Danielle Southcott

Another great week here at Supply Chain Now! Have you listened to all the episodes? If not, you can check them all out here: On Monday, Scott and Greg welcomed Mark Messina & Simon Houghton of Geek+ to the podcast!     Scott and Greg also welcomed Mike Griswold from Gartner to SCN Live to talk about all the latest supply chain news.     On Tuesday, Scott and Greg welcome Allison Krache Giddens of Win-Tech, Inc. to the podcast in collaboration with AIAG’s Supply Chain Summit.     Michael Neme joined host Jamin Alvidrez on Logistics & Beyond on Tuesday as well to share his mindset and some of the keys to his passion: Supply Chain Consultative Sales.     On Wednesday, Scott and Greg welcomed Karin Bursa and Jamin Alvidrez for the Supply Chain Buzz, to discuss the top news in supply chain for the week.     Also, Scott and Greg discussed the top news in supply chain with special guest, Guy Courtin of 6 River Systems     On TECHquila Sunrise this Thursday, Greg White welcomed Kinaxis CEO John Sicard to the podcast.     And on Friday, we ended the week with Scott & Greg…

Inside the reverse logistics education gap and the economic blind spot keeping it invisible Special Guest Blog Post written by Deborah Dull   Tony Sciarrotta has been asking the same question at industry conferences for years. As the Senior Director of Circularity and Reverse Logistics at the National Retail Federation, he knows what answer he’s going to get. But he keeps asking anyway. “Anybody in here go to school for returns management, reverse logistics, circularity? Any degrees in those fields the room?” It’s rare that anyone raises their hand. “That’s what’s wrong with our industry,” Sciarrotta told me at NRF Rev this January, the first conference under NRF’s new reverse logistics banner. “We still need to fix it.”   The Numbers That Should Make Headlines Here’s what makes reverse logistics so fascinating: the scale is staggering, but the infrastructure to support it needs to be stronger. According to the National Retail Federation, American retailers processed approximately $890 billion in returns in 2024 which is roughly 17% of all retail sales – and it’s higher for ecommerce. But that number almost certainly understates reality. “We have a fragmented industry,” Sciarrotta explained. “Where are all those returns going? It has to be…