cloud supply chain Archives

Traceable Sporting Goods Collection

Posted on 26 January, 20237 August, 2025 by David Priestman

Sourcemap, a global provider of supply chain transparency and traceability software, today announced that Amer Sports – the parent company of premier athletic apparel and equipment brands such as Arc’teryx, Wilson, Salomon and others – has signed on to track and trace critical commodities such as cotton and viscose, also called rayon.

Amer Sports will leverage Sourcemap’s full-suite supply chain transparency solution to collect transaction certificates for certified materials and independently verify the company’s and its subsidiaries’ entire chain of custody, from raw material to finished product, across its supply chain spanning five continents.

Two common raw materials for everyday and activewear across the apparel industry, cotton and viscose traverse through a number of intermediary stops, from the forest or farm at which it is sourced to retailer shelves. Between ginners, traders, fabric mills, sewers and other middlemen, thoroughly checking and controlling how and where these materials move is typically a costly and technically difficult challenge. In the U.S., legislation like the Uyghur Forced Labour Prevention Act has forced importers to irrefutably prove how their cotton and viscose are sourced or risk legal and financial repercussions, but fewer than 20 percent of apparel companies surveyed by KPMG reported having full visibility into their supply chains.

The parent company of established consumer brands such as Arc’teryx, Salomon, Peak Performance, Atomic, Wilson, Armada, ENVE Composites, Louisville Slugger, DeMarini and Sports Tracker, Amer provides everything from household hardgoods such as sports equipment to high-performance outdoor apparel. With such complex supply chains, Amer relies on real-time commodity mapping to ensure material compliance.

“Customer satisfaction is one of our main priorities, and we achieve this when we create total transparency and compliance with local and international mandates within our complete supply chain,” said Pascal Covatta, VP of Global Sourcing at Amer Sports. “Sourcemap is the integral partner enabling us to answer these customer needs and compliance expectations for our end-to-end supply chain transparency.”

Pioneered by Sourcemap, the supplier discovery process connects direct and indirect suppliers, sites, shipping lanes and transactions for an up-to-date graph of entire global operations. On average, Sourcemap customers discover more than 10,000 suppliers during the process; since signing on as a customer, Amer already has undergone Sourcemap’s supplier discovery program for one of its essential commodities: cotton, identifying upstream suppliers from farms to mills to factories within its supply chain.

Ahead of its peers, Sourcemap offers a certification workflow, a customizable solution that ensures brand protection and credibility along every tier of the supply chain. Thoroughly collecting an audit trail of evidence for future reporting, Sourcemap’s certification workflows are multi-brand, multi-certification and multi-commodity, ensuring every component of the value chain is verified. By utilizing Sourcemap’s certification workflow, Amer is able to manage its intricate supply chains with end-to-end visibility into the entire value chain, an essential undertaking to remain compliant and competitive.

“We will continue to see forward-thinking brands like Amer with complex supply chains that span nearly every corner of the world move beyond legacy mapping systems,” said Sourcemap CEO and founder Leo Bonanni (pictured). “As global companies continue to build resilient supply chains, traceability and transparency move even closer toward the centre of successful business planning. Sourcemap is key to helping companies across all sectors stay one step ahead.”

Capabilities to get Global Supply Chains Moving

Posted on 24 January, 202329 July, 2025 by David Priestman

To help organizations increase the efficiency of global supply chains, Oracle is introducing new logistics capabilities within Oracle Fusion Cloud Supply Chain & Manufacturing (SCM). The updates to Oracle Transportation Management (OTM) and Oracle Global Trade Management (GTM), part of Oracle Cloud SCM, help customers reduce costs, improve accuracy, automate regulatory compliance, and enhance logistics flexibility.

Logistics leaders are overwhelmed with a recent build-up of port and shipping delays, fluctuating fuel costs, and evolving trade regulations while also being at the forefront of efforts to reduce carbon emissions of goods in transit. Organizations that don’t have flexible and responsive logistics processes in place often end up passing these delays and costs onto their customers.

“The last few years tested the flexibility of global logistics operations and many organizations have struggled to keep pace with the changing market,” said Derek Gittoes, vice president of supply chain management product strategy, Oracle. “With Oracle Transportation Management and Oracle Global Trade Management, organizations can rapidly adapt to changes in their supply chain and logistics network. Oracle’s self-updating platform gives customers access to continuous innovation, as new features are added every 90 days without business disruption.”

The new capabilities within Oracle Transportation Management and Oracle Global Trade Management include:
• Automated Trade Agreement Qualification: Helps customers validate Certificate of Origin, reduce tariffs, and enter new markets. With a deep view into the bill of materials, Trade Agreement Qualification enables customers to comply with labour regulations and prove where goods were produced via auditable records.
• New Oracle Logistics Digital Assistant Capabilities: Allow users to gain insight into the status of their shipments with simple voice commands. With the embedded Logistics Digital Assistant, users can quickly find answers to their questions.
• Enhanced Workbenches: Allow users to combine data from multiple sources into a single view to streamline operations and enhance decision making. New templates for driver management, dock scheduling, work assignments, shipment, spot bids, and restricted party screening enable users to manage specific logistics processes more efficiently.
• New Oracle Transportation Management Mobile App: Enables customers to send assignments to drivers, capture arrival and departure events, and communicate in-transit status and location information. The highly configurable and intuitive app synchronizes offline app data and allows users to execute tasks efficiently no matter where they are.
• ETA Predictions with Machine Learning: Provide real-time updates and shipment tracking to create accurate predictions for arrival times based on a customer’s unique business operations. With more accurate ETA predictions, customers can take quick action to reroute shipments to enhance operational efficiency.

