- UK’s leaders in frozen food have partnered with product discovery platform, RangeMe, to source innovative product at scale and speed
- Partnership gives Iceland and The Food Warehouse access to a global community of more than 200,000 suppliers
- RangeMe technology has “transformed” the way the supermarkets source and buy
7th February 2022: Iceland and The Food Warehouse have joined forces with global product discovery platform, RangeMe, to supercharge the way they uncover and source new product.
RangeMe offers a single place for buyers to efficiently discover opportunity from suppliers around the world. By tapping into the platform, Iceland and The Food Warehouse – the UK’s leaders in frozen food – have unlocked access to more than 800,000 products from over 200,000 suppliers, which will enable their team of buyers across frozen, chilled and grocery, to source the most innovative emerging products.
In a competitive retail space, Iceland aims to maximise the potential of RangeMe to source trend-led and innovative products at scale, and speed. The supermarket’s team of buyers will maximise RangeMe’s software to discover brands and products faster, connect with suppliers, request samples, and discuss next steps.
Andrew Staniland, Trading Director at Iceland, said: “Joining forces with RangeMe has already transformed our sourcing and buying process. Our customers have increasingly diverse tastes and preferences and RangeMe’s technology presents us with opportunity from the global product market on one screen. Huge opportunity exists in collaborating. Embracing new technology, as we have with RangeMe, is key to getting ahead in the retail industry. This partnership has streamlined our approach to buying and sourcing and we will continue to maximise the software to supercharge our efforts to get the best-of-the-best onto the shelves in our stores as quickly as possible.”
RangeMe first launched in 2014 and is now used by more than 15,000 retail buyers in the UK, Benelux region, North America, and Asia Pacific.
RangeMe is the brainchild of founder and CEO, Nicky Jackson, who married a deep desire to bring suppliers and retailers together easily and efficiently, to ensure the most extraordinary products would not only make it to store shelves, but also into the hands of eager consumers.
Jackson said: “Today we welcome Iceland and The Food Warehouse, the UK’s leaders in frozen food, into our global community of retailers to transform their product sourcing experience. RangeMe offers Iceland the opportunity to seek out emerging suppliers and increase the number of new and innovative products it stocks online and instore.”
ENDS
ABOUT ICELAND
Iceland is recognised as the UK’s leader in frozen food and operates over 950 stores across the country, together with a multi-award-winning online shopping service. It prides itself on being a convenient and friendly place to do the family’s weekly shop, as well as meet everyone’s daily top-up shopping needs for fresh, chilled, frozen food and groceries. For more than 20 years Iceland has also offered a unique, free home delivery service for in-store purchases.
Iceland has won multiple awards for the quality of its food and service. Recent honours including being named Best Online Retailer and Best Frozen Food Retailer at the Retail Industry Awards 2018, Community Retailer of the Year at the Retail Week Awards 2018, Online Retailer of the Year at the IGD Awards 2017, and Online Supermarket of the Year at the Grocer Gold Awards 2017. Iceland’s online shopping service was also named the UK’s best in the 2016, 2017 and 2018 Which? supermarket surveys. Iceland has ranked as one of the UK’s Best Big Companies to Work For in each of the last 12 years, and was number one in both 2012 and 2014. Iceland was also named best UK supermarket for customer service in the 2018 and 2019 UK Customer Satisfaction Index.
Since 1970, Iceland has been proudly demonstrating to shoppers just how the Power of Frozen can deliver an extensive choice of high quality, great-tasting food from fine sources around the world at great value prices, while naturally generating low levels of food waste.
Research conducted by Manchester Metropolitan University suggested that switching to frozen food can reduce household food bills by as much as £1500 a year.
Always committed to doing the right thing for customers, communities and the environment, Iceland was a pioneer in removing artificial colours, flavours and nonessential preservatives from its own label food in the 1980s, and in banning genetically modified ingredients in the 1990s. In 2018 it committed to becoming the first major retailer, globally, to eliminate plastic packaging from all of its own label products by the end of 2023, and to remove palm oil as an ingredient from its own label range by the end of 2018.
ABOUT THE FOOD WAREHOUSE
Founded in 2014, The Food Warehouse now has more than 140 stores across Britain. They are all large format stores, with a car park, providing the value and convenience of a wholesale store without the hassle of membership.
The Food Warehouse is opening new stores up and down the country in retail parks and larger shopping districts. Each store is given a high quality warehouse style fit out, and covers between 8,000 and 25,000 sq. ft. of retail space.
The Food Warehouse offers great value, family-favourite products across frozen, chilled, fresh, branded grocery and homeware lines. With BIG DEALS across many big brands, customers can make great savings with bulk deals where savings are passed directly onto shoppers. There are special ‘When It’s Gone, It’s Gone’ offers too, where customers can purchase selected homeware lines at outstanding value.
The Food Warehouse also has a number of exclusive partnerships with brands including TGI Fridays, Slimming World and Greggs.
The Food Warehouse is part of the Iceland Foods Group.
ABOUT RANGEME
RangeMe, an ECRM company, is the leading online platform that streamlines new product discovery between suppliers and retailers. The platform empowers retail buyers to efficiently discover innovative and emerging products, while streamlining the inbound product submission process. For product suppliers, RangeMe enables them to grow their retail relationships with a platform that gives them the tools to manage their products, market their brand, and build awareness. Now integrated into the ECRM product offering, RangeMe adds increased breadth and depth to the industry’s most complete sourcing solution for top retailers and product suppliers in the US.