Cost saving through reverse logistics

Its clients include 5000 corporates presently operating in the country. United Colors of Benetton, Madura Garments, Planet Sports, Flying Machine, HILTI, TATA, Mahindra, HP, Arvind Brands, NIIT, Elsevier and FIAT are a few of its respected clients.

Reverse Logistics: Safexpress’ area of expertise

Safexpress has been providing a unique value-added supply chain & logistics service known as Reverse Logistics to numerous top corporates in the country. Usually, reverse logistics works in case a new product is found to be defective and the retailer returns it to the distributor, who in turn gives it back to the manufacturer. Safexpress directly takes these defective goods under its possession and moves them to its warehouses where they are repaired and re-shipped. Thereby Safexpress steps in to reduce the time and cost involved in the backward supply chain and prevents customer dissatisfaction, cash lockdown for the retailer, and a rise in the distributor’s inventory.

CASE STUDY

Safexpress provides these specialised services to Madura Garments. For hundreds of products of Madura Garments, which are moved to the retail stores across the country, some of the goods are rejected because of sudden change in fashion and customer preferences at that location and some for getting damaged in transit, thus becoming non-saleable. In this respect, Safexpress helps them with the complicated and specialised job of reverse logistics of these goods.

The solution provided

The range of reverse logistics services provided by Safexpress includes reverse movement of goods, re-packing, re-labelling, re-manufacturing and refurbishing as well as repair of damaged goods.

Not only does Safexpress move the goods back from the retail store to its own facility, but it also moves the goods back to a location where the inventory can easily be sold. In case of damaged items, including torn packaging, missing labels, broken buttons and so on, Safexpress does the repair work of the goods and makes them ready-to-sell again. Post that, the goods are moved back to the point where the demands are high. This reverse logistics solution provided by Safexpress saves Madura Garments a huge amount of money. In the absence of this service, the company would have to move the goods to their production site where it would be repaired and moved all the way back to the store. Instead, under reverse logistics a very small distance is covered for moving the goods back to the nearest Safexpress facility. So the huge costs associated with the back and forth movement of goods, from the destination to the origin and then back to the destination, are prevented by Safexpress in this case.

In order to provide these reverse logistics services to Madura Garments, Safexpress has deployed reverse logistics centres, where they stock thousands of SKUs of the client and employ well-trained tailors who can professionally handle the premium products of Madura Garments.

The government should look at allowing FDI in multi-brand retail since this is a capital intensive sector and the entry of foreign players will lead to greater competition in this critical sector. Investments on retail infrastructure, both front-end and back-end, as well as logistics and agro-processing would increase in 2011 leading to fast-paced growth in the sector.

Vineet Kanaujia, GM - Marketing, Safexpress