Supply Chain

As retailers contemplate 2020 and what it will bring in terms of trends, technology and customer demands, the overall supply chain requires further examination to better align it to the new normal for the next decade. The supply chain remains retailers’ best means of driving customer satisfaction and loyalty, not to mention efficiency and profitability.…

The advertising industry is undergoing rapid change, and buckle your seatbelts, retail is next. The new era of advertising is called “programmatic,” which simply means the work done by yesterday’s ad agencies and media buying firms is now done by computers. We’re entering the programmatic era of retail, and the survivors will be masters of…

For many years, drop-shipping was touted as the best possible business model for online entrepreneurs who wanted to start lucrative, yet lean businesses from the convenience of their own homes. But with so much saturation, is it still a profitable idea? What is Drop-Shipping? According to Shopify, “drop-shipping is a retail fulfillment method where a…

I don’t know about you, but I love convenience. I love ordering my groceries from Whole Foods while at the office, and have them waiting on my doorstep by the time I arrive home. Recently, I’m loving being able to pick up online purchases in-store. I order shoes on Nordstrom.com, wait a couple of days,…

Amazon.com is blocking its third-party sellers from using FedEx's ground delivery network for Prime shipments, citing a decline in performance heading into the final stretch of the holiday shopping season. The ban on using FedEx’s Ground and Home services starts this week and will last “until the delivery performance of these ship methods improves,” according…

Grocery store Kroger and drug store Walgreens are teaming up. In an effort to cut supplier costs, the two companies want to start buying merchandise together, CNBC reported. The chain retailers will call this partnership the Retail Procurement Alliance, and will have them identifying overlap in products that they both are receiving so they can…

The speed at which the retail industry is evolving to navigate e-commerce and gig economy disruption is happening far faster than we could have predicted. Gone are the days when shoppers were battling for parking at the local mall to take advantage of a department store sale, or shuffling through the aisles to hunt down…

With the holiday retail season upon us, some brands are executing strategies to counter the effects of tariffs on certain Chinese imports, including price increases and the relocation of offshore production operations to tariff-free countries. These strategies may not be an ideal or sustainable response to the tariff increases, however, as the price increases may…

In episode 222 of Total Retail Talks, Executive Editor Joe Keenan interviews Mike Del Pozzo, chief customer officer and senior vice president of sales at Frito-Lay North America, a leading PepsiCo snack foods brand. Listen in as Del Pozzo discusses the history of the 80-year-old brand, its distribution channels, and how shifting consumer behaviors has impacted…

When Amazon.com first introduced its “Fulfillment by Amazon” (FBA) program in 2006, it was impossible to know whether the online retailer fully recognized the growth prospects of the market it was walking into. Ironically, Amazon’s owner, Jeff Bezos, has joked about the difficulties of packing and shipping orders from his home-office during Amazon’s early years.…