When my cousin and I began our new endeavor of opening up a chain of retail-clothing stores, we delegated all tasks evenly. My cousin's job was to handle interior designing and store presentation as well as to take care of sales while my tasks were to handle all advertising, merchandise purchasing, and inventory distribution.
Throughout our experiences, the most frequent challenge of all was finding a solution to shipping our inventory out to our stores in a safe, orderly, and timely fashion. Allow me to further elaborate.
When chain stores are not able to function as one unit, the damage could be catastrophic, and that is exactly what takes place when not servicing all stores at the same time or keeping them up to date with the correct inventory. Sales are advertised but cannot be made, and new items are advertised but are nowhere to be found.
Chain store unity can only happen if the warehouse in which the inventory is stored uses a distribution service that has the ability to package the inventory and ship the required amounts precisely when needed.
With this set-up, our stores would be powered with in sync functioning, all offering the same merchandise, sales, and discounts at the same time. However, this idea was much easier said than done.
What normally took place was that our warehouse distribution functioned on a supply and demand basis. As the supply for a particular item went up, the warehouse would ship more merchandise. We were never able to get enough distribution power to ship our inventory out to all stores together, and therefore our stores were never in sync with each other.
This was the leading cause for numerous accusations of false advertising. On numerous occasions the corporate offices would advertise discounts on certain items in all stores and clearance sales, but the stores would not be able to meet these prices because they did not even have the inventory yet shipped to them.
We chose a pick and pack service that was able to distribute our merchandise to all of our stores on time so that all of our stores were in sync with each other. Thus, our corporate offices have been able to advertise sales and discounts and back it up. Sales have sky rocketed thanks to our new pick and pack service.
Throughout our experiences, the most frequent challenge of all was finding a solution to shipping our inventory out to our stores in a safe, orderly, and timely fashion. Allow me to further elaborate.
When chain stores are not able to function as one unit, the damage could be catastrophic, and that is exactly what takes place when not servicing all stores at the same time or keeping them up to date with the correct inventory. Sales are advertised but cannot be made, and new items are advertised but are nowhere to be found.
Chain store unity can only happen if the warehouse in which the inventory is stored uses a distribution service that has the ability to package the inventory and ship the required amounts precisely when needed.
With this set-up, our stores would be powered with in sync functioning, all offering the same merchandise, sales, and discounts at the same time. However, this idea was much easier said than done.
What normally took place was that our warehouse distribution functioned on a supply and demand basis. As the supply for a particular item went up, the warehouse would ship more merchandise. We were never able to get enough distribution power to ship our inventory out to all stores together, and therefore our stores were never in sync with each other.
This was the leading cause for numerous accusations of false advertising. On numerous occasions the corporate offices would advertise discounts on certain items in all stores and clearance sales, but the stores would not be able to meet these prices because they did not even have the inventory yet shipped to them.
We chose a pick and pack service that was able to distribute our merchandise to all of our stores on time so that all of our stores were in sync with each other. Thus, our corporate offices have been able to advertise sales and discounts and back it up. Sales have sky rocketed thanks to our new pick and pack service.
About the Author:
Bella C. Fletcher is a business developer with over twenty five years of experience in distribution services. For more information about the benefits of using pick and pack services in order to create a strong and unified business, check out the Bergen Shippers website online. Bella is an SEO consultant based with SEO services company ClickResponse.
