The pandemic has been just one of the challenges faced by Winc CEO Peter Kelly.

 

When Winc in Australia appointed former Coca-Cola Amatil executive Peter Kelly (pictured) as the new CEO in March 2020, the national workplace products reseller was facing a number of challenges.

 

After 20 months in the job, Kelly spoke to OPI’s Heike Dieckmann about the progress made, the obstacles that have been overcome and his strategic vision for the future.

 

Here’s part of that interview:

 

Peter Kelly: I have to tip my hat to our suppliers. Back in 2018-2019, Winc’s relationship with vendors was strained, to put it mildly. We had to find a better way. So we invested our time in an initiative called Winc Connect and began working with our suppliers in the same style we’re trying to work with our own employees: highly collaboratively and transparently.

 

We recently launched a supply and operations planning programme. It’s a fully integrated, end-to-end forecasting, supply chain and capacity planning tool. As part of this, we give our suppliers 13-week forward forecasts. The biggest vendors have weekly collaborative meetings on supply chain planning and I meet with the CEOs personally to ensure we are aligned.

 

It’s been fantastic for us and we have filled our supply chain planning team with excellent talent from within Winc and outside. They really know what they’re doing.

 

Suppliers like that we’re open and sharing with them all of our scorecards on their, our, and our customers’ performance. In return, they’re giving us their loyalty and cooperation. The fact we have had this in place has certainly protected us from the worst of the supply chain crisis to date.

 

To access the full interview with Peter Kelly, you can subscribe to OPI here https://www.opi.net/magazines/archive/2022/january-february-2022/top-picks-january-february-2022/big-interview-onwards-and-upwards-down-under/