Celebrating Our Newest Clients

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Vivobarefoot

The Calgary, AB based Canadian distributor for Vivobarefoot have recently signed on with NRI Canada.  Vivobarefoot is an innovative footwear company who offer a creative array of outdoor, active, and everyday footwear for men, women, and children.  Vivobarefoot footwear are uniquely designed in fit to be as close to barefoot as possible – bringing the wearer closer to nature.  B Corp certified, these guys hold their social and environmental values to the highest levels.

This new partnership with NRI will help in Vivobarefoot’s continued growth, with a focus on customer experience.  By placing inventory in Canada within NRI’s network, Vivobarefoot will ensure they reach their Canadian customers in the quickest and most cost-effective manner.

 

Palm Golf Co.

Palm Golf began a few years ago by a small group of friends having their weekly tee time at a local Orange County, CA course. With an eye for fun and fashion, they decided that they could improve golf’s style with a focus on the oft-overlooked glove.  With the goal of creating a high quality, comfortable, and fashionable glove, Palm Golf was created. However you dress up, they know they can cover your hand in style.

After three years of managing all aspects of the business themselves, the guys at Palm Golf Co. have decided to HAND the logistics over to NRI USA so they can focus on building their brand and continuing to increase their already incredible growth.

Whether you birdie or double bogey, always #swingandsmile

Better Together with NRI

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At NRI, we view our clients as partners. We seek to partner with brands who seek a high level of touch and expertise, hold people and integrity close to their hearts, and approach business partnerships respectfully with an expectation on quality and success.

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Freight Services

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Freight Services NRI

It should come at no surprise that the major logistics trends for 2021 are based on the significant increase of ecommerce in 2020.  The estimate of U.S. retail e-commerce sales for the second quarter of 2020 totaled $200.7 billion – an increase of roughly 37% from the first quarter of 2020!  Statistics like this are a driver of change and strategy at NRI.  This past peak season was the largest we’ve ever seen, and we expect the ecommerce trend to continue through 2021.  Late adopters, both brands and consumers, have now embraced ecommerce thus adding further to the already large number of online buyers and sellers.  As of May 2020, Baby Boomers increased their online spending by 47% and Gen X increased their online spending by 60%.  How are we keeping up with this new surge in demand for ecommerce?  Here are a few ways:

Carrier Diversification

Our large carriers such as FedEx, UPS, USPS, and Canada Post have seen capacity issues which they have struggled to catch up with, especially during the COVID19 pandemic which has been the impetus for the massive volume growth they have seen.  Through working with multiple carriers, NRI is able to adjust volumes between carriers to ensure that not all volume flows through one channel and overwhelms it.  We are also working to diversify volumes through regional carriers who will have the capability to deliver local/regional shipments at reduced transit times.  This will allow many of our clients to offer quicker shipping at reduced cost points.  Nimble management of multiple carriers, at scale, is not easy without strength in software.  Because of NRI’s proprietary Transportation Management System (TMS) we are able to handle this multi-carrier strategy with ease.

Transportation Management System (TMS)

NRI has developed our own TMS as a key component of our proprietary 3PL software suite – Aspire. Our system provides us the flexibility to continue to evolve and add partners at a much faster rate than otherwise possible.  Our TMS allows us to minimize additional touches and manual processes while ensuring we are able to process and ship with the optimal carrier of choice.

The system allows several layers of rules to be setup and maintained within the rate shopping process.  The logic supports our clients’ carrier preferences and requirements, service level preferences and requirements, and cost thresholds.  Rules can be created to upgrade ship methods automatically if cost differentials are within an acceptable tolerance and days-in-transit improvement is valid.  Our TMS is integrated with all major U.S. and Canadian carriers as well as select international carriers.

Strategic Geographic Locations

Being where your customers are is paramount to providing the best customer service possible.  With ever increasing consumers expecting faster shipping times, having product placed strategically will help with that.  We’ve implemented a “four corners” strategy that allows us to get orders out faster by being on both coasts of the U.S. and Canada.  By having inventory in either or all our facilities in these key regions, our clients save time and money on transportation costs.  This strategy, combined with implementing a Section 321 strategy for duty-free ecommerce fulfillment into the U.S., brings significant opportunity for savings.

For more information, contact us.

Investing in Our People and Operations

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NRI Distribution Employees

Investing in Our People and Operations

One of our core values at NRI is “Relationships Are Worth Investing In”. Whether it be our clients or our team members, we believe that everyone has potential to be great, and we embrace the opportunity to nurture relationships and help bring out the greatness.

NRI has familial approach to supporting our teams. We are adamant about maintaining the highest percentage of full time NRI team members on the floor as possible and have a goal of +90%.  e do not encourage the usage of temporary labor, nor do we use it as a crutch to further profitability. We invest in our staff with tangible benefits, training and development programs, and furthering education.

NRI is a learning organization and embraces continued education with a focus on leadership. We believe that we all have an opportunity to lead at any level within the organization. An outside educator has been heavily engaged at NRI for over 10 years – providing guidance on topics such as Servant Leadership and Emotional Intelligence (EQ), and how these can play a key role in the success of our individuals, our teams, and NRI overall. This individual is now a full-time senior leader at NRI, illustrating our serious commitment to helping our people grow.

Throughout all our departments, we have team members at all levels with multiple years of experience working in the company. This allows them to provide significant experiential learning to others.

Employee experience is important to NRI, and we make decisions based on our values that promote a positive experience. We actively promote from within the organization; 82% of our positions were filled by internal promotions last year! Learning opportunities for our people, such as our Leadership Development Program and LinkedIn Learnings, are essential to the successes of our team members and NRI is happy to provide these tools to develop our them.

