CHICAGO, July 1, 2008 – Sunflower Farmers Markets, a fast-growing natural and organic foods retailer with stores throughout the southwestern United States, has implemented IRI’s Apollo Professional™ solution for executing more customer-centric assortments and merchandising strategies within the space planning department. Information Resources, Inc. (IRI) is the leading global provider of consumer, shopper, and market insights for the consumer packaged goods (CPG), retail, and healthcare industries.
Sunflower purchased IRI Apollo Professional to serve as the foundation for its space planning and category review process. The retailer operates in a unique retail format focused on natural and organic products, which presents distinct challenges with the products offered and the merchandising practices implemented within the stores. Sunflower will be leveraging IRI’s Apollo Business Consulting Services to support their implementation and future integration.
“Integrating and upgrading our merchandizing process throughout all Sunflower markets is an important milestone for us,” said Chris Sherrell, Sunflower’s Chief Operating Officer. “IRI’s Apollo solutions will help us improve category performance, enhance communication between headquarters and our stores, collaborate more effectively with vendors and enable us to focus more intently on our shoppers’ specific needs. This, in turn, will lead to more effective company operations and better financial results.
“We studied many companies offering space planning products, and selected IRI’s Apollo Professional based on the quality of the solution as well as the flexibility to meet our unique business needs,” Mr. Sherrell continued.
Apollo Professional offers powerful, customizable capabilities to analyze space performance, create planograms, visualize category and assortment strategies and manage large planogram databases.
“Sunflower Farmers Markets is an exciting new customer for IRI and continues to underline the importance of Apollo in the retail market,” said Shaun Bossons, IRI’s senior vice president, Apollo Solutions Group. “Started by Wild Oats founder Mike Gilliland, the company has earned a reputation as a leader and innovator. We are pleased Sunflower selected IRI and Apollo to serve as the foundation for its space planning process and provide an execution strategy to support consumer centric merchandising.”
Apollo solutions are the number one choice for space planning in retail and provide a solution roadmap that continually builds on success to enable retailers to move from manual space planning to automated, optimized plangrams.
Apollo solutions and Apollo Business Consulting Services are components of IRI’s Customer Centric Retail Execution solution suite, the de-facto standard within the CPG and retail industries. IRI solutions enable CPG and retail companies to adjust stocking levels to demand, improve the efficiency of store operations, proactively plan distribution status, understand and optimize sales trends and ultimately provide a shopping experience that better meets the everchanging consumer’s needs. Customers can easily integrate these solutions with other space planning programs. Additional detail on IRI’s solutions is available at: http://us.infores.com/page/manufacturers/retail_execution/
About Sunflower Farmers Markets
Sunflower Farmers Markets is a rapidly-growing chain of full-service grocery stores offering consumers the highest quality natural and organic products at the lowest possible prices. The company, founded in 2002, is a pioneer in developing and exploiting the emerging value segment of the natural and organic foods retailing industry. The company has 14 retail stores located in Denver, Fort Collins, Phoenix, Tempe, Scottsdale, Tucson, Las Vegas and Albuquerque, with expansion plans for Texas and Utah.
About IRI
IRI is the world’s leading provider of consumer, shopper, and retail market intelligence and insights supporting 95 percent of the FORTUNE Global 500 consumer packaged goods (CPG), retail and healthcare companies. Only IRI offers the unique combination of integrated market information, automated and predictive analytics, innovative enabling technologies, and domain expertise. With IRI, leading retailers and manufacturers are able to quickly discover breakthrough insights driving smarter decisions and actions across the enterprise for breakthrough results. Companies around the world depend on IRI for improved productivity, stronger brands, and dramatic revenue growth. For more information, visit http://us.infores.com.
# # #
IRI CONTACTS:
John McIndoe
E-mail: john.mcindoe@infores.com
Phone: (312) 474-3862
Fax: (312) 474-2512