Background
Pet Food Experts has been a cornerstone of the pet industry for almost 30 years. Over the last three decades, PFX has magnified its presence in the independent pet retail space and become one of the leading distributors in the country. PFX currently partners with 6,500 pet speciality retailers in 39 states across the U.S, with more expansion plans on the horizon. PFX first partnered with Herlitz in 2020, when it implemented HIMPACT to manage daily forecasting and purchasing for its thousands of retail partners. At the time of the partnership, PFX was seeking to implement a new forecasting and purchasing solution to support its expanding business.
Client Challenge
A year after implementing HIMPACT, PFX acquired United Pacific Pet, which increased its service area by over 1,500 independent pet retailers throughout the West. The acquisition of UPP skyrocketed PFX’s standing and secured its spot as the second-largest pet food distributor in the U.S. PFX was simultaneously growing organically outside of the acquisition, and with that growth came a request from manufacturers for projection sharing. The onboarding of HIMPACT synced with a period of substantial change for PFX and provided a solid foundation to support its expanding needs on a core level.
“HIMPACT is the most successful software implementation we’ve done in the last five years and it is the one with the most ROI.”
Result of HIMPACT
The implementation of HIMPACT garnered PFX some early victories. Phylicia Proulx, Director of Purchasing, said, “As each vendor is turned on in HIMPACT, the inventory goes down by 5–10% and the fill rate goes up by 2–5 percentage points. The software allows us to track that and to see that change is phenomenal.”
With HIMPACT already managing purchasing, PFX was able to seamlessly transition their vendors and partners to the new system. Brian Wyrostek, VP of Strategy and Business Development for PFX shared, “We could have gone through this acquisition without HIMPACT, but with a lot more inventory and a lot more bumps along the way than if we didn’t already have it in place. HIMPACT is the most successful software implementation we’ve done in the last five years and it is the one with the most ROI.”
Looking into the near future, PFX is currently evaluating a module to improve vendor collaboration with HIMPACT. This module helps HIMPACT users improve vendor fill rate and is a positive for the supply chain. Pet Food Experts looks forward to their continued partnership with Herlitz Inventory Management.
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