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…)
In government press offices there is a phrase that sometimes gets used to warn of impending bad publicity – the Daily Mail moment. Who would have thought that a warehouse would have had one of those? But that’s precisely what happened in the case of Sports Direct’s distribution centre in (more…)
It’s a contentious point, but last month I questioned whether in-store click-and-collect is still fit for purpose. It was a story that garnered more reader responses in the form of emails, comments, messages via LinkedIn, Tweets and so on, than I had anticipated. Maybe it’s not broken per se, but (more…)
Super-fast delivery looks likely to be one of 2016’s key battle lines, with a gap emerging between shopper demands and retailers’ capabilities. In its State of Shipping In Commerce survey of 1,000 consumers and more than 200 retailers, Temando has highlighted a number of areas where customer expectations are ahead (more…)
New research into the problem of returns, carried out by Savvy on behalf of BBC Radio 4, has demonstrated the extent to which the decision to buy is taking place after delivery has been made. The survey of 1,000 household shopping decision makers found women’s clothing had been returned by (more…)
Tomorrow (28 May) sees a driverless vehicle competition take place in the Netherlands, featuring – among others – am autonomous Volvo FH16 from a team of developers who claim the animal kingdom is their inspiration. The competition is part of an EU project called the Grand Cooperative Driving Challenge, and (more…)
Each issue of eDelivery Magazine features three independent consultants taking a look at a leading retailer to benchmark their performance in terms of delivery, collections and returns, and to analyse what this means for their back end operations and retail strategy. In the most recent issue (April 2016) we focused on John Lewis. (more…)
Hundreds of Argos drivers are poised to take industrial action, as Unite – the UK’s largest trade union – ballots members over plans to move 96 drivers to Eddie Stobart. The drivers, based at Magna Park, are the last of Argos’s directly employed drivers at the site, the rest having (more…)
Today marks the official conclusion of the €4.4bn takeover of TNT by FedEx, described as “a truly historic day” by David Bronczek, president & CEO of FedEx Express, who used a press conference this morning to outline the acquisition, and also to dismiss the idea that Amazon is a threat (more…)
How the mighty have fallen. Christmas 2014: click-and-collect saved the day, without it the already over-stretched home delivery networks of UK retailers would have collapsed. Christmas 2015: shoppers left to wait in frustration as in-store click-and-collect counters struggle with ever-lengthening queues of people, and constantly growing piles of parcels. What (more…)
Echoing concerns voiced by former London Mayor, Boris Johnson MP, a recent study has highlighted the increasing number of delivery vans as a reason for London’s congested road network. This is a view put forward by the UK Warehouse Association (UKWA) last month when it called for the government to (more…)
In this guest article, taken from the latest eDelivery Magazine, David Hogg, commerce solutions lead for Europe at IBM Commerce examines the impact of omnichannel retailing on the retail supply chain and evaluates the impact that cognitive computing will bring to the industry. If ‘simple’ online retail is the starting (more…)
Last year’s trend of retailers pushing out Black Friday themed promotions in advance of the day itself will become an established part of the UK retail landscape, according to the ecommerce consultancy, Salmon, which is also predicting £5bn will be spent in the four days preceding Black Friday this year. (more…)
In the latest eDelivery Magazine, Sean Fleming, editor of eDelivery.net examined omnichannel returns and how retailers are analysing processes and customers to ensure profitability. he first working week of 2016 might feel like a dim and distant memory, but it was the pinnacle of the retail returns squeeze; the point (more…)