Ongoing supply chain disruptions. Increased consumer demands. A strained middle- and final-mile transportation system. Retailers and brands face unprecedented challenges. Learn how a large home and garden retailer thrived amidst disruption using the Flexe Rapid Replenishment Program.
Key Takeaways
- Stockouts cost retailers an estimated $1 trillion every year. To avoid stockouts, this enterprise retailer implemented the Flexe Rapid Replenishment Program
- Traditional solutions that require managing multiple vendors that use different processes no longer work. They require too many up-front investments, are slow, and don’t provide location diversity to restock stores quickly
- A programmatic approach to logistics requires just a single integration to tap into a vast network of logistics providers, so network expansion can happen in weeks vs. months or even years
The following transcript has been revised for brevity and clarity.
Vice President of Sales and Marketing, Flexe Warehouse Provider
What makes our company unique is that we've been around for over 30 years, we're privately held, and we're minority-owned, which brings something special to our customers.
The challenges facing the warehousing market today are pretty unique because of all the disruptions in the inbound supply chain—the global pandemic and increased customer demand. The constraints on warehouse space, the price of warehouse space, availability of labor, and the price of labor are creating unique challenges that everybody is trying to solve.
The constraints on warehouse space, the price of warehouse space, availability of labor, and the price of labor are creating unique challenges that everybody is trying to solve.
Matt Sykes, Flexe Senior Industrial Engineer
Because of these challenges, we are seeing more and more retailers struggling to get the right product to their stores at the right time, especially when they have to navigate a complex set of vendor relationships.
A large home and garden retailer approached Flexe and wanted to forward-deploy their inventory from a wide variety of vendors to replenish their stores rapidly and avoid stockouts and lost sales.
Fulfillment Program Manager, Flexe Warehouse Provider
We launched a large home and garden retail program with Flexe. The product comes to our warehouse from the retailer’s vendors, we store the inventory in our facility, and then the orders go out on trailers to the retailer’s stores. This is how the business stocks its stores without having each vendor send individual pallets.
The Flexe Logistics Platform is so easy to work with. We regularly bring in new warehouse employees. They can come in, train, and learn to use the Flexe Logistics Platform in less than one hour. That allows us to bring in labor when needed and flexe up or down given demand. Then we can move quickly and turn the orders around quickly for the customer.
Matt Sykes, Flexe Senior Industrial Engineer
Flexe’s Rapid Replenishment Program enabled this home and garden retailer to forward-deploy all of their fast-moving SKUs, enabling them to replenish their stores in as few as 24 hours.
Flexe’s programmatic approach solves these types of challenges at scale in a matter of weeks, not months.
With an existing relationship between Flexe and our company, we can mobilize quickly and execute for customers within 30 days.
Vice President of Sales and Marketing, Flexe Warehouse Provider
With an existing relationship between Flexe and our company, we can mobilize quickly and execute for this customer within 30 days.
As Vice President of Sales, my core responsibility is growth. The relationship with Flexe allows us to reach customers and markets that potentially would have been out-of-reach for us. The partnership complements my sales organization and accelerates our growth plan.
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