DEEPER DIVES: All The Money In The World Cannot Fix A Relevancy Problem

Good Morning,

First, as always, thank you for joining.

Matt and I will be kicking off episode 4 of Wake Up and Deliver on Monday morning.

Stop by and have your morning coffee with us. It’s like talk radio, except everyone can get in on the fun.

I’ll be back in the Greater Toronto area next week for events and client meetings.

If you are attending the Two Boxes social at the The Pint on Wednesday, make sure to connect (and hopefully I’ll have my paint splatter jacket in time)

Updates to the archive will happen this week (for the new subscribers who missed previous issues).

Here’s what this issue brings:

• Department stores are past their prime. That’s the general sentiment and even one I’ve shared myself. Can JC Penney make an Abercrombie & Fitch style comeback with its turnaround plan?
  

• Are you a small D2C brand supporting your own fulfillment through ShipStation? I’ll share a few things you can do with the software to help get more from its limited UI
  

• Bringing more data and better visibility to 3PL operators

Can JCPenney Make It(Self) Count With New Store Layouts, A Better Customer Experience And A Billion Dollar Investment?

Names like Macy’s, Bloomingdale's, Nordstrom, Kohl's and JCPenney are all department stores.

Traditional department stores are characterized by … departments. Whereas stores like Walmart and Target are often defined as having “selections”.

These days, I would offer that the lines are getting blurred as Walmart and Target are creating more experiences (like store within a store, designer collections, and well defined shopping areas) with a traditional department store feel - while keeping a heavy focus on price and convenience.

JCPenney caught my attention this week.

It made a $40 Million dollar distribution center upgrade to its Reno, Nevada site.

When anyone talks about a turnaround, it’s always important to see what (and where) they are investing in.

Companies that say they are going to turn around their business but don’t invest in core capabilities and infrastructure often fail.

“Turnaround” in that sense is used to mask attempts to balance the P&L instead of actually improving the business.

Last summer, JCP announced a $1B plan to restructure their model. Having been saved from bankruptcy a couple of years prior, the new ownership seems to be prioritizing long term goals.

The focus of the investment was in digital capabilities, in-store upgrades including tech, and merchandising and supply chain improvements.

The big reveal for the Reno site was the installation and implementation of the Joey Pouch Sorter System.

Here’s a description from the company’s website:

This system is basically a micro-fulfillment “cube” style ASRS that doesn’t use bins. Instead, it uses pouches to store items individually into the system.

Each item is scanned as it’s put into a pouch, and each pouch has QR code identifier on its neck. This immediately updates the system’s inventory to know what is in every pouch.

The system is capable of handling any sortable items that measure up to 17.4’’ X 29’’ X 9’, such as:

• Shoes

• Accessories

• Apparel

• Packages

Outside of the dimensional restrictions, items must weigh 22lbs or less.

The most interesting part of this system (to me), is how well it effectively manages customer orders. Since each unit is in its own pouch, all items from a customer order are sent to the same pack station at the same time.

For the operator, error free order fulfillment is as simple as removing each item from its pouch.

It was a big factor for JPC as well. The upgrade to the Reno facility is expected to play a pivotal role in streamlining supply chain operations, ensuring that online orders placed through jcpenney.com are processed and delivered with enhanced speed and accuracy.

This type of focus mirrors the need EVERY major retailer is sharing right now.

That the shopping experience between offline and online activity has to be flawless.

No one would walk out of a store with a red shirt when they bought a green one. If it doesn’t happen at the store, it can’t happen online.

More inventory control, higher accuracy, faster execution.

Tying Operations And Supply Chain Improvements To Stores

The back end operations are one thing, but for retailers like JCPenney to be successful at turning around their brand, they need to improve the front end experience as well.

They’re working on it.

JCP currently has 663 stores in the US. As part of the plan, they are making updates to hundreds of locations.

What’s interesting however, is that for the most part, they aren’t reducing store size very much.

This may give them a strategic advantage if they choose to implement more fulfillment systems directly into the stores.

One of the biggest challenges, and one that negatively impacts store sales, is the general state of department stores.

They are huge, and full of product.

With that much inventory on the floor, the stores can EASILY look like a disaster - and no one wants to shop what feels like a flaming pile of garbage.

A couple of things I’d love to see JCP implement to radically change the department store experience (while staying true to the curated offerings that once had them a retail giant) are:

1. Implement ASRS systems in stores. Get the bulk of the product off the sales floor. This allows you to still merchandise and create the department look - without having to constantly clean it up
   
   Customers would be able to key in requests from their phone or in-store tablet terminals to dressing rooms or to the cash
   

2. An in-and-out feature of (typically) d2c / online only brands. I would make partnerships with new and trending brands, give them space on the floor and develop collaborative retail strategies that would vary BY STORE.
   
