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EDITORIAL No deal Brexit and beyond: focus on operations and logistics

24 Aug 2018

Chloe Rigby

We’re reporting on what a ’no deal’ Brexit would mean for online retailers in today’s InternetRetailing newsletter, while our summer focus remains on Operations & Logistics.

This week has brought stories of growth and of challenge. We report on Laura Ashley as online sales grow but profits fall, and on Yours Clothing as it opens its first shop in Germany. The latest retail hack, reported this week, hit Superdrug: we ask what others can do to reduce their risk of a similar threat. We report too on the UK government’s move to boost exports for a post-Brexit world. But the greatest challenge of all could be a no deal Brexit. We’ve read the Government’s technical update on Brexit and set out here what that might mean in practice. This is well worth considering since many have now said there’s a 50% chance of this happening.

Our summer look at Operations and Logistics – timed for a relatively quiet time of the year when there’s chance to think about what strategic tweaks might work for the future – includes four practical approaches to operations and logistics, insights into how supermarket Waitrose is rethinking the way it does logistics, and we zoom out to consider the wider context, in which, says writer Sean Fleming, retailers must take an uncertain future into account. The bank holiday weekend may now give extra thinking time for how a no deal Brexit would add to that uncertainty.

Today’s guest comment comes from Professor Chris Bones of Good Growth, who debates how retailers might prioritise the latest technological developments in their ecommerce businesses.

RetailCraft podcast

Find out more about the first two episodes of InternetRetailing’s RetailCraft podcasts featuring Heals and the Rug Company.

RetailCraft 01 – David Kohn of Heals – “probably the most sceptical man in the industry”? Surely not!

RetailCraft 02 – Sarah Stagg of The Rug Company and the 2018 IREU Top500

Webinars

Find out more about upcoming InternetRetailing webinars and register for free on the InternetRetailing webinar page. You can also catch up with past webinars on the page.

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