Lightspeed has brought supplier catalogs and ordering into its point-of-sale software, initially for North American bike, outdoor sport, jewelry and pet retailers. The company highlighted Supplier Network’s January 12 launch in its February 4, 2021 financial update. Participating shops could handle those purchases in Lightspeed rather than switch among separate supplier portals. [S1][S2]

The product record is part of the connection, not just the order. Lightspeed described automatically updating supplier catalogs and a way to import brand-approved names, descriptions and images into the retailer’s system. Its February update also said retailers could import supplier images onto their own e-commerce sites. For shop staff, the practical implication is less need to recreate those product records for online selling; neither announcement measures how much working time the process saves. [S1][S2]

The exchange also sends information back to suppliers. Lightspeed said brands would receive aggregated, anonymized sell-through data in real time: information about goods sold by independent merchants. So the shop gains a view of supplier products while the supplier gains a view of retail sales. The announcements do not spell out retailer consent settings or the detail available to an individual supplier. [S1][S2]

Lightspeed’s reported customer base should not be mistaken for the reach of the new network. The February results put its total at almost 115,000 customer locations, including the recently acquired ShopKeep and Upserve businesses, for the quarter ended December 31, 2020. That period ended before Supplier Network’s January launch. Lightspeed also defined a customer location as a billing location, noting that one customer could have multiple physical or e-commerce sites. The figure is neither a count of distinct retailers nor a count of Supplier Network users. [S1][S2]

For a shop considering the ordering connection, the first check is whether the suppliers it actually buys from are available through it. The January announcement named four initial retail sectors; it did not promise access to every brand within them. Catalog import can remove a piece of duplicate work, but it does not establish that a shop can stop using all of its existing purchasing channels. [S1]

Source documents

  1. Lightspeed Revolutionizes Supply Chain of Independent Retailers with Launch of Supplier Networkhttps://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/lightspeed-revolutionizes-supply-chain-of-independent-retailers-with-launch-of-supplier-network-301205827.html
  2. Lightspeed Announces Third Quarter 2021 Financial Results, Provides Outlook for Fourth Quarterhttps://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/lightspeed-announces-third-quarter-2021-financial-results-provides-outlook-for-fourth-quarter-301221883.html