I would like to pass on my congratulations to everyone featured in Retail Week’s Etail Power List 2012.

I would like to pass on my congratulations to everyone featured in Retail Week’s Etail Power List 2012. Particularly with the huge challenges we all still face as the economy struggles to recover; this achievement is ever the more impressive.

Retailing is increasingly a global business, with design, manufacturing, brand management and retail channels spanning oceans and crossing continents. Brands that have succeeded in one territory are keen to replicate that success in other countries, especially through expanding their online fulfilment offers.

But it is a fast moving industry with ever more demanding customers and the chances of failure can be high, even for established brands, let alone for relatively new companies.

The buying behaviour of online shoppers is quite unlike that of their bricks-and-mortar predecessors. They are more fickle, impulsive and receptive to promotions. As a result, forecasting demand is problematic particularly in ‘fashion-orientated’ sectors that exhibit short product life cycles.

This frequently results in excess inventory, poor availability, and unnecessary write-downs to clear slow moving lines.

Building a fulfilment capability that delights the customer and yet is affordable, adaptable and aligned to the brand aspirations can be a challenging task. Returns handling is a particularly difficult activity which if not done well can alienate the customer, inflate inventory and open the door to fraud. This is true for a domestic operation but the problem is magnified when an online retailer sells overseas.

Unfortunately there are no easy answers. They depend on the nature and strengths of the company, the financing available, the precise nature of the market, conceivably on local laws concerning company ownership, taxation, tariffs and so on. You can find thoughts on how to tackle this challenge at www.unipartlogistics.com/internationalreturns.

Congratulations again to all of the successful individuals on this year’s Retail Week Etail Power List.

  • Stephen Ashton, Chief operating officer, Unipart Consumer Logistics