Why Retail Supply Chain Transformations Fail (And How You Can Beat The Odds)

There's no small list of retailers who are struggling to keep up with the Amazon effect, but a closer look at why some fail and others prevail, should give retailers who are willing to embrace change some hope.

With a record number of store closings last year (7,000, per CNN Money) and nearly 700 bankruptcy filings, we don't need to belabor the point that the retail vertical is undergoing significant changes. But, changes in the way consumers buy goods and services isn’t new. The key drivers of today’s E-commerce transformation — speed, choice, price and convenience — also drove every previous market disruption. It’s always been about providing better service to customers and meeting their evolving demands. Another consistency is that the majority of front-end service upgrades are made possible by back-end supply chain enhancements. 

Karl Siebrecht, cofounder and CEO at FLEXE (dubbed the Airbnb of warehousing), summed it up best: “Over the next decade, the difference between the companies that thrive and those that fail will be which ones master the modern supply chain — and which don’t.”