Christopher Gerard

𝗧𝗮𝗿𝗴𝗲𝘁 𝗙𝗮𝗰𝗲𝘀 𝗚𝗹𝗼𝗼𝗺𝘆 𝗢𝘂𝘁𝗹𝗼𝗼𝗸 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗛𝗼𝗹𝗶𝗱𝗮𝘆 𝗦𝗲𝗮𝘀𝗼𝗻 𝗔𝗺𝗶𝗱 𝗜𝗻𝗳𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝘀𝘂𝗺𝗲𝗿 𝗖𝗮𝘂𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 Target is heading into the holiday season with a bleak outlook, as its third-quarter sales and profit fell short of analysts' expectations, and the company lowered its earnings forecast for the current quarter. The retailer reported a modest 1.1% increase in sales to $25.7 billion, but net income dropped by 12%, falling to $854 million. As a result, Target's shares plummeted by 22%, reflecting concerns about its future performance. The company is struggling to engage inflation-weary consumers who are increasingly focused on essentials and bargains, rather than discretionary purchases like electronics and home decor. Target's flat sales in a quarter with major shopping events such as back-to-school and Halloween highlight ongoing challenges. CEO Brian Cornell noted that consumers are cautious, with budgets stretched thin, leading them to seek deals and stock up on necessities. This weak performance contrasts sharply with Walmart’s strong quarter, as the retail giant continues to benefit from consumer demand for essentials. While Target's struggles reflect broader concerns around low consumer confidence, inflation, and increased caution as we head into the holiday season, Walmart's strong sales are buoyed by its focus on essentials and its appeal to upper-income households. As we approach a leadership change and economic uncertainty, Target and other retailers must navigate an environment of rising interest rates, over-leveraged consumer credit, and shifting spending priorities. With the holiday shopping season ahead, both retailers and consumers are bracing for a turbulent period. #Retail #ConsumerConfidence #HolidayShopping #Target #Walmart #Inflation #EconomicUncertainty #LeadshipChange #ConsumerSpending #EconomicOutlook #InterestRates

1

Your 2024 warehouse wrapped is here! Move over Spotify and Taylor, we want to know what happened with warehouses. With 1.2 billion square feet of warehouse space under management, who better to give us insights on the past year and the year to come than Prologis! Hunter HeLal and Parth Pethani from Prologis Essentials joined me last week live here on LinkedIn to discuss some of the top trends in warehousing for 2024 and what they expect will happen in the warehousing industry in 2025. You can check out the replay on The New Warehouse podcast feed and let us know your thoughts in the comments as well. Here are some of their thoughts: 💡 Cube is king 💡 Used racking was hot 💡 Big project investments coming Q2/Q3 of 25 What do you think were some of the stand out warehousing trends in 2024? Listen here: https://lnkd.in/euJUPjCy

13

3 Comments

Walmart has reported strong earnings in the first quarter, with a 6% year-over-year improvement in sales and growing profits. The retailer has seen traction among higher-income shoppers, although it is not specifically targeting this demographic. Walmart is investing in renovating its stores and building new locations to create a more inviting shopping experience. The company is expanding its product selection, including the launch of its premium private label brand Bettergoods, and has seen a significant increase in third-party marketplace sellers. The convenience of e-commerce, particularly through delivery and curbside orders, is contributing to sales growth. Walmart's combination of nicer stores, upscale merchandise, and convenient services is making it resemble Target. Target, on the other hand, has projected a decline in sales and has faced criticism over its handling of its annual Pride celebration. Walmart's success in emulating Target is surpassing Target's success in emulating Walmart. Walmart continues to be effective in its core business while also improving its performance in areas traditionally associated with Target. #walmart #target #retail

1

Thanks you Yahoo Finance for inviting me on to talk about the #portstrike and impact on the #retail industry and the #economy. https://lnkd.in/exZk8mRU #supplychain #portdisruption

20

Aaron Alpeter used his well-deserved holiday break to put together his thoughts on Mexico enacting import tariffs on apparel and textiles. This will have large implications for Brands and Fulfillment partners in the US. He shared those thoughts in a blog post for Slotted If you, or a brand you know needs support in finding a new Fulfillment partner, Slotted provides a self-guided RFP tool and the internet's largest open database of fulfillment providers. We can help brands adjust quickly and confidently to the changing ecommerce and DTC landscape!

