Order Fulfillment

Crystal-ball gazing is not a widely practiced art in the world of fulfillment. Being very much a tactical discipline, fulfillment is more focused on the here and now. With calls having to be answered in 20 seconds and orders to be shipped in 24 hours, fulfillment is a near real-time, decision-making process — one that historically owes as much to operational flexibility as it does to operational planning. In the catalog industry, marketing innovation has spawned major developments in fulfillment operations. Marketers have been the dogs that wag an operation’s tail, and in the end it’s the marketers who determine the direction fulfillment

As margins continue to be squeezed, reducing expenses has become a major topic of discussion among catalogers. In fact, many have put into place specific edicts to reduce operational expenses. That said, the purpose of this article is to offer ideas that can help you attack one major aspect of your company’s cost structure — vendor inbound freight (VIF). By properly managing your company’s VIF, you could make the difference between a marginally good and a very good year for your catalog. Current State VIF usually is included on the profit-and-loss statement as part of overall inventory costs. This low visibility line item normally

The following is a checklist to help you develop cost-effective and customer service-oriented shipping plans. The direct-to-consumer in-dustry finds itself at a crossroads in terms of shipping and handling (S&H) policies and charges. Specifically, some studies show consumers are refusing to place orders if the S&H charges are perceived to be out of line with those charged by competitors. But S&H is a necessity for most catalogers. It often represents 8 percent to 10 percent of a catalog’s average order and net sales, and it offsets some of the pick-and-pack labor, outbound freight charges, and packing materials needed to ship consumers their orders.

Niche cataloger Shari’s Berries International guarantees that its chocolate-covered strawberries reach recipients a mere day after they’re dipped—a business plan that puts a heavy emphasis on reliable address data. Indeed, according to Lowell Feil, vice president of operations, until May 2002 his department experienced delivery address problems with about 10 percent of its orders. Though the company’s FedEx shipping system caught nearly all of these during the package-scanning process, catalog call center reps then had to call and re-verify the addresses. This not only strained call center resources, it often resulted in delayed product shipments and ruined customer surprises. Company executives

Since its inception in 1985, Venus Swimwear has had a long history of growth, with annual sales increases averaging 15 percent to 25 percent. Today, the Jacksonville, FL-based company that was started by a college student and weightlifting enthusiast is the world’s largest marketer of junior swimwear. But as Venus grew, founder Daryle Scott realized he had one problem. “We had this business that was doing really well, but it’s basically a February-through-June operation and is dead in the winter.” Venus Swimwear has always handled its own order-taking and fulfillment, and the seasonality was putting a dent in the company’s back-end productivity. Scott’s solution:

Long after the Internet bubble burst, e-commerce is alive and well for direct marketers and is the fastest-growing direct commerce sales channel. Catalog companies have three options for managing the dynamic online marketing environment. An Independent Adjunct At one extreme, a catalog’s e-commerce operation can stand alone as a totally independent adjunct to the traditional enterprise. Although it may share some of the same merchandise, it also may feature items that are not in the catalog. When it does offer catalog items, they may be only a subset of the full catalog line. In this extreme scenario, no effort is needed to

When Glen Pirie came to Swanson Health Products four years ago with a background in retail operations he was used to serving big customers like Wal-Mart and Home Depot. But he soon realized that for a consumer catalog, “A lot of the same business principles apply—like giving customers what they want.” The difference in the catalog field, he says is that there are “a lot more customers when you’re dealing with catalog orders. At Swanson, we have about 750,000.” Today, Pirie overseas purchasing, receiving, manufacturing and logistics at Swanson, which markets about 6,000 vitamin and health supplement products, including national and proprietary

Flip to the order form of any catalog or go to the checkout of a cataloger’s Web site, and you’ll find one truth: There’s no standard for shipping and handling (S&H) fees. What a catalog charges to ship product depends on many factors, such as type of product (soft goods or hard goods) or the shipping method chosen by the customer. Others are less-than-obvious and depend on how the cataloger chooses to account for S&H in its operations. These variables make S&H a widely debated topic. According to F. Curtis Barry & Co., an operations consulting firm, about half of catalogers charge

On the surface, it’s a typical American success story: an immigrant family fleeing religious persecution arrives in the United States and starts a business; 85 years later it’s not only successful, but still family-owned and operated. Today Omaha Steaks is a meat dynasty, making the merchandising and fulfillment challenges it faced from the beginning uniquely significant. How it continues to survive those challenges highlights strategies for other catalogers hoping to conquer the perishables market. On-site Processing Omaha Steaks enjoys the advantage of processing most of its own product offerings. The company sources its—literally—raw material mainly from Midwestern producers, and then ages, trims and

Richard Eaton, vice president, fulfillment services of Highlights for Children, and Tom Kirkham, senior consultant for ESYNC International, spoke to Catalog Success a few weeks before Highlights planned to go live with a new warehouse management system (WMS). Like many catalogers, Highlights for Children’s product-fulfillment operation contends with several distribution channels and myriad product types. Highlights’ in-house distribution center handles fulfillment for three divisions: - Highlights Catalog, a traditional children’s products catalog; - Highlights Jigsaw, an educational toy and book supplier offering products through home parties similar to the Tupperware model; and - a third division that sells business-to-business (b-to-b)