' WMS (warehouse management systems) and order entry systems don't have any vision for where an order actually is in a store," he said. "We see retailers increasingly challenged these days, because they know where the ordered item is in the store but employees need to find them. It can be a serious problem if an order item cannot be found, because it then cannot be shipped."

"There is also an increased focus on customization 'to get me exactly what I need when and where I need it.' It is part of an attitude that is driving significant change in retail across the board and is magnified during every holiday shopping and shipping season, which we are now on the cusp of. You see retailers trying to differentiate themselves every year and you also see, especially in recent years, consumer behavior become less and less predictable and all the while consumers wait and wait, holding out to the last possible minute to get the best possible deal."

As an example, he used the 2014 holiday shopping season, which saw myriad retailers deal with issues related to the West Coast port labor dispute. For FedEx, he said that last year's Peak Season served as proof that the key to success in the three-week period between Thanksgiving and Christmas is flexibility in the e-commerce economy.

"As much growth as e-commerce has brought to the industry, there is still a lot of runway ahead," said Maier. "U.S. retail sales this year is a $3.8 trillion business, and...e-commerce is bringing a whole new series of opportunities to companies like FedEx, mainly in the area of returns, logistics, and disposition. E-tailers are not really set up to handle returns, nor are brick and mortar retailers. They are happy to take the return back, because they are hopeful it will be exchanged for something else and maybe they will buy something else while they are there, but many do not have a real process for handling those returns."

Taking that another step, Maier said there is ostensibly a cottage industry brewing, which he dubbed "The Rs: return, refurbish, re-pack, replace, or recycle." As much as a consumer would like to return a gift in January, Maier said the reality is that a retailer does not want it back."

Looking ahead, Maier posed the question of what does the e-commerce supply chain look like in the future? He then explained that while free shipping is not really free, it is also not sustainable in its current form, noting that in the future there could be a situation in which it is only an option when a residential delivery is made to a commercial location such as a neighborhood drug store or a kiosk or a FedEx location, where a customer can pick up a shipment on the way home.

Related: Is Anyone Really Completely Omnichannel Ready?

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E-Commerce the Biggest Driver of Change and Growth in Supply Chain & Logistics

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With the days falling off the calendar leading up to the holiday season, the ongoing influence and emergence of e-commerce on supply chain management shows no signs of stopping. That was a major takeaway of a keynote speech given by Henry Maier, president and CEO of FedEx Ground at the University of Rhode Island's Supply Chain Management Forum earlier this week.

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Online sales in the US were up 16.1% on Black Friday 2015 compared to Black Friday 2014, driven by email marketing and mobile shopping.

The data comes from the Custora E-Commerce Pulse, a free online dashboard providing key US e-commerce statistics and benchmarking data from over 200+ online retailers, 500 million anonymized shoppers, and $100B in e-commerce revenue.

Here are the most notable trends of Black Friday 2015:

1. Black Friday e-commerce revenue is up 16.1% over Black Friday 2014. This is very strong growth in revenue, combined with order growth of 15.6% over Black Friday 2014, and AOV (Average Order Value) growth of 0.5%. Retailers did a good job growing the top line without being overly promotional compared to last year.

2. Black Friday was Mobile Friday.
Mobile Shopping (e-commerce orders made on mobile phones and tablets) accounted for over a third of online shopping on Black Friday 2015 - 36.1%. That's a significant jump from 30.3% in Black Friday 2014.

3. Mobile shopping = Apple.
Similar to the season's trends so far, on Black Friday, consumers who shopped on mobile devices (phones and tablets), where likely to do so on Apple devices (iPhones and iPads). 77.6% of all orders made on mobile devices happened on Apple devices, while only 22.1% happened on Android devices. The silver lining for Android devices is the slight increase from last year - from 19.5% of orders.

4. Email Marketing was the biggest marketing channel on Black Friday, driving a quarter of all transactions. Email Marketing drove the most online sales on Black Friday. While usually lagging behind online search (free and paid), on Black Friday email marketing was the primary channel, driving 25.1% of orders. Beyond email, 21.1% of sales originated through free search, and 16.3% through paid search. Social media (including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest) drove only 1.7% of sales.