16

1 Comment

This one is still relevant, and still cracks me up... #retail #ecommerce #distribution #warehousing #3pl #supplychain #operations #management #optimization #wms #automation #leadership

8

2 Comments

Need for Speed! 💡 While some are still arguing the value of Speed to consumer, AMZN is continuing to build a shield to protect them from new competitors through their logistics infrastructure ! Impressive!! +2 BLNs items arriving the same or next day to Prime members around the world. + Nearly 60% of Prime member orders arrived the same or next day across the top 60 largest U.S. metro areas. Most of the companies are building a next day to 2 days delivery network at the moment Exciting times in eCommerce Supply Chain!

29

Thank you RETHINK Retail for this feature. One of the questions I was asked: 𝙒𝙝𝙖𝙩 𝙞𝙨 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙜𝙧𝙚𝙖𝙩𝙚𝙨𝙩 𝙘𝙝𝙖𝙡𝙡𝙚𝙣𝙜𝙚 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙞𝙣𝙙𝙪𝙨𝙩𝙧𝙮 𝙞𝙨 𝙛𝙖𝙘𝙞𝙣𝙜? ⏺️ Product creation practices tied to over development and excessive physical sampling ⏺️ Merchandising and assortment planning strategies need to be reimagined = more supply does not equal more demand ⏺️ Inventory issues like excess inventory and eroded margins from markdowns ⏺️ Managing customer expectations on the instore and online experience ⏺️ Perfecting personalization, from design to marketing Interested in learning more? Check out the link below. ➡️ https://lnkd.in/edXg5aAf #retail #topretailexpert #RetailVoices #RetailVoicesbyNRF #RETHINKRetail #NRF2025

73

3 Comments

Hello Retail Friends, I am proud to announce that RELEX is once again designated as a Leader in The Forrester Wave™: Collaborative Supply Networks, Q4 2024 report. This prestigious recognition underscores our commitment to enhancing supply chain transparency, resilience, and efficiency for US retailers. Our top scores in innovation, vision, and several key areas, including embedded AI and ML, highlight our dedication to providing cutting-edge solutions. These capabilities enable seamless collaboration between retailers and suppliers, ensuring that our customers can anticipate changes in demand and supply, and continuously align production and transportation schedules. This acknowledgment from Forrester reaffirms our mission to drive mutual success through advanced supply chain and retail planning capabilities. We remain committed to delivering the tools necessary for our customers to achieve unparalleled supply chain visibility and operational excellence. Read the full press release here: https://bit.ly/3YJHbFU #SupplyChain #Forrester #AI #Innovation #RetailExcellence RELEX recognized as a Leader for the first time in this report by independent analyst firm, for demonstrating “a superior vision of an adaptive and autonomous supply chain…”…  

31

2 Comments

Resiliency... it seems like everyone is talking about it, but do we really understand what it means? Resiliency in the supply chain has become a hot topic lately, especially since 2020. But it's important to ask ourselves if we have actually made any significant changes or if it's just a concept we like to throw around. In the world of supply chain, we often get caught up in buzzwords like cloud native, digital twin, AI, ML, and digital transformation. But we need to be careful not to simply adopt trendy terms without taking real action. If you're interested in learning more about what true resiliency in the supply chain looks like, check out our blog post. Click the link below 👇 https://lnkd.in/eY-WxuAk #supplychain #supplychainresilience #resiliency #blogpost

1

A few weeks ago, I sat down with Tyler to walk through the Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) process using mugs as an example. We covered: ☕ Product Prep: Ensuring proper labeling (UPC or FN SKU) and durable packaging to withstand Amazon's fulfillment process. 📦 Shipping to Amazon: Using Amazon's send workflow, ensuring proper labeling of cartons/pallets, and partnering with carriers for seamless delivery. 🧐 Quality Control: The importance of having an SME (Subject Matter Expert) at your prep facility to avoid mistakes and costly delays. 💡 Amazon’s Changing Rules: How inventory distribution has become more complex, requiring more effort and additional fees for inventory placement. #AmazonFBA #EcommerceTips #BusinessGrowth #Fulfillment #AmazonSeller #SupplyChain

