Eqos Hosts Retail Leaders and Executives to Discuss Private Label Global Sourcing Trends, Challenges and Opportunities
- Speed-to-market, Collaboration and Supply Chain Control Among Key Panel Topics -
Burlington, Mass. - Jan 31, 2008 - During this year's National Retail Federation (NRF) 97th Annual Convention & Expo, Eqos, provider of PLM, global sourcing, and supplier management solutions, hosted an executive event for retail sourcing and IT business leaders to discuss strategies for scaling private label merchandise programs. AMR Research retail director, Mike Griswold, hosted an executive panel that included Kurt Salmon Associates (KSA) principal David Bassuk and former Liz Claiborne VP of sourcing and global manufacturing, Gary Ross.
AMR Research's Mr. Griswold shared a demand-driven model for retailers and sparked discussion with executives including:
- KSA's Bassuk shared insights into how increased speed can deliver better product assortments with quantifiable results - each week of improved speed to market equates to twenty-five basis points of margin improvement. This means that every eight weeks of cycle time reduction is worth two points on the bottom line. Mr. Bassuk noted that leading retailers and suppliers are achieving these benefits using a variety of techniques.
- Mr. Ross added, "Speed will separate the winners from the losers. In order for retailers to make more of what people want when they want it, retailers need to invest in processes and systems to transform today's linear activities and independent tasks into continuous processes and consolidate multiple data stores across suppliers and partners into a ‘single version of the truth'."
Other discussions were centered on the private label sourcing 'wave' that is rapidly expanding into the U.S. market. For example, the world's third largest retailer, UK- based Tesco, currently earns more than half its revenues from its 'own brand' products, a substantially greater proportion than the top retailers. Eqos recently announced that Tesco's international sourcing group is leveraging the company's technology to drive international sourcing for private label by adopting a standard operating model across its businesses and sourcing offices.
"Eqos was pleased to have the opportunity to bring industry leaders and executives to discuss key issues affecting today's retail leaders," said Jane Biddle, Eqos chief marketing officer and vice president U.S. operations. "Retailers are looking for ways to more effectively compete in a global economy with programs that offer tremendous profit potential, such as private label merchandising. And they're looking to thought and technology leaders to support the more difficult challenges they face, such as managing risk, enabling supplier collaboration, and ensuring ongoing supplier performance."
About Eqos
Eqos is a provider of PLM, global sourcing, and supplier management solutions for the retail supply chain. Eqos on-demand software enables retailers to work collaboratively with trading partners to enhance product innovation, improve supplier performance, accelerate time-to-market, and ensure product quality and factory compliance. By layering over existing applications, Eqos facilitates cross-enterprise, streamlined collaborative processes between retailers, sourcing offices, agents, factories, suppliers, and third party service providers. The definitive solution for multi-category retail segments, including apparel, grocery and general merchandise segments, Eqos supports millions of transactions daily for 15,000 users in 55 countries, managing more than $50 billion in inventory for the world's largest, most recognized global retailers. Customers include Best Buy, Edcon, H-E-B, Sainsbury's and Tesco. Founded in 1997, the company has offices in Boston, London and Hong Kong. More information can be found at www.eqos.com.
