Specialty Retail

With more sourcing now coming from China and Latin America, specialty retailers such as apparel and footwear manufacturers cannot afford to rely on traditional methods to manage their supply chains. Whether basic or fashion merchandise, Descartes gives specialty retailers the ability to reduce transportation costs, improve inventory turns and reduce potentially large write-offs due to obsolescence. 

Descartes helps specialty retailers: 

• Improve global visibility of inventory for inventory allocations and stores facing out-of-stock conditions.
• Reduce shipping costs significantly.
• Achieve savings in days, not months or years, by reducing write-offs from obsolescence.
• Optimize planning by driving decisions with integrated tools that consider business rules, transaction volumes, cost restrictions, and other factors.
• Improve performance and reduce miles driven in distribution center-to-store deliveries.
• Manage dock appointments.
• Collect and organize delivery and compliance statistics. 

Specialty retailers can use the Descartes Delivery Management Suite to address business challenges including Strategic Delivery Planning, Warehouse Optimization, Daily Planning (Route Planning), Reservations, Transportation Management, Supply Chain Visibility, MobileLink/Dispatch/Automated Vehicle Locator (AVL), Reporting Services and Connectivity & Messaging.

The Descartes Global Logistics Network (GLN) helps connect trading partners quickly and efficiently using one of the world's largest multimodal networks of transportation and logistics services providers and their customers. Descartes Rate Management helps specialty retailers manage ocean carrier contracts and reduce the cost of ocean freight.

Descartes' specialty retail customers include:

• Staples
• AutoZone