The holiday season is here and the Operation Give Joy series provides a closer look at how Kohl’s operations efforts are delivering an easy, convenient shopping experience to customers.
As part of the Operation Give Joy series, we sat down with Gregg Barta, Kohl’s senior vice president, supply chain operations, to talk about recent investments in Kohl’s distribution network and how Kohl’s is getting orders to customers more efficiently this holiday season.
How is Kohl’s fulfillment team making it easier for customers to complete their holiday shopping at Kohl’s?
We’re making it easier for our customers to check off their holiday shopping lists at Kohl’s — whether they’re shopping in store, online or on Kohl’s App. Our network of e-commerce fulfillment centers across the country is dedicated to fulfilling our customers online orders and, especially during the holiday season, it’s so important that customers get their packages quickly and hassle-free.
As part of our fulfillment network, store teams are leveraging new technologies to fill customers’ online orders faster and more efficiently. For Kohls.com and Kohl’s Mobile App shoppers, if an item is available in a customer’s local Kohl’s store, they can opt to pick it up for free or have any online orders shipped to their local store for free.
What’s new to fulfillment this holiday season?
This is the first holiday season that our fifth e-commerce fulfillment center is fully operational. I’m really proud of the fulfillment team for working all year long and putting in a tremendous amount of work to make sure we not only met but exceeded our processing, filling and shipping expectations.
Something we’re also really excited about — and we just rolled this out in time for the holiday season — we are giving customers the opportunity to shop Kohls.com or Kohl’s Mobile App and ship items to their local Kohl’s store for free pick up. Our buy online, ship to store initiative has been a great way for our customers to enjoy a significantly expanded assortment of products available for free shipping while also helping to drive traffic into our stores.
What are Kohl’s store and fulfillment teams doing to make Kohl’s a go-to destination for last minute shoppers?
We will once again keep our stores open around the clock to help everyone finish their holiday shopping. Whether you completed your holiday check list before Thanksgiving or haven’t started, our stores will open at 7 a.m. on Friday, Dec. 21, and will stay open through 6 p.m. on Christmas Eve. On top of our expanded store hours, Kohl’s customers can place buy online, pick up in store orders all the way up until 3 p.m. on Christmas Eve.
How does Kohl’s plan to keep up with growing digital demand during future holiday seasons?
As we look towards the future, we have confidence in the strong fulfillment network and team that we’ve built to serve our growing Kohls.com business. After opening our fifth e-commerce fulfillment center a little over a year ago, we recently announced we’ll begin construction on our sixth e-commerce fulfillment center. Similar to our fifth location, our sixth e-commerce fulfillment center will be highly automated and three times as productive as our first fulfillment center.
Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Information
This press release contains “forward-looking statements.” Kohl’s intends forward-looking terminology such as “believes,” “anticipates,” “plans,” “may,” “intends,” “will,” “should,” “expects” or similar expressions to identify forward-looking statements. Such statements are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that could cause Kohl’s actual results to differ materially from those indicated by the forward-looking statements. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, those described in Item 1A in Kohl’s Annual Report on Form 10-K and other factors as may periodically be described in Kohl’s filings with the SEC.