Boots partners with RangeMe to widen supplier base

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Oct 21, 2022

Boots has linked up with RangeMe, the product discovery, sourcing and purchasing platform, to expand the number of new suppliers it works with.

It wants to provide new, emerging and diverse brands with increased access to its buying teams having already added hundreds of new brands to its stores and webstore in the past year.

Some 200,000 suppliers are registered on the platform and Steve Ager, Chief Customer and Category Officer at Boots, said: “Our partnership with RangeMe will create a direct route for interesting and innovative brands to reach and pitch to our buying team, that cater to our diverse customer base and local communities. We introduced hundreds of new product brands last year, and we’ve seen many interesting start-ups launch post-pandemic. We’re looking forward to being able to support these businesses in their success by offering a new way for our buyers to discover them.”

It comes as some leading retailers take more of a marketplace approach and at the same time reach out to a wider number and type of supplier brands. 

This spring, for instance, Boots’ rival Superdrug announced plans for an online marketplace for beauty and wellness brands, taking in premium names, as well as start-ups and making every effort to include black and female owned businesses.

For Boots, partnering with RangeMe makes commercial sense. RangeMe can help it scale product sourcing efforts with streamlined submissions, easy discovery tools, and an industry standard digital sell sheet. Buyers can filter searches, connect and collaborate with suppliers, and access curated collections to help identify and understand category trends and emerging brands.

The benefit for any brand that makes it onto Boots’ physical or virtual shelves is massive exposure within the UK market. Boots is the dominant beauty retailer with over 2,200 stores and a hugely popular online platform.