It’s hard to remember a time when ecommerce retailers took 2-3 weeks to deliver orders. Those days are long gone now, as the rise of Amazon and faster shipping services have accustomed consumers to lightning-fast delivery. To keep up with the new status quo and satisfy customers’ expectations for 2-day or even same day delivery, more and more businesses are adopting a distributed warehousing model. It might seem counter-intuitive to operate many warehouses — rather than just one or two — but through this model, ecommerce businesses can improve efficiency, reduce cost, and better service custom ..read more

The Chinese New Year (abbreviated as CNY) in many Western countries is often nothing more than a blip on the radar. For some, the holiday comes and goes without them even noticing. In mainland China (and in other countries that celebrate the holiday such as Indonesia, Malaysia, North Korea, Singapore, South Korea, Vietnam, and Brunei), the Chinese New Year holiday is a very big deal. Imagine the Christmas holidays, but longer and with more extensive travel. Everything closes, and everyone goes home — sometimes for several weeks. For ecommerce businesses that manufacture products in China, now ..read more

With so many operational activities to oversee, it’s not always viable for ecommerce businesses to handle everything in-house. In these cases, brands often outsource to a third-party logistics service provider, or 3PL. But selecting the right 3PL for your brand can be a complicated task, as there are many different elements to consider. In particular, ecommerce companies should always evaluate a 3PL candidate’s distribution network — that is, the number and locations of 3PL warehouses and/or fulfillment centers that the 3PL runs. The size and reach of a 3PL’s distribution network is more impor ..read more

Retail replenishment is a little like juggling: it requires a lot of multitasking, a good deal of precision, and excellent timing. At first, retail replenishment can be frustrating — between forecasting demand, calculating how much stock to reorder, timing your purchase, and determining product allocation across channels and different locations, it is easy to accidentally end up with too much or too little stock. Multichannel merchants may find retail replenishment particularly challenging, as different channels might move different inventory items at different rates. However, like juggling, r ..read more

Every ecommerce business is concerned with profitability — and in order to be profitable, you need to stock the right inventory at the right locations at the right time. One key way to achieve this is through assortment planning. Through assortment planning, businesses can strategically plan their inventory and manage their catalog around changes in demand and sales volumes throughout the year to satisfy customers and maximize profitability. In this article, we’ll cover what assortment planning is, when to consider it, how to get started with assortment planning, and how a logistics platform l ..read more

As online brands grow, it’s not uncommon for inventory to be transferred from one location to another to meet demand. With multiple fulfillment locations and sales channels, there is a lot of inventory movement that occurs throughout the ecommerce supply chain — especially if you run a multichannel fulfillment operation. But juggling inventory transfers between storage facilities is sure to leave an inventory management team overwhelmed if not done properly. And though inventory transfers are useful for managing storage and demand, there are ways to avoid them for a more efficient supply chain ..read more

Whether you’re running a DTC brand or a B2B ecommerce business, distribution is one critical aspect that needs to be carefully considered and planned out. Good distribution management improves supply chain efficiency by streamlining the entire retail logistics operations. As a result, you need an optimized retail distribution strategy for better efficiency and cost savings. In this post we’ll give you a closer look at what retail distribution is, how it works, and how you can choose or optimize your retail distribution strategy. What is retail distribution? Retail distribution refers to the pr ..read more

Like the old adage goes: a chain is as strong as the weakest link. A business’s supply chain is no different. Whether there’s a manufacturing delay or inaccuracies in fulfillment, every stage of an ecommerce operation impacts the next.  This is why proper supply chain management is vital for the smooth functioning of an ecommerce business. But how exactly do you know if a supply chain is performing well? And how do you decide what areas of improvement are worth investing in? To effectively manage your business, you need to keep a close eye on your supply chain performance.  In this a ..read more

For an ecommerce business to succeed, building a resilient and agile supply chain should be top priority. Without supply chain agility, unforeseen problems and short-term hiccups could result in major disruptions that are often expensive and sometimes irrecoverable. That’s why good supply chain management is so important for your ecommerce operations. An optimized supply chain execution process can make all the difference. In this post, we’ll take a closer look at what supply chain execution is, what processes and tasks are involved, and how you can improve it for your ecommerce business. What ..read more