Home Depot’s Vendor Routing Guide
A little bit of history
Routing guides first surfaced when retail chains began to broaden their geographic reach through more locations, and simultaneously increased the variety of products they offered within their stores. This increase of stores and vendors created a logistical challenge as product needed to be efficiently routed to various locations but was shipped, labeled, and packed in an infinite variety of ways. Think Walmart.
Imagine how many different vendors they must coordinate with to stock the shelves of a single store. Then imagine adding hundreds, then thousands, of stores. It is easy to realize that product needs to be delivered to stores and distribution centers in a uniform manner – packaged, labeled, and shipped the same – no matter who the vendor is.
To achieve this uniformity, retailers created a document for vendors that details how they want product to arrive. And the routing guide was born.