In 2024, leading furniture retailer Nick Scali was forced to issue a profit warning and seek Federal Court orders when its freight forwarder collapsed - leaving hundreds of containers stranded.

It faced a significant threat, but not a unique one.

For retailers selling bulky, imported goods, container delays, detention charges, and distribution centre (DC) chaos are growing risks with a contagion effect that quickly spills into last-mile delivery performance and customer trust.

At Shippit, we work with retailers shipping big and bulky goods - like Freedom Furniture and Harvey Norman - where upstream logistics decisions carry far more risk than in other retail categories.

Today, retailers - irrespective of their freight profile - are racing to offer faster delivery because they know it drives sales. That was true during peak 2025, when retailers who offered fast delivery grew 3.5-4% faster than the market, and it'll be true in 2026.

For big and bulky retailers, faster delivery is a double-edged sword. It drives sales, but it can also amplify costs, operational risk, and customer fallout when supply chains break down.

That’s the reality of big and bulky freight: you can't execute a great last-mile experience if your first and middle mile is slow, opaque or volatile - and you certainly can’t do it profitably.

That’s why, in this week’s Delivered, we spoke to Conor Hagan, CEO of Explorate, an Australian-based supply chain company that combines technology, data and logistics expertise to help businesses like Nick Scali reduce upstream risk while gaining better control over costs, timelines, and delivery outcomes.

TL;DR

• Speed at checkout means nothing without visibility, predictability and efficiency from factory to port
• Big and bulky retailers face outsized costs when containers arrive late or all at once; their reliance on spreadsheets over integrated systems creates fragile rather than credible delivery promises
• Better visibility, stronger integration and scenario planning is key for big and bulky retailers in 2026

How Explorate helped Nick Scali turn a near-crisis into a competitive edge

Before talking about delivery speed, let's talk about the cost of unpredictability.

“If you get a glut of containers, it can be debilitating," says Conor.

Imagine the scenario. Your warehouse is resourced for six containers per day. Then 12 arrive at once because vessels were delayed, then released simultaneously. Your DC becomes overwhelmed. Last-mile deliveries are delayed. Customers get angry.

The immediate cost is detention and demurrage charges - a fee imposed when a container isn’t offloaded or returned within an allotted time. But that's just the visible cost. Further margin erosion can include:

• Emergency staffing to handle container backlogs
• Rushed warehouse operations that increase damage rates
• Cancelled customer orders when delivery dates slip
• Lost future sales from customers who never return

It was to avoid incidents like this - where upstream delays create downstream chaos - that Nick Scali began working with Explorate, focusing on eliminating unpredictability, generating better visibility and pursuing faster delivery.

“We see this happening quite a lot when there is supply chain disruption," Conor explains.

That “key person risk" is the status quo for most furniture retailers: spreadsheets, email chains, and relationships with freight forwarders who may or may not still be in business next year.

Through Explorate, Nick Scali replaced previously fragmented, manual, and relationship-based processes with a connected supply chain platform that tracks containers, aligns purchase orders with shipments, and manages customs documentation.

This gave Nick Scali clear oversight and allowed the business to deal directly with shipping lines instead of relying on a freight forwarder, giving it greater control over international shipping and day-to-day operations.

With scenario planning, diverse freight options, and real-time data integration, Nick Scali was also able to reduce the risk and contagion of future incidents, and build a more predictable foundation for faster, smarter delivery.

The traditional spreadsheet isn’t fit for purpose

There’s a similar pattern in many big and bulky retail operations.

“Most retailers manage their international freight with one system or spreadsheet, warehouse operations with another, and last-mile delivery with a third platform," Conor observes. “The complexity of that can become quite large."

So what does the traditional disconnection look like in practice? And what is a modern alternative?

Before (the manual way):

• Freight forwarder sends spreadsheet or email with container ETAs
• Warehouse manager manually updates systems
• Information gaps form between what's on the water and what's “ready to ship"
• Last-mile team sees “awaiting stock" but has no visibility on whether container is still at the origin, on the water, stuck in customs, or sitting at the wharf
• When customers call asking about their order, nobody can give an informed answer

This approach works, but only until disruption hits. And disruption is today’s new normal.

