January 2020 Issue of SCMR: Shift into reverse

This is an excerpt of the original article. It was written for the January-February 2020 edition of Supply Chain Management Review. The full article is available to current subscribers.

January-February 2020

If the holidays at your household were like most, the gifts were chosen and wrapped with care, and then half were returned in the week after Christmas. Maybe more than half. After all, who among us hasn’t bought four shirts in a variety of sizes and colors with the intent of keeping one and returning three. And why not: Retailers and e-tailers alike have made returns seamless, easy and cheap. At least for the shopper. For the supply chains of the retailer, manufacturer or brand owner, returns are a once-neglected area that is growing into a major focus of supply chain managers who don’t want to see their organizations lose their shirt taking…

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If the holidays at your household were like most, the gifts were chosen and wrapped with care, and then half were returned in the week after Christmas. Maybe more than half. After all, who among us hasn’t bought four shirts in a variety of sizes and colors with the intent of keeping one and returning three. And why not: Retailers and e-tailers alike have made returns seamless, easy and cheap.

At least for the shopper. For the supply chains of the retailer, manufacturer or brand owner, returns are a once-neglected area that is growing into a major focus of supply chain managers who don’t want to see their organizations lose their shirt taking back our shirts. As supply chain managers, we’re all learning to shift into reverse.

Reverse logistics is the theme of the first two articles in the January issue of SCMR. In the first, special projects editor Gary Forger takes an in-depth look at the process of getting your goods back from the customer to the point of origin. In the following article, Zac Rogers, Dale Rogers and Haozhe Chen explain why every supply chain manager needs a secondary market strategy to dispose of all that returned merchandise. Returns, by the way, are one reason why dollar stores are among the fastest-growing segments of retail today.

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