Waterstones hit by ‘nightmare’ stock issues after warehouse system upgrade

theguardian.com:

High street bookshop chain Waterstones has said it is working hard to shift a backlog of unfulfilled orders after a problem with warehouse technical systems led to stock shortages.

The retailer, which has more than 300 stores across the UK, upgraded to a new system called Blue Yonder several weeks ago, but it has been struggling to get stock out to shops and fulfil customer orders.

A spokesperson from the chain said: “Waterstones last month upgraded the system that manages stock distribution from our warehouse to Blue Yonder technology. This is now operational, with stock flowing to our bookshops and customers. Over the implementation period, however, a backlog of orders was created which we are now processing as quickly as we can.”

The Waterstones representative went on to apologise for “the unusual slowness”, and said the chain expects to have caught up with the backlog by the end of August. “By September we anticipate beginning to benefit from the much more sophisticated platform now at our disposal.”

Sam Missingham, publishing commentator and founder of The Empowered Author book marketing service raised the issue on Twitter and was inundated with replies from frustrated staff, authors and customers.

One Waterstones bookseller wrote, “We haven’t had deliveries for over a month because there’s an overhaul of our system, but something has gone wrong and we are having to order emergency stock directly from the publishers. Glasgow ran out of books.”

Another said, “Our systems for deliveries and order processing were super-outdated. They were upgrading them and something has gone wrong, so orders are not matching up properly on the system and as a result we haven’t been able to get any books whether they’re stock or for