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State of Logistics 2016: Pursue mutual benefit Michaels Stores turns to XPO for major Christmas Tree distribution strategy Holiday deliveries face challenges but situation is not dire Large 3PL integrations require patience, processes, and planning FTR’s Trucking Conditions Index drops, but growth is expected in 2017 More Logistics News Digital Evolution: Streamlining Logistics and Supply Chain Operations Virtual Conference | Dec 8, 2016 | 1pm ET Keynote Address: The Digital Re-imagination of Supply Chains All Resources While many stories focused on the holiday season with a logistics slant tend to focus on things like delivery methods and the e-commerce supply chain, a recent collaboration between third-party logistics and freight transportation services provider XPO Logistics and arts and crafts retail chain Michaels Stores has a bit of a different approach. This approach centers on a distribution strategy for 500,000 artificial Christmas trees, which are a top seller in the more than 1,200 Michaels stores in North America, a task which Michaels said today it turned to XPO for assistance. The collaboration was a successful logistics endeavor, with XPO working with Michaels to come up with a strategy, which, the companies said, staged and delivered what it called multiple waves of Christmas trees across Michael’s footprint of stores in less than 25 days, which enabled Michaels to add key capacity to its distribution network during a period of heightened holiday demand. Rich Markovich, VP of transportation for Michaels Stores, told LM that heading into its collaboration with XPO, there were three main challenges. “First was capacity,” he said. “This is one of our largest single product orders annually. We needed capacity and expertise that could manage and move the trees to the stores outside of our in-house distribution network. XPO provided that. We also needed a partner who could orchestrate several […]