Prioritizing Your Direct To Store Delivery To Get The Most Out Of Your Business

As the DSD model eliminates middlemen touchpoints such as wholesale dealers, it significantly reduces the overall time to market, allowing suppliers/manufacturers to deliver merchandise faster. It also helps retail storekeepers to replenish stocks quicker and improve customer satisfaction by keeping inventory stocked up sufficiently at all times.

Perishable consumer goods such as fresh fruits, vegetables, flowers, poultry items, and bakery products are time-sensitive and need careful handling, sometimes in special containers such as wooden trays or even refrigerated trucks. Fragile goods such as potato chips, biscuits, wafers, or snacks also need special care during packaging and shipment. In the Direct Store Delivery model, merchandise is packaged and shipped at the manufacturer’s location and transported directly to the end retail market, thereby minimizing the risk of damage to these fragile consumer goods and improving the efficiency of handling the goods.

Some retail businesses earn additional revenue by selling seasonal goods such as festival merchandise, summer fruits, winter vegetables, Valentine’s special flowers, Halloween candies, or even non-consumables such as umbrellas, raincoats, festive decoration items, Christmas goodies, and so on. Direct Store Deliveries are immensely profitable during these peak seasons when the demand for such special goods is high and there is a limited time for manufacturers to make them available in the market.

By implementing the DSD retail model, businesses can reduce storage and labor costs by completely skipping secondary distribution and warehousing. As businesses can directly deliver goods to retail markets, there is no added cost such as the fee paid to wholesale distributors to sort, package, and ship goods, or rental amount payable to centralized distribution centers for storage of merchandise.

The Direct Store Delivery method connects a brand directly to the retailer, building a better relationship with the end market players. As the brand sells goods directly to retailers, it gives them regular market insights — what are the consumers buying more, the recent market trends and demands, and which products are not doing well in the market. This information allows brands to strategize better and sell effectively.

As retail inventory management is carried out by the supplier or manufacturer, it reduces the retailer’s burden of keeping a check on inventory levels and replenishing stocks periodically. Dealing directly with suppliers allows retailers to fulfill market demands effectively, streamlining shelf-space management. It also allows brands to push items with higher consumer interest and thereby increase their sales.