How 3PL helps high-street retailers provide an excellent experience

Now more than ever, brands need to give consumers a slick, strong experience. These are trying times for the high street, but that doesn’t mean your brand’s standards should slip when it comes to giving shoppers what they have come to expect.

3PL service suppliers work directly with brands and retailers behind the scenes, providing the logistics expertise to ensure the in-store experience is as good as it can be.

#BTS

The retail experience involves management and fulfilment of vast quantities of “goods not for resale” across every store, where they are required. Everything from staff uniforms to till rolls, point-of-sale kits and carrier bags requires a reliable warehouse and fulfilment service where items can be stored, collated and dispatched successfully on the next order; ensuring everything is delivered on time and in full, facilitating retailers in providing a great in-store experience.

Point-of-sale material which adorns stores – shelf stickers, floor decals, vinyl posters, promotional displays and more – all add up to great amounts of material to be handled, collated and distributed. This needs to be done with great care across high-frequency and high-volume schedules to meet the demands of in-store sales and marketing activity,  partner relationships, seasonal campaign and product launches.

Only when all of these features of day-to-day retail are in place can retailers and brands hope to offer a consistent, high-quality experience to consumers, who demand and deserve no less. After all,  in-store experience is high on the customer agenda and can be  a fundamental attribute for maintaining a valuable customer relationship for retailers and brand owners on the high street.

Steps to sampling success

Another area of retail promotion which shows no sign of slowing down is sampling. We’re all familiar with the stand and brand representative located at the end of the aisle in our local supermarket, giving away free sample sizes of branded drinks, or morsels of tasty new food products. But how can you ensure it all happens seamlessly across all retail outlets?

An experienced logistics partner will be able to take care of the nuts and bolts of sampling campaigns. That means supporting field staff in situ by providing everything they need to attract and enthuse passing shoppers. Consumers who try a simple sample could become long-term customers if the experience is enjoyable.

We provide logistical support for in-store promotional sampling across hundreds of stores for one large national retailer. We provide all the component items required by the in-store sales representative to maximise success of the sampling activity; everything from pop-up stands to microwaves, to free issue samples to hand to shoppers, as well as brand uniforms and promotional literature.

We kit together the component parts, along with associate set-up instructions to supply a seamless and consistent brand experience for the shopper, while supporting the in-store representative with all they need to carry out their role.

Pop-ups keep popping up

Particularly in towns and cities, pop-up shops continue to be an exciting way for brands to reach customers without long-term lease agreements or run short retail promotions. It’s an especially good format for pure-play ecommerce companies looking to make their mark in the physical retail arena.

Again, though, this is something that needs a lot of thought and logistical support in order to be successful. The investment your brand is making in a pop-up environment deserves great logistics. In effect, the pop-up space is a new showroom or an experiential event for your product or service, and there’s no room for error when attracting potential customers.

For maximising the in-store experience, whether your need is on the shop floor of a network of stores; logistical support for a one-off pop-up; or high volume sampling activity; logistics can be the driving force behind the overall customer experience that leaves consumers wanting more of your brand. Thanks to the services 3PL companies like Granby provide, rumours of the death of the high street might just be exaggerated.