Southeastern Grocers Uses RangeMe to Find Business-Ready Brands

Retailers like Southeastern Grocers are using a new premium service from product discovery platform RangeMe to find new items to bring to shoppers.

The RangeMe Verified service helps retail buyers more easily identify new products and manufacturers that are business-ready while giving those suppliers increased visibility on RangeMe’s online platform.

The two-year-old RangeMe platform showcases roughly 95,000 brands and has established retail partnerships with such retailers as Whole Foods Market, Target, Albertsons, Rite Aid and Sephora.

"To keep up with consumer demand and stay competitive in our industry's fastest-moving and most innovative category, we need the ability to onboard on-trend brands quickly and efficiently," says Sarah Groves, natural and organic foods buyer at Southeastern Grocers, which operates the Winn-Dixie, Bi-Lo and Harvey's chains. "RangeMe Verified [helps] streamline our category review process by making it easy to identify high-quality manufacturers that are ready to do business now."

“Being a RangeMe Verified brand has absolutely changed how retail buyers view and discover my products,” says Kenney Joyal, founder of Snowflakes Candy. “In a short time, I have been able to leverage the opportunities created on RangeMe to launch with three retailers, including Hy-Vee,” a 240-store supermarket chain based in Iowa.

“Getting a product on store shelves can be a challenging task for both the buyer and the supplier, but it doesn’t have to be,” says Nicky Jackson, RangeMe's founder and chief executive officer. “We are defining a new industry measure for product sourcing as well as creating increased opportunities for both suppliers and buyers.”

RangeMe collaborated with retailers to determine the necessary criteria suppliers should meet to give buyers confidence they are sourcing products that are ready for market. These criteria include high-quality images, insurance, barcodes and nutritional labels. The criteria are verified by the RangeMe team.

Jackson will be joined by some of her retailer clients next year during a keynote presentation at the Path to Purchase Summit, March 12-14 in Schaumburg, IL.