The New Supply Chain Imperative

Retail supply chains are undergoing a generational transformation as the rise and competitive nature of e-commerce are changing customer expectations and how retail supply chains must operate in order to meet those expectations. 

It is not just e-commerce driving transformative change, though. Five major themes are rippling through retail supply chains in the U.S. that will affect all shippers over the years to come. Retailers that are dynamic, forward-thinking and willing to make the necessary and sometimes painful investments in order to succeed in this new world can still thrive despite competitive intrusion from Amazon and a host of other disruptors looking to take market share from traditional brick-and-mortar retailers.

Retailers that do not invest in their supply chains and the technology necessary to compete will be left behind. The rising penetration of e-commerce requires increasingly automated, visible and connected supply chains that can get products to consumers faster, cheaper and more efficiently. 

To better understand the greatest challenges facing retail shippers and how they are addressing them, FreightWaves partnered with Redwood Logistics to survey a diverse set of shippers and get their take on the most important issues facing retail supply chains, as well as what they are doing to improve their transportation networks.

One caveat is that we conducted our survey when the coronavirus (COVID19) was mostly a phenomenon contained to China (and other parts of Asia) and before it had become a global pandemic, causing lock- downs in most of the world. We have updated our outlook and made inferences about how retailers would have responded differently to our survey questions where appropriate.