Leading up to the Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM) weeks (Nov 25-Dec 6) we fulfilled and shipped an unprecedented volume of orders and units. We logged the biggest shipping days in DCL’s history during the holiday season. If there was any hesitance or worry about a down year, the order demand that our customers, and the overall consumer economy exhibited was strong.
During November and December, we saw a strong 16% year-over-year increase in orders fulfilled and a robust 36% increase in units shipped out. Although unit growth outpaced order growth, our observation is that it was reflected of our amazing brands’ expansion into retail and wholesale, versus B2C growth increase. Compared to previous years, retail order demand was higher later this holiday season.
B2C order volume growth was still strong for our customers compared to last year. We saw brands launch promotions earlier than ever before, very few started sales on Black Friday. We certainly experienced a rise in orders during BFCM, but it was less of a concentrated spike than in 2023.
Here are our key takeaways from this record-breaking holiday season.
How DCL Prepared for 2024 Peak
We are grateful to our customers’ collaboration, which ensured a smooth and successful holiday season! Delivering our customers' orders promptly and accurately was our top priority this year, and it required extensive preparation (we started peak preparation in January 2024!).
We proactively met with our brands to understand their daily promotions—our internal teams spent considerable time forecasting their order demand and tracking actual numbers to provide support and improvements to their forecasts in real-time.
Extended our conveyance systems and expanded the number of automated shipping label machines. This includes additional mechanical capacity across our network which led to an increase in mechanical output by 33%.
Doubled our modsort lines to allow for more accurate and automated sortation and accommodate more shipping carrier options.
In our Louisville facility, we combined multiple conveyance systems a to optimize our overall flow and plans for future growth.
Added faster, more automated tapers in all locations to cut down on dwell time within the parcel fulfillment process.
Increased storage capacity in several warehouses, notably Fremont and Louisville, by adding additional racking tiers.
Upgraded the software logic at our shipping manifest scan stations to accommodate a larger variety of packaging types (such as color varieties).
Improved quality control by implementing more detailed tracking and measurement procedures. We now have detailed records of our fulfillment output, by line, by station, and by individual.
2024 Holiday Performance Metrics
Orders shipped in November and December experienced a year-over-year growth of 16% compared to last year.
Units shipped in November and December experienced a year-over-year growth of 36% compared to last year.
From Black Friday through Cyber Monday, there was a 29% year-over-year increase in the number of orders shipped.
Our Transportation team was in frequent communication with our carriers to ensure they met their agreed-upon pick-ups and capacity commitments. There were a few issues with the performance of carrier pick-ups during this period. We did notice some transportation capacity constraints in the Southern California region as a whole and we’ve already layered this into our 2025 planning.
Order fulfillment SLAs for November and December achieved 99.23%. This average was impacted by a temporary decrease from Black Friday to the following Wednesday, when some brands had significantly higher volume than their forecasts.
In the weeks leading up to and following Black Friday, there was an uptick in rush receipts. Despite this, we managed to process these receipts swiftly without any significant delays.
Our Quality Team worked overtime this year to match order volume. They work on a percentage basis, so when order volume increases, so does their volume of quality checks. They matched the growth mentioned above to ensure premium quality assurance across all accounts.