Recently, a fast fashion company has once again become the focus of the capital market due to rumours of an IPO. Many were shocked to discover that this fast fashion brand, which is not known to most Chinese, has so far been valued at US$100 billion, making it one of the world's unicorns.
Reviewing the company's success trajectory, it is easy to see that in addition to the strong support from the Chinese supply chain, localisation has also played an important role in its success path - researching the local market, catering to user needs, local netizen seeding, laying out local warehousing and a series of other operations have brought consumers the closest thing to a good local e-commerce brand experience.
In its local warehousing layout, 4PX's overseas warehouses play an important role.
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Six logistics challenges for overseas sales of apparel
Apparel is an old industry, but it is also known as the "eternal sunrise industry" because it occupies the top spot for people's basic needs. It is also the number one category in both the domestic and cross-border e-commerce markets, as its online penetration rate far exceeds the overall retail industry average.
However, due to the strong seasonality and short fashion cycle, apparel going abroad is already facing the test of supply chain flexibility. With the rise of fast fashion brands and e-commerce channels, clothing trends are changing at an accelerated pace and the flexible "small batch, multi-batch" fast return production method is being used more and more. However, this trend has also further increased the difficulty of supply chain management, and overseas warehousing has become the right solution for apparel brands going abroad.
In fact, the local warehousing and distribution provided by overseas warehouses does help to enhance consumers' online shopping experience and can also reduce the return rate to a certain extent, but there are still some difficulties with traditional overseas warehousing and distribution for apparel categories.
-Receiving and warehousing are very slow
Apparel is typically a non-standard product, as long as there is a difference in colour, style, pattern or size, it is a brand new SKU, and in traditional overseas warehouse management, every new SKU must be inspected, which makes it difficult to control the timeframe for warehousing apparel products.
-Untimely shelving
Unstable inbound timeframe leads to products not being shelved on time.
Moreover, in traditional overseas warehouses, each storage space can only hold 3 SKUs, and for multi-SKU apparel categories, the number of shelves in traditional overseas warehouses cannot meet the requirements at all.
-Difficult to manage individual items
With the prevalence of the "small batch, multi-batch" trend, the number of SKUs and the small number of individual SKUs is the unspoken operation of apparel brands, if the traditional overseas warehouse design, it is difficult to achieve a win-win situation of high capacity utilization and inventory accuracy.
-Inefficient picking and shipping errors
In the case of shallow inventory and multiple SKUs in the warehouse, if the system does not achieve good algorithms and path optimisation, picking efficiency will be very low, and picking is often not timely, or even picking the wrong goods. In the case of apparel orders, where there are generally a large number of customer units, errors and omissions can occur frequently if there is no good process in place.
-Difficult to process returned items
The apparel category is a typical multi-SKU category with a high return rate, and the handling of returned goods is also a key item to be examined when choosing an overseas warehouse for this category. However, due to the lack of a standardized and systematic quality inspection process in traditional overseas warehouses, the entire quality inspection process for returned goods is complicated and slow.
-High storage costs
The relatively low customer unit price and low gross profit model of the apparel category is very sensitive to logistics costs. If the overseas warehouse cannot achieve the ultimate cost control and refined operation, it is difficult to support the business development of apparel customers.
While there are many difficulties, 4PX is able to provide a bespoke apparel cross-border logistics solution that can solve these problems perfectly.
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Solutions covering the whole process of service scenarios
Deeply cultivating the industry for 18 years, 4PX has accumulated a lot of experience in warehousing and distribution of apparel categories in the process of serving customers, and has sorted out a set of cross-border logistics solutions for apparel categories, covering the whole process of service scenarios such as cross-border parcel returns, positive inbound from overseas warehouses, transfer inbound from transit warehouses and consumer returns, and has established a customized warehouse for customers in Europe based on this.
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With big data as the core driver, 4PX Custom Warehouse has achieved refined and standardized management of the whole chain in receiving and warehousing, quality inspection, shelving, inventory management, picking, packing and shipping, making the overseas warehouse distribution problem of apparel category perfectly solved.
-System upgrades and shelf modifications to ensure receipt and shelf efficiency
Since the entry of Overseas Warehouse 3.0, 4PX technical R&D team has successfully promoted the intelligent and digital upgrade of the overseas warehouse system, covering the whole process of receiving and warehousing, quality inspection, inventory management, packing and shipping, and logistics and distribution.
After the upgrade, the system recommends the warehouse space, reducing the manual inspection steps and greatly improving the efficiency of product warehousing. 4PX has also opened up the adaptation of the system to the mainstream ERP tools in the market, making the inspection of product warehousing simpler.
In response to the problem that the warehouse shelves cannot meet the multiple SKUs of clothing categories, 4PX has carried out shelf customisation and transformation in the customised warehouse, together with the innovation and systematisation of operation standards, further improving the utilisation rate of warehouse space.
-Improve inventory management efficiency through standard operating processes and procedures
In the process of optimizing overseas warehousing and distribution, the standardization of personnel operation should not be neglected. In line with the system upgrade, 4PX overseas warehouses have set unified operational standards for all aspects of warehousing and distribution.
In the inventory management process, 4PX classifies the warehouse areas according to the product's dynamic sales grade, which effectively improves picking speed and efficiency.
In order to ensure the safety of high value products, 4PX is also equipped with a valuable product warehouse, where high value products such as accessories and furs can be stored; at the same time, 4PX has also customized a mature quality inspection program for returned items, a standard return process and a perfect compensation standard, and the return information can be checked at any time by logging into the system.
-Intelligent algorithms are used to optimise picking paths and reduce delivery errors
The 4PX system algorithm has provided sufficient support for avoiding errors in product delivery, in terms of product warehousing and inventory management.
In addition, compared to traditional overseas warehouses where one person is responsible for one order, 4PX has optimized the picking methods and routes for apparel products.
In 2022, a fast-fashion brand's overseas shops added more than 6,000 new products on average daily, leaving other traditional fast-fashion brands far behind. In this process, the whole process of cross-border logistics solution provided by Handy Square Custom Warehouse has helped it a lot.
If you want to know more about 4PX's cross-border logistics solutions for apparel, please feel free to leave your messages.