   Leverage surprise and delight while giving consumers access to brands they’ve been curious about but hesitant to buy without being able to see them in person.

One challenge that retailers will have when looking at systems to improve their overall costs and efficiencies is space.

Even with these systems getting smaller, there’s still a limit to what can (effectively) be done in small format stores.

The curb / corner positioning that department stores carry in malls is a wildly under utilized advantage these days.

Use what you have to win.

Things I Do When Working In ShipStation

These days the work I do varies a lot.

I go from high level advising, to deep analysis, to independent contributor style work with my clients.

I support one of my clients by taking care of a lot of ShipStation activity for them.

(Anything that is a logistics tool I can work with pretty easily - I’m a data pig).

What’s always surprised me is Shipstation’s popularity versus the quality of the UI.

If all you are using it for is basic rate shopping, and kicking data back to a more robust system with APIs, it might be a perfect fit for you.

But if you are using a few more of their options, or it’s a main tool for you to understand your current shipping situation, there are ways to make the UI give you a bit more.

Stores

It’s easy to understand separate connections for different stores (Shopify, Amazon, Woo Commerce, Ebay, Etsy, etc).

One miss that most people don’t realize however is that you can create multiple manual stores as well.

You can use this option to create multiple stores to support different types of activity that you might want to track (or have different people manage different orders).

For each store you can set up some basics for inventory, ship from locations, products, returns, branding, shipping accounts, etc.

Product Images

The ShipStation documentation and support isn’t the most in depth.

When I was setting up new products, we had the the ability to generate short URLs that were used in internal documents and wikis.

Even though clicking on one of these links would open a browser directly to the image, the links would not work with ShipStation.

In order to make sure images show up in your order screen, emails and pick slips, you need to use a full URL directly to the image that is correctly formatted and accessible. It should be a direct link ending in .jpg, .png, etc.

Tags

Tags are one the fastest and easiest ways to filter orders in the ShipStation UI.

They are completely customizable, so you have tons of flexibility for what you want to do.

I use different tags for different types of special requirements for shipping.

I also have set up some specific tags to go with other filters I have created tied to address validation (auto verified, manually verified, failed validation). There is NOTHING worse than products bouncing around or getting returned from sloppy address data.

Order Numbers

Whenever possible, set up conventions for your order numbers.

Simple codes and auto-sequenced assignments from your order system (or from ShipStation directly) make finding issues or following up on specific batches of activity annoying.

Here’s an example of the options you can use to find and filter groups of orders in the UI based on the order number.

Since I was able to tweak the systems to generate order IDs in a way that are much easier to search (something like [Product Group]|[Customer Type]|[customer_email]|[number_ord_id]), I take advantage of these options all the time.

With that type of defined order structure, I can quickly find, follow-up, fix, cancel, or confirm whatever I need to (often without checking any source systems).

Columns

No matter what system you use, ALWAYS check the column layout.

It surprises me how long people go with the default views.

Most people don’t realize there can be a treasure trove of information available (but just not selected by default) to help them manage their activity.

Pretty much every piece of table based software will have the ability to customize the column layout.

ShipStation is no different.

There’s a two for one benefit here.

First, you get to create the views you want based on the information you use the most.

Second, you are given the opportunity to export anything that is in a current view, exactly as you see it, if you ever need to.

Take advantage of making your UI, your own.

Labels

Set your labels to print at the right time.

And NEVER do this!

Out Of The Box Widgets And Reports Look Great, But You’ll Never Perform At Peak Using Them

I’ve been doing a lot of dashboard and analytic work.

It’s something I was responsible for in my corporate roles.

Having the right dashboards providing teams with the best information to make decisions dramatically improves your business.

I’m working with a few different systems right now (TMS and WMS).

Some are names that you would know.

Others are homegrown.

The best thing when you build your own management tools is that you only need the raw data.

I’ve been poking around with ShipHero’s sandbox. It’s a really cool system.

Going through it though, I started to see things that I felt I would want if it was my primary business driver.

I’ve reached out to a few people to build some custom dashboards for them. They’ll get highly dialed in insights, and I get to go deep on how far I can push the system.

If you have a system that you wish you could get more from, let’s connect and review. Often you’ll find that there is a lot more data than what the canned reports are working with.

That’s it for this week. Thanks for being here.