Salsify, the Commerce Experience Management (CommerceXM) platform empowering brand manufacturers, distributors, and retailers to win on the digital shelf, and Trace One, a platform to help retailers and brands get innovative, compliant, and sustainable products to market faster, announced UNFI Brands+ has partnered with them to prepare more than 5000 grocery products for success on the digital shelf.
UNFI Brands+ portfolio offers more than 5000 food and non-food items across 250 categories from conventional value to NBE and premium USDA Organic. With over $1B of annual sales, these products can be found at many independent and big-box retailers across the United States and International regions.
Over the past year, online shopping for grocery products grew by more than 54.0% and now represents 12% of total US ecommerce sales and 7.4% of all grocery sales.
This has forced brands to increase the volume and quality of the information provided to retailers to win on the digital shelf. UNFI Brands+ recognized this need and turned to Trace One and Salsify to create a singular, end-to-end PIM workflow.
To fully digitize their business, UNFI Brands+ needed specification data from Trace One which is used to collaborate with their manufacturers to ensure products are compliant, have the required transparency, and to drive artwork production, integrated with Salsify’s Product Experience Management Platform (ProductXM) so that product attributes could be seamlessly sent to their customers via multi-channel syndication.
The integration covers new item set-up and changes to the specifications over the lifetime of the products. This meant digital data was aligned to physical packaging as updates occurred.
Trace One worked with Salsify and UNFI Brands+ teams to provide validated data suitable for the artwork development process and in the structured format required by GS1 Standards and the GDSN. Trace One’s glossary-driven solution and Salsify’s dynamic data import capabilities provided the technical architecture for success.
With Trace One and Salsify, UNFI Brands+ lowered Internal effort allowing team members to focus on developing innovative products rather than the data management. They also reduced the time elapsed between product development being completed and making those products available on retailer customers eCommerce sites, increasing sales volumes and customer satisfaction.
“We want to make sure today’s digital-first consumer has the information they need to make confident food decisions for themselves and their family,” said Adam Sinley, Director, Product Development & Quality Assurance, UNFI Brands+. “Our investment in Trace One and Salsify help us achieve that by assuring data integrity and standardized formatting across our digital channels.”
Trace One’s solution reduces exposure to risk while maintaining a highly innovative product development culture,” said Don Low, Solution Consultant, Trace One. “The consistency between physical packaging and digitally available information beyond the label increases final consumer confidence during the buying process, leading to higher sales volumes.”
“Salsify’s ProductXM platform helps UNFI Brands+ bring together the core elements they need to manage, syndicate, and optimize product content across their entire commerce ecosystem — all within one unified platform,” said Peter Crosby, VP Corporate Marketing, Salsify. “In partnering with Trace One to import approved specification data through standardized integration, we were able to help get new products and product updates to the digital shelf faster.”
