When space is at a premium
The Christmas period is always a challenge for companies. The need to build up a large stock holding to supply hungry buyers is keenly felt in anticipation of what, for many businesses, is their peak trading period. As a result, one of the most important requirements for a company is having the space to store their products. One of the largest furniture chains in the UK was hit by this dilemma when they realised that close to half of their one million square foot warehouse was being consumed by returns that they didn’t know how to manage effectively. One unfortunate but commonly used method of management would have been to dispose of the returned stock in a landfill, but this would be a waste of resources and detrimental for the environment. We at Simon Charles were approached to come up with an alternative solution to manage their revenue recovery project in a sustainable and profitable way.
We took on the role and began to create an action plan that would suit their businesses timeline requirements, whilst also tailoring it to their other needs. We understand that each client comes with their own unique problems. For this reason, we steer away from generalised standard operating procedures that other companies might require their clients to adapt to. When you work with us, we will adapt for you. The main issue that we had to contend with was the sheer volume of stock that the company had accrued. Christmas was fast approaching, and the stock needed to be removed or it could prove disastrous due to the constraints they were experiencing regarding storage space. To get the project off the ground, we organised a precise and effective effort to move the stock to our distribution centre, involving the transportation of seven trailers a day over a three-week period.
To remarket products effectively, we provide each item with a lot number along with any unique identifier requested so that vendor can keep track of their stock, its performance and their returns at an individual item level. Although this was a large undertaking purely due to the quantity of stock, we were determined to show our client the same level of attentive service that we pride ourselves on providing throughout our vendor network. We recognised that these were fantastic products with most of them only being change-of-mind returns. These were perfect products for remarketing and were catalogued into appropriate auctions allowing for an exceptionally fast turnaround.
The vendor was extremely happy with the revenue recovered and were even happier that we were able to provide a fully managed service, allowing them to create space in their warehouse for the large volume of inbound stock they needed for their peak trade.
