Salsify and Alkemics

Frequently Asked Questions about Salsify’s Acquisition of Alkemics

Salsify acquired Alkemics and its Supplier Experience Management (SupplierXM) platform on May 19th. Based in Paris, France and founded in 2011 by Antoine Durieux, Antoine Perrin, and Benoît Portoleau-Balloy, Alkemics is a collaborative commerce platform for retailers and distributors. The combined capabilities make the Salsify Commerce Experience Management platform (CommerceXM) the only continuously adaptive system of record and workflow for brands and retailers to collaborate on winning product experiences for the digital shelf. 

What does Alkemics do?

Alkemics facilitates efficient commercial relationships between top retailers and an ecosystem of 20000+ brands and partners. Alkemics powers the supplier experience for 100% of the top grocery retailers in France, including Carrefour, InterMarché, Metro, Casino, and LeClerc. Alkemics also supports retailers in health, beauty, toys, travel, and "Do it yourself" verticals, allowing them to engage with their suppliers at every stage of their commercial relationship to better serve consumers, from sourcing and product discovery to listing process and omnichannel sales. 

What does Salsify’s acquisition of Alkemics mean for the industry? 

Consumers rely on accurate, complete, optimized experiences, fueled by suppliers’ data and rich brand content, delivered to every channel (from retailers' physical shelves to ecommerce channels, marketplaces, social commerce, and brand-owned sites). 

While other, legacy vendors have erected paywalls that force a supplier to submit product data through them - discouraging content updates and experimentation that lead to better shopping experiences - Salsify and Alkemics have both been committed to an Open World model since their inception. 

The newly combined Salsify Commerce Experience Management platform provides the onboarding and transparent cross-supply-chain collaboration capabilities necessary for sellers and suppliers to rapidly communicate requirements and exchange the data and feedback necessary to satisfy shoppers and grow sales.

What do you mean by "both companies have been committed to “an open world model"? What are walled gardens and why does this help break them down?

For decades, many vendors have erected paywalls that force a supplier to submit product data through them to retailers, creating walled gardens. These vendors effectively collect a toll for moving data across the internet, and do not support fast-changing, experiential or channel-optimized content.

An Open World model is needed. In a world of infinite shelf space and consumer-driven search, these paywalls must go away. Retailers require cross-supply chain workflows and analytics to enable the rapid onboarding and collaboration at scale across hundreds or thousands of suppliers. Brands need technology that supports managing & delivering channel-optimized data and workflows to all commerce touchpoints from a single source of truth to create unique and continuously optimized experiences. 

Salsify and Alkemics deliver value by enabling brands and retailers to collaborate and deliver high quality, optimized commerce experiences to the consumer. They do this by removing friction across the supply chain, speeding time to market, and enabling cross-functional and now cross-supply chain collaboration at scale to customers.

When will a unified platform be available? 

The two platforms are integrated today, and already provide the syndication and collaboration workflows for seamless powering of an optimized digital shelf commerce experience, including digitizing all omnichannel commerce processes.

Both Salsify and Alkemics are high-growth product-centric companies, with modern, cloud-native, multi-tenant, enterprise subscription platforms at the core of their businesses. 

Salsify will continue to invest in additional unification of the two platforms to bring additional value to customers. Salsify and Alkemics products were built from the ground up to interoperate and empower business users to get work done.

What does this mean for the Salsify platform? 

With today’s acquisition of Alkemics, the Salsify Commerce XM platform now consists of three main components:

• Product Experience Management (ProductXM) empowers brands, retailers, and distributors to create, deliver, and optimize product experiences that win the algorithm across all their digital touchpoints 
• Supplier Experience Management (SupplierXM) enables retailers to win the omnichannel shopper through deep collaboration with their suppliers at every stage of their commercial relationship
• CommerceXM Network is the open, two-way collaboration network through which brands, distributors, and retailers exchange data, content, and communications to most efficiently deliver winning products to the market at scale. 

Were changes made to staff or any office locations? 

No. With this acquisition, Salsify now has offices in Paris, Lisbon, Boston, and Chicago, with employees working remotely throughout the US and Europe. The combined staff is around 570 people and Salsify is hiring aggressively, and expects to end 2021 at around 700 employees.

What is the global reach of the combined companies? 

With this acquisition, Salsify is the only global Commerce XM platform able to support customers worldwide. Salsify is the leading Product Experience Management (ProductXM) software platform worldwide, with deployments in over 80 countries. Alkemics is the leading Supplier Experience Management (SupplierXM) provider in EMEA. Together, they combine strong industry connections as well as sales and customer success prowess for significant business opportunity in both regions. 

What were the terms of the deal? 

This transaction is a private transaction and the terms will not be disclosed. The combined company will cross $100M ARR by mid-2021 and has offices in Boston, Lisbon, and Paris. 

Together, their universe of current and potential customers now extend across the entire global supplier, retailer, and distributor network of companies. Already, the combined company boasts marquee brand customers such as Mars, L'Oreal, Coca-Cola, Bosch, and GSK,as well as retailers E.Leclerc, Carrefour, Metro, and Intermarché.

Where can I ask more questions?  

Media and analysts, please contact Kathy Keating at kathy.keating@salsify.com.