Brightpearl Acquires Inventory Planner, Giving Savvy Merchants Better Ways to Accurately Predict Demand
Bristol, UK, Austin, TX, 16th September – Brightpearl has acquired Inventory Planner, a market-leading demand planning tool that enables e-commerce retailers to predict demand and optimise inventory.
With this acquisition, Brightpearl expands its technology offering to include advanced forecasting expertise. This pairs with its core operating system for retail, which supports rapid scale, first class automation and out-of-the-box connectivity.
Brightpearl’s Strategic Vision
It also marks the first milestone in a longer-term strategy to make Brightpearl the top destination for best-in-class products which can streamline backend operations and support rapid scalability.
The move will see Inventory Planner running as a separate division of Brightpearl, with the parent company executing a significant programme of investment to evolve and enhance the Inventory Planner brand, and expand its business.
Brightpearl is a leading Retail Operating System which works with some of the world’s largest retail brands.
The winning combination of Inventory Planner and Brightpearl will allow merchants to connect historical sales data to Brightpearl’s powerful, built-for-retail operating system – delivering hugely improved margins and boosting customer satisfaction.
Why Inventory Planner?
The deal is expected to open up a new chapter for retail software with Brightpearl planning to create a destination model that puts an end to the one-size-fits-all approach and gives merchants the freedom and choice to meet the challenges of rapid growth.
Inventory Planner has 2,060 customers, primarily in English-speaking countries, 60% of which are between $1m and $100m GMV. Many subscribe via direct download from an app store such as Shopify. Merchants can utilize the tool to quickly visualise trends, and configure advanced reporting and notifications to help run their business by exception.
Derek O’Carroll, CEO of Brightpearl, said: “We’re thrilled to announce the acquisition of Inventory Planner. The last two years have shown the importance of demand forecasting expertise for today’s fast-growing merchants, so we’re excited to be able to offer this best-in-class solution as an extension of the Brightpearl network. We’re also very pleased about the addition of its experienced and talented team to the wider Brightpearl family.
“Our deal with Inventory Planner signals the first step in our mission to give modern merchants the freedom to easily deploy commerce experiences on their own terms, with access to the very best retail technology products – empowering them to break away from jack-of-all-trades legacy systems.”
“This evolution of our relationship with Brightpearl will allow Inventory Planner to better serve its current and future clients as we tap into the full potential of our integrated solution and offer a cutting edge demand forecasting technology to fast-growing merchants,” said Inventory Planner co-founder, Oleg Smirnov.
“We’re thrilled to be joining forces with Brightpearl, an ideal partner which shares our values and commitment to building secure and scalable retail operating systems.”
O’Carroll adds: “Merchants need alternatives to the current ERP-dominated retail tech landscape. They need real-time scalability and optionality, instead of being tied long-term to ‘all in one’ solutions which force-feed mediocre products that limit scale and innovation.”
“We’ll be offering exciting opportunities for merchants to leverage Brightpearl’s growing family of best-in-class products, like Inventory Planner. These specialist applications come pre-integrated, secure and scalable, so merchants can rely upon them to Grow Fearlessly. Our customers can choose to use these products as standalone solutions or interconnected to Brightpearl’s core operating system. It’s a win for our commerce customers, and a win for their consumers.”
Maurice Helfgott, Brightpearl Chairman, said: “I started my career as a merchant and know how critical accurate prediction is to getting the right product available in the right place at the right time. Inventory Planner’s customers are delighted with the proven simplicity and accuracy of its easy-to-deploy forecasting solution and we’re confident that Brightpearl’s world-class team will help ensure success for the product with larger customers, too.”
With its global headquarters in Bristol, UK and US headquarters in Austin, Texas, Brightpearl helps 1,000 commerce businesses to streamline and automate their retail operations across order management, CRM, fulfilment, accounting inventory, and warehouse management.
The company, which has partnerships with organisations like Shopify, eBay and Amazon, has seen 50% growth YOY, as more retail brands seek top technology solutions to support digital transformation, and now manages over $5bn of business a year.
Today’s announcement comes after Brightpearl raised $33M in a recent series C round. Sage led the round, investing approximately £17 million ($23m) out of a total of £25 million ($33m) raised, with existing shareholders including Cipio Partners, Notion Capital and Verdane investing a further £8 million ($10m).
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About Brightpearl
Brightpearl is a Retail Operations System (ROS) for retailers and wholesalers that’s built for rapid scale. Brightpearl’s mission is clear: automate the back office so merchants can get back time and grow fearlessly.
Brightpearl’s ROS includes financial management, inventory and sale order management, purchasing and supplier management, CRM, fulfillment, warehouse and logistics.
In addition, the solution has high-performing connectors to the major ecommerce platforms,
including Magento, BigCommerce and Shopify. 1,000 businesses in 26 countries use our platform. We manage over $5bn of business a year.
Our team guides commerce businesses through a highly efficient implementation process which typically gets them up and running in less than 120 days – twice as fast as our competitors.
Brightpearl’s US headquarters is in the heart of downtown Austin with a global headquarters in Bristol, UK. You can connect with us on Twitter (@BrightpearlHQ), LinkedIn (linkedin.com/company/Brightpearl), and Facebook (facebook.com/brightpearl).
About Inventory Planner
Inventory Planner launched in 2012 to help eCommerce merchants save time and money when purchasing inventory to better meet customer demand. Now integrated with over 30 platforms including marketplaces, accounting platforms, and inventory management systems, Inventory Planner supports merchants as they grow to see information from all of their sales channels. Merchants use Inventory Planner’s replenishment recommendations and assist with inventory planning, forecasting, reporting, and purchase order creation. Inventory Planner is a fully-remote team of planners and developers supporting hundreds of merchants around the world.