Digital is dismantling the retail industry brick by brick. The most successful retailers are the ones with thriving digital businesses, while physical stores are becoming more liabilities than assets.
However, e-commerce isn't without its challenges. In contrast to waning demand for in-store retail, rising demand for online retail has created a bottleneck at the fulfillment stage, whereby carriers and retailers are struggling to manage the increasing volume of online orders. This is presenting an opportunity for legacy retailers to leverage their gluttony of physical retail space to help fulfill these sales.
Ship-from-store — a fulfillment process where retailers use stock from their store's estate to fulfill orders — can help brick-and-mortars evolve and avoid stagnation. This method is an essential strategy for legacy retailers because it can help them survive digital disruption and remain competitive with e-commerce giants like Amazon.
In a new report, BI Intelligence explains how retail stores have become a liability and assesses the opportunity to use stores as distribution points for online orders. It also breaks down how the ship-from-store method works, and examines its benefits, the steps needed to implement it, the retailers best positioned to use it, and the implications it presents for the industry at large.
Find Report HERE.
Source - Business Insider Intelligence