It’s where big and bulky retailers bleed margin. Because when you can only fit a handful of pieces of furniture in a container (compared to thousands of apparel items), every delay and miscommunication is magnified.

“With furniture importers, the big driver is cost," Conor explains. “They can only fit three, four, five, 10 things inside a container. That cascades down even into pallets. You can't fit as much of their product inside their international shipping."

And because big purchases are high-value, one-off decisions - someone is designing a room around that sofa or waiting for a bed for their new apartment - customers are far less forgiving when delivery promises break.

After (the integrated way):

Modern retailers are systematising what once lived in someone's head:

• Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) as the source of truth for purchase orders and payments
• Transport Management System (TMS) to track physical goods from origin to port, with real-time visibility from vessel transponders, port systems, and satellites
• A Warehouse Management System (WMS) receives predictive ETAs, and plans dock schedules
• Last-mile delivery software gets accurate “ready to ship" data, not “awaiting stock"
• A freight technology platform to unify data from each source in a connected view

“That shared layer of documentation, that shared layer of information,” Conor continues. “At the core of it all is trust - knowing where shipments are at any one time."

The transformation isn't just operational efficiency and supply chain performance, it's about credible delivery promises.

Fast delivery doesn’t matter if there’s no customer trust

The uncomfortable truth for retailers investing in fast delivery is that speed doesn't matter if customers don't trust your promise.

Conor knows this scenario only too well. When he bought a sofa, the retailer quoted an eight-week lead time. At week four, he was informed it would actually be 10 weeks. “I'm sitting on the floor of my house, so it becomes more of an issue," Conor continues.

For furniture purchases, customers don't need same-day speed. But they do expect speed relative to the item they’ve purchased - and they need predictability.

Customers will accept a 12-week lead time if you're honest and visible. They can plan around that. However, they won't accept an eight-week promise that blows out because container tracking is a spreadsheet or email thread.

Upstream unpredictability creates downstream delivery failures that destroy customer trust and future sales. When two in three Australians won’t return to a retailer after a poor delivery experience, the margin for error is zero.

That’s why fast delivery capability means nothing without upstream visibility.

You can offer fast delivery all you want, but if customers can't trust your delivery dates at checkout because you don't know when inventory will arrive, your conversion rate suffers.

Accurate delivery estimates - backed by proactive tracking - are direct drivers of revenue.

The importance of scenario planning

The retailers who consistently deliver on their promises don't just react to disruption, they plan for it. “Stress test the different scenarios that could happen before they happen," Conor advises.

The questions logistics leaders should be asking:

• If we normally receive six containers per day, what happens if we get 12?
• If we get zero containers for a week?
• If our primary freight forwarder fails?

These aren't hypothetical scenarios. When Nick Scali’s freight forwarder collapsed, having legal preparation and backup systems made the difference between a manageable and a catastrophic disruption.

How to build delivery promises you can keep

Keeping delivery promises starts with end-to-end visibility and control across every stage of the fulfilment journey. That means:

• Real-time container tracking across multiple data sources (satellites, vessel transponders, port systems)
• Integrated systems that connect international freight, warehouse operations, and last-mile delivery
• Predictive ETAs that let warehouse teams plan dock schedules
• Scenario planning for container gluts or delays

The retailers who win in 2026 won't be those with just the quickest delivery, but those who have optimised their fulfilment - whether that’s picking and packing items in a warehouse, or importing a sofa from Asia.

Because in a world where fast delivery drives sales, broken delivery promises destroy them. So logistics leaders should be using the weeks ahead as an audit.

• Can you tell customers with confidence when their furniture will arrive, with an actual date, not “in 8-12 weeks"?
• When a customer asks about their order, can your team see where the container actually is?
• Do you have scenario plans for what happens when 12 or zero containers arrive instead of six?
• If your primary freight forwarder failed tomorrow, could you access your containers?

If you answered “no" to any of these, your fast delivery promise is sitting on a foundation of risk. Better visibility, stronger integration and scenario planning is essential.

When inventory is predictable the last mile becomes a competitive advantage. Shippit helps big and bulky retailers convert upstream certainty into delivery promises that customers believe; and fast, smart, reliable delivery experiences they’ll return for.