Supply Chain

Trunk Club will close down its Goose Island, Ill., distribution center and work more closely with its parent company, Nordstrom, cutting 250 jobs in the process, the retailers said in a news release Tuesday. Trunk Club, which was acquired by Nordstrom in 2014, will begin shifting order fulfillment and distribution operations currently handled at its Goose…

Retailers are dealing with changes in consumer habits and the explosive rise of e-commerce, which have transformed not only the small parcel economy, but the entire supply chain. Understanding the following six key supply chain realities will help improve efficiency, customer satisfaction and, ultimately, the bottom line. We're not slowing down: According to a Sealed Air…

Editor’s Note: Welcome to our newest feature, Total Retail Report’s In the News section, where we will highlight and offer our take on the top retail-related news articles of the day. Please let us know what you think about this new feature by posting a comment below. Walgreens Ends Theranos Partnership Walgreens announced last week that it…

Target  is asking many suppliers to take on up to an extra 3 percent to 5 percent of the cost of promotions and price cuts after slow sales so far this year. Retailers often use price discounts combined with promotions to sell slow-moving items and make room for newer products. Suppliers also have their own offers and…

The ability to collect and harness data is a key opportunity for retailers that want to truly enable a consumer-centric supply chain. According to a recent Boston Retail Partners study, 62 percent of retailers named customer identification and personalization of customer experience among their top three customer engagement priorities, more than any other initiative. However,…

After more than 1,100 deaths exposed dangerous labor conditions in Bangladesh in 2013, brands like H&M, Wal-Mart and Gap were among the most powerful companies that pledged to improve the safety of some of the country’s poorest workers. But human rights groups say that three years later, those promises are still unfulfilled, and that safety, labor…

Don and Jin Sook Chang, the billionaire owners of Forever 21, seemed to have it all in recent years — a happy marriage and one of the hottest retail chains in the country. Now both may be on the rocks. The fast-fashion retailer, which for years was busy opening ever-larger stores around the globe, is late paying…

When San Francisco resident Catherine Lelong recently received a delivery from Sam’s Club, she was confused: She didn’t remember having placed an order with the membership club. She was right. Lelong hadn’t placed an order from Sam’s Club, but she eventually realized that the bottle of detergent inside the box was something she had recently ordered…

Before the rise of e-commerce, the intricacies of a complex global supply chain were mostly hidden from the consumer. Products appeared on store shelves and in the pages of catalogs seemingly by magic; the very appearance of a mail-order package on a doorstep was considered impressive in and of itself. Not so today. With each…

Out-of-stock inventory continues to be a huge problem for retailers and suppliers alike. There’s nothing more frustrating for consumers than an empty shelf, and even just one instance of an out-of-stock item can have lasting consequences in terms of customer loyalty and lifetime value. Consider some recent findings from the Trading Partner Alliance consisting of…