Receive Cyber Monday and other holidata updates
Sign up to receive email updates about key holiday dates including Cyber Monday.

About Custora
Custora ( http://www.custora.com) provides a retention marketing platform that helps retail brands anticipate individual customer behavior to build longer, more profitable relationships. Custora uses predictive analytics to improve how marketing teams, tools and data interact in a way that transforms how retailers acquire and retain customers.

We're excited to work with up & coming e-commerce innovators as well as established omnichannel retail brands, including Guess?, Bonobos, Ann Taylor LOFT, Crocs, and Backcountry.com. To learn more about Custora, get a demo here.

About The Custora E-Commerce Pulse
The Custora E-Commerce Pulse is a free online dashboard of US e-commerce stats and trends. Pulse data and analysis have been featured in The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Fortune, eMarketer, and WWD. Pulse data is part of the Bloomberg Professional Service (Bloomberg Terminals).
Pulse methodology: To provide estimations of the US e-commerce industry, The Custora E-Commerce Pulse uses a combination of internal and external data sources. Internally, Custora analyzed over 500 million online shoppers and over $100B in e-commerce revenue across over 200 US-based online retailers. External data points, such as the US Department of Commerce e-commerce growth figures, are also leveraged to extrapolate growth trends within the Custora data universe to arrive at predictions for US industry at large. Sign up to receive email notifications for data updates here.

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Black Friday US E-Commerce Up 16.1% Over Black Friday 2014

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Online sales in the US were up 16.1% on Black Friday 2015 compared to Black Friday 2014, driven by email marketing and mobile shopping. The data comes from the Custora E-Commerce Pulse, a free online dashboard providing key US e-commerce statistics and benchmarking data from over 2

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VIDEO: Should UBER consider legal action?

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VIDEO: Should UBER consider legal action?

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Why are Uber drivers considering legal action? BBC News

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More than 100 drivers for app-based taxi company Uber are looking to take action over their rights, lawyers tell the Victoria Derbyshire programme. Subscribe to BBC News HERE http://bit.ly/1rbfUog Check out our website: http://www.bbc.com/news Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/bbcworldnews Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/bbcworld Instagram: http://instagram.com/bbcnews

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VIDEO: Worlds biggest shopping day - CHINA

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VIDEO: Worlds biggest shopping day - CHINA

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China Singles Day: World's biggest shopping day - BBC News

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China's "Singles Day" was originally a sort of anti-Valentine's day for the unattached, but has morphed into the biggest online shopping day of the year. Subscribe to BBC News HERE http://bit.ly/1rbfUog Check out our website: http://www.bbc.com/news Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/bbcworldnews Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/bbcworld Instagram: http://instagram.com/bbcnews

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Royal Mail delivering in tough market | Lex

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► Subscribe to the Financial Times on YouTube: http://bit.ly/FTimeSubs Royal Mail is facing shrinking postal demand and overcapacity in parcels amid competition from Amazon. Lex's Oliver Ralph and Jonathan Eley discuss how the now fully privatised company is faring.

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VIDEO: Argos Christmas advert - Implications??

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VIDEO: Argos Christmas advert - Implications??

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Argos Christmas Advert 2015 - #JustCantWait

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The Argos Christmas Advert 2015. Immerse yourself in a world of colour, excitement and energy with the Argos Christmas ad, #JustCantWait for Christmas. Get free Same Day Delivery when you spend £50, or collect in store in as little as 60 seconds with Fast Track. Go Argos.

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Amazon & Argos - How quick would you like your delivery?

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Amazon & Argos - How quick would you like your delivery?

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Are ASOS not interested in older customers?

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Are ASOS not interested in older customers?

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River Island launches Click and don't collect article

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How important is delivery speed to customers? 

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How important is delivery speed to customers? 

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E-commerce - an opportunity for Arcadia?

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E-commerce - an opportunity for Arcadia?

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Supply chains - a competitive advantage?

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Supply chains - a competitive advantage?

