I had the pleasure of interviewing Talking with Brian Townshend, General Manager of Omni Retail for Super Retail Group, at the 2021 Retail Leaders Forum in Sydney at the International Conventional Centre on April 28th.
Brian Townshend On Introduction to Super Retail Group
We kicked off with an overview from Brian of his role, and an introduction to Australasian retailer, Super Retail Group, parent company of Rebel, Super Cheap Auto, BCF and Macpac.
Brian then goes on to share insights into to the journey their organisation was undertaking leading up to the end of 2019 as part of a refocus on online ecommerce through their online customer experience and resulting fulfilment solution.
Brian then continues to explain how, as a result of various pandemic mitigation measures, online sales of home fitness and outdoor leisure exploded in Australia in 2020, resulting in Super Retail Group increasing ecommerce sales by 87 percent to $237 million in the second half of 2020.
He tells us that as a result, in an effort to meet this surge in online orders and meet their customer promise around delivery, they fast-tracked the roll-out of Manhattan Associates’ omnichannel solution in a remote, socially distanced manner, and that the resulting solution achieved significant fulfilment savings per order, from day one of operation.
Brian walks us through who when COVID-19 fully hit and many businesses were consolidating projects, Super Retail Group actually sped up the deployment of Manhattan Active Omni and that it offered them a single window of visibility and availability of stock across their entire supply chain network.
We delve into the details of their successful long term relationship with Manhattan Associates, and details around the Manhattan solution, it’s ease of implementation, and how it is highly adaptable and responsive.
Brian goes on to explain how even implementing it virtually and operating throughout the challenges of COVID-19, the new system has been able to accommodate major order and fulfilment routing changes within minutes, and how with the new system, Super Retail Group were able to change their fulfilment logic and immediately reduce fulfilment costs, even achieving their 12-month goal on day one, which is a remarkable result.
This is a conversation not to be missed, tune in now or all of this and more.
This interview was made in partnership with Manhattan Associates.
