4 Seismic Shifts Forever Altering Our Supply Chain (The Future of Work Series, Part 6)

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Never before have we seen the complexity of challenges as we have over the past several months. Sourcing, collaboration, production, and communication —the heart and soul of our supply chain— have been violently shaken and overturned. 

As we seek to move forward and rebuild our businesses and our industry, we must realize, we can’t simply put the broken pieces back together the way they were. When Uber ushered in a ride-share revolution, the taxi companies that dreamed of a “return to normal,” were doomed.

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Though our industry hasn’t been entirely disrupted in the same way, there are four seismic shifts occurring that will forever change how we work together in the future. Following are four key areas plus a few tips on how we can lead through these changes:

(I) How We Ideate & Collaborate

Tradeshows: Are they gone for good? The glory of a bygone era? Or will tradeshows be resurrected? 

Once we are able to return to shows safely again, there’s a high likelihood that we will flock in droves, hungry to connect, anxious to get back to life as-it-once-was. Shows will continue, but not without dramatic changes. By the time we gather regularly again, suppliers and distributors will have found additional (and perhaps more efficient) ways to ideate together. 

In the past, shows were where suppliers introduced new products, where distributors reviewed new ideas, latest trends, hottest items. What’s always missed the mark with tradeshow culture is the complete absence of real-time collaboration on projects. When distributors attend shows, they often talk with supplier partners about the projects currently in the pipeline or the big annual projects that repeat.  But our work is fluid and fluctuates wildly. Our ability to remember the 10,000 ideas we pass on a crowded show floor is impossible considering that we manage hundreds of projects throughout the year. 

Many of us attended shows out of habit, but COVID and the economy is forcing us to think of optional ways to ideate together moving forward. In fact, as we look back now at all of that energy spent around shows, and how a digital, work-from-home culture is reshaping how we interact over products in real-time, it’s a marvel that we held on as long as we did to shows are our primary vehicle for idea gathering. 

Today, how we experience new ideas from our supplier partners is changing. For example, since distributors no longer have the luxury of inviting supplier salespeople in their showroom to see the latest products, on the commonsku platform, suppliers can give product demonstrations through videos right in-app which creates an insane efficiency as distributors never have to leave the platform. Teams can now view at their leisure and the high cost of an entire sales organization giving up its precious selling time for a few hours during a PK (product knowledge session) could be seen as a throwback to a Mad Men era. And some suppliers are loving the shift, one supplier said to me that they are now getting even more facetime with the right types of buyers through digital interaction. And with less travel consuming their time, suppliers have more time for selling and collaborating. 

Shows are important and will still be important. But the future of shows and what they look like will change. The need to gather together will be vitally necessary for the health of our supply chain but our future events should be far more strategy-driven than product obsessed. This seismic shift happening is a change that will stick.

From this point forward, we need to reimagine how we can make the best of future tradeshows. As we mentioned in a previous article, the client is demanding that distributors take the time to understand their problems which means more time spent on client research, less time spent on product research. The traditional time-consuming way we all demonstrated product needs to be expedited to fit this new normal and the digital processes for presentation, ideation, and collaboration are not only here to stay, but will grow. 

In Europe, at the largest promotional products show (PSI) in Dusseldorf, products are beautifully exhibited but primacy is given to distributors and suppliers to gather together around ideas and partnering strategies. This heightened sense of collaboration will be the future of shows. “What’s new?” will no longer be the primary reason to walk a show floor; in the future, every gathering will now carry a rally cry, “how can we work better together?”

(II) Even Sustainability is Changing

“Sustainability,” for far too long, has been restricted to simply eco-friendly terms in the average mind. “Sustainability” is such a worn conversation that many of us have grown deaf to it, to the point that we are no longer paying attention to the critical conversation of how buyers are changing their attitudes about sustainability. It’s a much different conversation now than before. 

Sustainable now has broader implications. 

Studies have shown that due to restricted travel, air pollution and carbon emissions have naturally dropped. And thanks to COVID, many of us, having retreated to our homes while spending less time out, have had a crash course in minimalism. We’re more cognizant of the waste in our lives, more attune to the essentials and aware of the non-essentials. But where we’ve felt it most is individually: People are decluttering their lives, learning to embrace simplicity. In a recent skucast episode, futurist and trends editor Vicki Ostrom said that “less is the new luxe.” 

The impact from all of this will have a dramatic and lasting effect on future buyers’ thinking. Typically, in a tight economy, costs become the primary factor. Cost is certainly still a factor, but, in a strange way, COVID-19 made the world more conscientious. This is not the same-old eco-friendly conversation. According to Bain research, though the crisis is making sustainability harder in the short term, the long-term effects on buyers’ minds and how they will buy moving forward is going to make sustainability a priority as we’ve never seen before. 

