Inventory Management

Coach Inc. plans to gradually move some production out of China, where labor costs are rising, and into lower-cost countries such as India and Vietnam. But China is proving a boon to Coach's sales, as residents that have become more affluent buy the retailer's status-symbol bags.

While after-Christmas buying was tempered in the Washington-area due to the threat of foul weather, shoppers across the rest of the country got right to it, returning unwanted gifts and scoping out bargains in the aftermath of what appears to have been the best holiday season for retailers since 2007, The Washington Post...

Over the last 30 years, there's been a consistent push to streamline business processes. After all, time is money. Nowhere is this more applicable than in supply chain processes.

A study of returns policies at 88 U.S. retailers, including big names such as Target, Best Buy and Sears, found that over half don't put their returns policy on their website's home page, and one-quarter still do not allow cross-channel returns.

U.S. retailers can expect more people to try to return stolen merchandise this holiday season, according to a National Retail Federation (NRF) report released Tuesday. The NRF predicts that the cost of those fraudulent returns will reach $3.68 billion during the holiday season, a 34% jump from the $2.74 billion cost last year.

Direct retailing has always been about adapting new media to market from a distance. Whether the medium is door-to-door selling, newspaper and magazine advertisements, mail order fliers, 300-page catalogs, specialty catalogs, infomercials, or e-commerce, direct retailing has always been about selling products to consumers from a distance. The format of the message and the speed of communications certainly change, but the fundamental process of selling products to consumers remains.

The sharp increase in November and December sales makes inventory planning and scheduling an extreme challenge for cross-channel retailers. The combination of increased sales, long vendor lead times, inherent forecasting challenges and limited cash availability create a “perfect storm” of inventory management opportunities.

Just as recession battered consumers are trickling back to malls, clothes makers in the U.S. face a tough choice. Squeezed by ballooning raw material, labor and freight costs, manufacturers are fretting they might have to raise prices in fragile markets to maintain margins.

Import cargo volume at the nation’s major retail container ports is expected to total 14.5 million containers for 2010, a 15 percent increase over last year’s unusually low numbers as the economy continues its cautious recovery, according to the monthly Global Port Tracker report released today by the National Retail Federation and Hackett Associates.

From an inventory management perspective, the fourth quarter holiday season creates a perfect storm of challenges: extremely high demand, a short selling season coupled with long vendor lead times, limited cash available to support increased inventory requirements, a bloated freight system, and inventory handling dependent upon over-stretched distribution center staff.