In case you missed this in this weeks’ Progressive Grocer newsletter: https://progressivegrocer.com/7-things-grocers-can-do-make-ecommerce-mainstream Retail grocers have opportunity (and a bit of work to do) for shoppers to embrace them in the online world, according to this article from Randy Hofbauer of Progressive Grocer. His seven things definitely makes sense to us here at Itasca, starting with […]
Shrink. Almost no one wants to spend time hearing or worrying about this retail reality. Whether it’s from damage, theft (internal or external), spoilage, date-coded product, or bad ordering, shrink is a bane to profit, and it’s not easy to fix. Itasca retailers have a different experience. Think truck-to-shelf. Product is handled once before the […]
Recognition of the need for understanding inventory levels in a grocer’s supply chain, and especially on-line when an order is being placed, has rapidly become the hot topic-of-the-day. And for good reason…it’s vitally important to retailers’ success in a world where they are relative newcomers – compared to what they know about the physical shelf. […]
What Amazon Might Not Know About On-Line Fulfillment Download the Click-Confirm-Collect Gold Paper THE BLOCKBUSTER announcement last week from Amazon.com and Whole Foods Market has analysts and the business media buzzing about a potential new era in online grocery ordering. Never Pay for Inventory Again! Made possible with superior computer-generated ordering technology, and using the Supply […]
THE HEADLINE FOR THIS COLUMN may seem like a riddle, but it’s intended as a succinct way to characterize the flow of forecasted order quantities up and down the supermarket supply chain. The prevalent method has long been to order product in a consolidated way for use downstream – that is, for distribution to stores. […]
THE RIGHT TECHNOLOGY gives grocers a better handle on out-of-stocks at the store level. At Itasca Retail, we’ve been proving that for more than a decade in more than 1,300 supermarkets across North America. Current industry dialog on On-Shelf Availability has focused greater attention on best practices around store-level inventory visibility. In Progressive Grocer magazine’s […]
AT THE VIBRANT National Grocers Association meeting in Las Vegas, attendees heard from a trio of grocery retail experts about the role DSD receiving processes play in loss prevention. In a session entitled, “DSD Receiving & Auditing,” Bob Summers, Director of Loss Prevention, Buehler Food Markets, Inc., Keith Beckett, Director of Loss Prevention, Niemann Foods, […]
A RECENT ARTICLE in the Wall Street Journal, “Target Expands Inventories to Repair Stock-Outs,” once again highlights the dilemma facing the nation’s largest retailers when it comes to getting stock levels right. The article quotes Target COO John Mulligan, who said the retailer had upped inventory levels by as much as 50% on some high-demand […]
GROCERY RETAILERS ARE TALKING about the latest report from IHL Group, “Retailers and the Ghost Economy – $1.75 Trillion Reasons to be Afraid.” That mind-boggling number refers to the cumulative global impact of Out-Of-Stocks, Overstocks and Returns across the retail spectrum. IHL coined the term “Inventory Distortion” in 2011 to describe the combination of OOS […]
WE CAN’T STOP a storm, but we can improve the recovery on your shelves. Itasca’s Magic™ store replenishment solution offers a better method to regroup after a winter storm. Magic provides store orders based on demand forecasting against a store perpetual inventory. Normally this provides just-in-time auto replenishment for the stores. But what happens when […]