Review
Borgholzhausen, October 7th, 2020 – New month, new events: a lot happened at B + S in September too. All current activities from September can be found here at a glance in the rear-view mirror.
Staged: Video shoot by WDR and our customer Eis.de in Bielefeld
On September 9th, the cameras of the WDR team ran hot at our location in Bielefeld. The reason? A visit to our customer Eis.de for the planned new documentation on the topic of female pleasure. The film team was able to answer the question of how the desire for customers comes with a look behind the scenes of the logistics of the online shop for erotic articles. You will soon see the result on the WDR YouTube channel.
Provided with trends: social media alternative to the e-commerce BBQ
This year without our e-commerce BBQ, but with trends from e-commerce: As an alternative to the industry get-together, we have highlighted five of the latest trends from online retail via our social media channels. Here you will find an overview of the industry trends.
Trend 1: Sustainability has arrived in online retail
As one of the top cross-industry trends, sustainability does not leave e-commerce cold either. Example: reusable packaging. According to the Bitkom digital association, 86 percent of consumers are willing to use returnable shipping systems. And online retailers are reacting: More and more companies are investing in sustainable reusable solutions to reduce packaging waste.
Trend 2: Artificial intelligence optimizes e-commerce processes
From the creation of individual offers to the personalization of the shopping experience: AI is already being used frequently. And in logistics, too, it harbors potential for optimizing processes. By collecting and evaluating data and making decisions based on it, validating it retrospectively and saving it for future solutions, it is possible, for example, to identify seasonal fluctuations in inventory at an early stage or to make picking processes more efficient.
Trend 3: Individuality and personalization instead of mass processing
Well thought-out customer journeys are increasingly becoming a guarantee of success for online shops. Because consumers value personalized content, starting with advertising, mailings and the products displayed, right through to the checkout process and packaging. So if you want to keep customers, you have to offer them an individual customer journey.
Trend 4: Alternative delivery concepts are on the advance
They are already being tested in many places: alternative delivery concepts using cargo bikes, autonomously driving robots or parcel boxes for apartment buildings or companies. And we are certain: Innovative concepts for the last mile are in demand and will help to improve the quality of life in cities in the long term.
Trend 5: More success through social commerce
Picking up people where they are privately without cleaning the door: That is the core of social commerce. More and more people use social media to find out about products. Traders can use this opportunity to be successful in the long term. By wrapping their articles in emotional stories and combining the contribution with an option to buy, they use the full potential of brand loyalty and multi-Chanel.
Trimmed for sustainability: B + S addresses sustainability in logistics
We have used the Sustainability Action Days of the Council for Sustainable Development as an opportunity to show how logistics can become greener. We have summarized our measures for you here:
Fact 1: Sustainability starts with the building
In a space-intensive economic sector such as logistics in particular, it is important to consider sustainability when planning a logistics property. The standards of the DGNB German Sustainable Building Council, according to which we build our properties, provide guidelines on how this can be achieved.
Fact 2: Modern vehicle fleet and well thought-out transport management
With a modern fleet of vehicles that emits as little CO2 as possible and a transport management system that makes it possible to utilize existing transports to the full and optimize routes, we ensure that sustainability does not fall by the wayside outside of our warehouse either.
Fact 3: Giving something back to nature
Logistics consumes resources. But how about creating a balance for nature? We have done that, for example, with our company’s own beehives in Borgholzhausen. 600,000 bees make their contribution to a balanced ecosystem and functioning agriculture.
Fact 4: Process returns efficiently
An online shop without returns is unthinkable. It is therefore important to use efficient management for returns in order to process them not only quickly, but also sustainably. By properly classifying and processing goods according to their condition, most items can be put back into circulation or recycled. And in many cases we can even proactively avoid returns by optimizing item descriptions in the online shop.
Fact 5: minimize CO2 emissions
CO2 emissions are not only hazardous to health, they also place an undue burden on our environment. It was therefore our goal to reduce these emissions when we joined the Lean and Green program of GS1 Germany two years ago. And it works: with our catalog of measures, which includes the modernization of our fleet and the construction of new logistics buildings, we have already been able to save 18 percent CO2.