So, did you bag a bargain on Black Friday (or over the weekend…. or indeed any of the days preceding it?) It seems that for 2016 much of the action moved online rather than instore for Black Friday. Argos for example reported half a million visits to its website in (more…)
We all know the problems that Black Friday brought last year when some retailers simply couldn’t cope with the increased demand and delivery services and promises crumbled under the strain. This year however all we are hearing is the work that retailers and delivery partners have put into preparing for (more…)
Valuable lessons can be learnt as to how to handle peak from Black Friday. Here Judy Blackburn, director at Kurt Salmon, reveals some of the ways retailers have been preparing to smooth out potential delivery problems and what 2015 taught us. As we head towards Black Friday, retailers are faced (more…)
So if Project Como reports are to be believed then rumour has it that Amazon is to open convenience stores, as well as operating drive-in locations for customers, as the online delivery giant goes even more physical than before. What retailer hasn’t been affected by the power of Amazon? Very few. (more…)
Amazon’s obsession with innovative logistics dates back to 1994 when Jeff Bezos began building his empire from a humble garage in suburban Washington. Today Philippe Hémard, Vice President for Amazon Logistics Europe reminded an international audience of e-commerce and supply chain executives that this drive for operational excellence in fulfilment (more…)
It has been estimated that warehouse robots have cut Amazon’s operational costs by $22m in each warehouse where they’re located since being introduced two years ago. Alexey Tabolkin believes that allowing people and robots to work to their strengths lies at the heart of Amazon’s recently reported success. Amazon is (more…)
Domino’s Pizza in New Zealand is on a mission to become the world’s first company to offer a commercial drone delivery service. The fast food chain demonstrated a pizza delivery by an air-borne drone last week (24th August 2016) in the city of Auckland, and confirmed that it will be (more…)
A shocking figure has been revealed this week which will be hard for UK e-delivery professionals to ignore. More than £250 million worth of online shopping is estimated to have gone missing or not been delivered to shoppers in the UK in the last year. The worrying finding comes from (more…)
Morrisons came to the ecommerce party late, so it’s no surprise that a game of catch up is now being played. Morrisons and Ocado joined forces in 2013, enabling Morrisons to launch an online business years after rivals Sainsbury’s, Tesco and Asda got going. The grocer has done well tapping (more…)
French sports retailer Decathlon is hoping to delight customers and increase sales by teaming with InPost UK, to offer a secure Click & Collect service from easily accessible lockers. As of Thursday 4th August, Decathlon’s UK customers have had the option to receive their online purchases through one of the (more…)
Here is Amazon’s first ever branded cargo plane ‘Amazon One’, part of a planned fleet of 40 Prime Air jets. The aim of this investment in air transport is to vastly improve the web giant’s supply chain operations across the US. In particular Amazon is hoping to speed up cargo transportation (more…)
News broke earlier this week that the UK’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) is to allow Amazon to test delivery drones – flying in the face of the received wisdom that this idea had been grounded some time ago. The trials will involve drones with a 2.3kg (5lb) payload, or less (more…)
Hot on the heels of announcing plans to double the size of its click-and-collect network, Sainsbury’s is now running trials of same-day grocery delivery. As in the case of Amazon’s own food service launch, shoppers in London will be among the first to experience the new service, which is available (more…)
Last June I wrote about some of the difficulties we’d all seen retailers and carriers faced with, as they tried to keep up with customer demand and expectations across the Black Friday 2014 period. Last year’s end-of-year peak was relatively trouble free. Was it a fluke, or the result of (more…)
A 14% increase in sales has seen Ocado profits rise for the half-year period, ending 31 May, giving the online grocery firm a chance to thumb its nose at new market entrants such as Amazon and Uber. Retail sales were up 13.9% to £582.9m. Pre-tax profits stood at to £8.5m, which is up from £7.2m for (more…)
In the aftermath of Christmas 2014, click-and-collect was said to have saved retailers’ home delivery networks from complete collapse in some cases. In recent weeks we’ve looked at click-and-collect to ask if it could still perform as well under pressure; this seems like the ideal time to look back at how (more…)
Since the aftermath of 2015’s end-of-year peak season there’s been a growing recognition that retailers won’t always be able to rely on in-store collection to ease the burden on their home delivery networks. The previous year click-and-collect was lauded for saving Christmas, but as the popularity of in-store collection grew (more…)
InPost’s 1,000 strong parcel locker network is now part of the DHL Express UK offering. Although lockers have yet to find favour with the British shopping public, this is one of the most high-profile votes of support for them within the industry. DHL is no stranger to lockers, operating an (more…)
By way of follow up to our analysis of last week’s UK launch of AmazonFresh, we’d like to hear from you – what do you think? Is this a milestone moment, the time when bell was tolled for the UK’s traditional supermarkets? Or is it nothing more than a new (more…)
Last week Amazon extended its presence in the UK grocery sector by rolling out AmazonFresh in 69 neighbourhoods across central and east London. But should anyone really care? The London launch of AmazonFresh will offer one-hour delivery slots (available from 7am ‘till 11pm), a 1pm cut-off for same-day delivery (from 5pm (more…)