Boot Barn is a retail chain devoted to western and work-related footwear, apparel, and accessories. The company operates over 200 stores in the US and e-commerce websites consisting primarily of bootbarn.com, sheplers.com and countryoutfitter.com. The company also operates store support and distribution centers in California and Kansas. The Wichita, Kansas facility supports the company’s expanding […]

In December of 2019, the global grocery retailer Ahold Delhaize announced it was investing $480 million to transform and expand its US supply chain operations to support a strategy to transition the supply chain network into a fully-integrated, self-distribution model.  My colleague Steve Banker published an informative article in 2020 about this extensive initiative Ahold […]

I recently had the opportunity to speak with Mike Khodl, VP of Differentiated Technologies at Dematic. We spoke mostly about achieving optimal warehouse performance. However, we discussed a number of key subtopics, beginning with the role of software intelligence in automated warehouses as a strategic value driver, and the critical role it plays in in […]

  This week’s logistics news includes two articles about privately-held warehouse robotics companies and their respective equity financing announcements. Both articles mention the implied valuation of these companies. Corporations with publicly traded stock can be valued by simply multiplying the number of equity shares outstanding by the price per share, resulting in the company’s market […]

Last week I had the opportunity to speak with Markus Schmidt, President of Swisslog Americas, about warehousing in today’s environment of rapid and often unpredictable change. The coronavirus pandemic exerted widespread impact on order fulfillment operations. But even prior to the pandemic, warehousing and fulfillment were evolving rapidly due to a number of factors, most […]

Merchandise fulfillment variability has been on the rise for a number of years, due in large part to the growth of e-commerce. But all bets were off in 2020 as variability went off the charts. As you can see from the two included images charting the quarterly change in US e-commerce sales (year over year) […]

Covid-19 vaccine distribution is headline news across the country. Operation Warp Speed, the umbrella term for the public-private partnership responsible for the development, distribution, and administration of Covid-19 vaccines, is incredibly large, complex, and important to the well-being of the US population. The US government, private entities, and news outlets provide select insights and periodic […]