06. Tearing Up the Rulebook

Supply Chain Restructure

Working with a leading fashion accessories company, we helped them to re-shape their supply chain supporting costume jewellery concessions active in over 800 stores in the UK and ROI.

We identified the opportunity to re-locate the distribution centre pick and pack facility from Leicester to Qingdao, China. 

In addition, we relocated all stock management and ordering functions from the UK to a newly created team in China that were close to the supply base and targeted with reducing stock holding through quick response on fast-selling merchandise.

Stock was held in a purpose-built DC in a Free Trade Zone in Qingdao and shipped directly to store using UK domestic DHL courier rates. The objective, and result, was to achieve a speedier ‘pick to receipt’ process from China than we had been able to achieve through the UK domestic DC.

The project delivered first year savings of around 35% in end-to-end distribution costs and delivered a manpower saving of over 50%, in total generating over £500,000 in savings annually.

In parallel with the re-location of DC and Merchandising functions, we also delivered a bespoke new software system to control all ordering and stock from purchase order through to store level transactional data.

This project was delivered through the creation of new and innovative partnerships with China based 3PL and DHL UK, as well as internal HR and IT to support the re-structuring and development of the new software package.

This route of creating UK domestic parcels in country of origin was the first exercise of its kind for DHL anywhere in China and was groundbreaking for them to offer new services and over the following years gained wide market adoption.