Target Paid Membership Program?

[arizonaguy]

I would expect Rite Aid to move to ship from store. That is the trend in the industry to reduce the cost and environmental impact. Everyone is moving away from fulfillment centers after spending decades building them. Now you can close that expensive facility and replace it with a inexpensive cloud based app on an iPad in every store. Slash costs dramatically and reduce shipping distance 90% or more.

Personally I hope they don't given the inventory situation in their stores. Rite Aid pulls orders directly from a store distribution center. There is not a separate distribution center for .com orders (this is how Walgreens was-two separate .com only distribution centers).

The conversion of Walgreens from .com warehouses to ship from store has been a DISASTER when it comes to order accuracy, item condition, and fulfillment of entire orders.

It saves a fortune though. Ship from DC is not profitable.

I was curious if Kroger was still as committed to its Ocado "ship from DC" program and then I read this:

https://www.grocerydive.com/news/kroger ... up/693287/

As of October it seems clear that the Ocado ship from DC sites were not performing to expectations.

[ClownLoach]

Personally I hope they don't given the inventory situation in their stores. Rite Aid pulls orders directly from a store distribution center. There is not a separate distribution center for .com orders (this is how Walgreens was-two separate .com only distribution centers).

The conversion of Walgreens from .com warehouses to ship from store has been a DISASTER when it comes to order accuracy, item condition, and fulfillment of entire orders.

It saves a fortune though. Ship from DC is not profitable.

I was curious if Kroger was still as committed to its Ocado "ship from DC" program and then I read this:

https://www.grocerydive.com/news/kroger ... up/693287/

As of October it seems clear that the Ocado ship from DC sites were not performing to expectations.

The reason ship from DC doesn't work is the fear of running out of stock. Many companies wind up under stocking the stores to protect inventory levels for eCommerce. The better answer is to send more stock to each store and whoever gets it first buys it. You are correct however that stores with bad inventory processes and high shrink will have disastrous fulfillment rates like Walgreens.

[ItsAshleyFTW]

I would expect Rite Aid to move to ship from store. That is the trend in the industry to reduce the cost and environmental impact. Everyone is moving away from fulfillment centers after spending decades building them. Now you can close that expensive facility and replace it with a inexpensive cloud based app on an iPad in every store. Slash costs dramatically and reduce shipping distance 90% or more.

Personally I hope they don't given the inventory situation in their stores. Rite Aid pulls orders directly from a store distribution center. There is not a separate distribution center for .com orders (this is how Walgreens was-two separate .com only distribution centers).

The conversion of Walgreens from .com warehouses to ship from store has been a DISASTER when it comes to order accuracy, item condition, and fulfillment of entire orders.

It saves a fortune though. Ship from DC is not profitable.

About 6 months ago I ordered a hard-drive docking station from Best Buy. It came the next day and it was packed, shipped, and delivered from a Best Buy store outside of town. It wasn't delivered by Best Buy themselves, but rather from Roadie, a delivery service owned by UPS which specializes in last-mile delivery at affordable prices. Roadie's website states they reach over 20,000 zip codes and can deliver same-day up to 100 miles.

I agree ship-from-store is more profitable for companies, especially since customers would be inclined to order more frequently if their items arrive faster. I think Roadie would make it a lot easier for a whole bunch of companies to streamline their delivery and fulfillment systems, especially since this would allow Walmart, Target, Costco, etc. to reach more customers in areas where they don't have physical locations. I wouldn't be surprised if more retailers start to use Roadie for their deliveries, I would definitely use it if I were a retailer.

https://www.roadie.com/business/ecommerce-shipping

[ClownLoach]

Personally I hope they don't given the inventory situation in their stores. Rite Aid pulls orders directly from a store distribution center. There is not a separate distribution center for .com orders (this is how Walgreens was-two separate .com only distribution centers).

The conversion of Walgreens from .com warehouses to ship from store has been a DISASTER when it comes to order accuracy, item condition, and fulfillment of entire orders.

It saves a fortune though. Ship from DC is not profitable.

About 6 months ago I ordered a hard-drive docking station from Best Buy. It came the next day and it was packed, shipped, and delivered from a Best Buy store outside of town. It wasn't delivered by Best Buy themselves, but rather from Roadie, a delivery service owned by UPS which specializes in last-mile delivery at affordable prices. Roadie's website states they reach over 20,000 zip codes and can deliver same-day up to 100 miles.

I agree ship-from-store is more profitable for companies, especially since customers would be inclined to order more frequently if their items arrive faster. I think Roadie would make it a lot easier for a whole bunch of companies to streamline their delivery and fulfillment systems, especially since this would allow Walmart, Target, Costco, etc. to reach more customers in areas where they don't have physical locations. I wouldn't be surprised if more retailers start to use Roadie for their deliveries, I would definitely use it if I were a retailer.

https://www.roadie.com/business/ecommerce-shipping

They are another gig worker company, and what happens today is there are apps that aggregate orders and offer them up to the lowest bidder... Roadie, Shipt, and Doordash.

The problem with tying yourself to a single vendor like Roadie is that if they don't have someone available right now to pickup the delivery, then you fail to deliver on time.

I have some experience with this company and we did run into problems where nobody wanted to make a delivery so we had to refund customers orders. Doordash was much more reliable, but cost more.

