Supply chain technology company Blue Ridge has acquired price optimization and analytics startup Prolific Virtue. The acquisition’s financial terms were not disclosed.
“Pricing is inherently complementary to supply chain planning since it has such a direct impact on customer forecast,” Blue Ridge CEO Jim Byrnes tells Hypepotamus. “When the company was looking to leverage rapid organic customer growth over the last 3 years, price optimization was identified as a top candidate for inorganic growth and acquisition opportunity.”
Blue Ridge’s cloud-based supply chain optimization platform helps retailers and distributors forecast customer demand and react faster to avoid inventory issues and illiquid capital.
They focus on the “why behind a buy” by collaborating across sales, marketing, operations, and other business units for input instead of making blind estimations of sales.
“We’re applying machine learning in practical and meaningful ways to ensure that it has real-world impact and value through the fastest on-boarding available in the supply chain planning marketplace,” says Byrnes.
Blue Ridge currently has AAMP Global, Epic Wine & Spirits, Hillsdale Furniture, HVAC Distributors, Max Finkelstein, Packaging Wholesalers, and others as distribution customers.
Blue Ridge will be integrating Prolific Virtue’s price optimization technology to offer pricing simulations, recommendations, and price sensitivity analysis. This additional technology will help Blue Ridge’s customers reach their strategic financial goals.
The core price optimization science, price strategy engine, and Prolific Virtue design is already being implemented on the scalable Blue Ridge platform and will be available for customer implementations by the end of the year and for general availability in the first quarter of 2020.
“Retailers can’t survive without price optimization, and now distributors are following suit,” said Prolific Virtue founder Cliff Isaacson in a statement. “Machine learning technology has improved price recommendations and made it easy to forecast the financial impact of price changes accurately.”
Isaacson has joined the Blue Ridge team as Executive Vice President of Product Strategy. The remaining Prolific Virtue team members will also merge with the Atlanta-based company.
“Adding pricing optimization on the heels of our 2018 product release has continued to drive customer adoption of Blue Ridge,” says Byrnes. “These innovations have helped separate Blue Ridge from the traditional, on-premises solution providers, as our solution is purpose-built for retail and wholesale distribution.”
