Innovative courier service expands partnership with ebay
At the end of last year, ebay announced a new partnership with Shyp, an innovative app used to coordinate pickup, packaging, shipping and tracking services. The goal of the app is to eliminate the hassle associated with the shipping process. Currently, the Shyp app is serving four cities: San Francisco, New York City, Chicago and Los Angeles. This week, the company announced it is rolling its ebay partnership option out in its LA market.
The partnership between the two companies is quite logical. Once the user has sold an item on ebay, a courier can be summoned to collect the item. The app promises a pickup of within 20 minutes. After Shyp professionally packages the item, the most economical shipping provider is chosen and the item is sent on its way. This truly takes away a big part of the hassle associated with selling on ebay. The video below provides a quick overview of how it works:
News of the rollout most certainly has ebay sellers in Los Angeles excited about the potential this service offers.
Read more about the innovative app its partnership with ebay here.
Sustainability: learning from the pros
An article published this week on Greenbiz highlighted the importance of integrating a holistic sustainability strategy into supply chain operations. The piece covers a report released by SustainAbility, a strategic advisory firm focused on promoting sustainable operations, which identified 5 key areas businesses can leverage to anchor sustainability into their operations:
- Employing business model thinking
- Putting materiality to use
- Applying a sustainability lens to products and services
- Tapping into culture
- Leveraging transparency
Most importantly, the commentary highlights a company that has achieved excellent levels of sustainability in its operations. German chemical producer BASF uses an internally developed methodology to steer its decision making process with regard to its product portfolio. The program is called BASF’s Sustainable Solution Steering and was launched in 2011. Over the last 5 years, BASF has recruited more than 2,000 of its employees across multiple divisions to assess the level of sustainability associated with each of its 60,000 product. For example, the company tested its paper coating products and discovered there were some environmental concerns associated with some of the substances used in the production process. They stopped selling this product and developed a new set of recyclable, environmentally friendly products. This becomes relevant when looking at the positive statistics associated with the sale of sustainable products compared to those with low levels of sustainability.
To read more on this topic, click here.
Supply Chain to the rescue? American Apparel hopes so…
In October of last year, American Apparel filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. For a long time, the clothing company banked on the “sex sells” aspect of marketing, and featured many provocative ads that resulted in some backlash. After scaling back on the “sexiness” the brand seemed to have lost some of its edge and identity, which in the end, resulted in the overall restructuring of the business at the beginning of the year.
During its rebuilding process, American Apparel seems to have gotten some of its original appeal back, but also shifted its focus to a “supply chain sells” strategy. In a recent interview, the brands senior vice president of marketing noted a recently launched program with last mile delivery service provider Postmates. In order to improve the customer experience in the e-commerce sector, American Apparel, together with Postmates, will be offering a delivery time of 5 to 6 hours for online purchases made in San Francisco and New York City. This development certainly highlights the growing importance of efficient e-commerce supply chain management.
To read more, click here.
Have a great weekend!
