Retail-Exchange Combo Plans To Provide Single Supply-Chain Platform

Retail supply-chain exchanges GlobalNetXchange LLC and the WorldWide Retail Exchange LLC have agreed to merge. The boards of the companies, both of which are privately held, have approved the merger, the companies say. A name for the new company hasn't been chosen.

GlobalNetXchange and WorldWide Retail Exchange both offer retailers and consumer-products providers Web-based supply-chain collaboration. GlobalNetXchange also offers a product-life-cycle-management system, mostly for grocers. The new company will focus on the same applications geared toward sourcing, supply-chain collaboration, supplier-performance management, and private-label-product development.

WorldWide Retail Exchange CEO Christopher Sellers will serve as the executive chairman for the combined company, while GlobalNetXchange CEO Joe Laughlin will be CEO of the new company. The company's main U.S. offices will be in Illinois and Virginia, and globally in France and Japan. It will have a global workforce of 250 employees.

The new company will serve more than 45 major retailers and 50,000 suppliers. Plans are for it to offer retailers a single platform for global data synchronization with their suppliers based on standards from GS1, the newly merged Uniform Code Council and EAN International organization, interoperable with the global registry of product descriptions and compatible with Electronic Product Code and radio-frequency identification technology.