Bangladesh, a major manufacturing hub of the garment industry supplying much of Europe, Asia, and North America with clothing, has been hit by a nationwide dock workers strike. Apparently, the workers were promised wage increases, but the money never came. The worst of the strike is centralized at Chittagong Port. Workers are also complaining about…
A recent study conducted by Resilinc Corp., a provider of supply chain resiliency solutions has determined that the world’s supply chains are facing a threat. Specifically, most suppliers are all depending on a relatively small set of sub tier suppliers, which means that if any of these face difficulties in production, the entire global supply chain…
Amazon is already taking a substantial bite out of the retail world, commanding as much as 11 percent of total retail sales in some markets, according to Forbes. In fact, Amazon’s sales now total more than the next 12 internet retailers’ sales combined. Apparently, even adding e-commerce transactions to a retail website doesn’t help retailers…
For the second month in a row, the cost of importing goods rose in September by .2 percent. This follows a rise in August of .2 percent, which was revised after an originally projected flat month. These numbers, released by the Labor Department on Wednesday, Oct. 23 were delayed due to the recent government shutdown. Though…
During the recent government shutdown, many of the numbers industries and investors use to gauge the economy were not released due to worker furloughs. Now that operations have resumed, some of the data from September and early October have been released, and it’s clear that the shutdown did, in fact, have a negative effect on…
The new year didn’t ring in so merrily for Aldi and Lidl stores in Tesco Ireland, as the Food Safety Authority of Ireland discovers through DNA testing that beef burgers sold in some of these stores was, in fact, as much as 30 percent horse meat. Investigators have spent the rest of the year trying to…
GAME Stores is the leading retailer of gaming consoles, games, and accessories in the UK. Formerly, the distributor operated in a singe facility in Bracknell, Berkshire, which served as both the warehouse and the administrative headquarters. Since this facility was not designed with the game distributor’s purposes in mind, GAME Stores decided to relocate to…
Economists had expected the unemployment rate to drop to 335,000 last week, but instead the number of unemployed workers dropped to just 358,000, a reduction of 15,000. However, the statistics werent’ very clear, since the analysts had to adjust the figure for government workers applying for unemployment due to the government shutdown. Furthermore, a computer…
Staples, a global retailer of office supplies and equipment, has found the perfect niche for using electric trucks within their fleet of almost 2,000 delivery vehicles. According to Staples director of fleet equipment Mike Payette, the trucks are ideal for short local delivery routes within cities where lots of stops are involved. With a battery…
Following the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan, automakers faced challenges getting enough parts to fulfill their vehicle orders. The technology industry also took a big hit, as so many of our electronics and electronics parts depend on Japanese manufacturers and suppliers. More recently, a South Korean company that manufacturers most of the world’s DRAM…