Wilko Distribution Centres

News & Blog

Explore industry insights, merchandising tips, installation practices, project management, trends, regulations, company news and success stories.

18 November 2021

Summary

With current labour challenges across the sector, Wilko Retail Ltd were facing a team member short fall on the run up to peak Christmas demand in their two distribution centres at Worksop in Nottinghamshire and Magor in Newport.

Our merchandising team identified an opportunity to work collaboratively with Wilko to help support their requirements at a time when merchandising in-store is traditionally quieter, to reduce customer disruption during a key sales period.

Challenges

Distribution centres have lots of new Health and Safety challenges, such as lorry routes and forklift truck movements that the teams were not used to working with.

The team received extensive training beforehand and they were then able to support in a number of roles including picking stock, loading store deliveries, offloading containers and organising recycling and salvage.

Results

The Bluestones One merchandising team were able to support both distribution centres with up to 60 people, around the clock, over a 7-week period to help fulfil their peak demand.

This will now become a successful seasonal collaboration and opportunity for both businesses going forward.

Employee of the Month for April

We’re delighted to announce that April’s Employee of the Month has been awarded to Ian Hunt.

Meet Garry Leck: Lead Resource Co-ordinator

Tell us about your role at Bluestones OneI am the Lead Resource Coordinator and have been with Bluestones One for almost three years now. I started out in the field as a Merchandiser, then moved up to Team Leader before I got offered a permanent role within the office. I spend most of my time based in our North East office where we run a small team responsible for allocating the work to the field staff. On a day to day basis, we allocate the work and resources needed for each job site. How would you normally start your day at work?The start of each day is different and led by what has happened the previous night. The main priority is to resolve any day to day challenges or additional requests generated by the night teams. Once resolved we can move onto the planning of the following days and weeks. What does a typical day at work look like for you?A typical day is mainly dealing with enquiries generated on-site whilst trying to organise the following weeks. If we can get everyone into a job they like with people they enjoy working with, our job is made so much easier.