- Seagull Software is the result of a merger between Seagull Scientific and its BarTender labelling system, and software solutions company Mojix.
- The newly merged company intends to bring supply chain visibility to companies that are using BarTender label printing software.
Labelling software company Seagull Scientific is merging with Mojix—an inventory management technology firm—to provide an end-to-end solution for companies labeling and tracking goods through supply chains and into stores or restaurants.
The merged companies will operate as Seagull Software and offer Seagull’s BarTender label designing solution brand as well as Mojix’s inventory tracking brand. The technology companies are owned by Peak Rock Capital, a private equity firm focused on consumer, technology and health care solutions.
The rearrangement of companies includes Dan Doles (former CEO of Mojix and member of its board of directors) now acting as CEO of Seagull Software and Chris Cassidy (former CEO of Mojix) as the chief revenue officer.
Leveraging a Global Footprint
BarTender’s API is in use by companies across the globe for printing and managing barcode and RFID labels. In fact, Seagull is among the largest label printing software companies in the world. The BarTender label design, printing, and encoding software is in use by 250,000 customers across 175 countries and enables the printing of more than 100 billion labels each year.
Mojix provides the “ytem” traceability platform—an inventory tracing solution to track labeled goods with passive UHF RFID technology. The U.S.-based company offers a cloud-based SaaS platform for real-time management of goods and assets, based on RFID as well as other IoT technologies.
With the merger, the expanded company will offer a more extensive solution for its customers, whether they are brands applying labels or companies that ship or receive the goods, said Cassidy. The goal is to provide a single solution for end-to-end supply chain management as the merger enables a more seamless approach to traceability- whether companies are using barcodes, RFID or a combination of both.
“We will offer fully integrated traceability solutions that capture data at every touchpoint along the supply chain,” Cassidy said.
Chipotle Solution
BarTender and Mojix have worked together in the past. The two companies joined forces to provide a seamless solution for labeling and supply chain management for restaurant chain Chipotle.
Chipotle is one of the first large restaurant companies to deploy RFID technology across its enterprise to improve traceability and food safety. The chain of 3,000 fast casual restaurants operates in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Germany and France.
The solution first developed and piloted four years ago uses BarTender labeling software with Avery Dennison RFID tags at supplier sites. The end users can configure, print and encode labels for each SKU of products, with a unique ID.
The system integrates with the Mojix ytem traceability platform that provides a view into each product’s location and status as it passes through read points. Once goods are received at one of the restaurants, employees use handheld RFID readers to confirm what has been received, and the software updates the item’s status. This information helps the restaurant, as well as corporate management, ensure what inventory is on hand at each site and determine the freshness of each product.
An additional benefit in its design is as a labor saver and booster of inventory accuracy.
Integrated Solution
While RFID is already providing traceability and transparency of products such as food and apparel to meet requirements like the digital product passport (DPP) in Europe, there have been few seamless solutions. That means that a brand using label printing software doesn’t not access or share data from a system used by logistics companies or retailers.
“What has been missing for companies that want to leverage traceability software is an agnostic data platform,” Cassidy said. However, for Chipotle, the tech providers built a solution that could integrate with companies’ existing software with the ytem and BarTender data.
With integration, customers can capture a product’s data at the source of manufacture and subsequent enterprise intelligence as goods flow to a retailer-can then connect to a user’s warehouse management software (WMS) or enterprise resource planning (ERP) system for a full digital view of labelled inventory and asset management.
Becoming Better Together
During the Chipotle deployment, BarTender and Mojix came to a conclusion “we were better together” based on the solution for the restaurant company, Cassidy said.
With the merger, both brands will be offered under the Seagull Software umbrella. Cassidy’s prediction is that the merger will enable other companies to do what was already accomplished for Chipotle.
“As we start to get more suppliers and food distributors onboard, it will expand,” he said.
Hybrid Approaches
Cassidy predicted the demand for traceability is going to continue to grow, but the technology used to accomplish that will vary. Users may employ QR codes, 2D data matrix codes or RFID.
“It’s really going to be a convergence over the next couple of decades,” he said.
Cassidy points out that some companies that are not deploying RFID tags can still leverage the ytem and BarTender data under the merger. The software allows users with handheld readers to select an alternative to RFID tag reading, when no tags are present. That could involve flipping a switch on the reader to launch barcode scanning, or even to accommodate manual inventory counts. Whether goods come in tagged with RFID or not, retailers would still be able to use the single receiving process in the store.
With the merger completed, Seagull Software is moving forward with discussions with new customers in both the food and retail space.
“We really see ourselves as the multi-tenant cloud platform that can meet you on your journey where you’re at and plug and play into your ERP or your WMS,” said Cassidy. “I call it harmonized or orchestrated together-for traceability.”