Supply fluctuations cause problems for a garment wholesaler

Case Study
March 23, 2023

Almost overnight, a garment wholesaler encountered problems within its supply chain. The company has garments produced on a large scale in South-East Asia, but there were suddenly major long delays in delivery. When the garments finally arrived in the Netherlands, the relevant season was already partly over. The wholesaler then had to sell the garments to retailers at a big discount.

Problems due to early delivery

To ensure that didn’t happen again, the wholesaler decided to buy in the next batch earlier. To its surprise, the new batch arrived on the quay much sooner than expected. On the one hand, that's fine, but as a company you need to be able to finance everything right at that point. That early delivery threatened to create problems for the wholesaler.

Fluctuations within the supply chain

Raising awareness of proper planning within the entire organisation allows for a more alert response to fluctuations within the supply chain. To that end, management is working to make its supply chain variable by also sourcing garments closer to home (for example in Turkey and Portugal).

Financial restructuring

Financial restructuring also creates room to be better prepared for future fluctuations in the delivery process. This also doubles as a solution to increased procurement prices, which led to higher financing of working capital. This requires transparent coordination and agreement with shareholders and banks. To achieve the necessary transparency between parties, we carried out an assessment (review) of the business plan, for example.