Member Article

Original Additions - An SMB UK Success Story

Original Additions is a leading supplier of beauty products in the UK with well established distribution channels in many countries across Europe, The Middle East, Australasia, Africa and the Americas. They are one of the world’s largest suppliers of false eyelashes and nails. Selling through high street supermarkets and beauty outlets, the company takes a highly innovative approach to growing its market share and has entered into many high profile licensing agreements that have resulted in product ranges being developed with the likes of Girls Aloud, Sex in the City and Katie Perry.

Original Additions has experienced impressive growth since it was established in 1978, with year-on-year growth in international sales of almost 40 per cent between 2009 and 2012. A major factor in this growth has been the establishment of a US hub which has allowed the company to rapidly penetrate the North American market. They use EDI to help them to trade with UK customers and expansion into the US has dramatically increased the focus on their EDI capabilities.

B2B ecommerce is an established way for US retailers to conduct business, and most mandate that their suppliers integrate with the retailers EDI systems as a minimum requirement to enter a business relationship. For a mid-sized organisation like Original Additions, a reliable EDI capability was an essential requirement to enter the market. They also needed an effective and flexible solution to meet the exacting requirements of the US retail organisations.

Charl Breytenbach, US Operations Manager at Original Additions explains: “We have a good deal of experience in exchanging business documents with our UK customers. However, US retailers seem to be more advanced in the range of message types they expect their suppliers to support and in their use of EDI generally.”

In the UK, the company’s retail customers require them to exchange business documents including Purchase Orders, Invoices and Advance Shipping Notices(ASNs). US retailers regularly exchange a much wider range of electronic messages. Breytenbach says: “I’d say that the average US retailer uses five or six times more EDI messages than our UK customers. So, we needed a whole range of new message types, created to trade in the US. Not just orders and invoices but also change notices and EPOS messages. It was the first time we’d had to make use of Functional AcknowledgementMessages, for example.”

The company has been extremely successful in signing up major US retailers as customers. High street names such as Ulta, CVS, Fred Meyer, Kmart and Meijer. Each customer has its own EDI requirements which suppliers must adhere to. In addition, each has its own set of message types that it employs with suppliers to ensure highly automated supply chain processes.

The level of automation within US customers posed challenges for Original Additions, Breytenbach explains: “A company like Kmart has been able to automate many aspects of their business. If we sent through an invoice and there was pricing conflict, their system would send an automated message back. Our systems had to be able to accommodate this type of message response from our US customers otherwise we would not be able to deliver the expected levels of customer service. Our challenge was firstly, how to ensure that we received the information and secondly, how to ensure that our systems were properly configured to act.”

When Original Additions started to do B2B e-commerce they selected GXS Freewayto service their UK customers. The solution provided an excellent range of maps for the types of documents used by the UK retailers and GXS demonstrated an in-depth understanding of the UK and European retail market, so setting up a new customer was straightforward. Later, when Original Additions entered the US market, and were faced with new message types and formats they needed new maps to conduct B2B ecommerce with their new American customers.

“We were faced with accommodating new message formats and new communication protocols. Our US customers tend to provide their suppliers with specification sheets that set out how we need to develop our documents to exchange data with their systems. However, our experience has been that the specification sheets are changed and updated regularly which can lead to inaccuracies that the supplier has to overcome, all within very challenging timelines,” states Breytenbach.

Expanding to North America meant that in addition to the new message requirements, Original Additions were also required to be set up and ready to trade with their new customers, within a very short timescale, usually within a month of signing. some US retailers expected suppliers to be EDI-ready in less time though.

Original Additions operates GXS Freeway on a standalone PC that allows the Operations and Customer Services teams to access it remotely, ensuring that all messages are dealt with in a timely fashion. The solution has proved to be highly reliable providing them with a 24x7 capability which is essential to trade with US customers. As importantly, it is a solid foundation to handle an exponential growth in EDI traffic that the company is already starting to experience.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Denise Oakley .