Lids opens inventory with Micros Locate

Indianapolis – Lids Sports Group fully understands the importance of the brick-and-mortar channel when it comes to omnichannel commerce and customer experience. As Kevin Thompson, director of application development for Lids, told attendees of the recent Oracle Industry Connect conference, the retailer has implemented the Micros Locate inventory visibility solution to enable full inventory access at stores.



“It’s a customer service issue,” said Thompson. “We don’t want to disappoint customers.”



Lids uses Locate for order brokering, providing visibility of inventory to other stores and DCs both from the store as well as to customers using one of Lids’ e-commerce sites. Store associates are equipped with tablets allowing them “endless aisle” inventory access, and out-of-stock items can be ordered for home shipment at the POS, either from a DC or a nearby store.



Lids takes steps to protect inventory levels, including setting a limit on how many items can be filled from a specific store’s inventory and setting a hierarchy so that goods are first fulfilled from a DC before being fulfilled from a store. Lids also avoids shipping fragile items from stores.



In the 800 stores where Locate has been implemented, Lids has seen a 1.5% sales lift. However, the retailer has stopped using Locate in certain stores where it did fit well with store operations. In addition, Thompson said e-commerce sales have increased much more dramatically since Lids went live with Locate in February 2015.



Thompson gave some final advice on managing fulfillment of online orders from stores.



“Your stores will have fulfillment centers all of a sudden, when they have never done that before,” said Thompson. “You have to motivate store employees, perhaps with incentives or compensation.”