Supply chain disruptions are the new normal. Yet retailers and brands face increased consumer demands and fast delivery expectations. Especially during heavily-promoted product launches. Learn how this global gaming company leveraged the Flexe Logistics Network to successfully meet a tight deadline for a large-scale product launch.
Key Takeaways
- Retail and brand product launches account for 26% of annual revenue. Their frequency and often unpredictable demand spikes are hard for traditional logistics solutions to manage
- A global gaming company was gearing up for a large-scale product launch and needed to hit a very specific street date to meet customer expectations
- A technology-first product launch program with Iron Mountain resulted in success. The brand scheduled three additional Flexe Product Launch Programs in the same year
The following transcript has been revised for brevity and clarity.
Ben Miller, Flexe Senior Technical Program Manager
Hundreds of thousands of products are launched every year, accounting for roughly 26% of annual revenue. Executing product launches flawlessly is critical. Ensuring that you're hitting street dates is something that can earn incredible amounts of trust with your customer.
Brett Spector, Iron Mountain Senior Director of Strategic Partnerships
For a successful product launch, the warehouse is important, the warehouse location is important, and making sure you have the labor to support the product launch is important.
Hundreds of thousands of products launch every year, accounting for roughly 26% of annual revenue. Executing product launches flawlessly is critical.
Ben Miller, Flexe Senior Technical Program Manager
Ideally, a company should be able to launch its product without impacting any of its standard operating procedures at the warehouses and within its supply chain on a day-to-day basis.
This video game company came to us because it faced a very complex operational challenge. It needed to stand up multiple warehouses in a short amount of time to hit an already-promised street date.
Brett Spector, Iron Mountain Senior Director of Strategic Partnerships
The company’s existing 3PL couldn’t execute the high amount of orders in the short period of time that the product needed to reach the street.
What makes Iron Mountain such a great partner for this program is, first and foremost, our mountaineers—our people that come to work here every single day. The second thing is our real estate footprint. But, the most important thing for our customers, besides the first two that I mentioned, is how secure our facilities are.
All of our buildings have cameras, CCTVs, and card key access, which enhances our value proposition compared to other providers in the same type of business.
Ben Miller, Flexe Senior Technical Program Manager
This video game brand was doing a two-phase launch—a pre-order phase with 100,000 units and a live order phase with half a million units.
Our dynamic, ship-on dates ensure that we are not shipping anything prior or past when it needs to go out. We’ll get it on doorsteps on the specific days shippers and customers want it to arrive.
Paul Baliterra, Iron Mountain Operations Manager
There are really tight time frames for when inventory gets to the warehouse to when it hits doorsteps. We go from making boxes to packing them, labeling them, and getting them on the truck.
What’s great about the Flexe Logistics Platform is custom batch waving, especially with multi-line items, different SKUs, and QR codes. If we have a certain large-quantity order, we just scan one QR code instead of scanning the same SKU number over and over again.
The Flexe system is extremely easy to use. As soon as new team members onboard, we show them how to use the platform and have them ramped up on the system within the same day.
What’s great about the Flexe Logistics Platform is custom batch waving, especially with multi-line items, different SKUs, and QR codes.
Ben Miller, Flexe Senior Technical Program Manager
This is our sixth product launch with this brand. With each launch, the company increases the number of units it wants us to handle, and the brand keeps coming back.
Brett Spector, Iron Mountain Senior Director of Strategic Partnerships
With these different launches that the gaming brand has, there are demand spikes. It still uses its existing 3PL provider to handle its everyday customers’ orders. But Flexe and Iron Mountain handle the spikes during product launches—all on-demand.
You might also be interested in: #
