Looking Ahead to NRF 2025
From Jan. 12 – 14, 2025, over 40,000 retail professionals will descend on the Javits Convention Center in New York City for the retail industry’s biggest show of the year — NRF ‘25. Every year, retail professionals gather to learn from their peers, see and…
The State of Order Management: Commerce and Order Management Strategies to Drive Success
This blog was co-written by Nina Seth and Hiu Wai Loh. The retail landscape continues to evolve. Every retailer must create customer-centric experiences from click to deliver and back, leverage stores as fulfillment hubs and keep an eye on sustainability to meet the needs of sustainability…
Keep or Return? Fashion Influencers Have Created a Costly Trend for Retailers
It’s no secret that product returns are one of the biggest challenges facing the world’s retailers — especially retailers of fashion apparel. Clothing trends and product seasons come and go with increasing speed today. That means fashion retailers must get returned products back in stores,…
It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like the Post-Peak Season
The holiday season is a time for joy — and for supply chain chaos. This year is no exception. The five-day period from Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday shattered online retail sales records, with U.S. consumers spending $41.1 billion, an increase of 8.1% over 2023. The…
How Cooperative Supply Chains Are Transforming Retail and Logistics
This blog has been adapted from a talk given at the Leaders in Logistics: Last Mile event. In the past, meeting up with friends meant setting a specific time and place and hoping everyone showed up as planned. In today’s world, we continuously update one…
5 Steps for Retailers to Optimize Marketplace Returns and Protect Their Brand
In our last marketplaces post, we covered why many retailers are establishing marketplaces for third-party sellers to offer their products through. The opportunities for growth are undeniable, but there are challenges to overcome to maximize the marketplace approach. Foremost among them is the question of…
Why Retailer-Owned Marketplaces are Taking Over – and What to Watch Out For
The number of retailer-owned third-party marketplaces, in which retailers list products from other sellers within their platform or website, has risen over the past few years. Many big-name retailers now have their own marketplace platforms, including Tesco, Boots, Superdrug, B&Q, and The Range in the…
Retailers Beware: Returns Fraud on the Rise As Criminals Get More Creative
Returns already have a significant impact on retailers’ bottom line. National Retail Federation (NRF) data reveals that for every $1 billion in sales, retailers incur an average of $145 million in merchandise returns. To make matters worse, returns fraud is also on the rise. Last…
Are You Serving Today’s Shoppers on Yesterday’s Technology?
Category management has reached an inflection point. In a volatile context characterized by rapidly shifting customer demands and expectations, rising prices, strained margins, ongoing supply chain instability, and increasing fulfillment complexity, getting the right product into the right place at exactly the right time is…
From Aisle to AI: How CPGs Can Conquer Demand Variability
Extreme demand volatility and unprecedented supply chain disruptions make it tough for many manufacturers to get the demand-supply balance right. Consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies face especially difficult forecasting and demand planning challenges. Every day, CPG planners must contend with the complexities of omni-channel sales…