Victoria Kickham, an editor at large for Supply Chain Quarterly, started her career as a newspaper reporter in the Boston area before moving into B2B journalism. She has covered manufacturing, distribution and supply chain issues for a variety of publications in the industrial and electronics sectors, and now writes about everything from forklift batteries to omnichannel business trends for Supply Chain Quarterly's sister publication, DC Velocity.
Leaders at Oral Essentials needed a way to manage explosive growth in demand for the company’s products while also sticking to its core values: being good stewards of the environment and providing first-rate customer service. They found their answer in third-party logistics service provider (3PL) ODW Logistics, which has helped the natural oral-care products company improve its fulfillment processes, eliminate packaging waste, and reduce costs as it went from filling hundreds of orders per week to more than 10,000 a week over the past two years.
“We were looking to partner with an organization that could handle retail distribution and [direct-to-consumer] distribution,” explains Joshua Rizack, president and COO of California-based Oral Essentials Inc., which makes the Lumineux Oral Essentials line of toothpaste, tooth whiteners, and mouthwash. “To us, the most important thing was the customer experience—the customer getting a package that looked good, that reflected our core values, and that got there in a reasonable amount of time.”
ODW’s ability to provide a dedicated team to manage all aspects of the company’s fulfillment, including its direct e-commerce business and a growing number of accounts with some of the nation’s largest retailers, sealed the deal. Today, Oral Essentials outsources its entire fulfillment process to ODW and is reaping the rewards in better logistics operations and lower costs.
SATISFYING DEMAND, PROVIDING SOLUTIONS
Rizack joined Oral Essentials in 2019, when the company was still relatively small and filling orders out of a 4,750-square-foot warehouse in downtown Los Angeles. But things changed quickly, as demand for naturally derived products grew and the pandemic-related e-commerce boom of 2020 reshaped the consumer buying landscape. Oral Essentials began landing deals with large retailers such as Whole Foods, Wegmans, and Walgreens, while also dealing with a surging direct-to-consumer business. Its small warehouse couldn’t keep up. Company leaders wanted help managing the increased order volumes without scaling up and adding a lot of warehouse associates.
The company started shopping for 3PLs and worked with a few before developing an exclusive partnership with ODW. Keys to the deal: dedicated warehouse space and staff at ODW facilities in Southern California, and a solutions-based approach to improving logistics. It’s been just about two years since Oral Essentials moved its fulfillment operations to ODW’s facilities, and Rizack says the transition has been virtually seamless.
“They worked very closely with our people on how we did things,” he says. “It was a very smooth transition. What I liked most of all is that when there was an issue, it was dealt with immediately.”
That includes finding solutions to existing logistics challenges. ODW and Oral Essentials worked together from the start to develop programs that address productivity, sustainability, and cost-reduction goals. A case in point: new packaging that yielded an 18% decrease in shipping costs and 40% improvement in order processing. As Rizack explains, Oral Essentials wanted to reduce the size of its packaging as a way to eliminate waste and maximize storage space. ODW helped design a solution that utilized the smallest box possible for a product while also minimizing packing material inside the box. The result was a lighter package that takes up less space, helping the company maximize truckload shipments, reduce costs, and improve sustainability.
“We wanted to find solutions that [addressed] all these obstacles we were experiencing,” Rizack says. “[The new packaging] reduced costs, saving us substantial amounts of money every month, and it’s better for the environment. As a company, we are always asking how we can be better stewards of the environment.”
Providing such services is at the core of what ODW Logistics does, adds Casey Nofziger, ODW’s director of business development, who works closely with the Oral Essentials team.
“We are processing things out of the building daily, so we can see how there may be better ways to bag, box, or redesign things,” he says. “We provide recommendations, but at the same time, we ask ‘What are your customers saying? What is the experience they are currently having?’ We gather the feedback and make improvements.”
Emblazoned with the Lumineux brand name, the new packaging is designed for easy construction, an attribute that has helped free up labor for fulfillment activities. The change has reduced overtime and sped up the order fulfillment process, according to both Rizack and Nofziger.
PRAISING UNSUNG HEROES
Rizack emphasizes the profound effect a good logistics process has on an organization and says it’s something that often goes unrecognized. ODW is helping Oral Essentials develop new distribution strategies that will get products to customers faster, using the least fuel, and at the lowest overall cost, for example.
“You’re only as good as your weakest link. You can say how great your sales team is because they got you into Whole Foods, or your packaging team because of the beautiful package,” Rizack explains. “But the person who never gets credit is the guy who gets [the product] in the box and gets it to the retailer. If that doesn’t happen, everything else that everyone has done is a waste of time. I can’t emphasize enough how important your logistics team is. They don’t get the credit they deserve.”
Supply chain planning (SCP) leaders working on transformation efforts are focused on two major high-impact technology trends, including composite AI and supply chain data governance, according to a study from Gartner, Inc.
"SCP leaders are in the process of developing transformation roadmaps that will prioritize delivering on advanced decision intelligence and automated decision making," Eva Dawkins, Director Analyst in Gartner’s Supply Chain practice, said in a release. "Composite AI, which is the combined application of different AI techniques to improve learning efficiency, will drive the optimization and automation of many planning activities at scale, while supply chain data governance is the foundational key for digital transformation.”
Their pursuit of those roadmaps is often complicated by frequent disruptions and the rapid pace of technological innovation. But Gartner says those leaders can accelerate the realized value of technology investments by facilitating a shift from IT-led to business-led digital leadership, with SCP leaders taking ownership of multidisciplinary teams to advance business operations, channels and products.
