Just as we were delivering the last full loads of beer and Christmas puddings into the retailer’s RDC’s, X2 were kept busy delivering sale stock of summer garden furniture into over 160 garden centres across the country, ready for the January sales.
Companies who deal with seasonal product lines face enormous logistics challenges, often having to organise high volume movements of stock over a very short period of time with immense organisational and resource pressures.
X2 are in a unique position to assist manufacturers and retailers who deal with these extreme fluctuations in demand for their products either because they are inherently promotionally driven, or because of the specific seasonality of the product. Our ability to switch on resources often at very short notice and then switch off those resources without any residual cost overhang, makes our solutions flexible, responsive and cost effective, providing the customer with a one stop shop solution.
X2 receive the volume forecasts, schedule deliveries into the 160 stores taking account of the specific delivery restrictions and requirements. We source and allocate vehicles and drivers through our extensive partner network, liaise with the warehouse operation to plan loading patterns and agree collection windows. We then manage the deliveries into stores, deal with any delays or delivery issues, organise the return of POD’s, collate the KPI’s on behalf of the customer and to make life easier for their finance community provide a single invoice for the entire weeks activity.
We are pleased to say that as a consequence of the quality of service we provided in 2011 we have also been awarded the distribution for the new 2012 season, so no relaxing in the garden for us!