How to Make Your Supply Chain More Resilient to Disruptions in 2025

It’s not just you — global supply chains are getting more complicated. 

While the chaos of COVID-19 lockdowns has passed, the aftershocks continue to impact retailers worldwide. In fact, 56% of retailers around the worldexperienced significant disruptions during the pandemic, and 2025 has brought new waves of uncertainty—from geopolitical tensions to extreme weather events.

So, how can modern e-commerce businesses build resilience into their supply chains and stay competitive in an unpredictable world?

Let’s break it down.

Experts’ Tip: Resilience isn’t about avoiding disruption—it’s about adapting fast when disruption happens.

Read About Wayfindr’s Adaptable 4PL Logistics Services

Tips to sure up your supply chain

Considering the global nature of today’s supply chain, it’s likely your business will feel the effects of some disaster going on halfway around the world from time to time. While this can’t be helped, there are a few things you can do to avoid the brunt of the blow and mitigate risks for your business.

Move away from single-sourcing

Thanks to various bottlenecks during the past few years, many retailers have decided it is no longer safe to single-source their production or manufacture in only one location. 

Setting up tertiary manufacturing and logistics operations can be done for a multitude of reasons, including:

1. You want to set up operations closer to a foreign market to better serve those customers
2. Your primary supplier is unreliable or cannot keep up with your demand levels
3. Supply chain barriers are making it challenging to get shipments from your primary supplier

Any way that you can set up multiple operations closer to your largest markets will help you cut down on risks. Whether you can figure out how to set that up with in-house capabilities, or you choose to outsource that job to a 4PL, depends on you and your resources.

Nearshore parts of your supply chain

Nearshoring is booming—and for good reason. U.S. retailers, for example, have increasingly shifted production to Mexico and Central America, with automotive shipments from Mexico to the U.S. up 31% YoY.

What is nearshoring?
It’s the practice of moving manufacturing or logistics functions closer to your primary customer base—helping to reduce transit times, lower shipping costs, and mitigate risk from international disruption.

Is nearshoring right for you?
Consider it if:

• Your main markets are in the same region.
• You rely on high-value components (e.g. microchips)
• You serve time-sensitive industries (e.g. healthcare or electronics)

Related: How a 4PL Keeps You Moving Through Supply Chain Disruptions

Develop contingency plans

Don’t wait for disruption—plan for it. The most agile e-commerce businesses in 2025 are those that invest in contingency planning.

What does that look like?

A. Upgrade to real-time supply chain visibility

Use systems like WMS, TMS, or OMS that integrate across your entire logistics operation. These platforms help you:

• Track real-time inventory and shipments
• Predict demand surges or product shortages
• Coordinate across vendors with unified data

B. Keep your supply chain asset-light

In 2025, flexibility wins. Rather than owning warehouses or fleets, outsourcing allows you to scale up or down without costly infrastructure overhead. When disruption hits, you’re nimble.

Expert Insight: Asset-light supply chains are key to navigating events like port closures, regional strikes, or shipping delays.

Work with an experienced logistics partner

All of these solutions have one thing in common: they work best when employed with an experienced 4PL as your partner!

As a global fourth-party logistics provider (4PL), we at Wayfindr (formerly CBIP Logistics) have built our business to provide flexibility and supply chain resiliency for our e-commerce retailer clients. Our flexibility is built from the ground up; we do not own any assets. Instead, we work with a network of logistics providers. 

Each one of these warehouses, fulfillment providers, carriers, and shipping companies has all of their operations and data management systems integrated with our platform. When you log on to your Wayfindr client platform, you can see everything happening across your logistics chain, all in one place. 

What if something goes wrong? 

Even though we are a global company, we are not a huge one-size-fits-all logistics provider. We take a personalized approach to logistics, and that extends to when you are having a crisis as well. We will be there on the scene, forming and enacting a contingency plan that gets your business back on track in no time flat.

Ready to learn how to avoid supply chain disruptions in 2025? Give us a call — we’ll chat about your business, and different methods to ensure your logistics operations run smoothly in 2025.