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Ll Bean Supply Chain Analysis

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Ll Bean Supply Chain Analysis
L.L.Bean is an outdoor apparel and equipment manufacturer and retailer with a focus on quality products and practical designs that meet the high standards of its demanding customers. To meet quality standards, the company spends a significant portion of its resources on research and development and places a premium on the field testing of its products. L.L.Bean regards itself as a multi-channel retailer that offers direct sales of its products through mail, phone, fax, email, or internet channels. Also, customers can shop at its thirty-nine retail stores in the U.S. or internationally at stores in Canada and Japan. L.L.Bean’s nearly 100-year-old catalog business, the heart and soul of the company, still reaches 170 countries today (“About …show more content…
A consequence of this strategy is that L.L.Bean now operates two distinct distribution centers, both located in Freeport, Maine, but each fulfilling a specialized fulfillment function. One distribution center replenishes L.L.Bean’s retail stores while the other distribution center fulfills catalog and online customer orders. UPS fulfills the majority of parcel orders for L.L.Bean. However, the company also employs USPS and FedEx home delivery services where UPS delivery is unavailable. L.L.Bean’s privately owned fleet of trucks replenishes stores in and around its Freeport distribution center. The replenishment of remote L.L.Bean stores occurs with the support of independent less-than-truckload (LTL) carriers (Cooke, …show more content…
Continuous replenishment cuts down on large shipments by replacing them with an increased number of smaller shipments. This also increases the agility of L.L.Bean’s supply chain, making it easier for the company to adjust to demand fluctuations. Furthermore, merchandising operations at L.L.Bean are increasingly being transferred to its suppliers, who prepare products for resale at L.L.Bean based on fulfillment channel, be it store fulfillment or direct fulfillment. According to Mike Perkins, Vice President for Fulfillment at L.L.Bean’s, the lifecycle based inventory strategy “…make sure that the customer gets what he or she wants, when he or she wants it” without fear of “…warehousing it when the season is over” (Cooke,
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