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According to ONS data out this morning, online retail now accounts for 10.5% of sales, but events this week north of the border show how fragile online retail distribution networks remain, and how fulfilment remains the key challenge for the web.
Scottish transport minister Keith Brown was quick to hit out at those retailers which stopped taking online orders - conveniently forgetting that if he’d done his job of keeping the roads open then they’d still be taking them - but it is striking that while retailers’ sophisticated supply chains have managed to keep stores well-stocked through even the worst of the snow, systems for the fulfilment of web orders seem to fall apart as soon as things take a turn for the worse.
Retailers which have stopped taking non-food orders in Scotland are playing it safe, influenced no doubt by the forecasts of more adverse weather to come. That makes sense because no retailer wants to make promises to customers it can’t keep, especially at this time of year.
But the success of online retail over the past few years has been all about giving customers confidence in its reliability and that the goods will be delivered. Whether its the fault of the politicians, the retailers or the delivery industry, the fact that bad weather can effectively close large parts of the country to online retail while stores manage to remain open is a big failure. Maybe some long-awaited good news for good old-fashioned physical shops though?
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From Retail Day
Retail Day is a blog about retail by the Retail Week editorial team
Readers' comments (3)
Ian Middleton | 16-Dec-2010 5:07 pm
Something that is being driven home to me very pointedly right now. As I type I'm still on hold with Initial Citylink and have been for the past 37 minutes trying to get an update on the position in their main hub at Heathrow, where I understand they are currently dealing with a predicted 3 day delay. Unfortunately for us one of our biggest logistic deliveries of the year is in the middle of that somewhere.
From what understand from staff and our regular driver, this is mainly down to under-manning at the hubs and a lack of drivers. I suppose we only have ourselves to blame for yet again putting our faith in a company that every year seems to find the arrival of the Christmas rush a complete surprise!
The really annoying thing though is that they didn't mention any of these problems when they accepted the shipment for delivery. If they had we could have made our own arrangements. Whereas I'm now told that our shipment is probably being held in a locked container while they wait for someone to unload it. A position its been in for at least 36 hours.
So we now face potential stock shortages during what could be the busiest weekend of the year.
If couriers can't get this sort of thing right now, I really fear for the future of home delivery. It seems like the online revolution is about to be stopped dead in its tracks by something as simple as a lack of joined up thinking within companies where one would imagine that was an essential pre-requisite.
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Neil Saunders | 17-Dec-2010 7:41 am
City Link is, by quite some margin, one of the worst couriers. I have lost count of the times they have completely messed up a delivery.
I once stayed in all Saturday for a scheduled delivery only to be told, when tired of waiting I finally phoned at 4pm, that the driver could not come out today because he was ‘unwell’. No apology was offered, as these were ‘circumstances beyond their control’.
On another occasion a two part delivery came with just one item. When querying where the other package was the driver looked at me with a completely blank impression, “I forgot to put it on the van this morning but it’s in the depot I can bring it round later in the week”. He seemed quite bemused when I told him I would be working during the week.
However, to top it all, my colleague’s Aunt purchased some wine which was delivered to his house by City Link. Clearly, as it was a gift he was not expecting anything. He arrived home one evening to find the wine on his doorstep, in clear view of the street, with a City Link card on which the driver had scribbled: “3 bloody times I came here don’t order suf [sic] if you not gonna be in”.
Interestingly, my all of my deliveries were from John Lewis and my colleague’s was from Waitrose. Doesn’t exactly reflect very well on the Partnership does it? Find another courier company JLP…
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Ian Middleton | 17-Dec-2010 12:40 pm
Sounds familiar Neil, but then I fear that stories about Citylink will probably be as many and varied as those we retailers discuss in less than hushed tones about those particularly challenging customers we all encounter at some point.
Citylink have apparently won an award for outstanding customer service though http://www.city-link.co.uk/press/2010/city-link-winner.html. Yeah..I know!
Happily though they do now seem to have found our delivery. 3 days late and still not yet arrived, but assuming the driver doesn't give up on his central London deliveries (as he's done in the past) at least our store will have it for the weekend. We don't usually trust them on deliveries during the last week before Christmas, but this year things seem to be running early. Next week's shipment will be handled internally.
I think its a case of caveat emptor, and to be fair to Citylink they are the cheapest option out there, so I guess you get what you pay for. I see they've just lost their CEO for the second time in 18 months, maybe they're slowly coming to the same realisation.
It does still highlight a problem in the UK. If online is going to continue to grow at the current pace it will very soon outstrip the capacity of affordable delivery services. Will the tipping point be when customers online will be charged £20 for delivery of a £10 item? Or are these sorts of costs going to have to be absorbed by the online retailer? Either way online may not look like such an attractive prospect at that point.
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