Warehouse Management

It's never too early to start preparing your warehouse for a surge in orders throughout the holiday season. You'll be ready to tackle any bottlenecks in the months leading up to and during the holiday season by following this easy checklist:

How small retailers (both online and brick-and-mortar) can compete with Amazon and its vast resources, cheap pricing and fast delivery.

Asos, the U.K.'s largest online-only fashion retailer, suspended taking orders after a fire at its warehouse in northern England that handles all its shipping. Ten engines were needed to battle the blaze at the Barnsley site, the South Yorkshire Fire and Rescue service said in a statement on its website. An investigation into the cause of the fire, which affected several floors of the 60,000-square meter (650,000 square foot) depot, will begin today, it said. "There's substantial fire damage, and it's too unsafe for anyone to go in," Asos said on its Facebook page.

As online evolves and e-commerce grows, Home Depot's vision of interconnected retail continues to morph. The retailer is leveraging its brick-and-mortar presence, blended with its virtual assets to better optimize the new technology and new shopping behaviors. "That really is from our company's perspective the center point of our strategy," said Kevin Hofmann, senior vice president and president of online for Home Depot, at the Goldman Sachs Dotcommerce Conference. "Interconnected retail isn't a tangential distraction; we're convinced that this is the future." 

For a retail company with a profoundly simple business model and interior layout, there always seems to be interesting Costco secrets floating around the internet. How many rotisserie chickens does Costco sell in a given year? Hey, did you know that Costco sells caskets and really pricey bling online? So as a means to join this Costco cult underworld of facts and figures, Belus Capital Advisors CEO Brian Sozzi has dug through his notes on the company compiled through seven years of client coverage.

Striking workers at a Yue Yuen Industrial Holdings Ltd. shoe factory in China halted production for a fifth day in a dispute over company contributions to employees’ social security and housing funds. The stoppage at the shoemaker for sportswear brands including Nike, Adidas and Asics continued while Yue Yuen communicates with workers about an offer to increase the social security benefit starting May 1, said George Liu, a spokesman for the Hong Kong-based shoemaker. Monitoring group China Labour Bulletin said on its website strikers at the Dongguan, China facility numbered at least 10,000.

Although growing quickly may seem like the ideal scenario, it can cause operational issues for retailers who are ill equipped to scale effectively. A rapid uptick in demand carries several added expenses that tax resources, cash flow and working capital. It requires financing to pay for more inventory, new staff, shipping and packaging costs, and any additional supplies or capital necessary to fulfill orders.

Carter's increased its sales in 2013 for the 25th consecutive year, with both its wholesale and retail businesses reporting sales topping $1 billion. As sales continue to grow, the children's apparel and accessories retailer's distribution costs became inflated, prompting the construction of a fully automated multichannel distribution center (DC) in Braselton, Georgia that's already improved the bottom line and has yet to reach full ramp-up. In 2013, Carter's spent nearly $110 million on distribution, a number EVP and CFO Richard Westenberger hopes to trim when the new DC is fully ramped up later this year.

J.Crew Group Inc., the retailer owned by TPG Capital and Leonard Green & Partners LP, is interviewing banks as it weighs an initial public offering in the U.S. later this year, people familiar with the matter said. With 451 stores and about $2.4 billion in annual sales, J. Crew may fetch a valuation of as much as $5 billion, one of the people said. That's almost twice the $2.64 billion value of J.Crew's buyout by TPG and Leonard Green three years ago.

In a bid to get online orders to customers faster, Home Depot on Monday opened a new fulfillment center in Locust Grove, Ga. The 1 million-square-foot facility will open with 125 jobs, but will eventually increase that number to 300, the Atlanta-based retailer said. The company's move is part of fast-growing competition among retailers to deliver orders to consumers with more agility, often in two days or less. Online giant Amazon.com suggested in December it could push the industry even further in the next four years by using drones to deliver packages 30 minutes after a completed customer order.