Skip to main content

Retail Supply Chain - Big Lesson from Big Winners | LoadProof

It is very easy to look at the adversity, see only doom and gloom and give up quickly. However, real winners see the opportunities behind the challenge. It may be tempting to assume that e-commerce is the new reality, but I believe retail sales still have promise.

Let me share a story. Once, a gentleman had a beautiful bone china cup in which he would enjoy his tea, while reading his books. He relished the experience every day. It’s easy to imagine: most of us have relished a nice drink, something to read, and a few quiet moments.


One day, he accidentally dropped the china teacup and broke it. He didn’t have another cup and he was unable to find another that was as sleek and as beautiful as the one he had. He was disappointed thinking that he was never going to be able to have such a calm, relaxing experience again. Then he had an idea: he asked a master craftsman to try to fix it. The craftsman knew that he couldn’t make it look like new. He thought for a long time and finally had a clever idea. He made golden glue by adding gold powder to the adhesive and then glued the pieces together with the golden cement. The cup was even more beautiful than it was before—and unique as well. The master craftsman turned adversity into opportunity.

Truly great companies take a similar approach. Consider the Starbucks barista. People stand in line every day to buy their coffee. The baristas are trained to have the goal of ensuring the customer is completely happy. They are willing to make any variation on a drink. They are trained to build relationships with the customers and remember specific traits and preferences of each. Most of all, they are trained to respond positively to any customer dissatisfaction and to remake the order until the customer is satisfied. Human connection is a powerful thing.

Click here to continue reading this article.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Optimize Your Warehouse Replenishments with these Best Practices | LoadProof

  This best practice is about making  replenishments  inside the warehouse. It is important to stay on the top off replenishments always in your warehouse. If you have just one shift that you are running it would help a lot. If you spend extra hours in the evening and then do the topping off all your active locations it will be helpful for the pickers in the next shift. In the next morning when the pickers come after all the locations will be full and they can start picking right away without wasting time in replenishments. If you have two shifts running either choose the second shift or have a third shift if possible and keep doing the top off replenishments. There are active replenishment locations and these active locations have Min and Max. Whenever your inventory falls below min, replenishments are going to get triggered or it will get triggered if there is an order that needs a lot of picks from a particular location. This will drive the location down which will tri...

Picture Documentation for Freight Claims White Paper – Part I | LoadProof

  INTRODUCTION This document describes the benefits of an effective Picture Documentation System(PDS) that helps with getting Freight Claims Paid faster. An effective pictures documentation system helps with 1 – Get Freight Claims paid much faster by making pictures available quickly and easily, 2 – Provides visibility to the damages through pictures. The visibility gained provides insight into the handling mistakes made while the orders are fulfilled, so that the parties can determine and establish accountability boundaries and get the shipper paid. BACKGROUND What are Freight Claims? A freight claim is a legal demand by a shipper or a consignee to a carrier for financial reimbursement for a loss or a damage of a shipment. Freight Claims are claims submitted by manufacturers/suppliers/shippers to transportation vendors and or carriers, when the goods the Supplier shipped did not arrive at the destination in a pristine state. Instead it arrived as damaged, the packaging was damaged...

3PL Panacea: The Flexible Mobile Supply Chain Platform | LoadProof

  The third-party logistics (3PL) business is tough, because it covers a wide gamut of service offerings, that include some combination of: Just move my boxes and/or pallets. Move my boxes and/or pallets and store them in your warehouse. Move my boxes and/or pallets and operate my facility. Own all the labor and activities in my facility. Offer all distribution services for my product (All I will do is download my orders into your system/supply chain). I’ve even run into more complicated models of operation, including both tightly and loosely coupled models.  In a tightly-coupled model, the supply chain systems of the 3PL, including orders, inventory, transportation, advanced shipment notices, purchase orders, and more, are tightly integrated into the shipper’s supply chain systems. All this information seamlessly flows between both supply chain systems of the 3PL and the shipper. They stay in synch with each other and the parties perform the functions in their respective syst...