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Landmark Novelties

Vision, leadership and guaranteed success.

The Si Route Accounting solution provided Landmark with the business intelligence and mobile customer management capabilities that supports our customer satisfaction goals and Continuous Improvement initiatives.

Greg Gartner, Champion of Continuous Improvement,
Landmark Novelties, Inc.

The Company

Landmark Novelties is a leading supplier of novelty items and merchandising services to convenience stores throughout the Midwest. Prior to its launch, Landmark Founder and CEO, Bob Lansing had a vision. He wanted to create a new company whose business goals were dedicated to the success of its customers. He turned his vision into reality in 1999 when he founded Landmark and hired a team of equal dedication. To prove his commitment, Bob and his team offer each customer a most compelling guarantee: “Each Landmark item will sell profitably, or we’ll take it back!”

Landmark provides more than 1,200 convenience store customers with novelty items such as baseball caps, cigarette lighters, caffeine tablets, and sunglasses. In addition to supplying over 400 unique items, its merchandise savvy sales team also helps store owners better manage their shelf space and more effectively promote novelty items. With a well-rounded selection of quality products and attentive customer service, Landmark’s reward is a loyal and satisfied customer base and astonishing growth. In just four years, the company grew from its humble start and into a $12 million revenue-generating establishment.

The Challenge

Building Landmark Novelties from the ground up provides an opportunity to institute best practices and leading edge technology systems in the company’s infancy. While Bob recognized the need for strong operational leadership, wise deployment of technology, and programs to ensure customer and company success, none of the current staff possessed the expertise.

The Solution

Enter: Greg Gartner. Bob quickly recruited Greg, who simply transferred his role as Champion of Continuous Improvement from General Electric to Landmark. As a recognized thought-leader in continuous improvement and measurement systems, Greg rapidly established the processes and systems required to deliver profitability to customers, employees, and shareholders. Solid Innovation was selected as the key technology partner of choice to help achieve these goals.

Of vital importance to Landmark is its leadership DSD (direct store delivery) strategy. As the foundation of the company’s operation, it is designed to improve customer satisfaction, increase sales productivity, reduce costs, and enable on-going monitoring of the business. Solid Innovation manages customer interactions on the road, increases the accuracy of all sales, inventory and financial transactions, while decreasing administrative expenses and providing the business intelligence needed to manage the Continuous Improvement Program.

The Solid Innovation solution aids the Landmark DSD process in numerous ways.

• Supports on-location activities – facilitates shelf stocking, order entry, and mobile inventory.
• Improves driver productivity – by providing the inventory information to rapidly complete merchandising and settlement activities.
• Streamlines accounting by automatically collecting and managing all sales, invoicing, and inventory transactions, and posting automatically to general ledger, thus ensuring that the month closes quickly and accurately.
• Provides intelligence. Solid Innovation transactions are leveraged for business analysis, including determining profitability by sales person, by store, by route. By matching results to pre-defined metrics and comparing best practices, the company is able to identify ‘best-in-class’ performance to help boost all customer and sales rep behavior.

Results with Solid Innovation

Due to the forward-thinking nature of the company, Landmark has leveraged the Solid Innovation solution to help achieve the vision and goals that Bob Lansing originally established for the company.

• Customer Success – Customers are enjoying profit margins in excess of 40% on its novelty items—safely. Customers return what they can’t sell.
• Pro-actively managing the business – with details at their fingertips, Bob and Greg can quickly assess what’s working and what’s not… and make adjustments as needed.
• Motivated Team – Sales staff is compensated on customer profits. Therefore, each route works harder to make sure goals are met. Operating with smart technology, Landmark is able to recruit and retain the highest caliber of industry professionals.
• Rapid growth – Good business practices and a customer-driven philosophy fueled the company’s skyrocketing growth. This substantial growth allowed management to take the company to the next level; funding technology advances and infrastructure initiatives.

Conclusion

As a visionary and leader in the wholesale distribution industry, Landmark Novelties success story was achieved by implementing progressive practices, programs and systems throughout the business.

And let’s not forget their indisputable attribute: guaranteed customer success!