Crocs: Revolutionizing an Industry’s Supply Chain Model for Competitive Advantage

Crocs

Crocs Supply Chain vs. Traditional Supply Chain

· In the traditional supply chain in the shoe industry, most companies would try to project how much to produce and have orders placed way in advance

· This often resulted in too little or too much inventory

· Traditional supply chains are also much more complicated because there is a different company involved with each stage of production

· There is less flexibility and is more costly due to time constraints

· http://crackmba.com/traditional-vs-new-supply-chain-models/

· Crocs wanted to take a different approach where they get their product to customers when they needed it, and react to changes quickly

· In order to do this, they needed to take over the supply chain and gain control over all areas of production

· They bought out Foam Designs to take over manufacturing

· They used contract manufacturers over seas to expand globally, not all of them worked, but one example that did was China because they were able to quickly adjust to changes in demand and production

· They also took over the compounding process and created their own facilities in Canada, China, and Mexico. This gave them more flexibility as opposed to having an outsider in Italy do the compounding

· They also added warehousing to their factories to accommodate large retailers who placed orders more in bulk and at a much higher volume, but kept warehouse in Colorado for smaller retailers

· Since they also controlled production at a global level, they could produce in areas with lower tariffs to lower costs

· They created a database that allowed them to see their inventory globally in order to plan how much to produce and meet customer demands

· https://smehro.files.wordpress.com/2008/11/supplychainpresentationundp-accenture.pdf