We understand that our team members have obligations outside of NRI and are happy to accommodate. We have provided a framework of accountability that allows flexibility and freedom.  We have provided specific part-time shifts to accommodate students and shifts for parents with school-aged children. In 2020, we allowed flexibility to work remotely due to COVID-19, as well as took considerable protective measures to ensure all our warehouse team members were safe on the job.

Our goal is to be a place where people want to come to work, and an organization that our team members are proud to be a part of. As a results-based organization, we understand that meaningful rewards and recognition are a mechanism for motivating employee performance and, as such, we offer our team members a wide range of rewards and recognition programs and employee perks to both promote performance, as well as maintain a positive working environment.

 

To learn more about our people, see our people page.

Logistics Trends for 2021

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NRI warehouse fontana

Logistics Trends for 2021

It’s hard to believe that 2020 and all its craziness is now behind us.  No one saw COVID-19 coming, nor the global impact is has had.  If there is a silver lining or opportunity in this cloud for brands and the logistics industry, it is certainly the increase of ecommerce business.  In fact, the estimate of U.S. retail e-commerce sales for the second quarter of 2020 totaled $200.7 billion, an increase of 37.0 percent (±1.2%) from the first quarter of 2020.  And with how busy the holiday peak season was, we will likely keep seeing these increases.  Nonetheless, we need to learn from 2020 and think about 2021.  Here are some of our thoughts for 2021.

Going Green

There were more ecommerce orders in 2020 than ever before.  U.S. e-commerce sales will hit a projected $709.78 billion in 2020, or an increase of 18%.  With that comes an increase in deliveries which means more delivery trucks on the road.  Climate change is here and we need to drastically improve conditions to keep our planet thriving.  By nature, the logistics industry contributes to greenhouse gas emissions and we need to better ourselves.  There are eco-friendly warehouses, whose purpose is to reduce and monitor the use of electricity, heat, water, and gas.

What’s NRI doing about this?  One of our principles is “Creating Harmony and Sustainability for All”.  We work with our clients to reduce any excess waste and offer sustainable solutions.  Some of our clients, such as United by Blue, have opted to use recycled packaging for their orders.  Other clients, such as Tentree, do not use any plastic polybags, only recycled rope to keep items tidy.

Focus on the wellbeing of the environment plays a major role at NRI.  We work internally to identify and embrace opportunities for continuous improvement in sustainability, and we also work to share suggestions with our clients on how they too can make improvements.  We’ve embraced several opportunities including:

  • Storm water runoff management
  • Motion sensor and LED lighting in warehouses
  • Recycling program for all possible materials (paper/cardboard, plastics, wood, metals)
  • Low-flow plumbing
  • Working with clients to identify and remove waste in packaging i.e. straps on cartons, excessive and/or non-recyclable fill in cartons
  • Continuous education of our team members on opportunities to reduce or remove single-use items from their lives

We’re All Partners

Things are better when we’re (working) together!  Treating suppliers and logistics companies like partners is beneficial to everyone.  Good, clear communication around sales information, time-in-shipping data, and other KPIs can help you, your suppliers, and logistics partners be prepared for any increase or decrease in sale trends.  Working together makes it easier to achieve your goals, than you going at it alone.  Using big data and analytics will help you identify any actionable insights for any sales trends, pricing strategies, and utilization of logistical resources (such as NRI).

If you speak with any of our current clients, they’ll be the first to tell you that NRI puts a major focus on preparedness.  We partner with our clients on sales data, forecasting, shipping information, returns, and anything else we need to prepare from a facilities and labor perspective.  This past year has reinforced NRI’s believe that we need to be prepared for anything, and build in contingency plans for the unexpected.

Robots are Taking Over

Not really, however, in the constant effort to improve processes and automation, many supply chains and logistics companies are looking into the use of robotics.  During the first half of 2019, North American companies spent $869 million on more than 16,400 robots.  Even outside of warehouses, companies are investing in drones and self-driving car technology to free up manpower to be better used elsewhere.

We’re embracing these technologies at NRI and constantly looking to how we can automate certain tasks so that our human warehouse employees can become more efficient and apply additional focus on our value-added services like giftwrapping, tagging, and handling fragile items.  NRI has long been a leader in technology investment and development – operating on our proprietary 3PL software suite and with robust Technology and Engineering teams focused on the mindset of continuous improvement.

Dude, What’s My Budget?

No, seriously, what’s my budget?  Just like 2020, it’s hard to predict how much to allocate towards logistics partners because this year has been abnormal, and we don’t know what 2021 will look like.  Budgeting for 2021 will need mapping existing resources with strategy and a shift from the traditional inputs and standard approaches.  The need for more incredible speed and cost control spans across all industries, therefore making it a challenging task to achieve a perfect budget for 2021.  Another suggestion is just to treat your budget as a range.  In many ways budgeting will be a guessing game, and companies need to put together a plan based on contingencies.

Because we treat all our clients as partners, we work hand-in-hand to predict, as accurately as possible, any trends and forecasts.  This helps our clients set aside a budget for their fulfillment and freight budget.

With how ecommerce trends are continuing to grow, we hope 2020 can be a learning experience for all and that we make 2021 better.  We must think about the environment more than ever, become partners through the entire supply chain process, use technology to our advantage, and crunch numbers to create a budget that won’t break the bank.

We’re here to help. Let’s talk about scalable solutions for your business. Contact us here.