“1-800 Flowers has a very complex supply chain and transportation plan with our focus on high end gifting, and a strategic priority to deliver an unparalleled customer experience through operational excellence,” said Don La France, vice president, enterprise logistics and supply chain solutions, 1800 Flowers. “Our goals were standardization, scaling capabilities, cost savings, visibility and reporting. After some discovery we quickly decided on Oracle for transportation management and warehouse management. We were able to stand up OTM on our largest brand in 12 weeks, improved our proactivity, and gave our teams the visibility needed to drive greater on-time performance. We are very happy with our choice and our decision has been validated by our results many times over.”

Oracle Cloud SCM helps organizations seamlessly connect supply chain processes and quickly respond to changing demand, supply, and market conditions. With new features added every quarter, Oracle Cloud SCM helps customers create a resilient supply network and processes that outpace change.

Funding to Boost Brands with Logistics Engine

Posted on 16 January, 202329 July, 2025 by David Priestman

The logistics engine of Locad provides a cloud supply chain for brands to store, pack, ship, and track orders for ecommerce and omnichannel retail through a tech platform connecting a network of warehouses and shipping partners. Locad has announced it has raised an $11M Series A funding round to expand their supply chain platform that allows modern consumer brands in Asia-Pacific to automatically store, pack, ship and track their orders in a distributed, end-to-end supply chain as-a-service. The $11M Series A raised will be used towards network expansion, product development, and hiring talent across Asia-Pacific. The round was led by Reefknot Investments, a fund anchored by Temasek and logistics powerhouse Kuehne & Nagel.

Locad’s platform, dubbed the logistics engine, syncs inventory across sales channels such as Shopify, Lazada, Shopee, and TikTok Shop, and orchestrates end-to-end order fulfillment for B2C and B2B orders, from storage to delivery, through a network of warehouses and shipping partners. To date, Locad has served over 200 brands across Singapore, the Philippines, Thailand, Hong Kong, and Australia, and shipped more than 2 million orders while maintaining a 99% same-day order fulfillment rate.

“Ultimately, our goal is to enable a frictionless movement of physical goods and data across the supply chain for any brand and merchant, enabling anyone to sell anywhere, on any sales channel, and deliver seamlessly.” says Locad CEO and Co-founder Constantin Robertz, “As modern consumer brands are transforming to direct-to-consumer and omnichannel retail, we have seen that the supply chain and fulfillment infrastructure is a key barrier to scaling the business for many brands, and the bar is only rising further, due to higher customer expectations for fast delivery, and the complexity driven by an increasing number of sales channels.”

The series A funding round also saw participation from returning investors Sequoia India and Southeast Asia’s Surge, Febe Ventures, Antler, as well as new investors Access Ventures, JG Summit, and WTI.

“We are excited to partner with Locad to bring holistic end-to-end e-commerce logistics solutions to brands across Asia Pacific.” shares Ervin Lim, Vice President of Reefknot Investments, “Locad’s unique operating model of localizing warehouses into the cities ensures that inventory is kept close to the customers thereby enabling significant cost and time savings for both brand and consumer. We believe that Locad’s logistics engine will spur greater participation in the digital economy as consumers outside of Tier-1 cities can now receive their orders 2-3x faster at a fraction of the usual cost.”

Locad’s logistics engine provides the backbone to support the e-commerce and omnichannel growth of global consumer brands such as Havaianas, Reckitt Benckiser, and Emma Sleep in the region, while also expanding access to best-in-class logistics infrastructure to growing D2C brands and mid-market merchants.

“Success in omnichannel commerce for modern consumer brands requires a powerful supply chain orchestrated by software that seamlessly integrates the infrastructure of warehouses and shipping carriers. And that’s what we’re building here at Locad” added Constantin Robertz.

Committed to democratizing the back-end supply chain of e-commerce, Locad will use its $11M Series A funding towards building the region’s largest fulfillment network. The company is adding warehouses, partnering with transport operators, and hiring talent across the region to scale in Southeast Asia and Australia.

“Over the next 5 years, we expect to build the region’s largest network of warehouses, enabling next-day delivery in Tier 1 to 3 cities across the region, and make this available to brands and merchants in one integrated platform” concluded Constantin Robertz.

Locad is a logistics engine enabling e-commerce brands with a cloud supply chain to grow their omnichannel business and automatically store, pack, ship, and track orders across Asia-Pacific.

Locad’s tech platform syncs inventory across online channels and organizes end-to-end order fulfillment through their reliable network of warehouses and carriers across Singapore, the Philippines, Thailand, Hong Kong, and Australia, with more locations opening soon. Through this, brands and merchants get a geographically distributed warehousing infrastructure that allows them to stock goods closer to customers, enabling faster delivery at lower cost.

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