F. Curtis Barry & Company’s Multichannel Operations & Fulfillment Blog

We attended VendorNet’s conference at the beginning of this month to present a speech and a roundtable on Vendor Compliance Policies. The speech covered:
• Role of vendor compliance in reducing costs and speeding receipts through the DC
• Trends in vendor compliance
• Contents of vendor compliance manuals
• […]

Cost Reduction and Productivity Improvement Assessment
70+ Ways to Reduce Costs, Increase Productivity and Improve Customer Service
By Curt Barry
Over the past 23 years F. Curtis Barry & Company’s work with multichannel companies in operations and fulfillment consulting has allowed us to compile these 70+ ways that can cut costs and increase productivity, which will ultimately lead […]

Nobody needs to tell you it’s a tough business climate. Last week at NCOF, I gave a speech to 180+ people on Operations Expense Reduction – Managing the Pennies. You can access the speech on our website. Also, in working with our clients to reduce expenses, F. Curtis Barry & Company has compiled an 11-page […]

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Upcoming solution will bring together multiple data sources to analyze business performance, aid merchandise analysis, analyze productivity in call centers and fulfillment centers
Redwood City, CA, and Richmond, VA; April 2, 2008 –
For 20 years, Taurus Software has been “making data liquid” for over 700 companies world-wide, with over 80 clients being in the […]

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Richmond, VA, & Philadelphia, PA, April 7, 2008 — F. Curtis Barry & Company, a leading consultancy to multichannel businesses, in partnership with Catalog Success, the leading publication serving the catalog/multichannel business, today jointly announced a co-branded two-day interactive workshop, “Evaluating, Selecting and Implementing Direct Commerce Systems.”
“The software marketplace for today’s multichannel direct […]

This is a question that needs to be asked because of some recent trends. Consider:
1. Production chases low cost labor. Where Japan and Taiwan were the centers before China, production is starting to move from China to other Asian countries such as Indonesia, Vietnam and Cambodia—as well as Mexico, Central and South […]

“The products in the National Wildlife Catalog are being sold by National Wildlife Direct, a subsidiary of BlueSky Brands, Inc. National Wildlife Federation has licensed its name and logo to BlueSky Brands and receives a 5% royalty fee for the sale of each catalog item. National Wildlife Direct contributes a minimum of $1 million […]

Last week was a tense one for several of our clients, and for our folks here, as we worked to move two of BlueSky’s fulfillment clients to new facilities before BlueSky Brands / AB&C Group this past Friday. We were successful before the doors were shuttered Friday evening. (For more info see Multichannel Merchant Magazine’s […]

Too many times recently I’ve entered a client’s facility and quickly identify the warehouse manager is either no longer in control or really never was in control of the operation. The position of warehouse manager should be thought of with the same relevance as sales or marketing, but too frequently companies are satisfied to […]

A couple of weeks ago we hosted 23 of Stone Edge Technologies’ customers at our two-day seminar, How to Improve Fulfillment and Operations. For those of you who don’t know Stone Edge, they sell an order management system for small to moderate sized direct businesses. They have over 1600 customers, second only to Dydacomp. I […]