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Navigating Retail’s New Era of Risk

In the post-Covid era, retailers who rethink their supply chains will lower their exposure to risk and unlock profound competitive advantage, argues Doug Stephens.
Ever Given blocking the Suez Canal. Ariel shot
When the megaship Ever Given blocked the Suez Canal last year, it offered a stark lesson in what’s wrong with retail’s global supply chains. (Getty Images)
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If a single image has come to define the failure of global supply chains amid the Covid-19 crisis it’s that of the Ever Given — one of the world’s largest container ships — stuck in a diagonal death grip inside the Suez Canal, heavy with more than twenty thousand units of cargo destined for Western retailers. For almost a week, the ship jammed up worldwide shipping, halting nearly $10 billion in trade a day, before eventually being freed.

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