Courage

Columbus Consulting

2023 Retail Strategy Outlook: People, Processes and Platforms

By    |  

Over the last three years retailers and brands were faced with both opportunistic initiatives and post-pandemic obstacles. The industry unilaterally and almost instantaneously became aware of how the overall business model was changing. Consumer behaviors and demands have forced a re-examination of how retailers and brands operate, creating a fundamental shift from product to consumer centricity. As a result, retailers are currently focused on evolving their people, processes and platforms. This retail model re-evaluation has resulted in a …

2023 Retail Strategy Outlook: People, Processes and PlatformsRead More

The Hybrid Work Environment: A New Path for Retailers

By    |  

Today, retailers are facing complex challenges from supply chain, logistics, and product sourcing to shortages of labor and growing costs. In addition to the economic issues, consumers continue to place demands on retailers focused on their DEI and sustainability strategies. Among these new challenges for retail brands has been the expectation from employees to create a new hybrid workplace that provides a more balanced work/life experience, but still drives creativity and collaboration. The hybrid workplace has created new opportunities …

The Hybrid Work Environment: A New Path for RetailersRead More

Sustainable Inventory Strategies

By    |  

Sustainability is moving to the top of many retail CEOs' agendas. Demands for sustainable businesses are coming from every angle: the consumer, management, government legislation, and even mother nature itself through catastrophic climate disasters. And while sustainability has become a buzzword in some industries, fashion, which accounts for about eight to ten percent of global carbon emissions, is feeling the pressure to address their processes now. Designers and the fashion industry rely on numerous rounds of product sampling, fit …

Sustainable Inventory StrategiesRead More

Separate Is Not Equal

By    |  

In a world where ecommerce has become mainstream and retailers raced to build unified commerce business models, some brands are starting to consider returning to multichannel structures. While this may present an opportunity to unlock value for stockholders, it is the opposite of what consumers are looking for in retail. Unified commerce is a total ecosystem of seamless, frictionless processes that put the consumer first. Today it is no longer about getting the right product at the right price, it is about getting the right product, at the …

Separate Is Not EqualRead More

It is 2022, Is the Supply Chain Fixed Yet?

By    |  

Retailers and consumers alike have made supply chain a household conversation. With favorite brands missing from the shelves and out of stock messages showering the websites, all of us went into a pre-holiday spiral. News of offshore containers, late seasonal merchandise and delayed delivery notices put logistics front and center, shifting the way that most people and industry professionals previously took it for granted. Fast forward to the new year and retailers are prioritizing their investments to revisit their own supply chains to have …

It is 2022, Is the Supply Chain Fixed Yet?Read More

Unified Commerce = Managing the Customer Experience

By    |  

Like many retail phrases and terms, unified commerce has been lumped in with multi-channel and omnichannel simply as a means of selling across platforms and locations. While this may be true, it is certainly not the full vision of what it means to be unified. Unified Theory So, what exactly is unified commerce? In a nutshell, it’s a systematic practice of having a single view of the customer. That seems essential to fulfill personalization and customized experiences for demanding customers who expect this as table stakes. Today, …

Unified Commerce = Managing the Customer ExperienceRead More

How Retailers Can Modernize Fulfillment

By    |  

Let’s face it, the supply chain as we once knew it has been forever changed. Just in the last few weeks, we’ve read about furniture deliveries and new iPhone sales being delayed due to Covid-19 outbreaks in China and Vietnam. Labor shortages have threatened holiday deliveries for many major retailers, and a shortage of shipping containers continues to delay the delivery of raw materials to manufacturers. This crisis isn’t entirely new, but it certainly feels urgent. According to a 2020 Infosys Consulting Survey on the impact of the pandemic, …

How Retailers Can Modernize FulfillmentRead More

Compressing the Supply Chain to Connect with Your Consumer

By    |  

I need to be honest. I was one of those skeptics about online shopping back in the mid-90s and well into the 2000s when Amazon was revolutionizing the shopping experience. I was comfortable and complacent with the brick-and-mortar shopping experience both as a consumer and as a supply chain professional and made a bunch of assumptions that I was not willing to question. There is irony in my myopia. I grew up with the Sears and JC Penny mail order catalogs. In middle school I bought most of my back-to-school wardrobe out of those catalogs …

Compressing the Supply Chain to Connect with Your ConsumerRead More

CONNECT WITH TRR