The holiday season is fast approaching and retailers are feeling the pressure to deliver on time with the increase of orders they are experiencing.
In a bid to compete with services such as Amazon Prime, retailers are striving to provide next-day delivery to their consumers. How can you maintain the fast flow of goods at this busy time when supply chains face multiple obstacles, such as port congestion issues and shipping container shortage?
Learn why transloading and distribution center (DC) bypass are the solutions to keeping your supply chain smooth and getting goods to your consumer on time this holiday season.
DC Bypass and Transloading: What Do They Mean?
What Does DC Bypass Mean?
DC bypass, much like the name suggests, allows your business to forgo distribution centers, and remove one step in the supply chain. This streamlines your transportation of goods, and with fewer moving parts, there are fewer potential issues to worry about.
What is Transloading?
Transloading is another available solution for retailers. With transloading, you transfer your entire cargo container shipment from one form of transport to another. This type of transportation option gives you a great deal of flexibility. You can postpone deciding on the destination for your cargo and effectively and cost-efficiently adjust modes of transport so that your stock is in the prime location for sales at the right moment. And with delays at the ports and rails, transloading allows you to get that freight off the container and into a truck and on the road to its destination quicker.
Cost-Effective Transportation Solutions For The Holidays
Transportation costs continue to rise across all modes of transport. High demand and capacity constraints, along with impacts from the global pandemic, mean retailers are paying more than ever to get their goods to their customers.
Both DC Bypassing and transloading offer cost-effective solutions to help you adapt to rising shipping costs and keep overheads down while maintaining a steady flow of your products.
Being able to direct your stock to where it is needed to meet increased demands in specific locations over the holidays through transloading saves you loss in revenues from keeping stock in regions with slower sales. It also means you save on transport costs and the headache of trying to then ship those goods from your low sales region to where there is a higher demand.
Without a distribution center to go through, DC Bypass reduces your cargo’s processing time, allowing you to quickly get it to your stores or direct to customers. Distribution centers are typically located large distances from retail locations. With a DC bypass strategy, you speed up the supply chain and eliminate wasted processes. Fewer steps to worry about and faster flow of goods means lower overall costs and happier customers.
Both transloading and DC bypass mean there are lower handling costs for your cargo. Products don’t need to travel as far or be redistributed and go directly to the retail store in which they are most needed. The reduced transit and handling allow for significant cost savings that can help balance the increase in shipping costs that retailers are experiencing globally.
Less Damage to Inventory
During the holiday season, you need all your inventory in tip-top shape. With high demands, if a customer orders a damaged product, it may become out of stock, and you are unable to deliver to your customer on your promise. This affects your reputation and means you lose loyal customers.
Both transloading and DC bypass help reduce the risk of damage to your inventory. Less loading and unloading and fewer steps in the supply chain mean less opportunity is presented for your inventory to become damaged.
The Holiday Season Presents Extra Stress To Everyone
Most retailers have a love-hate relationship with the holiday season. Increased demands mean increased profits, but also greater stress to deliver to customers and more headaches in navigating busy supply chains.
Transloading and DC bypass are shipping strategies every retailer should be considering this holiday season. Fewer steps in the supply chain and increased flexibility mean that you will find it easier to get your products to the stores that your customers are shopping in and in time that they choose to purchase with you rather than shop with a competitor.