What makes Ocado different from other players? You should pay comparable prizes as in a regular supermarket, and you can schedule a one hour time slot when the products arrive. Ocado delivers not only to the door, but in fact to the kitchen table. Since they also cut logistical lines, the groceries that come to your kitchen table are fresher, than the ones that arrive in the store.
100 % online presence makes it possible for them to custom-made logistics for e-commerce and saves in all lines. A success factor in the long run is that they don’t manage any physical stores. A lot of their competitors have several stores that decrease in value when e-commerce grows more and more.
To compete about the food bag is hard, when the prerequisites to succeed depend on the volume and logistics. Apart from other stories we listen to at NES about companies that grow from small to large, Ocado has had a wholehearted commitment from the start. Sverker Lindbo says that anything else wouldn’t be possible, a large-scale commitment is a must. Today, Ocado has 6,500 employees, and 1,100 trucks that deliver groceries, with two warehouses that each serve 200,000 people and 3 more warehouses to come. We can easily understand which volumes they handle. Especially impressive is the simulation Ocado has built of stock and pack flows. You can follow the flow and detect bottlenecks almost in real-time. The graphical presentation is almost like a circulation of blood where you can zoom in every detail.
The expansion in England continues, and Ocado targets new markets. Behind the corner, strong competitors like Amazon Fresh waits, while old competitors work to catch up. A new map of grocery sales is about to be drawn.