A Taste of Success

In October 2002, at the National Association of Convenience Stores, Slim Mints Weight Loss Breath Mints nabbed 82 new customers. Ever since then, the little mint that could has reveled in its rising popularity, appearing on NBC's Today Show and popping up on CNNMoney.com. How has this little product positioned itself for such epic growth?

Devotees of Slim Mints enjoy the taste, no doubt, and also the reassurance that the mints include two all natural FDA ingredients to control appetite and increase metabolism, key sales hooks that are prominently displayed on the packaging. In addition, competitive pricing has also struck a high note with retailers and consumers. Cam Cloeter, national sales broker for Lifemax, distributor of Slim Mints, says his company has changed the way retailers look at breath mints and weight loss by introducing "a value added product that brings new shoppers to both categories with its $1.99 MSRP per tin."

Fast Turnaround
Struggling to meet the overwhelming demand for its product, LifeMax soon realized that its outmoded inventory and shipping process was leaving a bad taste in the mouths of it retailers, who couldn't get the mints in stores fast enough. The company turned to a hosted solution called WebForms from SPS Commerce to handle all of its inventory and shipping documents with retailers.

"It helps speed up the process of electronic invoicing and purchase orders, which helped take some of the work load off other people in the office," says Josh Felber, vice president of sales for LifeMax. "Plus, we were getting requests from all of our retailers to switch over to EDI (Electronic Data Interchange)."

A Special Offer
As a service offering, SPS Commerce's WebForms eliminates the time and expense of implementing an in-house EDI solution, and enables organizations to more rapidly comply with customers' requirements. Since completing its first connection to a single retailer in April, LifeMax's business has greatly expanded, resulting in the company establishing six additional connections. Today, LifeMax is meeting the electronic compliance requirements of Associated Wholesalers, Fred's Stores, Giant Eagle, Meijer, Rite Aid, Target and for purchase orders, shipping notices, inventory status updates, planning and forecasting.

"The WebForm service enables us to easily start exchanging EDI with each new retailer in a very short period of time and without adding infrastructure," says Felber. "SPS has extensive experience and knowledge of each retailer's compliance requirements, which made our initial selection and expansions easy. LifeMax was able to add new connections as it needed them, with seven connections completed in less than six months. This wouldn't have been possible with an in-house system."

Compliance Comes Easy
Felber says that compliance with new retail customers is now almost effortless, which enables the company to focus its resources on the production and marketing of its product. "We actually get notified whenever we do get purchase orders via e-mail," says Felber. "An e-mail is also sent to people who put orders into the system. After that information is put into the system, it gets forwarded to shipping," he says.
LifeMax has used SPS for about one year with other tech initiatives and it was only within the last six months when Wal-Mart, Target and others started knocking on LifeMax's door. "EDI is something they requested from the beginning," says Felber. "We simply forward all of the information to SPS and they take care of it for us."

Catching the Craze
As a rising number of consumers catch on to the Slim Mints craze, demand will continue to spike at stores, says Felber. "They, in turn want to supply their customers with our product. And now that we are doing everything electronically, we can invoice much faster."
Felber also says payments are remitted much more quickly now and instead of dealing with multiple interfaces from different companies, LifeMax can now painlessly pull up a single profile on Wal-Mart, for instance, to check order and payment status. "From a sales perspective, the EDI process is a must because everything is automated, " says Felber. "Things are definitely operating more smoothly as we have seen our efficiency and productivity climb 35 percent."