Recently, Bringg hosted a retail webinar addressing holiday success. The panel discussion included FedEx VP Bonnie Voldeng and Deloitte retail & supply chain Lead Bill Kammerer.
Bringg’s VP Marketing Daniela Perlmutter hosted the discussion covering key trends pushing change in retail fulfillment. Both Bonnie and Bill provided easy to implement tips on how retailers can scale up and optimize their last mile operations to capitalize on peak season demand.
Here are a few highlights from the webinar:
On Increasing Delivery Capacity:
“Bundling is better…Offer a product or shipping discount to encourage order consolidation.
“When you consolidate an order into one shipment, you can reduce your order fulfillment efforts and your shipping costs significantly.”
– Bonnie Voldeng, VP FedEx Freight
“While the last mile may be a point of contention,…you now have distribution centers that [have] to operate…at a smaller capacity just because of maintaining social distancing.
“If there’s a positive COVID test on a shift there will be an impact on throughput capacity of that facility just to get the product into the last mile system. Many retailers are having to address this with additional workers and expanding into multiple shifts. “
– Bill Kammerer, Deloitte
On Crowdsourced delivery:
“A lot of retailers…are starting to branch out from the very traditional shippers and getting into many of the micro market delivery capabilities…in particular, retailers that have a physical footprint.
“you’re starting to see much more of the fulfillment coming out of the store, and leveraging local market delivery…developing relationships with either smaller, local based courier’s, looking at the doordashes, or the instacarts, or even some of the more kind of unique Gig drivers.”
– Bill Kammerer, Deloitte
Click Below to watch the full webinar:
On emphasizing a fulfillment channel to scale up and optimize:
“51% of shoppers [are] actually going to look to have their shipments that they buy [for] Christmas sent to the recipient…this is going to put even more of a strain on retailers to be able to handle multiple delivery mechanisms.” – Bill Kammerer, Deloitte
On how to prepare for rising shipping costs:
“Shipping demand is usually highest on Mondays, so promotions launched over the weekend have the potential to be problematic…an earlier start to the season may also save on cost on certain surcharges that would be applied later in the peak season.” Bonnie Voldeng, VP FedEx Freight
Optimizing retail footprint?
“inventory has to be tracked across all selling platforms…retailers shouldn’t accept orders for inventory that they don’t have and possibly cannot get or replace prior to the holiday season.” Bonnie Voldeng
Building up brand loyalty prior to the holiday rush:
“Overcommunicate order status to buyers during the entire sales and shipment process.”
“When it comes to their orders, customers would rather have too much information than not enough.” Bonnie Voldeng, VP FedEx Freight
Keeping customers at the center
“Returns are a large determining factor at times to shoppers online…62% of shoppers online [will] leave a retail site if they do not offer a return policy.” – Bill Kammerer, Deloitte
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Ready for more retail and logistics tips? Watch the full webinar here.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
