Retail and eCommerce highlights this week include: UK’s leaders in frozen food company Iceland have partnered with product discovery platform, RangeMe, to source innovative product at scale and speed. As B2B ecommerce grows, BigCommerce acquires quoting solution Quote Ninja to make online selling easy for B2B merchants. Northwest Arkansas-based clothing brand LIVSN is the latest retailer to minimise their complex manual processes with Brightpearl’s more sustainable Retail Operating System. Mediaocean’s new offering combines Flashtalking and 4C technology to accelerate speed to market for brands and improve social advertising performance. Extending Mirakl’s online marketplace category leadership, 2021 was marked with 80 new customers, 66 enterprise marketplace launches and $555 million series E funding. Mirakl exceeded $100 Million in annual recurring revenue in 2021.
Iceland joining forces with RangeMe to streamline search for innovative suppliers
Iceland and The Food Warehouse have joined forces with global product discovery platform, RangeMe, to enhance the way they uncover and source new products.
RangeMe offers a single place for buyers to efficiently discover opportunities from suppliers around the world. By utilising the platform, Iceland and The Food Warehouse have access to more than 800,000 products from over 200,000 suppliers. This will enable their team of buyers across frozen, chilled and grocery, to source the most innovative emerging products.
In a competitive retail space, Iceland aims to maximise the potential of RangeMe to source trend-led and innovative products at scale, and speed. The supermarket’s team of buyers will maximise RangeMe’s software to discover brands and products faster, connect with suppliers, request samples, and discuss the next steps.
RangeMe was first launched in 2014. It is used by more than 15,000 retail buyers in the UK, Benelux region, North America, and Asia Pacific. RangeMe is the brainchild of founder and CEO, Nicky Jackson, who married a deep desire to bring suppliers and retailers together easily and efficiently, to ensure the most extraordinary products would not only make it to store shelves, but also into the hands of eager consumers.
BigCommerce buys Quote Ninja, B2B eCommerce platform
BigCommerce has bought Quote Ninja, an enterprise software solution provider and a BigCommerce partner. The company provides business-to-business (B2B) eCommerce capabilities for merchants of all sizes. Quote Ninja is a quoting solution. BigCommerce says it’s acquisition furthers its ability to deliver eCommerce functionality to B2B merchants.
According to Forrester, U.S. B2B eCommerce transactions are expected to reach $1.8 trillion by 2023. This would account for 17% of all B2B sales in the country. A 2021 BigCommerce/Profitwell market research study found quoting is one of the most important features for conducting online B2B commerce, whether the business is moving online for the first time or processing millions of dollars in GMV.
B2B Ninja is available to any BigCommerce merchant on any plan to enhance the customer experience and easily manage quotes online. It is ideal for merchants who don’t need all the functionality of B2B Edition but are looking for next-level quoting functionality, or for complex use cases that require extended quoting capabilities.
BigCommerce will continue to offer B2B Edition, an advanced suite of B2B functionalities through the exclusive partner integration of BundleB2B with BigCommerce Enterprise.
Activewear brand LIVSN selects Brightpearl’s Retail Operating System
LIVSN has selected Brightpearl Retail Operating System for its intuitive, out-of-the-box features. Launched in 2018, LIVSN creates versatile, well-made clothing for ‘people who value experiences more than stuff’. Supported by a Shopify-website, the DTC and wholesale brand have built an online following and support for new products.
The business has access to an Automation Engine that will scratch tedious manual tasks off the to-do list. it will eliminate human errors and save the team hundreds of hours. Spreadsheets previously used to fill gaps can now be canned. The company now has a simplified central hub that acts as a single source of truth.
Following a 120-day, expert-led implementation, the company has also gained accurate demand forecasting, advanced accounting, warehouse management. The platform provides real-time insight into its orders, financials and inventory. The LIVSN team can make smarter, informed projections and more accurately manage products across its multiple sales channels.
Unlike many platforms, Brightpearl offers API access and the best Plug & Play integrations. As a result, brands like LIVSN can link seamlessly with third-party apps such as its eCommerce platform Shopify. In addition to marketing automation platform Mailchimp and fulfilment provider Shipstation.
Mediaocean launches new creative solutions for social media personalisation
Mediaocean, the mission-critical platform for omnichannel advertising, has announced new creative solutions for paid social media. The new solution is expected to accelerate and improve both the scale of creative production and overall campaign performance.
Following the acquisition of Flashtalking in 2021, Mediaocean has combined the functionality of Scope by 4C and Flashtalking’s best-in-class solutions for creative automation and reporting. The new solutions provide brands and agencies with a flexible set of tools for every step of a social media campaign.
This expansion of Mediaocean’s platform includes omnichannel scaled creative production, automated ad personalisation, cross-platform social media campaign management. In addition to centralised reporting, and optimisation. This combination of functionality contributes to streamlining workflow and amplifying performance. With social media ad spend expected to reach $177 billion by the end of the year, activating across the wide network of social media platforms and channels has been a long-standing challenge for brands and agencies.
Mediaocean’s new scaled creative production allows automated variations through composite design and bulk templates. This creates a single workflow to build across platforms. Users can easily and rapidly produce thousands of personalized social media ads in minutes through the platform’s centralised digital asset library. New dynamic templates automate in-market content and optimize a brand’s creativity to each social media platform’s specifications and algorithms.
Mirakl exceeds $100 Million in annual recurring revenue in 2021
Mirakl, an advanced enterprise marketplace SaaS platform has reached over $100 million in annual recurring revenue. The company reported more than $4.3 billion transacted on Mirakl-powered Marketplaces in 2021. Mirakl also closed $555 million in series E funding led by Silver Lake, placing the company’s valuation over $3.5 billion. This represents a 230% increase in one year. The success is evidence of the rapid growth of the marketplace category that Mirakl created and definitively leads. The company had a record number of brands joining its customer roster. The company also launched marketplaces including Macy’s, Bloomingdale’s, CMA CGM, Decathlon, and UNFI.
The great eCommerce acceleration has permanently changed buyer expectations. Today, two-thirds of consumers prefer online marketplaces over conventional eCommerce sites. To deliver on these fast-evolving expectations, companies’ partner with Mirakl to build and scale their own online marketplaces. In 2021, 80 new customers signed with Mirakl, including numerous Global 2000 companies, and 66 new marketplaces were launched.
