Adidas, one of the world's biggest sportswear makers, recently announced plans to close a large number of its globally spread brick-and-mortar stores to sharpen its focus on digital sales. The word came from the CEO himself, Kasper Rorsted, in an interview with the Financial Times.
The motivations behind this decision are not surprising. The company seeks closer contact with its customers, eliminating intermediaries for direct sales to the final consumer, and follows the trend of generating more options and convenience for its customers, like several others.
Figure 1 – Site will be the main store of the German brand – Source:Adidas
It is interesting to analyze, however, the impacts that this positioning may have on their service models. Today, the brand operates closer to the multichannel concept, with the website, physical stores, and distribution to partner retailers. The focus now, however, should embrace the concept of omnichannel (already discussed so many times here on the ILOS Blog), since Adidas' physical stores will become close to concept stores, the so-called showrooms. The online store, in turn, must also be improved to ensure that the experience of the customer, who will eventually no longer find an Adidas in the mall, is as good as the one he had before.
Moving on to the logistical point of view, the brand will certainly need to review its current structure, since customer service directly is very different from the traditional model with intermediaries. Rorsted himself says that “the whole logistics is very different”. When I saw this news, I remembered the post about the Nike that colleague Alexandre Lobo wrote some time ago. If on that occasion, the great CD in Belgium of the North American giant was highlighted, I imagine that for Adidas' new strategy, it is essential to focus more on a more dispersed structure, and with quick response practices to guarantee the level of service in customer service direct.
And what do you think of Adidas' new positioning, ball inside? And your company, have you thought about using direct sales more? If so, how would this impact your logistics structure?
References
http://www.infomoney.com.br/negocios/grandes-empresas/noticia/7370798/adidas-quer-fechar-parte-das-lojas-para-investir-mais-site
Fernando Chalréo
He has been working on consulting projects in Logistics and Supply Chain for 5 years, with experience in companies in the consumer goods, retail and food and beverage sectors. Types of projects already carried out: Sales & Operations Planning, Inventory Management, Network Planning, Business Process Review, Logistics Indicators and Transport Management
