How Being Proactive Got NEST New York’s Supply Chain Through the Pandemic and Left Them Better Off Today

“Jaguar freight has allowed us to be proactive during the supply chain pile-up, advising us when to hold the course and where to pivot to get goods delivered in a timely and cost-efficient manner,” Troy Puccia, CFO at NEST New York.

Stylish fragrance purveyor NEST New York faced the same supply chain disruption and uncertainty as every other company in the early spring of 2020. However, their decisive response and support from partners like Jaguar Freight resulted in less negative impact than most. And today, with the worst of the pandemic (hopefully) in the past, their logistics operation is stronger for it – and now an even more prominent consideration in strategic decision making at the company.

Overcoming Disruption

From the beginning of the pandemic, NEST’s supply chain problems were familiar to most shippers, and in many ways, still are. The chain of events at the time, not surprisingly, immediately strangled supply chains everywhere on several fronts, including; tight capacity, lack of equipment, and historically high rates.

Alexandra Kimmel, Senior Manager of Operations, credits a close working relationship with Nest’s freight forwarding partner, Jaguar Freight as a primary reason they’ve successfully worked through the period.

“When the problems started to surface last year, we immediately started communicating much more closely with the Jaguar team. Having them at our side to help highlight alternative delivery options that allowed us flexibility with schedules and delivery options was crucial in getting us past some tough times. They elevated their customer service and level of communication to help us work through what we needed in those early moments.”

Building and Executing on a Strategy

In coordination with Jaguar, NEST also worked with all of their material suppliers to build more lead-time into shipping schedules and enable better load coordination. “Previously, bookings were simply made asap with no notice, but now we are working up to four weeks out. Our biggest suppliers even provide container schedules directly to Jaguar, so their team can start sourcing, and we never did that before,” adds Kimmel.

NEST and Jaguar Freight’s creative approach and ‘out of the box’ thinking wasn’t a one-time thing; it’s a now part of the day-in-day-out approach. A more recent example of this is the problems at the port and railroads in the Pacific NW that started in April 2021. With rail containers backed up for 2+ months in some cases, fast decision-making got NEST’s product on the move to its Midwest U.S. destination on time by way of OTR truck.

And, relying on Jaguar’s CyberTrax platform daily, NEST maintains full visibiity into its supply chain so all stakeholders at the company can always know where its product is on the SKU level. This knowledge keeps all the functional departments within NEST and all their supplier/ partners up-to-date with real-time supply chain data.

Having access to real-time information and understanding service and costs options is another important way that NEST is able to make better supply chain decisions with Jaguar’s technology. In a year of extremes, the need for routing flexibility is commonplace, such as the occasional need for faster but more expensive air cargo for transport. All shippers know that air is rarely the ideal solution from a cost perspective, but sometimes it’s the only viable option to meet delivery requirements.

The reality for all companies is some additional costs have been necessary to manage through the pandemic. Together, NEST and Jaguar have adapted when and where it makes sense. For example, premium fees for ocean shipping have been unavoidable at times, but the detailed cost reporting Jaguar provides makes it easier to set and manage expectations with stakeholders within the company.

“The level of attention to detail is great, and we can trust Jaguar Freight to advocate for us when it comes to dealing with carriers and getting our product delivered on time,” concludes Puccia. “And, now logistics has a seat at the table when it comes to planning and execution for our company. Other parts of the business need to know what’s going on in the supply chain, and now we’re part of discussions when it comes to future projects.”