“A sound data governance strategy supports advanced technologies, such as composite AI, while also facilitating collaboration throughout the supply chain technology ecosystem,” said Dawkins. “Without attention to data governance, SCP leaders will likely struggle to achieve their expected ROI on key technology investments.”
The British logistics robot vendor Dexory this week said it has raised $80 million in venture funding to support an expansion of its artificial intelligence (AI) powered features, grow its global team, and accelerate the deployment of its autonomous robots.
A “significant focus” continues to be on expanding across the U.S. market, where Dexory is live with customers in seven states and last month opened a U.S. headquarters in Nashville. The Series B will also enhance development and production facilities at its UK headquarters, the firm said.
The “series B” funding round was led by DTCP, with participation from Latitude Ventures, Wave-X and Bootstrap Europe, along with existing investors Atomico, Lakestar, Capnamic, and several angels from the logistics industry. With the close of the round, Dexory has now raised $120 million over the past three years.
Dexory says its product, DexoryView, provides real-time visibility across warehouses of any size through its autonomous mobile robots and AI. The rolling bots use sensor and image data and continuous data collection to perform rapid warehouse scans and create digital twins of warehouse spaces, allowing for optimized performance and future scenario simulations.
Originally announced in September, the move will allow Deutsche Bahn to “fully focus on restructuring the rail infrastructure in Germany and providing climate-friendly passenger and freight transport operations in Germany and Europe,” Werner Gatzer, Chairman of the DB Supervisory Board, said in a release.
For its purchase price, DSV gains an organization with around 72,700 employees at over 1,850 locations. The new owner says it plans to investment around one billion euros in coming years to promote additional growth in German operations. Together, DSV and Schenker will have a combined workforce of approximately 147,000 employees in more than 90 countries, earning pro forma revenue of approximately $43.3 billion (based on 2023 numbers), DSV said.
After removing that unit, Deutsche Bahn retains its core business called the “Systemverbund Bahn,” which includes passenger transport activities in Germany, rail freight activities, operational service units, and railroad infrastructure companies. The DB Group, headquartered in Berlin, employs around 340,000 people.
“We have set clear goals to structurally modernize Deutsche Bahn in the areas of infrastructure, operations and profitability and focus on the core business. The proceeds from the sale will significantly reduce DB’s debt and thus make an important contribution to the financial stability of the DB Group. At the same time, DB Schenker will gain a strong strategic owner in DSV,” Deutsche Bahn CEO Richard Lutz said in a release.
Transportation industry veteran Anne Reinke will become president & CEO of trade group the Intermodal Association of North America (IANA) at the end of the year, stepping into the position from her previous post leading third party logistics (3PL) trade group the Transportation Intermediaries Association (TIA), both organizations said today.
Meanwhile, TIA today announced that insider Christopher Burroughs would fill Reinke’s shoes as president & CEO. Burroughs has been with TIA for 13 years, most recently as its vice president of Government Affairs for the past six years, during which time he oversaw all legislative and regulatory efforts before Congress and the federal agencies.
Before her four years leading TIA, Reinke spent two years as Deputy Assistant Secretary with the U.S. Department of Transportation and 16 years with CSX Corporation.
Serious inland flooding and widespread power outages are likely to sweep across Florida and other Southeast states in coming days with the arrival of Hurricane Helene, which is now predicted to make landfall Thursday evening along Florida’s northwest coast as a major hurricane, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
While the most catastrophic landfall impact is expected in the sparsely-population Big Bend area of Florida, it’s not only sea-front cities that are at risk. Since Helene is an “unusually large storm,” its flooding, rainfall, and high winds won’t be limited only to the Gulf Coast, but are expected to travel hundreds of miles inland, the weather service said. Heavy rainfall is expected to begin in the region even before the storm comes ashore, and the wet conditions will continue to move northward into the southern Appalachians region through Friday, dumping storm total rainfall amounts of up to 18 inches. Specifically, the major flood risk includes the urban areas around Tallahassee, metro Atlanta, and western North Carolina.
In addition to its human toll, the storm could exert serious business impacts, according to the supply chain mapping and monitoring firm Resilinc. Those will be largely triggered by significant flooding, which could halt oil operations, force mandatory evacuations, restrict ports, and disrupt air traffic.
While the storm’s track is currently forecast to miss the critical ports of Miami and New Orleans, it could still hurt operations throughout the Southeast agricultural belt, which produces products like soybeans, cotton, peanuts, corn, and tobacco, according to Everstream Analytics.
That widespread footprint could also hinder supply chain and logistics flows along stretches of interstate highways I-10 and I-75 and on regional rail lines operated by Norfolk Southern and CSX. And Hurricane Helene could also likely impact business operations by unleashing power outages, deep flooding, and wind damage in northern Florida portions of Georgia, Everstream Analytics said.
Before the storm had even touched Florida soil, recovery efforts were already being launched by humanitarian aid group the American Logistics Aid Network (ALAN). In a statement on Wednesday, the group said it is urging residents in the storm's path across the Southeast to heed evacuation notices and safety advisories, and reminding members of the logistics community that their post-storm help could be needed soon. The group will continue to update its Disaster Micro-Site with Hurricane Helene resources and with requests for donated logistics assistance, most of which will start arriving within 24 to 72 hours after the storm’s initial landfall, ALAN said.