Jacobson Keeps its Brands on the Move
Combining traditional values of quality service to its customers with rapid response to the demands of the modern marketplace, the Jacobson Group develops its brand-led business model. Its partnership with international logistics service provider, Dachser, ensures the streamlined distribution of its products to European retail outlets.
The market for fashion goods is typified by demand for wide-ranging product design, speed of delivery to point of sale and highly competitive pricing structures, requiring costs to be kept to a minimum. The European high street footwear sector has these characteristics in abundance. The Jacobson Group, based in the traditional shoe and boot making region of east Lancashire, meets these challenges in its own particular and successful way.
Within the Jacobson stable of brands are well-established names such as: Lotus, reputed to be the oldest British footwear brand, having been established in 1759; Frank Wright, a name on gentlemen’s feet since 1885; Gola, synonymous with sportswear since 1905, and Norvic, another brand with a hundred-year history, this time in the children’s market.
Business success does, however, ultimately depend on the total product package delivered to the retailer. In addition to customised product development and design, with up-to-the-minute sourcing strategies comes tailored marketing plans and effective distribution. “Without an ability to deliver the final product to our customer’s shelves our performance in all other areas would be wasted,” emphasised Tim Murphy, Jacobson Group operations manager.
So far this year, Dachser have delivered over 1,800 individual shipments for Jacobson to retail outlets throughout Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Belgium and the Netherlands. This in itself is not too remarkable, it is the efficiency and reliability of Dachser’s service that assures Jacobson that its product ranges hit the streets at the height of the appropriate sales windows. A total of 55,000 pairs of shoes, part of a special promotion in the German market, were delivered last month within a four-day window to 31 outlets of a major German retailer. This typifies the sort of service both provided and required in this market.
Regular shipment collections are made by Dachser from Jacobson’s Lancashire warehouse on a three times per week schedule with rapid delivery times to all European destinations according to a fixed timetable.
In Dachser, the Jacobson Group has a partner with similar business values bred from a family-owned independent background. Jacobson’s 75 year history features leadership from four generations, while Dachser’s owners have a lineage stretching back to 1930. Both companies understand well what it takes to provide competitive service in today’s marketplace. From a logistics point-of-view, this is demonstrated by Dachser’s use of IT to provide supply chain visibility.
Crucially, Dachser has the ability to track and trace each and every shipment with proof of signed-for delivery on-line. The logistics operator is one of the few carriers to offer this level of electronic confirmation for pallet-load or smaller-sized consignments in Europe. Jacobson attaches bar-codes and labels cartons at its own premises. Data required for export and shipping documentation is sent via a full EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) link to Dachser’s system and all the information is then tied to a Dachser unique ID. As a consequence, there is no need for re-keying of data at any point on the goods transit and each carton can be tracked through to the customer.
Via the Dachser on-line tracking system and utilising the unique ID, Jacobson can confirm ultimate delivery time and date at their customer’s premises. “It is the surety of delivery and certainty as to the whereabouts of each of our shipments that completes our total package offering to retailers,” explains Tim Murphy.
Along a footwear supply chain that strides the globe, dependability within the final mile is essential. The Jacobson Group has proved quick on its feet in response to the vagaries of the fashion world, you could say that it also relies on Dachser, its sure-footed partner in logistics, to complete the legwork.
