Many years ago, the ports, they had smaller vessels, they had smaller terminals, and as the United States started to export our work overseas, it was a whole learning curve how to bring containers in. There was a military term called “logistics.” That’s really what started applying to ocean imports.
In the retail environment today, you can’t make it for any less, and you can’t sell it for any more. There’s a very short window as far as when it has to be in there in order to offer full price selling. And so our job is to partner with the retailer, to make sure we get that product in the store – at the right time, at the right quantity, at the right quality in order to maximize full price selling.
We’re located in Seattle, we’re located in Los Angeles, Long Beach. Also on the east coast we have facilities there. What we’ve done is we’ve created entrepreneurs in each of the gateway cities, so they are responsible for their business. We know this market area, we understand it, we do very well at it. All of our managers, supervisors, leads, and even our labor understand that they can do whatever they need to do to satisfy the customers’ needs.
Our people are critical to our success, and high quality, good skilled people are essential.
Everyone is on the same page in really driving to provide a great customer service and a strong operation.
Our business is all about efficiency. In order to drive efficiencies, we need to invest in technology. We need to invest in mechanization, in automation, and in labor productivity.
We really run a wide range of solutions from the customers that we have from a full automated environment with a carton sorter and unit sortation down to a simple pick pack from an aisle environment, depending on what the outbound needs are for each customer.
We’re challenged as a business to provide value to our customers. Even though our costs are rising, we need to invest in efficiency, in order to make sure that our pricing is competitive and allows our customer a competitive advantage in the marketplace. It’s important that every single one of our distribution centers offers value added services. Every one of our facilities has the ability to sew, to steam, to hang. We’ve created a customer centric mentality that we are going to provide the services that you need, in order to make sure that you’re successful.
So we never stop looking at the operation. We’re always driving for additional process improvement. What can we do to make it better, reduce our cost, and hopefully pass on the cost savings to our customer.
They want one stop shopping. They want to go to one contact point, one company, and they want you to take care of everybody. And in today’s world, everything has to move very fast. That’s what really puts us on the map.
We pride ourselves on being good partners. We pride ourselves on creating a win-win strategy, and a win-win solution for our customers. Because at the end of the day when our customer is successful, we’re successful.
