Examples are using different traffic modes in different seasons or product life cycles, using air transport for solving occasional problems, and adapting consignment sizes and departure frequencies to the transport offer.
That system allows 125 approved dealers, mostly jewelry manufacturers, to buy shoe-box size consignments of uncut diamonds 10 times a year from the company's stockpile in London.
Geoff Moulton, Anglia Freight's managing director, says: "Joining Palletline transformed our business, giving us the ability to offer our customers total flexibility irrespective of the size of the consignment, or the location of the consignment".
Interestingly, consignments were of medium size (averaging about 3 kg) and showed little fluctuation.
He'd used code words to indicate the size and frequency of consignments packed into his fleet of articulated lorries transporting drugs across Europe.
Carolyn Thompson has stepped into the void with ResellXL, an online consignment shop specializing in professional and upscale attire size 14 and up.
My own bargain was hiding in the basement of a bridal consignment shop and could be ordered in my size.
The seed of the idea was sowed when Thompson tried to off-load some of her own plus-size attire and could not find a consignment shop to accept it.
Is it on consignment from a collector?" He said costs vary based on the size of the gallery and how much art it has, and he noted that galleries do not necessarily insure for the full value of their holdings, on the theory that even in a disaster a percentage of their inventories may survive.
But Lily, who has looked like Cate Blanchett since she was fourteen and works at an auction house, is precisely the kind of person from whom consignment stores want to buy: her closet is lined with gently worn size fours that are fashion-forward but timeless.
Search the shelves of consignment stores or thrift stores and have the clothing altered to your size and style.
