F. Curtis Barry & Company Blog

As the country continues to battle COVID-19, many businesses are having to adapt at staggering speeds or face closure.  In some states, "non-essential" businesses are forced to close and others are operating on skeleton crews.  As states begin to shed light on how and when businesses can begin to reopen, businesses should think about how to support sales in this new economy. 

Various indicators show customers are less likely to shop in crowded stores and significantly more likely to order online with contactless pickup.  Business must adapt or face closures as COVID-19 will affect retail for quite some time.

The COVID-19 pandemic is infecting hundreds of thousands of people and threatening to shut down millions of businesses. Many business owners are trying to stay open and service the customer while keeping their employees and customers safe. Other owners temporarily shut down and are thinking about how and when they can reopen.   

As consultants to wholesale distributors, retailers, and ecommerce companies, we are working with a number of “essential” companies remaining operational, as well as retailers implementing local, store level-pick-with curbside pickup. Like you, our hope is to get through this and move on to the “new normal.”

Global supply chains have not experienced this much disruption since WWII when the United States wasn’t as dependent on oversea goods and manufacturing.  Many businesses are making swift business decisions and joining an illustrious group of retailers closing for several weeks to try and flatten the curve of the coronavirus. 

We are on the potential brink of global Supply Chains disruption.  Many of the major brick and mortar retailers in America are now temporarily closed until at least mid-to-end of April. Online merchants are still open, although Amazon is limiting shipments to priority medical and health products.

These are truly unprecedented times.  Strikes at ports and fuel prices sometimes disrupt supply chains; however, supply chains have not experienced such impact and fast disruption to off-shore manufacturing and shipping patterns as they are with COVID-19 since WWII. 

Considering all of the challenges today’s ecommerce fulfillment centers face, it’s difficult to know what aspect to tackle first when assessing your operation. While it’s OK to have just some general objectives - like reduce fulfillment costs – many companies’ assessments have more specific objectives such as addressing increased fulfillment expenses without incremental increases in productivity.

Even with technology advancements and headlines alluding to robot-operated warehouses, most fulfillment centers and warehouses rely on manual labor. In fact, only the largest companies employ and justify advanced automation. Despite the cost prohibitiveness of automation for many companies, manual labor is not cheap, either.

Opening a new fulfillment facility – whether it’s an existing building or build-to-suit (BTS) project - is an expensive and long-term commitment.  Oftentimes, facilities do not open on time or within budget because of inadequate planning and conditions that arise. Issues such as construction delays and systems/automation testing lengthen the start-up timeframe and increase costs. 

Many ecommerce and retail businesses achieve 60% to 70% of their profits in the last quarter of the year.  Peak weeks order processing may be 10 to 15 times higher than an average week. For multichannel businesses and wholesalers, their peaks start months earlier to supply other businesses.  Take the time after each peak to analyze your fulfillment’s successes and failures and develop a plan to make improvements using a multi-faceted approach.

Has a personal shopping experience ever made you reflect on how important fulfillment is to customer service? Fulfillment is often the last touch point your business has with a product before landing in the hands of your customer. The amount of attention to detail your fulfillment staff put into selecting and packaging the product has a direct impact on whether or not the customer will be happy.