“Warehouses are the weakest link in the supply chain:” is how the CEO of Stowga describes the role of fulfilment centres when it comes to expanding globally.
Speaking at IRX 2019 yesterday, Charlie Pool, CEO of Stowga said that when it comes to cross-border trade, sellers can’t simply move their fulfilment centres closer to their customers.
Pointing to an example of Vimto, UK’s soft drink brand, he said that the business moved to Wales and signed a warehouse lease for four years to find out that their product offering that there wasn’t a high demand for their product offering in Wales. As a solution to such situations, said Charlie, we allow customers to lease warehouses, with a pay-as-you-go model, sellers can try a warehouse out in a certain location and see if it works for them.
Charlie also emphasised on the growing trend to compete with players like Amazon. In order to compete, said Charlie, sellers often ask themselves questions such as – how do I get goods to a customer fast and economically? He said that a key to such a query is a distribution model. He encouraged sellers to build warehouses that are located nearby customers who are statistically likely to purchase the goods.
Concluding his keynote ‘case study: innovating the warehouse’, Charlie said that in such a risk-averse industry, it’s difficult for businesses to experiment and innovate. He encourages merchants to disrupt and bring change in order to re-examine old models and reap the benefits of taking the risk.
One Response
Taking the above discussion from another point of view, a store that has online presence apart from brick and mortar presence is more likely to be successful in retaining a warehouse. Sustainable towards building a consumer base online can open avenues and give you insights regarding the next big opportunity to put a new warehouse for efficient transport. eCommerce Shipping solutions like StorePep in the market are a great way to handle multi vendor shipping with multiple warehouses using WooCommerce.