Take a fresh look at the world around you

摘要

While Modern readers are feeling the strains that the astonishing growth of e-commerce have placed on operations, a summary of statistics recently shared with me by Ian Hobkirk, founder and managing director of Commonwealth Supply Chain Advisors, put that explosiveness into context. "As a percentage of total retail sales, e-commerce has been taking about 1 to 1.5 percentage points a year away from brick-and-mortar sales pretty steadily for the last five years," says Hobkirk. "In 2020, e-commerce market share grew by 4% in the second quarter. That means that when the pandemic first hit, we saw the equivalent of more than three years of natural e-commerce growth in just a month or two." I keep thinking the residual effects of this intense progression will be nothing but positive, as we continue to hear about warehouse and DC operations taking a fresh look at the world around them and pushing innovation forward.