Best Reading of the Day - Entry 0008 Best Buy's Fulfillment Process

The major brick & mortar retailers are in trouble.  Projections for the next 10 years indicate roughly 20% of their business will migrate to online supply sources.  If the entire 20% goes to Amazon.com that won't leave enough business for many of these large box retailers to survive.

What to do?

Best Buy is now suffering from problems related to the very strengths that allowed them to survive the Great Recession of 2008-9 while competitors such as Circuit City failed.  Size.  They were big enough that people had a diverse enough reason to come in to the store so business was good enough to keep the lights on.  Now, as sales slowly migrate to other supply sources, mostly online, the size of Best Buy stores may be working against them.

Their story and their efforts to become an omnichannel retailer is one worth following.

http://risnews.edgl.com/retail-best-practices/Best-Buy-Enables-Online-Fulfillment-from-All-DCs,-Pilots-Ship-from-Store87174

Here is a snippet from that article:

"Depending on the months, 2% to 4% of all of our online traffic does not result in a purchase because we do not have the inventory in our distribution centers, and we are telling online shoppers that the item is out of stock," explained Best Buy CEO Hubert Joly at the company's recent shareholders' meeting. "However, an estimated 80% of the time we actually have it in one or more of our retail stores."

Hope everyone has a wonderful 4th of July.

Happy reading,

J.W. Gant