Weekly edition
| March 2, 2021
By Shefali Kapadia
Store fulfillment is typically the last node of the retail supply chain, before the consumer picks up an online order or it's delivered via last mile. But not for Target. (Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up here.) |
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Target could have kept building fulfillment centers, CEO Brian Cornell said this morning on the retailer's earnings call. But "we didn't see the textbook solution as scalable," he said.
It's trying a different playbook instead.
Target is testing a sortation center between the store and last-mile delivery, with plans to add five more. How it works.
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The retailer is able to fulfill orders six times faster than the year before. And that's critical, with Lowe's fulfilling 60% of online orders from stores in Q4.
Lowe's is also aiming to take complexity out of stores, building a network of cross docks and distribution centers.
"Market-based delivery is absolutely the way to go," CEO Marvin Ellison asserted. Read more.
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Orders are idling at factories and supplier facilities in Asia. That's rippling down the chain to cause stockouts of some SKUs at Wayfair, executives said.
The e-tailer expects it will take a few months before the backlog lessens and stock levels return. Details here.
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Stat of the week
A recent survey by Gartner found that 53% of respondents plan to invest in waste reduction efforts in the next 18 months, because it's the right thing to do and it saves cost, as seen in the chart below. Dive deeper.
Credit: Matt Leonard / Supply Chain Dive
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data from
Gartner
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Quick Hits
The New York Times
Design News
Parcel and Postal Technology International
Marketplace
HR Dive
Parting thought
It seems like just yesterday (but also ages ago, because time is a weird construct in a pandemic) that Target executives were defending their store-based fulfillment model to dubious analysts who thought the model couldn't scale.
Well here we are, with more and more retailers fulfilling more and more online orders from stores.
Was Target right all along? The executives surely think so. Did the pandemic help change the game for store-based fulfillment? Or a bit of both?
Shefali Kapadia
Senior Editor, Supply Chain Dive
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