SupplyExplorer targets faster retailer supplier discovery

Rithum has launched SupplyExplorer, a new supplier discovery product aimed at helping retailers find, assess, and connect with high-value suppliers more quickly as merchandising teams face growing pressure to expand assortments without adding more manual work.

The launch centres on Merchant Match, SupplyExplorer’s foundational module, which recommends suppliers based on a retailer’s category mix, growth priorities, and wider business requirements. The tool uses network-wide data and matching signals to surface suppliers that are better aligned with a retailer’s strategic goals, rather than relying on cold outreach or fragmented sourcing processes.

Supporting that is Network Profiles, a set of supplier-controlled pages that give retailers more visibility into company capabilities, catalogue range, and performance across Rithum’s network. The intention is to shorten evaluation cycles by allowing merchandising teams to review fit, relevance, and historical performance before making contact. Rithum said that should reduce sourcing risk and make assortment expansion more reliable.

“Supplier discovery has remained one of the most manual and fragmented parts of ecommerce, forcing merchandising teams to rely on disconnected data, time-consuming research, and guesswork to find the right partners,” said Blaine Nielsen, President of Retailers at Rithum. “That slows down assortment expansion, creates missed revenue opportunities, and makes it harder for retailers to keep pace with changing customer demand. With SupplyExplorer, we’re helping retailers act more quickly and confidently by bringing structure, visibility, and intelligence to how they identify and connect with the partners that will drive their next phase of growth.”

The release is designed to address a familiar problem in retail operations: supplier information is often spread across disconnected systems, outreach is slow, and good potential partners can be missed while teams focus on manual research. That, in turn, can delay category growth and make it harder for retailers to respond to shifts in customer demand.

Rithum is positioning the new product as an extension of its role in the wider commerce ecosystem. Drawing on more than two decades in the market, the company said its network gives it visibility into supplier performance, assortment breadth, and trading relationships that can be used to improve how retailers build and scale their assortments.