The Supply Side: High Impact Analytics grows staff, revenue, clients

Bentonville-based High Impact Analytics, a customer service firm for brands selling into Walmart and Sam’s Club, has been on a growth trajectory since pivoting its strategy in 2023. Revenue is up 70% annually in the past three years, and employee numbers are up 46%.

The company has added 13 new hires in the past three years, with eight of those since Jan. 1. High Impact now has 82 clients representing hundreds of products in Walmart and Sam’s Clubs and online, according to CEO James Harris.

High Impact employs 28 people who have a combined 250 years of retail and supply chain experience. The firm has added 136 years of deep retail experience to its business acumen in the past two years, Harris said. He also said the firm is positioned to grow revenue by another 50% to 70% this year as it continues to add services and clients, including e.l.f. Beauty, Michelin, and food brands like Miracle Noodle, Wilde Brands and TruLabs Hydrate. He said on the brokerage side of the business, about one-third is grocery or food, with one-third being over-the-counter health and wellness and the remaining one-third being general merchandise.

On the analytics and replenishment management side of the business, general merchandise suppliers comprise about half of the revenue, with food and over-the-counter health each at 25%.

THE REBRANDING
Harris was bitten by the retail bug early with his first job at Walmart in 1999 in replenishment while working his way through college. Harris joined Unilever Foods in 2001, working three years on the Walmart team and two years on the Target team. He then spent two years as director of mass sales for Sleep Innovations, where he called on Walmart and Sam’s Club, Amazon, Target and Kohl’s.

He started the company in 2007 and dubbed it Retail Business Consulting. Harris said he loved the back-end service element of the business and helping suppliers manage the flow of merchandise, find savings and overcome obstacles with the ever-changing requirements of retailers. The primary services early on were analytics and managing replenishment for medium-size companies selling to Walmart and Sam’s Club. Harris grew the business to add retail strategy, consulting and brokering for niche brands in 2023 when he rebranded the company as High Impact Analytics.

“The business has evolved; we started helping smaller suppliers with replenishment and data analytics, and as they grew, so did their needs. Business consulting and strategy, sales and marketing services were added in recent years for niche brands, and we also picked up some larger brands for managing the replenishment management and analytics data around category insights. We also added services to help suppliers with online setup and management in sync with Walmart’s push to grow its online and marketplace inventory. The business is growing on all fronts,” Harris said.

Harris said he added 14 employees in 2017 as more brands needed help with weekly reporting, replenishment and digital content around Walmart’s omnichannel push. Walmart also was focusing on inventory flow with its on-time-in-full (OTIF) requirements.

Harris said the employee group he has assembled has deep category knowledge from the halls of Walmart, including technology prowess and shopper marketing insights that give clients data to succeed online and in stores. Since 2017, the employee number has doubled to 28.

Harris recently began to focus on innovation around products, find ways to entice demand through creative marketing such as working with influencers who receive free samples and programs that generate shopping rewards to build loyalty.

SUPPORT EXAMPLES
“We are about relationships, and there is nothing more rewarding than to see a small company grow their product lines and retail reach over more than a decade. Michigan-based Brightz is a father and son team that has grown their LED lights business to hundreds of products over the past two decades,” Harris said.

Brightz has more than 100 products that take LED lights and turn them into usable luminary applications, such as lining a bicycle wheel to help illuminate the bike at night. There are lights to illuminate corn hole boards, tents, canoes, basketball rims and numerous other applications. Harris said Brightz continues to innovate new products and expand its reach with growing sales in Walmart U.S. stores and Walmart.com.

He said Wilde Protein Chips is a story of innovation founded in 2017 by Jason Wright, who found himself eating more potato chips even though he knew they contained unhealthy ingredients. The main ingredients of Wilde’s chips are chicken breast, chicken broth and egg whites. The chips have 20 grams of protein per serving with just 6 net carbs, compared to potato chips that have 2 grams of protein and 14 grams of carbs per serving.

Harris said High Impact works with Brightz and Wilde to manage and grow their businesses with Walmart. Wilde is sold in Walmart stores nationwide and several online marketplaces.

High Impact also worked with a sporting goods company that faced lost sales when Walmart announced a potential delay in the normally scheduled modular reset. High Impact found shoppers in certain regions typically look for hunting apparel sooner than others. With the modular reset postponed until late September, there were going to be missed sales by Walmart and its supplier.

High Impact put together an analysis by region for all the stores impacted by the decision that the supplier took to the Walmart buyer. High Impact found delaying the reset in warmer climate stores, Walmart could net $1.2 million in sales, which they would otherwise miss. The result for the supplier was increasing their credibility with the category buyer which led to more sales and shipments.

High Impact said a toy supplier was facing a big markdown on the end-of-season inventory in the spring of 2022. The client disagreed with Walmart’s markdown request based on their agreed arrangement.

‍”To better understand the supplier’s challenge, our team used Retail Link data, Walmart’s audit, and the program agreements to complete an extensive markdown analysis. We were able to deliver a comprehensive plan that the supplier could then confidently present to Walmart. In the end, our supplier partner recovered over $100,000 in markdown dollars as a result of the analytics and insights presented to Walmart and has continued to grow their partnership with the retailer,” High Impact noted in its case study.

Editor’s note: The Supply Side section of Talk Business & Politics focuses on the companies, organizations, issues and individuals engaged in providing products and services to retailers. The Supply Side is managed by Talk Business & Politics and sponsored by Firebend.