The average buyer will want to know more about origination, how products are made, and how manufacturers are contributing to the circular economy. Moreover, buyers will want to know that the promotional products they are buying affect much more than the environment, they want to know that the products they purchase will make a social impact on communities and employees. If budgets are slashed, then where they do spend matters most, which means, when they turn to you, they expect you to have the guts to put your money where your mouth is and believe in the power of an advertising medium that is not transient and temporary, but enduring. 

As distributors, much of our sourcing has been reliant on simply being able to meet deadlines and confirming inventory stock. But every project we now produce should be given a new criteria for sustainability and endurability as well. How you vet suppliers moving forward should extend beyond stock and production. The critical question for every project we source, should be: How long will this product endure? What’s the long-term impact of this promotion? 

This isn’t new, the savviest distributors have always done this, but what’s changed now is that the majority of buyers will no longer tolerate waste and clutter, it’s another subtle but seismic shift that will be a requirement when the dust settles. 

(III) The Fragility of the Supply Chain

At skucamp last fall, David Nicholson with Polyconcept North America (PCNA) gave us a glimpse into the future from a global perspective and shared how our overreliance on China is leading to a fragile supply chain, a supply chain in crisis, giving us a historical lesson on where the supply chain was, is at today, where we are heading, and what we must do to pivot toward a healthier product eco-system. David’s research showed that sourcing beyond China will be imperative for our future but he also suggests that reshoring will rise.

The over-reliance on China, along with the volatility of our economy, has now made many of our supply chain partners more fragile through this process. The strength of the supplier’s business and the safety of their products and production process is now paramount. Additionally, anytime a crisis in the economy happens, consolidation rises and changes occur faster than we can keep up, which means that we should expect more and more news about mergers and acquistions. Which is why the fragility or strength of our supply chain should be given far more attention than it has in the past. 

Suppliers will need to be more transparent with their distributor partners about the strength of their business. Educating them about reshoring efforts or sourcing plans outside of China. Some distributors do not care enough about where products are sourced and how, but they will, as clients put more and more pressure on them to be an open book. The more you coach your distributor partners in the reliability of your manufacturing and the strength of your diverse sourcing efforts, the more they will source through you.

Distributors will vet supplier partners with the new criteria mentioned above but include future plans, financial viability, and creative collaboration as essential criteria. Distributors will need to vet beyond product and through to processes, production, and impact. Perhaps even getting ahead of client demand by sharing with customers who your sourcing partners are and discussing how important sustainability, reshoring, and social impact is crucial to you and your entire supply chain.  

(IV) Doubling Down on Doing More with Less

“Sufficient” is the word many of us have used for far too long. Our systems were sufficient. Our supply chain was sufficient. Our teams were sufficient. But our ability to staff-up for inefficiencies is no longer a luxury. In the volatile market we now find ourselves in, where both distributors and suppliers have had to make incredibly hard decisions about essential staff, layoffs, furloughs, and cutbacks, we still find ourselves immersed in terribly inefficient systems for getting business done. 

But that has radically changed. We’re all discovering how to do more with less. 

We’ve survived in a world where 6 out of 10 distributor orders are on hold because of a lack of information transferred through manual processes. 66% of all purchase orders submitted by distributors to suppliers have either missing information or incorrect information. Distributors, there are an average of eight manual touches on every order you process, and that’s for orders that don’t have problems. With a lean staff and a relentless demand from the customer to stop wasting their time about order progress (or regress), future buyers will no longer tolerate our inefficiencies. 

The bandwidth we lost must be replaced by technology that makes all of our systems silent and  collaboration with the customer seamless. In other words, the long-awaited integration of Promostandards into every supplier’s and distributors infrastructure is finally so imperative that we have no choice but to make it a priority. But even beyond Promostandards, getting more done with less is a seismic shake-up that will be one of the most important and radical shifts in our culture. 

When we started this series, we wanted to explore how the future of work is changing right beneath us. We’ve highlighted the  3 Habits Shattered by the New Virtual Workforce; we’ve explored our Outdated Selling Skills, and How to Fix Them; and most importantly, we’ve discovered the Four Demands the Client of the Future Wants From You Now and how to adjust to these by Getting Back in the Game to be a Player Coach. 

As we close this series, we want to encourage everyone to stop seeing the world the way it is now, through the lens of chaos and uncertainty, but use this crisis as a catapult; not merely to reassemble ourselves from discarded parts, but reimagine and reinvent a new beginning. Entrepreneurs envision a future that they want for themselves and then go forth making a world they want to inhabit. With this vision and fortitude, and an astounding resiliency, we can grow beyond the limits of even our own our ability.

You can now download the complete Future of Work eBook in a free, easy to read, downloadable PDF. Click here to get your copy!