Hobby Hall – Logistics strategy

Background

EP-Logistics has conduted numerous logistics studies for companies and the public sector. A logistics strategy considering the special needs of a mailorder company was devised for Hobby Hall, part of the Stockmann group.

Hobby Hall provides its customers products and services via a webshop and physical shops. In 2000 Hobby Hall’s sales were over 1,2 billion marks. The company operates in Finnish, Estonian and Latvian markets.

The logistics of a company must be able to answer to the challenges of the business as cost-effectively as possible. In the case of Hobby Hall, the logistics has to serve fluently both mailorder business and boutiques, and special requirements of order-supply chain set by the webshop have to be considered in logistics operations.

The assignment and the results

During the project a logistics strategy was devised that sustains the company’s growth objectives. To support the strategy, a comprehensive look at the current logistic situation was made. This led to the creation of indicators to evaluate the efficiency of the company’s logistic operations as well as to the calculations of unit costs of the logistics.

Benefits

Creation of the logistic strategy yielded answers to the following questions:

  • What is the current situation of the company’s logistics and what are the challenges?
  • What are the demands of the growing e-commerce on logistics?
  • How should the performance of the logistics be measured?
  • What are the right handling methods of the goods in a logistics centre?
  • What is the operational capacity of the logistics and how to improve it?
  • What is the unit cost of the logistics? (Package and product cost estimates.)
  • Is there a need for investments in logistics in the near future?