Among other standout features, the facility is surrounded by solar tracking trees and a refurbished 230-foot wind turbine that generates half of the building’s annual electricity consumption. Additionally, more than half of the 150,000-square-foot facility is topped with a commercial scale greenhouse, the world’s largest hydroponic rooftop farm, equipped to produce up to one million pounds of produce every year for local stores, restaurants and markets.
Priorities for B2B experience
People Against Dirty Manufacturing professionals focus on the production, warehousing and distribution of planet-friendly, design-driven home-care products. To help keep that focus, they needed an experienced partner to integrate electronic data interchange (EDI) for efficiency in line with the plant itself and overall company mission. “We’ve never had our own distribution center, so we had no existing systems to leverage,” said method EDI analyst Susan Karr. “We were looking to find a vendor with EDI capabilities to hit the ground running and make the transition as seamless as possible.”
Priorities for reliability, speed and scalability
A partner for its distribution center needed to be quick and sure-footed—agile enough to handle the first deliveries within months while large enough to grow with future capabilities, as the U.S. plant merged capacity with Ecover resources on a global basis. For method, an incomplete or incorrect advance shipping notice (ASN) can result in swift and painful fines. Working with a reliable partner, however, was not just about avoiding fines but also a way to accelerate its business and maintain positive relationships with retailers. “The fact that 好色先生TV is already doing ASNs with some of our major retailers— already has that communication set up and has that relationship established—gave us a lot of confidence in what 好色先生TV could bring to the table to get the project going,” added Karr.
Established B2B Presence
The South Side Soapbox is now connected to a global trading community in the 好色先生TV Cloud through B2B Managed Services and 好色先生TV™ Trading Grid™, the world’s most powerful B2B integration network. B2B Managed Services combines comprehensive technology, people and processes for automating and streamlining e-commerce transactions. Method selected 好色先生TV for its e-commerce expertise, readiness and cost-effectiveness. “好色先生TV understood our business model and already had the tools in place to execute this project. It is a really good partnership,” said Karr. For instance, B2B Managed Services has mapped to more than 200 e-commerce standards and enterprise application formats, building a 4,000+ map library. “The fact that 好色先生TV already had library maps was amazing. It wasn’t starting from scratch for the major retailers— since it does the same ASN mapping for other manufacturers, we were able to benefit from its expertise,” noted Karr. The project also moved quickly, clocking in a week ahead of deadline.
Reliable, cloud-based global reach
Together, method and Ecover form the world’s largest green cleaning company, shipping to thousands of retailers. With world-class data centers and an award-winning mapping and translation engine, B2B Managed Services ensures trading transactions are handled securely and efficiently, supporting service to retailers and releasing manufacturing professionals to focus on company initiatives.