Omnichannel Fulfillment Leads to Growth and Profitability for Retailers

The state of retail has changed immeasurably over the last few years, forcing brands and their logistics partners to approach fulfillment in new ways. Once seen as a cost center, supply chain and the management of inventory now has a seat at the revenue table.

The pandemic and supply shortages placed this front and center for retailers who realized they needed to find better ways to get the inventory on hand to the customers who wanted it. With that, omnichannel fulfillment re-emerged as more than a nice to have but a business necessity.

“Retailers have gotten that religion to the extent that if they’ve got inventory, then they want to be able to sell it and maximize the price for that inventory,” said Justin Stone, senior vice president of business development and customer success, Deposco. “It’s not going to do any good if you’ve got an online buyer that is looking for an item but it’s sitting in your store and it’s not available for them to buy. In that sense, inventory and supply chain has crept its way into a revenue enabler.”

Regional retailer Psycho Bunny recently implemented Deposco’s Bright Suite omnichannel platform across more than 60 stores to remedy this exact problem. The brand was challenged by a fragmented fulfillment system that did not provide real-time inventory visibility, resulting in stock-outs and lost sales from both online and in-store channels.

“They were going to miss their revenue targets for the year; they were really trailing in the ability to get their online revenue to the benchmark that they had set,” said Stone. “In order to really hit their targets, they lit up the inventory in the stores to be able to sell online, and all of a sudden, their online revenue growth offset anything they were seeing in terms of lagging in the stores, and therefore, the overall business hit their revenue targets.”

Bright Suite not only gave Psycho Bunny the needed visibility into inventory across all stores, but also improved the brand’s ship-from-store functionality, creating a scalable process for fulfilling orders directly from store locations. This significantly reduced order fulfillment time and created a unified buying experience.

“After our first store went live in only three months, we were shipping more than 62,000 orders alongside a reduction from 2 to 5 days of processing time for orders sourced from the DC to under 48 hours out of the stores with Deposco,” said Monica Provenza, director of omnichannel and experience, Psycho Bunny.

Can omnichannel solve retail’s biggest challenge: the ever-evolving customer?   

For Psycho Bunny, investing in omnichannel fulfillment has solved its immediate inventory problems. The long-term goal will be leveraging that unified customer experience toward brand loyalty and sustained company growth.

Creating that experience to serve today’s consumers is one of the greatest challenges retailers face. Having the right inventory, at the right time, and at the right place is only part of it. Retailers also must create a familiar and seamless buyer experience free from delays and disruptions.

From a strategy standpoint, Stone says that means placing inventory at the center of it all.

“Do you leverage your facilities?” asked Stone. “How many of those do you have spread out in order to accomplish a one-day to two-day mentality? Do you use a 3PL? It's all of those things that tie together, and you have to have the right leadership in place to form the strategy and then be able to execute.”