Broder Bros, DBA Prime Line® Selects Blue Ridge to Optimize North American Supply Chain Operations Following Merger with alphabroder

ATLANTA, September 24, 2019Blue Ridge announced today that Prime Line®, a privately-held Bridgeport, Conn. based promotional products wholesaler, has selected Blue Ridge technology to streamline its extensive North American supply chain operations, which include a network of more than 10,000 promotional product distributors and 1,700 stock keeping units (SKUs), across 15 product categories.

Prime Line has been a leading promotional products industry supplier since 1980. In 2017, it merged with alphabroder and is now its hard goods division. The product line is sold exclusively through industry distributors and other resellers. While operating primarily in North America, the company can ship anywhere in the world. Prime Line’s inventory includes bags, drinkware, tech accessories, gift items, desk items, stress relievers, apparel, headwear, executive toys and writing instruments. The wholesaler is the exclusive industry supplier for MopToppers™, Leeman New York, BUILT and Rubik's® brands.

With such an extensive inventory catalog and large-scale supply chain operation throughout North America, Prime Line selected Blue Ridge as its technology partner because of their proven history in optimizing across channels, synchronizing planning processes and executing seamlessly so wholesalers can keep customers and win new business.

Increased availability, reduced delivery or shipping times and returns management are considered basic expectations, not differentiators, in today’s marketplace,” said Jeff Lederer, president, Prime Line. “We’ve invested in upgrading and expanding our warehousing and production facilities in recent years and partnering with Blue Ridge was the next step in streamlining our North American operations.”

Prime Lime offers a comprehensive assortment of products available with deep inventory and 24-hour production. Some of these items are part of the company’s Prime Plus inventory program of best sellers, which offers production of large quantity orders in days, instead of the standard two to three months required for overseas orders.

According to Blue Ridge, advanced techniques that consider the granular information available of an item or location can enhance abilities—precisely predicting and accurately planning demand, avoiding stock outages or excess inventory.

“Our partnership with Prime Line utilizes state-of-the-art capabilities that holistically leverage attributes such as price changes, types of promotions and event dynamics —combining them with advanced machine learning and big data strategies to enhance the accuracy of forecasting. That’s a differentiator,” said Jim Byrnes, chief executive officer, Blue Ridge.

About Broder Bros, DBA Prime Line®

Broder Bros, DBA Prime Line has been a leading promotional products industry supplier since 1980. In 2017, it merged with alphabroder and is now its hard goods division. The product line is sold exclusively through industry distributors and other resellers. While operating primarily in North America, the company can ship anywhere in the world. Key product categories include bags, drinkware, tech accessories, gift items, desk items, stress relievers, apparel, headwear, executive toys and writing instruments. Prime is the exclusive industry supplier for MopToppers™, Leeman New York, BUILT and Rubik's® brands. For more information, go to www.primeline.com.

About Blue RIdge

Blue Ridge Supply Chain Planning and Price Optimization solutions empower distributors and retailers to tap into undiscovered margin through enterprise-wide inventory intelligence, automation and synchronization. Blue Ridge uniquely combines demand forecasting with pricing strategy, so that businesses can proactively understand the unpredictable and allocate the right inventory – right-priced across the entire mix – to accelerate top- and bottom-line results. In a world where the only constant is change, Blue Ridge provides more certainty, more speed, and more assurance – so companies can see the why behind the buy, and respond faster to the unexpected. That’s why major retailers and distributors rely on Blue Ridge for a more foreseeable future. For more information, go to www.blueridgeglobal.de