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In retail, success is not just about what you sell; it's about how efficiently you can get products into the hands of customers — a challenge for e-commerce businesses facing the flood of peak season orders. And with peak seasons no longer limited to holiday shopping or defined by Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals, retailers must put the logistical foundations in place to manage outliers long after the holiday decorations are up. have been removed.
Today's e-commerce environment is characterized by smaller, more predictable spikes, such as those associated with major product launches or seasonal trends specific to a company's offerings (e.g., order volumes for eclipse glasses increased by American Paper Optics before this year's rare solar eclipse event). At the same time, online retailers must deal with unpredictable spikes in demand, such as when a previously “under the radar” product goes viral on TikTok or a supply chain disruption causes certain product shortages—or, in the case of Fragrance Retail, when one appearance on Good Morning America had the environmental fragrance company manage $250,000 in orders in an hour.
With peak volumes trending to strain warehouse and logistics operations, online retailers must create a scalable and frictionless workflow in storehouse to ensure that the correct items are shipped and arrive on time. Of course, this is much easier said than done.
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It all starts in the warehouse
While some retailers may be tempted to throw more people into the problem during peak periods, this approach is hampered by ongoing restrictions labor shortage – a recent study found that 77% Supply chain and logistics leaders are facing a level of labor shortages in their organizations—and the added time commitment of training an influx of temporary workers.
Alternatively, forward-thinking retailers are implementing strategies around warehouse layout and organization, efficient inventory management, and seamless data flow through the warehouse to build an effective line of defense against order flooding. Automation plays a key role in this approach, eliminating inefficient manual tasks, reducing costs and driving a positive customer experience through accurate and fast deliveries – without burning out teams or breaking the bank.
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Carefully planned warehouse space
or warehouse layout it's more than just racks, aisles and stations — it's the blueprint for operational success. By implementing organizational strategies to improve warehouse flow and maximize pick point, businesses can better meet planned and atypical peak demands.
For example, during scheduled peaks, fast-moving items should be in aisles close to packing and shipping stations to reduce walking time. Seemingly small organizational changes, such as aisles wide enough to accommodate additional pickers to reduce congestion or gaps in long runs of pick locations, enabling pickers to move to the next row to minimize end-to-end travel, can bring huge efficiency gains.
Flexibility and agility in the warehouse—the ability to change configurations, add more packing benches, and quickly change warehouse layouts—is integral to scalability. To that end, some retailers are creating flexible warehouse environments by opting for modular carton racking or bin locations on pallets that can be easily moved as needed to meet escalating pick-up volumes.
Retailers should also ensure that they have sufficient equipment and shipping materials available for yeast. For example, multiple packing benches set up ahead of time are invaluable when they need to be activated at a moment's notice to increase fulfillment. Similarly, having an adequate supply of shipping boxes, tapes and packing materials on hand to ensure smooth packing of orders is key to meeting increases in demand.
For growing e-commerce brands, warehouse space optimization can be improved by using e-commerce warehouse management software (WMS) to create route-optimized pick lists for the warehouse team. Orders of similar items can be handled more efficiently using a multi-order pick list, for example, requiring fewer workers to occupy warehouse space.
Additionally, leveraging mobile barcode scanners and an e-commerce WMS to run a dynamic location system (aka chaotic storage) enables businesses to issue and move any SKU anywhere in the warehouse, maximizing warehouse capacity and flexibility – up to at 40% – avoiding bad choices and scaling quickly during peak periods without disrupting existing processes.
Paving the way for a frictionless workflow
With efficiency and productivity at its peak during peak seasons, the freight process – all the way to delivery should be a seamless chain of events, without any hitches or bottlenecks. By eliminating disruptions from receiving operations—by pre-tagging for pickup, ensuring labels and barcodes are accurate, and restocking items before the daily pickup process begins—online retailers can set the stage for a seamless fast, trouble-free and accurate fulfillment work.
In addition to eliminating time-consuming and costly manual steps using barcode-based picking and automated printing of labels and packing lists, retailers must turn their attention to the shipping workflow. By automating the shipping process with purpose-built technology, e-commerce businesses can save time and money, even during high-volume peak seasons.
Ideal for small and mid-sized online retailers focused on growth but facing rising operational costs—everything from sourcing to shipping—in addition to highly personalized customer delivery expectations, automated shipping technology can take the sting out from freight transport requirements during peak seasons. Especially, scaled multi-carrier shipping software can use automation rules to prevent fulfillment bottlenecks and increase efficiency, evaluate the store automatically to find the most cost-effective shipping service, and reduce shipping costs with discounted carrier rates.
Retailers should also note that an integrated stack of software solutions can be accelerated order fulfillment helping data flow more efficiently across operations; with a scan of a barcode, relevant background processes can be activated, from label printing to customer order status and payment notifications. Indeed, by integrating shipping and e-commerce WMS technology with sales channels and/or e-commerce platforms of choice (e.g. Shopify), retailers can automate workflows, increase accuracy and tighten inventory control with real-time visibility.
In today's unpredictable retail world, the ability to effectively handle atypical peak seasons is a critical differentiator. It is not enough to manage routine operations; companies need a warehouse environment prepared at scale to meet fluctuating demand. By embracing automation in the warehouse, along with physical layout and organizational strategies, retailers can take advantage of peak periods while setting the stage for sustainable growth throughout the year.