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SUPPLY CHAIN IS CENTRAL TO MULTICHANNEL SUCCESS WITH A NEED FOR REAL-TIME INVENTORY VISIBILITY, FLEXIBLE FULFILMENT OPTIONS AND NEAR-SOURCING. BUT, WRITES PENELOPE ODY, IT'S A DAUNTING PROSPECT FOR MANY.
By Penelope Ody

Time was when the supply chain was the Cinderella of retail departments. It was rare to find supply-chain representation at board level. Responsibility was often lumped together with IT and regarded by the 'real' retailers - working in trading departments such as store operations, merchandisers, or buyers - as little more than a service function.

Today the story is very different. A study, Supply Chain Strategy in the Boardroom - the Reality, by consultants Solving Efeso and Cranfield School of Management found that in around three-quarters of the businesses questioned, the senior supply chain executive was now a board member. While improving the status of supply-chain executives may be straightforward, transforming the supply chain to cope with multichannel demands is quite another matter.

Retailers rarely replace supply-chain systems, and many major chains are currently using technology designed for a time when ecommerce was in its infancy. Martec's IT in Retail 2013 Report analysed the IT systems of 150 leading UK retailers, and suggests that the average age of retail logistics and supply-chain technology is 10.8 years - the second highest of any systems category studied, with the average age for replacement calculated at 12 years, the highest for any category.

"Supply chain is coming onto the board agenda," says Andy Murden, business development manager at transportation management systems developer Kewill, "and there is a realisation that it has to be synchronised across the channels with one or at most two platforms and with real-time updates. Currently, companies are tending to patch up their existing systems as best they can, but certainly over the next five years as systems become due for replacement we should see some significant changes and increased capabilities."

WORKING IN REAL TIME
In a multichannel supply chain, real-time is essential as Alek Adamski, partner at consultants Kurt Salmon , agrees: "So many retailers are still working with old legacy systems that cannot give real-time information and for me that is key - it is vital."

John Lewis has already bitten the bullet with a £369 million investment in its supply chain planned between now and 2020. Termed Programme Q, the investment includes a second distribution centre at the Magna Park site in Milton Keynes.

"A critical element in planning future supply-chain needs is that the facts we base our plans on today will have changed in five years time," says operations director Dino Rocos. "Therefore we need to maintain agility with a modular approach."

Deliveries also need to be flexible and although John Lewis currently uses three carriers for the 9.5 million smaller parcels it despatches annually - it has its own two-man distribution fleet for larger consignments - Rocos admits to being "uncomfortable about our reliance on the carrier network". An in-house one-man delivery fleet is certainly on the cards for the future.

As Rocos points out, in 2000 John Lewis' online sales were £21 million a year - the equivalent of half a department store. Today that figure is £1 billion and accounts for 27 per cent of the company's trade: by 2020 it expects online to have risen to 40 per cent. John Lewis' first distribution centre (DC) at Magna Park opened four years ago with 650,000 square feet; today it provides 900,000 square feet and similar growth is expected for the second unit scheduled to open in 2015. This expansion is not just for online business but to cope with the chain's growing number of department stores as well. "We're investing serious money in supply chain and our larger DCs reflect the scale of our growth," says Rocos. "We need to be able to access a piece of stock anywhere in the business to support our customers - however they choose to interact with us."

Complementing the DC investment - and designed to provide that vital real-time stock information - is planned investment in new ERP systems, probably from Oracle and to be implemented next year, and investment in item-level RFID in branches. "You really need stock accuracy for online fulfilment," adds Rocos.

LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION
Understanding where stock is located - stores, DCs, regional warehouses, cross-dock, supplier or wherever - and how quickly and from where it can most cost-effectively be despatched to meet a customer order, is central to successful and profitable multichannel fulfilment. That means not just fully integrated inventory data but updates in real-time to ensure that goods really are 'available to promise', as well as integration with retail systems - both EPoS and web - so that everyone has the correct information available at all times.

