Atlanta, GA August, 2009 FineLine Technologies announced that it has been selected by Ross Stores, Inc. , a Fortune 500 company with 2008 revenues of $6.5 billion, as its primary outsourced provider of barcoded price tags, tickets and labels.
Prior to its decision to select FineLine, Ross Stores primarily produced its own tickets, tags and labels through in-house printing operations at its multiple distribution centers, particularly at its distribution center in Rock Hill, South Carolina. Tickets were produced in house and either applied to merchandise at the DC or were shipped to Ross suppliers all over the world, including a substantial number of suppliers in Asia. During the fall of 2008, Ross thoroughly investigated the cost/benefit and business ramifications of outsourcing its ticketing operation and selected FineLine as it primary outsourced supplier.
From an inception date of early November, project management teams from both Ross and FineLine collaborated to develop processes and the supporting technology to facilitate the transition from in house printing. This major initiative involved key personnel from FineLine as well as a cross functional team from Ross which included representatives from IT, Merchandising, Pre-Ticketing, Operations and Finance. User acceptability testing was followed by a pilot which was followed by full implementation in March of 2009. From its facilities in North America and Asia, FineLine is now providing tickets to over 3,000 Ross suppliers in 39 countries.
The backbone of the system is Fast Trak, FineLine’s proprietary web based system for ticket order processing and management. Fast Trak provides for ticket production from data captured from Ross purchase orders and allows FineLine to print and ship most orders within 48 hours. FineLine IT personnel worked closely with Ross in order to provide a number of very significant enhancements to the platform including sophisticated administrative functions, enhanced data management capabilities and a reporting dashboard that provides outstanding visibility and control over ticket orders.
Richard Jaynes, FineLine’s Vice President of Sales, says “We are extremely pleased to have had the opportunity to collaborate with Ross Stores to reinvent the ticketing function for their company. Both the Ross and FineLine implementation teams are to be commended for successfully executing the project on an extremely aggressive timeline. We are very proud of our new relationship with Ross Stores and its 3,000 strong vendor community.”
Ross Stores, Inc, headquartered in Pleasanton, California, is a Fortune 500 company with over 900 locations and is the nation’s second largest off-price retailer with annual revenues in excess of $6 billion.
FineLine Technologies (www.finelinetech.com) provides retail ticketing solutions for retailers and retail suppliers. With headquarters in Atlanta, GA, the company has offices in the U.S, Canada, Hong Kong and China to serve its customers worldwide.