In 1965, Ron Swenson began his career in the technology side of the retail business.  For the next 20 years he developed and installed technology systems for The May Company, Federated Department Stores, Marshall Field’s and various specialty retailers. 

In 1983, while still having responsibility for the technology group, Ron took over the entire supply chain organization for a specialty retail chain in the Chicago area.  He installed a WMS and managed a dedicated fleet of trucks that serviced the inbound and outbound operation.

In 1991 Ron moved to Leewards Arts & Crafts as Vice President of Supply Chain, with responsibility for all warehousing, as well as domestic and international transportation.  When Leewards was acquired by Michaels Stores in 1994, Ron was moved to Dallas to take over their entire domestic and international transportation operation.

While at Michaels, Ron designed and installed a Transportation Load Center to manage all Inbound and Outbound freight shipments.  He also set up an international transportation network as Michaels was moving to a heavy import operation to service their 650 stores.

After leaving Michaels in the fall of 1998, Ron continued to manage Michaels import operation for the next two holiday seasons.  Over the next five years Ron set-up or assisted in establishing a number of domestic and international transportation operations for manufacturing and retail companies, including a food manufacturing company in Cincinnati; retailers in Miami, Dallas and San Francisco; and a dot.com company in Dallas.

In the fall of 2002, Ron joined Garden Ridge Stores in Houston, TX.  His first task was to evaluate the domestic and international transportation operations and to improve the flow of product from the suppliers to the stores.  He was charged with quickly reducing transportation costs and bringing the freight-to-retail cost ratio to a more acceptable level – and to do so with no additional resources in terms of budget, personnel or IT support.

By April 2003, Ron had signed a contract for a new TMS and the first loads were tendered through the newly implemented system on June 1st.   The conversion to a web-based system went remarkably smoothly.  The vendor community embraced the system when they realized the ease with which loads are tendered and the consistency with which they are picked-up.  Transportation costs were reduced by $2.7 million on a spend of $15 million in the first 8 months.

With the success of the domestic transportation re-work, Ron tackled the makeover of Garden Ridge’s international supply chain network.  The changes included new contracts with ocean carriers, international freight consolidation services and customs brokerage services.  He also established a distribution center bypass program for products purchased in Asia and created SOP’s for each of the import functions.  Savings of $3.1 million were realized on a spend of $20 million. This was followed by a successful transition into US Customs CT_PAT program.

The next step was to take over the warehousing and internal distribution system.  Garden Ridged had installed Manhattan’s PKMS System and was struggling to make it work successfully in their environment.  Ron moved into the temporary role of General Manager in the spring of 2004.  After evaluating the flow of product through the warehouse, he changed several processes both on the receiving dock and the put away operation to increase the integrity of the warehouse inventory.  Through the series of changes, several days were taken out of the timeline in processing freight through the distribution center.

In August 2006, Ron left Garden Ridge to resume the Logistics Consulting business he had started in 1998.