Having an integrated system is, however, just the start. A greater problem for many is accuracy. "In-store inventory accuracy is not generally that good," says Steve Leng, retail merchandising and supply chain solutions leader for UK and Ireland with IBM , "so retailers are reluctant to embed that data into their supply-chain systems. If you don't have stock visibility you can't promise to fulfil customer orders. To improve store accuracy you need IT investment and better processes, but transformational change is difficult - so for some RFID is back on the agenda."

RFID IN RETAIL
RFID has been around for at least 30 years, periodically hitting the retail headlines as the next 'big thing' but few pilots have progressed to roll-out. Now, a number of fashion retailers are experimenting with combined RFID and security tags which just might prove cost-effective. "There is a real business case for RFID as part of a real-time supply-chain model," says Leng, "but the jury is out - retailers have been burnt in the past by RFID projects so some are reluctant to try again."

Alison Wiltshire, global retail propositions director with BT Global Services is more optimistic: "Retail is the fastest-growing sector for RFID after government and livestock," she says, "and we're already seeing a lot of interest from fashion, apparel and luxury retailers in using RFID, also from some of the larger department stores and for high velocity items or where they are difficult to count. In the US, Bloomingdales has enterprise-wide use of RFID while here Marks & Spencer is starting to tag all sorts of items - not just apparel. We expect to see more large-scale RFID roll-outs during the first quarter of 2014."

Item-level RFID tagging means that goods can be tracked wherever they happen to be within the supply chain - from racks at the DC to dressing a mannequin in the front window - so accurate 'available to promise' commitments can be made.

Without RFID greater discipline is needed for regular in-store stock checks to maintain accuracy. As Leng points out this is "transformational" change - persuading store ops that using sales staff for supply-chain activities is essential while encouraging sales associates to prioritise such jobs.

Craig Sears-Black, UK managing director at Manhattan Associates , tells of retailer Ann Inc, owner of the Ann Taylor and Loft brands, which has implemented real-time visibility systems across its 1,500 US stores. Minimum store safety stock levels for every SKU had to be established, allowing anything above that to be available to promise for online orders with highly disciplined regular stock checks to ensure accuracy. "Historically retailers worked on batch updates for store stock levels but if you are selling online and fulfilling from store you can't do that," he says. "When the supply chain meets the store you need people and process change, and it becomes an HR and skills issue."

Ensuring stock accuracy is thus not just a matter for the supply-chain director but can involve IT in introducing task-management systems or RFID, store ops in changing processes, and HR in retraining programmes: multi-disciplinary requirements that need board-level support and backing to be implemented successfully.

"Larger retailers are starting to think strategically and end departmental silos," says James Lovell, Smarter Commerce solution consultant Europe at IBM. "The culture in retail is finally beginning to change and boards are starting to see that organisational barriers have to be broken down."

Such cultural change demands strategic direction and has to be on the board agenda for any multichannel business. Also high on the list has to be a true understanding of the total cost to serve involved in multichannel fulfilment, as well as the financial implications of offering click and collect or drive-through.
Studies by Kurt Salmon for individual retail clients suggest that some could be losing 10-20 per cent on each sale. "We've not found that many as high as 20 per cent," says Alek Adamski, "but there are a few where such sales are severely loss-making. Most retailers assume their online business is profitable but in many cases it is quite the reverse."

THE COST OF FULFILMENT
Fulfilment services such as click and collect already come in many flavours and finding a cost-effective option is essentials. Some leave it all to store staff, others send individual pre-packaged orders from DCs overnight. Most DCs are, however, designed purely for bulk picking - hence the practice of allocating stock to a separate ecommerce warehouse set up for single picks. "We're working with several retailers streamlining their DCs to become more efficient," says Manhattan's Sears-Black, "with many wanting to include single and bulk picking from a single stock pool at one site."

There are challenges further back along the supply pipeline too. Most established online retailers regard international growth as vital - and that raises the question of how to fulfil these overseas orders. "Retailers need to be able to split inbound supplies," says Sears-Black. "Rather than ship everything to the UK and then send it back out again, should they develop regional hubs so that stocks go from the far east direct to them?"

