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☛ WEB VERSION: https://bit.ly/2O2XEjv


POST COVID-19: THE NEW NORMAL


SUPPORTED CONTENT


physical showroom presence, whether their own or through partnerships.


Online or physical retail businesses need to give serious consideration to the returns loop. This is not just about the efficient passage of customer returns back in to saleable stock, but potentially it could be about the recovery, reprocessing, recycling of used and end-of-life goods and of packaging materials.


Alongside the recovery mode of dealing with huge swathes of unsold or unseasonal stock, piled high during the lockdown period, retailers will need to review their sourcing, stocking and inventory policies. How commercially viable is near-sourcing, multiple suppliers, just in time manufacturing and pull ordering? Many ‘fast fashion’ retailers already operate these more agile, short lead


time, responsive supply chain models – how can mainstream retailers implement similar principles, and do so profitably? Collaboration and visibility are likely to be key components.


All the points made so far have implications for the size, type and location of warehousing and distribution centres, and also for the sorts of relationships retailers will need to have with their competitors, suppliers, and logistics partners.


All this of course has to be done while maintaining or improving efficiency and service levels, and maintaining an iron control over costs. This is particularly true online. As many firms are currently discovering, an online offer can be expensive to deliver, particularly when speed is prioritised. The key to sustainability


homeofdirectcommerce.com | Direct Commerce


will be balancing customer proposition and cost, and creating efficiency at scale. To achieve this retailers need to look inwards to understand their own processes and costs, and outwards to what their customers really want.


Those that succeed in the ‘new normal’ will have invested, not necessarily massively, but wisely, in a number of areas. Automation gives opportunities to improve labour resilience, to grow more cost effectively, and to be able to react faster and more robustly to f luctuations, whether those be spikes in demand or labour shortages. Importantly, automation is not just needed in the warehouse – much sourcing, procurement, supplier relations, transport and warehouse management, and the links between them, are ripe for automation. Well- deployed


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