35

Attn LinkedIn Ecommerce Fulfillment Leaders: Your time is here...the #BlackFriday through #Christmas #shipping sprint. By now, you've hopefully done all the planning to include staff augmentation, training, materials/supplies procurement, among others. If you: 1. Still feel anxious, and need a shoulder who has been through this many times, please call me. 2. Have a leadership gap at the Supervisory, Manager or Director level and could use an interim solution to help you crush this important time of year, please call me. I may be able to help. #1 is just me trying to be helpful b/c I know it can be lonely #2 is just me trying to be helpful but of course comes with $ My cell is: 718-450-2041. #logistics #staffing #leadership #ecommercefulfillment

3

The Q1 2024 e-commerce supplement for retail trade just released, which incorporates new benchmarking from the 2022 Annual Retail Trade Survey. As such, I wanted to share some insights we can glean from this document. Two charts. Thoughts: •Top chart shows e-commerce sales as a percentage of total sales for retail trade excluding (i) motor vehicles & parts dealers and (ii) gasoline stations. I’ve seasonally adjusted the data using the 2018-2019 period. Q1 2023, assuming it holds, is specially as this is now the largest seasonally adjusted reading ever, even bypassing Q2 2020 during COVID-19 lockdowns. It’s also interesting to see that the e-commerce percentage seemed to restart an upward climb in Q1 2023 after having been neutral for an extended period. We are still 1.5 percentage points above where the pre-COVID trendline would have placed things. •Bottom chart shows e-commerce sales for (i) nonstore retailers (e.g., pure-play e-commerce firms) and (ii) brick-and-mortar retailers excluding motor vehicle & parts dealers. On a percentage basis, both series have grown almost perfectly in unison (relative to Q1 2018, nonstore e-commerce is up 113%, whereas brick-and-mortar e-commerce is up 99%). •I do wonder if continued penetration of Chinese e-commerce firms such as Temu will start to chip away at growth of domestic e-commerce, especially for nonstore retailers (e.g., is that Q1 2024 seasonally adjusted drop in the bottom chart a harbinger of things to come?). Implication: e-commerce continues its slow upward penetration in the retail space. Yet, brick-and-mortar retailers continue to account for more than 75% of retail trade excluding (i) motor vehicles & parts dealers and (ii) gasoline stations. #supplychain #supplychainmanagement #ecommerce #retail #freight #trucking

78

9 Comments

When we started Open Apparel Registry, (now Open Supply Hub) we very purposely set out to listen and understand which governance structure and business model was the right fit for our purpose. Check out this post below to understand why we're structured the way we are and what led us to the decision. Some additional thoughts from me: >There are always pros and cons to every model but for a digital public good like ours, a nonprofit, with a multistakeholder governed board, builds trust and ultimately ensures stakeholder voice is centered. > Having chosen a 501c3 structure in the USA, we don't have access to growth capital in the same way a VC backed for-profit scaling tech social enterprise would. There aren't as many nonprofit accelerators, awards, conferences etc. I'll be sure to draft a post another time on the resources we've found to be most helpful that are nonprofit centric (Nonprofit Builder , Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation and more) . If you have resources that have been helpful to your nonprofit - please leave them in the DMs! >Small nonprofits like ours are filling a gap that exist in our economy and society today - we're providing necessary public digital infrastructure to build a digital economy on, that a utility or a government would provide for physical infrastructure. We need ongoing support to maintain, grow and serve stakeholders from workers to the biggest companies - we appreciate financial support from our users and fans - donate here !(https://lnkd.in/ekPZTnkG)

