e-Tailing and Stores May Require Separate Supply Chains

This column discusses a lesson to be learned from Sears of long ago when it was a bi-channel retailer. The company successfully operated its legacy catalog business in conjunction with store operations as two separate supply chains. The column also discusses that many service arms of durable-product companies typically do the same in order to balance short-term sales versus long-term service-customer satisfaction. Forecasters and planners finding themselves in these situations may need to support multiple ‘efficient’ versus ‘responsive’ supply chains.