Dirty Laundry Comes Clean
The subject of retail returns is big, messy, and embarrassing enough that retailers tend to keep quiet about it. Logistics executives toss around words
Operations & Fulfillment
Opinion and Response
HAVING HIS SAY Beware Divine Followers Roman Martynenko, chief financial officer of San Francisco-based Web services provider Ecofabric, on the continuing
Innocents Abroad
EVER SINCE O+F STARTED A DEBATE on offshore outsourcing in its weekly e-newsletter back in August, we have been deluged with e-mails from readers. Feedback
Bricks Aid Clicks
IN THE DAYS when the Web grocery business produced spectacular flops like Webvan, the South African grocery Pick ‘n Pay began developing its business
Battling Today’s Economic Doldrums
POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC conditions seem bleak. Unemployment levels are near all-time highs. Small-parcel delivery costs are rising faster than anyone’s
Shoppers Fear Online Fraud
The rise in cyber crime hasn’t gone unnoticed by online shoppers. A recent study by Forrester Research Inc. found that consumer confidence in online credit
Project Post-mortem
Here’s an all-too-familiar scenario: A project team spends six months of late nights and cold pizza working to go live with a new system. Then the go
Operations and Management: Small Catalogers, Big-Time Speed
Catalogers that receive tens or hundreds of thousands of orders a day, such as Lands’ End and L.L. Bean, have long had a dedicated Internet connection
Crime Does Pay
Sick of working yourself to the bone just to keep your demanding customers happy? Tired of worrying about budgets and margins and inventory turns? Maybe
Patterson Buys into New Market
Who says there are no new lands left to conquer? Certainly not St. Paul, MN-based Patterson Dental Co. In August the cataloger of dental and veterinary