Many retailers are using Roadie and have been for some time, but in combination with other vendors as I mentioned with a carrier aggregation application.

[storewanderer]

It saves a fortune though. Ship from DC is not profitable.

CVS is another one who ships from store and I've had various experiences with them in the past shipping damaged or expired merchandise, having to bounce the order to multiple stores before one finally fulfilled it (every store would fulfill what it could).

Profitability aside, the other thing I like about Rite Aid ship from distribution center is everything always has a very long expiration date since it is straight out of the same warehouse the stores pull from. That is really great vs. these low volume drugstores fulfilling from physical stores like CVS who have near expiry stuff sitting around and certainly will love to offload that on some .com order.

Walgreens ship from warehouse I got some damaged items more than a few times (which were promptly replaced free of charge when I called them about it) and also shorted items a couple times and given too many items more than a couple times. Now with their new program of ship from store they no longer offer a replacement just offer a refund. However I was offered to place the order again for an item that I returned then call customer service and they'd refund me the shipping fee and also adjust the item cost down by the coupon that had attached to a damaged item that I had lost. This all seemed too complicated so I never took them up on that offer. They actually have a pretty good customer service call center. Unlike CVS who is worse than calling the IRS. So then I lose the coupon too, so that is not good. Useless website now for coupon shopping.

Rite Aid ship from warehouse I had one single order sometime in the past where some liquid leaked and damaged a couple other items, but that was it and I have had easily 100+ orders from them since years ago when the Plenti program went into place which was when I got into their coupon programs/started doing online orders. Every other order- zero issues- 100% fulfilled- perfect condition. Used to get stuff from a warehouse in KY before they sold that region to Walgreens. Then CA warehouse, no issues. More recently NY warehouse, no issues. Many items aren't available on the website, but are in the store.

[Romr123]

Just received in my Valpak mailer in the Coachella Valley a coupon for Kroger shop-from-home (branded as-such, with all the nameplates on the other side) for specialty/exotic merchandise. Seemed to me like nothing more than a relaunch of Vitacost which ISTR did show up in Valpak mailings from time to time).

[storewanderer]

Just received in my Valpak mailer in the Coachella Valley a coupon for Kroger shop-from-home (branded as-such, with all the nameplates on the other side) for specialty/exotic merchandise. Seemed to me like nothing more than a relaunch of Vitacost which ISTR did show up in Valpak mailings from time to time).

Kroger is marketing Digital/Pickup like crazy. How much of these gourmet items are from third party sellers?

Lately on Smiths app I am getting extremely frustrated. Every time I load the app up, it defaults me to ship. I keep changing it back to the shop in store but that requires me to search for the store again and go through multiple screens and it is a major hassle. I use the app for 2 tasks: 1. look up prices; 2. clip digital coupons.
I do not shop from the app or want to "ship" anything.
It feels like they are purposely doing this to put the "ship" function in the app user's face.
WinCo, Trader Joe's, and Wal Mart get more appealing every day.

[SamSpade]

WinCo, Trader Joe's, and Wal Mart get more appealing every day.

Off Topic

EDLP, no app hoops, and generally clean, easy to shop stores with employees on the sales floor? Who would've thunk?

[ClownLoach]

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/03/05/target- ... e-360.html

As promised, the program was announced today and basically is Shipt membership at half price for Target only with a new name, Target Circle 360. $49 for unlimited same day delivery of orders over $35. This is half the price of Shipt membership that works at retailers beyond Target (CVS, PetSmart, and Petco are a few others). So a good savings for the Target shopper vs enrolling direct for Shipt. Seems that the Shipt name is being quietly sunsetted as they don't refer to that brand in the article for how these orders are being delivered but we know that is the carrier as Target owns and operates it with an all gig worker staff. Sounds like the regular free 2 day shipping will require 360 which is as expected; the news has been full of discussion of retailers curtailing free shipping programs because of skyrocketing costs that are getting passed along to everyone and driving up inflation. We know that these retailers are all cutting front end labor and raising prices to offset the costs of these ship from store orders that people really could just go buy at the store in most cases, so if their shipping order volume goes down that actually will make the store a better place to shop for everyone. Remember that if it's physically shipped Target employees pull it from store labor, but if it is delivered by Shipt then their gig workers pull the items. By encouraging more Shipt and less, well, shipping, they effectively are removing the need to pull employees off the register to work the backlog of orders to be pulled. A good thing for all.

No mention if RedCard members lose the free shipping but I assume they do as that was always supposed to be a limited time promotion. No discussion of any other changes to RedCard, and frankly if they did change anything it would basically make the product worthless to the customer so I don't believe they will make any changes. This program saves Target a fortune in credit card processing fees so they need it to remain otherwise intact and people keep using it.

Also the regular free version of Circle will now automatically put all the available discounts in for you. No more looking up the specific "deal" shown on signage in the store on an app. No more jumping through hoops! This is fantastic when you consider that the grocery based competition of Kroger and Albertsons now make customers not only use a club card for most deals but also their app where you need to scan shelf tags or look up the item for the extra discount. Target is making it automatic and easy while the grocery stores make it harder to shop.

[Romr123]

That last item is a key---I am ordering stuff online for in-store pickup because I can get the Circle discounts (where I cannot if I shop in-store--I refuse to use their app or print out a barcode after tagging the coupon).