As the outdoor goods and clothing retailer LL Bean continues a multi-year digital transformation, the company has found that steady expansion requires a strict focus on a few critical tools, company executives said on a panel today at the Retail Industry Leaders Association (RILA) show.For many years, the company expanded from its handful of retail stores at a rate of one or two new sites annually, said Corey Bouyea, the company’s VP for stores & retail operations. But as it recently passed 50 total stores and now approaches 70, that rapid growth has exposed strains in specific parts of its supply chain, he said.That pressure began slowly as the company “muscled through” pandemic shifts like omnichannel sales, buy-online-pickup-in-store (BOPIS), and ship from store. But the need for change has grown as LL Bean set an ambitious goal of opening 10 new retail stores per year.One major restriction is that the Freeport, Maine-based company still relies on a single distribution center (DC) for national sales, even as it expands from its New England roots toward new states in the South and the West. But instead of adopting a massive expansion plan that adds new DCs, the company has found success in three core goals for its transformation, said Kirsten Piacentini, LL Bean’s chief supply chain officer. Specifically, the company is focused on improving demand forecasting through machine learning (ML), refreshing its warehouse management system (WMS) with new software, and adopting “pre-packs” to ship groups of common clothing items to stores bundled…
