For all of you parents of school aged kids or if you are the older neighbor without kids that have to put up with the noise of summer vacation, I have good news for you. Back to School orders have started to ship out of warehouses all across America. Even though school just got out only a few weeks ago there is a light at the end of the “I am sooo bored” summer vacation tunnel. Last minutes edits are being finished on the Wal-Mart, Kmart, Office Depot and Staples BTS [Back to School] marketing campaigns. These campaigns will startup the week of July 21st. Let me now bring you behind the velvet ropes to expose the 4 major selling seasons during the year. The first is Easter then you have Back to School followed by Halloween and then we finish the year off with the big one Holiday shopping. All of these seasonal goods need to be in stores at the right time for consumers to buy them when they want them. For us in the warehouse and logistics business that means BTS is in full swing at the 4th of July holiday.
There is a tremendous amount of planning and coordination that goes into making sure your little Sally or Timmy has the right clothes, supplies and whatever else is hot for the fall before school starts. The difficulty for the retailers comes in the fact that 3 of the 4 major selling seasons are back to back to back! Getting stock in for one then clearing out what didn't sell for the next is no easy task. Then you have the manufacturers that have to be able to produce the goods and get them shipped to the warehouse on time to meet ship dates. Now I will tell you that the warehouse guys have the tough task of keeping not only our clients happy [Manufacturers] but the retailer buyers as well. The 3PL warehouse is the middle man and if there are issues and trust me there are always issues we have to deal with both sides of the supply chain coin. That coin is a double sided fire breathing dragon that is running after you know who. I didn't make the goods and I didn't order the goods but somehow all the problems become my fault.
That is why having a good 3PL [Third Party Logistics] warehouse is critical to the supply chain process. H&A has mastered the art of solving logistics issues and explaining to both sides what the issues are from delays at the ports to quality issues from the factory. At H&A our company motto is “We Treat Your Products like They Were Ours”! By taking that approach we are able to foresee most issues then deal with them before they get too big or we try to anyway. The real skill is communicating the issues to our clients and retail buyers in a way that keeps them calm. No one likes surprises especially before a major selling season when the pressure is on all parties. A good 3PL will have a solid relationship with the ports and in the New York area that is not always easy. The other big piece to the supply chain puzzle is quality control. H&A has developed a 3 point quality control inspection program for our client’s goods. It is so important for a clients brand to have their 3PL catch any quality issues that might have been missed prior to shipping. Any quality issues need to be discovered before the goods are in the supply chain and shipped to the consumer. H&A inspects the goods and reports back to our clients any quality issues we find, along with working to find a fix or solution prior to shipping. That is the H&A difference!
So when you go to buy little Sally or Timmy’s school supplies this year just think about everything that went into getting those goods on the shelf. It’s not magic people it is a lot of hard work by good people and good companies that make sure your kids get back to school with everything they need. I hope you have enjoyed this walk behind the velvet ropes!