American Eagle’s logistics arm is stepping up its delivery and fulfillment network with the new partnership (Photo: Shutterstock)
“As we continue to expand the Quiet Platforms business, we are excited to partner with Pitney Bowes, which will enable faster delivery services and logistics capabilities to get orders into the hands of customers quicker and more efficiently,” said Brent Beabout, president of Quiet Platforms. “Offering in-network retailers and brands access to our expansive logistics capabilities enables them to focus more closely on what they do best, creating great products and memorable customer experiences.”
But the platform, which American Eagle describes as a “plug-and-play” service, is greater than the sum of its parts. It takes the logistics and transportation assets of all of its member companies and pools them together for use by any retailer in the network.
That means, for example, that Steve Madden could be mixing its own warehouses with trucks from Kohl’s and fulfillment centers from Peloton, all facilitated through a single network.
Shekar Natarajan, executive vice president and chief supply chain officer for American Eagle parent company AEO, described his vision of an open-sharing logistics network to Fast Company in May: “So many retailers have tried to build their own vertically integrated supply chains, but building more assets and buying more resources is not the answer to achieving hyper-scale efficiencies,” he said. “Sharing is.”
Are logistics capacity constraints here to stay?
Natarajan pointed to a few other companies that have thrived using a similar model. Uber, for example, does not own any of its vehicles, and Airbnb doesn’t own a single hotel room, he said. Quiet Platforms does the same thing, but with the logistics network instead, allowing it to scale up operations as it adds new retail partners.
Adding a dedicated carrier partner like Pitney Bowes to the equation, then, is just the cherry on top. Gregg Zegras, EVP and president of Pitney Bowes Global E-commerce, sang the praises of the partnership in a press release Tuesday.
The new service Zegras mentioned, Designed Delivery, has potential to fit well with Quiet Platforms. The offering is purpose-built for e-commerce shipments, using consulting services and data-driven insights to build configurable delivery networks for customers nationwide. That could help Quiet Platforms manage the various needs of its different customers.
