News Briefs

The Honest Company has updated its e-commerce site, now allowing consumers to check out with one click. 

Using technology from online checkout company Fast, the Honest Company is providing consumers with the ability to purchase its products directly from online articles, display ads, emails, and QR codes via one step. The partnership was announced during ShopTalk, and will allow Honest consumers to quickly replenish their products by inputting their payment and shipping information once. 

Honest will also be adding QR codes to its product packaging to allow consumers to more easily reorder their preferred items. 

Fast Checkout is directly embedded on product detail pages on the company’s website, allowing buyers to bypass the shopping cart and subsequent checkout flow. If consumers wish to make additional purchases, they will have an opportunity to do so during the Fast Checkout process. These items are added to the original order, eliminating packaging waste and extra shipping costs. 

Pete Gerstberger, chief digital and strategy officer at The Honest Company, said that the company is evolving to meet the needs and preferences of its consumers. 

[Related: Pete Gerstberger Named Chief Digital & Strategy Officer at The Honest Company]

"Our goal every day is to make it as easy as possible for consumers to discover and purchase our products, while delivering the experience they know and expect from us,” he added. “By implementing Fast's one-click checkout, we're providing consumers another way to shop with us at the click of a button, no matter where they are."

Domm Holland, co-founder and CEO at Fast, said the tech upgrade makes it easier for the Honest Company consumers to order and reorder products, whether via the e-commerce store or a QR scan. 

Data cloud company Snowflake is expanding its relationship with Amazon Web Services (AWS), to improve demand forecasting and delivery for the retail and CPG industries. 

Customers will now be able to natively access Amazon purchase order (PO) data and Amazon Forecast generated insights from Snowflake’s Retail Data Cloud to better identify variances in product demand and plan for manufacturing and delivery lead times. 

Through this technology, users can leverage brand-level and fulfillment center-level forecasts, and access new data from third-party data providers within the Retail Data Cloud, from Snowflake’s single, integrated platform. 

[Read more: Five Innovations to Improve CPG & Retailer Collaboration in 2022]

Capabilities include the following:

• Import Amazon PO data into Snowflake to better access, govern, and share data seamlessly across the organization.
• Improve forecast accuracy using machine learning models from Amazon Forecast to create accurate time-series forecasts to predict demand for variable vendor purchase orders weeks ahead of time.
• Track product weight or dimension changes to ensure they adhere to manufacturer standards.
• Improve on-time in-full (OTIF) metrics to enhance organic ranking on Amazon.com, reduce chargeback expenses, and help ensure products are in-stock for consumers to buy.
• Match correct probabilistic forecasts with SKU sales velocity to help ensure key products will stay in stock and improve revenue.

Rosemary Hua, global head of retail and CPG at Snowflake, said that today’s retail and CPG companies are looking for accurate, efficient, and timely tech solutions that positively impact their bottom lines.

“Amazon.com has revolutionized how retail and CPG businesses sell and deliver to consumers and, similarly, Snowflake has had a profound impact on empowering businesses to optimize their operations and seamlessly collaborate on data,” she added. “Together, Snowflake and AWS can streamline data-driven inventory management for items sold on Amazon.”

Purple Innovation, Inc has named Jeff Hutchings chief information officer, a newly created role that will support the mattress company’s growth plans and innovation acceleration. 

Previously the chief product officer at Skullcandy Inc., Hutchings will leverage his decades-long background in corporate tech, engineering management, product strategy and development starting May 1 at the company’s Lehi, Utah, headquarters. Hutchings will report directly to Rob DeMartini, who was appointed chief executive officer in March 2022. 

[Related: From Mattresses to Invoice Mastery: How Purple Automated Accounts Payable]

Prior to Skullcandy Inc., Hutchings held various roles at car technology company HARMAN International. He stated that joining Purple “presents a unique opportunity to create meaningful impact within the health and wellness industry, helping improve lives and reinventing comfort for consumers."

"I am thrilled to announce that Jeff Hutchings will be joining Purple as our chief innovation officer, bringing his deep experience in leading product strategy and development across different channels to spearhead Purple's innovation journey," said Rob DeMartini, Purple's chief executive officer. "I am confident that Jeff will strengthen our team at Purple and help lead us with innovative new products to help drive growth."

Beauty brand Shiseido Company, Limited, is implementing a “Win 2023 and Beyond” strategy with the goal of establishing more efficient production systems. In an effort to do so, the brand has signed a multiyear licensing agreement with a manufacturing operations management solutions provider.

Using the Dassault Systèmes Perfect Production system across major Shiseido production sites in Japan, Europe, the U.S., and other countries, the company will focus on improving factory productivity and reducing costs.

The single collaborative virtual environment allows Shiseido to focus on end-to-end planning and operations optimization to more accurately assign production resources, maintain product quality, and satisfy both global and local product demand.  

[Related: Beauty Industry Joins Forces on Sustainability Initiative, EcoBeautyScore]

Atsunori Takano, executive officer, CITO, Shiseido, stated that by 2030, the company hopes to be a global leader, and expects the new manufacturing solution to bolster its growth strategy.  

“The consumer shift toward wellness is accelerating globally, and leading beauty players will need to deliver innovative new products to market faster than ever before,” said Philippe Loeb, vice president, Consumer Packaged Goods & Retail Industry, Dassault Systèmes, adding that technology can deliver a more agile experience in existing factories and can help expand the brand’s portfolio of beauty and wellness products. 

Zebra Technologies is acquiring Matrox Imaging for $875 million, bringing into the fold automation and vision technology. Recent IT investments also include robotics and machine learning. 

[Related: Boosting Supply Chain Challenges Through Advanced Technologies: Up Close with Zebra Technologies' Guy Yehiav]

Matrox Imaging’s software development kits, smart cameras, 3D sensors, vision controllers, input/output cards, and frame grabbers are used to capture, inspect, assess, and record data from industrial vision systems in factory automation, electronics and pharmaceutical packaging, semiconductor inspection, and more. 

Anders Gustafsson, chief executive officer of Zebra Technologies, said the acquisition will enable them to meet evolving consumer needs across the automation journey, including production and the movement of goods and materials. 

According to the company, the purchase will expand Zebra’s recently launched fixed industrial scanning and machine vision portfolio and grow its focus in software, machine learning, and deep learning.

The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions, including regulatory approval and is expected to close in 2022. 

This article first appeared on RIS News. 

Global managed services and automation firm enVista has launched an inventory forecasting and planning as a service solution. 

Primo Water Global is among the brands leveraging the new offering, which allows companies to create inventory models, complete a demand forecasting analysis, and monitor ongoing performance. 

enVista also analyzes SKU historical profiles to determine inventory needs to best meet financial objectives. 

[Related: enVista Expands Automation Capabilities with Acquisition]

According to the company, the subscription allows companies to scale enVista’s solutions to “adapt to evolving market changes, optimally position inventory across the network, optimize gross margin return on inventory investment, and ensure the right inventory is available in the right place and right time to improve customer service.”

The offering can be used alongside enVista’s cloud-native omnichannel order management system with enterprise inventory availability and AI-powered inventory allocation.

Primo Water Global CIO, Jamie Jamison, said that with the current state of the company’s supply chain and DTC model, inventory management has been crucial to their success.

“enVista’s inventory forecasting and planning as a service offering has ensured that we consistently have the right inventory levels in every echelon of our global supply chain to meet customer demand and protect our bottom line,” Jamison added.