Retail Dude

There has been tremendous change in Warehousing Model in past few years. Traditionally Warehouses were required only to deliver goods to stores. It was responsibility of stores to future make it available to customers. But with changing retail business and growing multichannel retailing, warehouses also need to deliver it to store as well as to customers placing order online or through catalogue or any other model. So, with this the traditional idea of having few big warehouses doesn’t work anymore. This led to evolution of Regional Warehousing and Multi-Warehousing. The idea is to have multiple regional warehouses to meet demands of customers.

With multichannel retailing, lead time for deliveries has also changed significantly. Traditionally stores use to order a week in advance, but with online retailing and all, consumer want their product in three days and even next day in many cases. Not only this, they even expect it to be gift wrapped. So, this requires regionalization of warehouses.

 This trend has not only changed warehousing, but has also changed the transportation used for delivery. Traditionally, LTL (Less than Truck Load) and Large Trucks delivering to multiple stops were used. But now with this new model of warehousing, smaller trucks and straight trucks are used more. These trucks are used as there are lot of residential deliveries these days.

This shift in industry has also led to growth of 3^rd Party Warehousing and Collaborative Warehousing.

-          Rajeev Damani

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