The nation's largest cooperative food wholesaler to independently owned supermarkets, serving over 3,800 locations in 35 states from 11 full-line wholesale divisions, AWG will work with RangeMe to scale its retail buying efforts for natural, specialty and organic, general merchandise, and health and beauty products for all of its members.
RangeMe - which has also struck deals with Petco, Sprouts, Sam’s Club Regional, Jet.Com, Lucky Vitamin, Winn Dixie, and Bi Lo, among others - offers retail buyers, who are currently inundated with approaches from suppliers via online forms, email, social media, phone calls, and face-to-face contacts at trade shows and other events, a more efficient way to manage inbound approaches and compare what suppliers have to offer.
It also alerts them to new products from smaller, organic and specialty suppliers that might otherwise have slipped under the radar.
The product and supplier information on RangeMe – which now represents 65,000+ suppliers and 210,000 active products in the US (where it launched in September 2015) - is presented in a consistent format and allows buyers to rapidly find and compare new products and suppliers, said AWG executive director, VMC division, Greg Oldright.
"Consumers are seeking and demanding an ever-expanding selection of specialty, organic, local and diverse and [an] innovative array of products.”
Anna Mancini, AWG’s VP, VMC Division, added: "By implementing the RangeMe platform, our category team can quickly locate and identify products that our members want, like organic items, baby, beauty products or locally relevant items or brands. It saves us time and money, which is passed on to our members."