Customer challenge
The Supply Chain Challenge of Scotch & Soda
Scotch & Soda used to have different warehouses, seperated per sales channel: one for retail, one for wholesale and another one for e-commerce. This made processes complex and often redundant. Additionally, the inventory was kept siloed. As a result, Scotch & Soda was facing missed sales as they kept inventory that could have otherwise been sold in a silo that wasn’t accessible. This is one of the reasons why Scotch & Soda decided to create a single pool of stock.
For example, a pink t-shirt in size S carried in the retail silo wasn’t replenished in the store network due to a lack of demand, but it was sold out online. Not having enough insights in these separate stock pools resulted in a missed sale. To avoid this, Scotch & Soda executed time-consuming, manual checks. This is now automated.
A fully integrated RFID supply chain was the plan from the very beginning. As a first step, Scotch & Soda started source tagging and deploying iD Cloud in their global store network in 2021. Jonatan van der Geest: “RFID was already working in the stores, so it was logical to apply this technology in our warehouse as we were transforming our logistics.” Niek Wattel adds: “The main reason we use RFID is that it makes our inventory more accurate. Therefore we can better serve our customers because we have a better understanding of what we can deliver. And that is the ultimate goal: unmatched customer experience.”