Last week I ordered a pair of shoes from DSW.com, and
received them the next day. This shopping experience made me interested in
finding more about its supply chain management.
In this article that I found, it talks about how DSW started
as a close-out retailer, and then shifted its strategy in the mid 2000s and
became a footwear specialty retailer. Harris Mustafa, who’s in charge of the
supply chain at DSW, said that as a close-out retailer, “We didn’t have a lot
of choice or control, and the need for planning and forecasting really didn’t
exist, but now we needed to do planning and allocation better”.
While on average a DSW store is 20,000 square feet, it still
has limited space to keep an excessive amount of merchandise, and thus
inventory management is crucial for each store. Just as DSW successfully
shifted its strategy and achieved a good inventory and supply chain management,
a new challenge has arrived – to continue its focus on physical stores or move
to the web?
Based on my personal experience, their online business seems
to be pretty good. However, for customers who are looking for more variety of
products and flexibility of returns, Zappos is much more attractive than DSW.
As customers’ purchase behavior shifts, should DSW put more efforts to compete
in online business? If so, how would this affect their physical stores?
Reference:
Last week I ordered a pair of shoes from DSW.com, and received them the next day. This shopping experience made me interested in finding ... ddswshoes.blogspot.com
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