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In retail, success isn’t just about what you sell; it’s about how efficiently you can get products into customers’ hands — a make-or-break challenge for ecommerce businesses facing the flood of peak season orders. And with peak seasons no longer limited to just holiday shopping or defined by Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals, retailers must lay the logistical groundwork to manage atypical spikes long after the holiday decorations have been put away.
Today’s ecommerce environment is marked by smaller, predictable peaks, like those associated with major product launches or seasonal trends specific to company offerings (e.g. order volumes for eclipse glasses surged for American Paper Optics ahead of this year’s rare solar eclipse event). Simultaneously, online retailers must contend with unpredictable demand peaks, such as when a previously “under the radar” product goes viral on TikTok or a supply chain disruption causes certain product shortages — or, in the case of Aroma Retail, when an appearance on Good Morning America led to the environmental scenting company managing $250,000 of orders in an hour.
With the propensity for peak volumes to strain warehouse and logistics operations, online retailers must create a scalable, frictionless pick-pack-ship workflow in the warehouse to ensure the correct items are shipped and arrive on time. Of course, this is much easier said than done.
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It all starts in the warehouse
While some retailers may be tempted to throw more people at the problem during peak periods, this approach is hampered by the constraints of the ongoing labor shortage — a recent study found that 77% of supply chain and logistics leaders are facing some level of labor shortage at their organizations — and the added time commitment of training an influx of temporary employees.
Alternatively, forward-thinking retailers are implementing strategies around warehouse layout and organization, efficient inventory management and seamless data flow across the warehouse to build an effective line of defense against the flood of orders. Automation plays the starring role in this approach, eliminating inefficient manual tasks, reducing costs and fostering a positive customer experience through accurate, speedy shipments — without burning out teams or breaking the bank.
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Carefully planned warehouse space
A warehouse layout is more than just racks, aisles and stations — it’s the blueprint for operational success. By implementing organizational strategies to improve the flow of the warehouse and maximize the pick face, businesses can better meet the demands of both planned and atypical peaks.
For example, during planned peaks, fast-moving items should be in aisles close to packing and shipping stations to reduce walk time. Seemingly minor organizational tweaks, like aisles wide enough to accommodate additional pickers to reduce congestion or gaps in long runs of pick locations enabling pickers to cut through to the next aisle to minimize end-to-end travel, can deliver major efficiency gains.
Flexibility and agility in the warehouse — the ability to change the setup, add more packing benches and change warehouse layouts quickly — is integral to scalability. To this end, some retailers are creating flexible warehouse environments by opting for modular cardboard racks or bin locations on pallets that can be easily moved as needed to meet escalating pick volumes.
Retailers should also ensure they have sufficient equipment and shipping materials available for peaks. For instance, multiple packing benches set up ahead of time prove invaluable when they need to be activated at a moment’s notice to scale up fulfillment. Similarly, an adequate supply of shipping boxes, tape and stuffing materials on hand to ensure smooth packing of orders is key to meeting demand spikes.
For growing ecommerce brands, optimizing space in the warehouse can be enhanced using ecommerce warehouse management software (WMS) to create route-optimized pick lists for the warehouse team. Orders with similar items can be picked more efficiently using a multi-order picking list, for example, requiring less workers to occupy the space in the warehouse.
In addition, leveraging mobile barcode scanners and an ecommerce WMS to execute a dynamic location system (a.k.a. chaotic storage) enables businesses to put out and move any SKU to anywhere in the warehouse, maximizing warehouse capacity and flexibility — by as much as 40% — avoiding bad picks and scaling quickly during peak periods without disrupting existing processes.
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Paving the way for a frictionless pick-pack-ship workflow
With efficiency and productivity top of mind during peak seasons, the process of goods-in all the way to dispatch should be one fluid chain of events, without hurdles or hitches. By eliminating disruption from picking operations — by pre-labeling for receiving, ensuring labels and barcodes are accurate and replenishing items before the daily picking process begins — online retailers can set the stage for a fast, seamless and accurate fulfillment workflow.
In addition to eliminating time-consuming and costly manual steps using barcode-based picking and automated printing of labels and packing lists, retailers should turn their attention to their shipping workflow. By automating the dispatch process with purpose-built technology, ecommerce businesses can save time and money, even during high-volume peak seasons.
Ideal for small and medium-sized online vendors focused on growth but facing rising operating costs — everything from sourcing to shipping — in addition to highly personalized customer delivery expectations, automated shipping technology can take the sting out of the demands of shipping goods during peak seasons. Notably, scalable multi-carrier shipping software can leverage automation rules to prevent fulfillment bottlenecks and boost efficiency, rate shop automatically to find the most cost-effective shipping service and cut shipping costs with discounted carrier rates.
Retailers should also take note that an integrated stack of software solutions can accelerate order fulfillment by helping data flow more efficiently across operations; with one scan of a barcode, relevant background processes can be triggered, from label printing to customer order status and payment notifications. Indeed, by integrating shipping and ecommerce WMS technology with selling channels and/or ecommerce platforms of choice (e.g. Shopify), retailers can automate workflows, boost accuracy and tighten inventory control with real-time visibility.
In today’s unpredictable retail world, the ability to handle atypical peak seasons effectively is a critical differentiator. It’s not enough to manage routine operations; companies need a warehouse environment primed to scale to meet fluctuating demand. By embracing automation in the warehouse, in tandem with physical layout and organizational strategies, ecommerce retailers can capitalize on peak periods while setting the stage for sustained growth throughout the year.