Do that and you need high-level quality assurance at source, as well as good planning and allocation systems so that the merchandise ends up in the most convenient place. TXT, which works with pureplays such as ASOS , is already reporting growing interest in more sophisticated planning systems from online retailers. "Initially they were more interested in in-season planning, but now pre-season is becoming important," says Mark Stone, COO, planning for EMEA at TXT. "In the internet world retailers need to react quickly. Customers want goods immediately - so [retailers] need to keep resources close to home. They need to build specific plans for each channel as activity varies and you can't apply the same merchandise plan to all of them. If you don't plan how can you react?"

PREDICTING FUTURE NEEDS
Predictive systems, such as TXT's tools, can provide rapid insights into likely sales very soon after a new line has been launched, so helping to adapt plans in real-time to ensure that the stock is available where it needs to be. "We're seeing more interest in local DCs," adds Stone, "and companies are running replenishment programmes several times a week to ensure that stocks are shipped to where they will most be needed."

Such local DCs may be dedicated regional warehouses, a larger branch acting as a stock portal for the area, or even a dark stores, a failing outlet transformed into a mini-warehouse providing back-up stock and managing local click-and-collect or ship-from-store consignments. Near-sourcing, too, is on many agenda with high-profile names such as Jaeger already announcing that it plans to bring part of its production back to the UK and Europe, to cut lead-times and give greater flexibility.

At a time when customers are shopping anywhere, everywhere and whenever they choose - and expecting instant delivery as well - supply-chain activities can no longer be dismissed as back-office service functions: they are key not just to multichannel strategy but for its success.

SPEAKING FROM EXPERIENCE

STRATEGIC STORES
"The store is strategically important in the multichannel environment but retailers need to think about it in a different way - they need to manage the store as part of the distribution centre."
Steve Leng, retail merchandising and supply chain solutions leader, UK and Ireland, IBM

MOVING IN-HOUSE
"Some carriers are in a financially precarious position and some are not moving forward as we would like, so we're looking to do one-man deliveries with our own fleet and expect to bring these shipments in-house in time."
Dino Rocos, operations director, John Lewis

FINANCES OF DELIVERY
"In the early days home delivery was seen as a loss leader, especially in grocery. There was a land grab for market share so retailers were prepared to swallow the losses. As the number of shoppers grows, so home delivery becomes even more uneconomic. French supermarkets have taken to drive-through collection, mainly because they didn't want to lose money on home delivery, but how much do they lose by reducing the contact customers actually have with the store?"
Alek Adamski, partner, Kurt Salmon

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Supply Chain Moves Centre Stage - InternetRetailing

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SUPPLY CHAIN IS CENTRAL TO MULTICHANNEL SUCCESS WITH A NEED FOR REAL-TIME INVENTORY VISIBILITY, FLEXIBLE FULFILMENT OPTIONS AND NEAR-SOURCING. BUT, WRITES PENELOPE ODY, IT'S A DAUNTING PROSPECT FOR MANY. Time was when the supply chain was the Cinderella of retail departments. It was rare to find supply-chain representation at board (more...)

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Research bullet point 6: The impact of e-commerce on business performance, both nationally and internationally

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Research bullet point 6: The impact of e-commerce on business performance, both nationally and internationally

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Research bullet point 5: The factors influencing, if why and how businesses respond to the growth of e-commerce

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Research bullet point 5: The factors influencing, if why and how businesses respond to the growth of e-commerce

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Research bullet point 4: The extent to which e-commerce creates opportunities and poses threats for businesses

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Research bullet point 4: The extent to which e-commerce creates opportunities and poses threats for businesses

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Research bullet point 3: The impact of e-commerce on different stakeholder groups

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Research bullet point 3: The impact of e-commerce on different stakeholder groups

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Research bullet point 2: The impact of e-commerce on businesses and their functional areas

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Research bullet point 2: The impact of e-commerce on businesses and their functional areas

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Research bullet point 1:  The impact of e-commerce on the competitive environment within industries

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Research bullet point 1:  The impact of e-commerce on the competitive environment within industries