Ace Hardware and Dukal Corp, case study.
Ace has more than 80 years in the market, operating 4600 stores in 50 states at U.S. and 70 countries. Part of the constant growing of the company, in the year 2000 Ace launched it’s Vision 21 strategy to boost retailer’s sales and profits, builting also the Ace brand.
About Dukal we can see that “is a privately held and operated medical supply company. Gerry LoDuca started Dukal in 1991 after spending 15 years in the medical supplies business. He has taken great care in developing Dukal by surrounding himself with highly dedicated and experienced people. It is through this motivated team that Dukal Corporation is successful in bringing to market its strong product offering”.
As we can see that both companies have a story to tell.
In the text is told that both companies have changed distribution locations and changed service providers to get better everytime. To optimize its distribution centers they have applied like the “just in time” but in distribution channel, named order-ship time commitments. By impoving appointment schedling, receiving and visiblility into data cocerning consumer demand. This helps to get better customer service and for the brand image, which in a way have just started; but still it have the service back up.
So in both cases there are several tools that helped them to be where they are; collaborative partnerships with suppliers, that can be the base of the success distribution channel.
Also as they have being improving and updating with technology, a good point that have helped is the internet usage, replenishment cycle times, built logistics capabilities by product category, improve operations to achieve profitability (and the article can tell us much about it), and many ot ...