Maybe you’re a small business. It all starts with an online business idea — you have a product, do some marketing, the wheels of commerce start turning, and now you find there are people out there buying what you are selling. Now you’re at a tipping point: the orders are coming in fast and furious, …
It’s hard for any single company to do everything superlatively well. At some point, most businesses face the decision of whether to keep all operations in-house or to outsource some functions such as warehousing and fulfillment to specialist partners to focus on their core competencies. If you’ve opted to outsource your warehousing to a third-party …
Whether you’re manufacturing computer chips or chocolate chips, you rely on a group of suppliers to create your business products. Then you sell those products to specific customers. In this respect, your company, your suppliers, your customers (and their customers) form the different “links” of a supply chain. Moreover, the better you can integrate these …
Thanks to Amazon, consumers expect anything to be delivered fast and at a low cost. You’ve worked so hard to create a line of products and offer them at a price that customers are happily willing to pay for. Your marketing is on point: reviews and referral traffic are building, and you’re able to reduce your …
If you’re running your consumer packaged goods warehouse on an outdated system or even spreadsheets, you could be costing your company millions. It could be time to upgrade if you find it challenging to manage inventory and meet customer expectations. Take a look at the next level: a warehouse management system or WMS. What is WMS? …
The overall market for consumer packaged goods (CPG) – the items used by the average consumer – is on the rise. For example, in 2018, online sales of CPGs rose over 35 percent, and that trend doesn’t look to change anytime soon. What are CPGs? They are the everyday items that most people use regularly. They are …
Whew! You have designed and either built or sourced great products. You have efficient manufacturing partners, and your marketing is scaling. Customers are finding you online, and orders are rolling in steadily. But the big question is: can you be — or do you want to be — the one to fulfill and ship all …
Every year, there’s a degree of evolution in retail and e-commerce inventory management and the logistics and warehousing that support it, but 2020 has seen more change than most years. Pundits and business schools will spend years analyzing its (often painful) lessons, but several fundamental trends are already clear. We’ve selected seven that we think …