38

1 Comment

The July episode of Tennessee on Supply Chain Management is worth a listen. Ted and Tom spoke with Dave Clark, former CEO of worldwide consumer business for Amazon. They discussed: - the factors driving a surge in container rates and the leveling off of demand for warehouse workers - eCommerce and consumer expectations - Fast Fashion Vs On-Demand Fashion - The Next Big Thing in supply chain technology - GenAI Vs 'classic' AI - What future leaders need A few quotes... On the retail sector and eCommerce*: "What you've seen in the last decade or decade and a half of retail is retailers who have met those needs and who have invested in and improved the customer experience have succeeded and excelled*, and the ones who haven't have gone away. Retail is consolidating into the players who are really aggressive about meeting consumer need.” On competition: "It's customer-focused versus competitor-focused, because the customer is always going to be tougher than the competitor. Always. They always want more than what some competitor is going to be willing to provide, and usually if a competitor has beaten you on something, it's because they figured out something the consumer wanted that you didn’t." On TikTok and others: "I think people are not as willing broadly to wait for things that are readily available. They are willing to have a longer shipping time for something that is new and unique and not readily available. That's a selection expansion." On The Next Big Thing "Honestly, much of supply chain needs to catch up with the last wave. Still Supply chain tech tends to be not very good across the board. You know there's a lot of good segments as pieces of tech that's good, but there's very little end to end." "But if I've had the most thematic thing, I would say getting to a place of data consistency, less for generative AI and more for classic AI...ML neural network...true high-end analytic calculation and optimization performance, I think is a huge impact." On Supply Chain Disruptions: "I certainly don't think chaos is going to be reduced over time.” On the next wave of supply chain leaders: "Building leaders who are dynamic, who are resilient, I think the number one skill I used to say software is probably the number one skill. Math generally, is probably the number one base skill." The full episode is below... * More on the 'how' from the team at Standvast Fulfillment is here: https://bit.ly/3ybacA0 #supplychainmanagement #supplychain #GSCI #UTK #2024SpringSCF Ted Stank Thomas Goldsby Kevin O'Meara Lance Starks Eric Topp Alan Amling Haslam College of Business at the University of Tennessee Christopher Wolf Paul Dittmann Daniel Stanton Rob McIntosh Thomas Deakins, MBA Ben Cook Timothy Dooner Jeff DiLullo Mary Long Brian Fugate Chris Richards Barton Jennings Ken Evans Scott DeGroot Bill Hutchinson Greg Smith Peter Anderson

36

5 Comments

On several recent visits to the Gaithersburg Amazon Fresh store, I noticed that some things I routinely buy cost more than long-established supermarkets located less than a 15-minute drive away charge for the same products.  Case in point: On Dec. 8, Amazon Fresh was selling private label 1-pound bags of cut carrots for $1.69 — or $1.52 for shoppers who belong to Amazon Prime. Yet a Giant Food store a couple of miles away and even Amazon’s very own Whole Foods Market offered the identical item for 99 cents — more than 40% less. I found a similar disparity when pricing a 5.3-ounce cup of Fage Total yogurt at the three stores over the weekend. Amazon Fresh charged $1.89 for that product, while Giant offered it for $1.79 and Whole Foods, which regularly charges $1.89 for that variety of yogurt, had it on sale for $1.25.  Bananas, meanwhile, were 59 cents per pound at Amazon Fresh and Giant, but just 49 cents per pound at Whole Foods. And a 7.5-ounce box of Annie’s cheddar squares cost $4.99 at Amazon Fresh, but just $4.69 at Whole Foods. The fact that Amazon Fresh sells some products sporting Whole Foods’ iconic 365 house brand muddles the pricing equation even more. Granted, the 25-ounce jar of 365 pasta sauce I saw during one of my visits to Amazon Fresh for $2.69 was $2.99 at Whole Foods. But as a consumer, I found myself trying to figure out why I was seeing Whole Foods products in Amazon Fresh — and wondering why I’d only save 30 cents on a product also available at a premium grocery store.

6

I am so honored and humbled.  "AI-powered solutions will also play a pivotal role in lowering returns by enabling more accurate product descriptions, personalized recommendations, and efficient reverse logistics."   Thanks Shelley E. Kohan for including my thoughts in Forbes on how brands can reduce returns this holiday season. Zeta Global leads retailers in digital transformation! #retailnews #retailmarketing #retail

31

3 Comments

On Friday the White House announced new actions to improve enforcement of our customs laws on de minimis shipments, packages entering the U.S. under $800 in value. The #retail industry perspective, in short: As long as section 301 #tariffs on consumer goods remain in place, they should be applied evenly and fairly. See RILA’s full statement from RILA trade expert Blake Harden here: https://lnkd.in/gTMHeDmj #supplychain

7

What #SupplyChain practice or belief would you declare dead? ☠️ For our VP of Product, Lindsey Bonfiglio, it’s “the notion that supply chain visibility is simply about tracking.” Discover her insights on redefining visibility to put #HighVelocity at the center in the latest issue of Inbound Logistics. 👇👇👇

1