TradeStone's Sourcing Module contains robust functionality for designers, buyers, merchants and factories alike:

Request for Quote: Building upon the product specifications outlined in the Product Brief, buyers can walk through a step-by-step process to publish requests for quote. The TradeStone proprietary StepBuilder process ensures that no detail is missed. For instance, "material" attributes span softlines, footwear, and hardlines, including fiber content, construction, count, weight, and measure for the material composition by position on the garment.

Additionally, the solution can call style and slot identifiers from other applications, i.e. a Product Data Management (PDM) system, a bill of materials, images and sketches, as well as technical specification packages. Merchants and buyers can also include product packing configurations (CBMs, weight, inner pack/master pack size, etc.) and require confirmation from the vendor for packing weight/measure and freight estimates. And, of course, buyers can allocate sizes and colors and other attributes to various delivery dates and locations.

Vendor Offers: Suppliers are guided through a logical workflow to build comprehensive offers and suggest product variations. The OfferBuilder prompts the vendor to include FOB/first cost, minimum ship quantities and ship dates, as well as delivery terms, port of origin and country of origin. Additionally, the vendor can submit recommendations for substitute materials via the variations or collaboration options. The vendor can also attach detailed costs to the offer to build out the landed cost estimate (agent fees, packaging, handling, freight, duty, etc.). And TradeStone's own dynamic costing models will automatically calculate fee schedules, freight rate data, HTS schedules, and currency conversions.

The Sourcing Module is a very powerful tool in TradeStone's Merchandise Lifecycle Management, playing a critical role in product pricing and time to market. Offer Comparisons prompt the buying organization to support product goals for margins and time to market with the best-positioned vendors.