If you're a long time reader of Modern, you may recognize this month's cover man—Roy Drilon, senior vice president of distribution at Elizabeth Arden. This is actually his second time on the cover, the first in April 1997.

He was at Elizabeth Arden's DC in Roanoke, Va. then too. But that's about all that has stayed the same, both there and in retail distribution in general.

When we did the original story, Drilon, as director of logistics, had just upgraded the DC, spending $3 million. This time around, $5 million was spent on materials handling and another $6.5 million on an expansion. What was 265,000 square feet is now 400,000 square feet.

Before its first upgrade, the Roanoke DC was having a horrible time getting product out the door. It was a push operation that was converted to a pull environment. "We went from being what was once a chaotic operation," says Drilon, "into becoming the lowest-cost provider."

But that was then. This is now in retail distribution.

As our story on page 18 explains, the DC used to ship to 7,000 retail stores and regional warehouses. Today, that number is 35,000.

When asked what was the biggest change in the DC between the two systems, Drilon had this to say: "We went from filling bulk resupply orders to filling store replenishment orders generated by point-of-sale data managed by electronic data interchange. What were previously once a month orders became an order almost every other day." Sounds like a microcosm of retail distribution in general.

That shift required still more changes, especially on the information side. So the IT system in Roanoke received particular attention to make order processing more efficient. Another familiar refrain.

In time, Drilon became vice president of operations with responsibility for both manufacturing and distribution. In that position, he made a big push to better manage distribution by rearranging priorities at the cosmetics factory in Roanoke. That improved customer service levels, flow rates and order turnaround times on the distribution side.

Along the way, Elizabeth Arden was purchased by French Fragrances Inc., the retail environment continued to shift, and the clock started ticking on the system featured this month.

In the end, the changing requirements and expectations of retailers have driven many of the changes at Elizabeth Arden's DC and those of other suppliers. And that's not going to stop. Just ask anyone implementing RFID for Wal-Mart.

But there has also been a fundamental change in how suppliers and retailers interact that Drilon encapsulates so well. "Basically, retailers have shifted risk from themselves to their suppliers," he says. And that is the short version of why and how retail distribution has changed so much in the past decade.