Building Direct to Consumer Fulfillment Capacity and Capabilities

06.09.21

Direct to consumer or DTC strategies are very popular right now in retail and consumer goods companies. It’s easy to understand why, especially for consumer goods companies. Start with the continued soaring growth of ecommerce. After what seemed then robust ecommerce growth in the US of 14-16% annually for many years, in the stay at home economy of 2020, that growth rate soared to 44.5% in Q2 of last year, 36.6% in Q3, 32.1% in Q4, and 39.1% in Q1 2021, according to data from the US Census Bureau. No company wants to miss out on that megatrend.

Retail comes out swinging

01.20.21 

As retailers rebuild their distribution schemes as quickly as possible, they are still behind the curve when it comes to how the role of stores is changing and the enormous surge in e-commerce. A little empathy is actually in order, even when you can’t buy exactly what you want when you want it. Patience remains a virtue.

2021 Marks a New Chapter for WES

01.18.21

Any way you analyze it, 2020 will go down as a watershed year for the material handling industry. From the effects of COVID-19 on the workplace to the unprecedented (and continuing) jump in e-commerce, with the start of the new year, the material handling industry is deep into its new way of doing business, especially in warehouse execution systems or WES.

The supply chain’s pivot to E-commerce

01.06.21

COVID brought a spike in e-commerce annual growth. The challenge now is to manage that explosion in the near term without over investing before the new normal, because we aren’t going back.

“How does any DC absorb that?” asks Dan Gilmore, vice president of marketing for Softeon. That, unfortunately, is not a rhetorical question. And the immediate answer is not easily, and certainly not gracefully. Worse yet, it was just a prelude of what was to come.