Jossey Menswear – the Supply Chain Project

Introduction

Jossey Menswear is a clothing retail company in the UK with around 60 shops. It has been in the clothing business for over a century. The company is part of the Amedox Fashion Retail division. The menswear company had all its tailored products made by Cornwall, which is also part of Amedox.

In order to increase the division’s profits and allow it to react quicker to market trends, it implemented a “quick response (QR) supply chain management” system. This system is a combination of the ‘Just-In-Time’ (JIT) system and the latest Information Technology (IT) based systems ((e.g. Electronic Point of Sale (EPoS), Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) and bar coding) to help the supply chain process flow more efficiently.

In the past, Jossey Menswear mainly relied on predicting the fashion trends and the level of demand on their products months before they were available in the stores. This meant there was a risk that if the prediction was incorrect then certain products could end-up being overstocked and will need to be sold at heavily discounted prices to get rid of them. Also, if a product ends-up being more popular then previously predicted, it could result in lost revenue due to the item being sold out.

David Jossey, Managing Director (MD) of Jossey Menswear decided to implement QR to reduce the risk of products being heavily overstocked or out-of-stock.

To implement the QR system, various areas of the process needed to be addressed. This included the buy-in from the employees at the manufacturing plant (Cornwall factory) and to ensure teams and a payment system was set-up without affecting the performance of the rest of the factory.

The significance of the QR approach in improving the company’s supply chain performance

The initial set-up costs would have been high, however early experience has shown that a company can expect payback within two years (Christopher 2005, pp191). The change will mean the manufacturing and logistics costs will reduced due to less inventory and lead times.

Adopting the QR approach meant the retail store chain would have lower stock holding in their stores and fewer ‘stock-outs’ (i.e. items sold out/nil stock). The QR process enables the company to react quicker to consumer demands. It reduced the likelihood of customers coming in to the stores looking for a specific item/s and then walking away without making a purchase due to the item/s not being available.

Jossey Menswear was able to monitor the ‘near-live’ sales data at each of its branches and identify the products that were either selling well or performing poorly. Its stores did not need to hold large quantities of each product for fear of going short. The IT system would be able to identify which items were at risk of running low and because the retail company was sharing the ‘point-of-sale’ data with the manufacturing factory, the factory was able to reach straightaway and arrange for its dedicated production teams to make some more.

The aim of Jossey Menswear’s MD was to improve the ‘Full Price Sales’ (FPS) figures. Prior to QR the company was achieving 50% FPS, which was seen as normal for the industry. However, the implementation of QR meant that it was possible for the company to improve on this figure. This is because popular items will continually be replenished, where and when required and there will be a limited amount of stock to sell at discount of poorly performing items. The logistics of the QR system will ensure ‘the right product in the right place at the right time’.

The company’s designers were coming up with designs up to 18 months before they reached the shelves in the stores. This was risky because fashions changed constantly when it came to clothing. QR helped to reduce the risk by allowing the company to avoid making high volumes of each product. Therefore, if a product turned out to be a poor seller, then the quantity of stock the will need to be reduced will be kept to a minimum.  

Cornwall plant’s approach to introduce QR

The Cornwall plant tried to make the required changes for QR with minimal disruption. The approach taken was to enable the employees to feel that they were part of the decision making process. This seemed like a good way to implement the QR process without the employees worrying about how it affected them. Some employees would feel that if a company starts to streamline its production, it means job losses.