Question of the week April 25, 2008
Posted by Randal Stocker in News.Tags: carbon footprint, D2C, direct to consumer, green initiative, question of the week
trackback
Image Credit: magneticpride.com
I was talking to a representative of a major retailer this week and they informed me that one of their “green” initiatives is to sell more products through the D2C channel (direct to consumer: shipped to the consumer directly from the manufacturer). They claimed their research showed less of a carbon footprint from them due to less shipping and less inventory. Is that truly a green initiative or just passing the footprint on to suppliers and consumers?
-Randy
Comments
Sorry comments are closed for this entry
Hmmm… Interesting question, Randy….
In some ways, it IS a green initiative – but in a round-about kind of way….
Think of it this way – Randy is buying a new plasma flat screen TV. Here’s the way that Randy can buy his new TV from Me:
* I maintain a showroom with the TVs. Randy comes down, finds the one he likes and buys it and takes it home. Now, here’s the “carbon footprint” of this TV… I order it from LG (sony, toshiba, whomever) and it gets shipped to My warehouse. Then I need it in My store near Randy’s house – so I ship it from My warehouse to My store. Then Randy buys it, picks it up and drives it home OR we deliver the TV to Randy’s house. So that TV travels in 3 different vehicles to get from Mfg to Me to My Store to Randy.
* I have the TVs shown online. Randy orders the TV from Me. I’ve got it in stock in My warehouse. So, I’ve ordered it and the mfg has shipped it to Me and then I stock it and ship it out to Randy. Now we’ve got this TV in 2 vehicles – from MFG to Me and from Me to Randy.
* I have the TVs shown online. Randy orders the TV from Me. I then have it shipped directly from the mfg to Randy – only one vehicle is involved – from MFG to Randy.
So, in this type of a scenario, there is less of a carbon footprint in doing the ship direct process.
But, however, you also have a point in that by pushing that carbon footpring onto you, I’m also lowering it for Me and My company.
It’s kind of a twin-bladed sword – sharp on both sides… but one side is just a bit duller and will not cut quite as deep….