Giant Eagle Employees Looking Sharp for Less

PITTSBURGH -- Giant Eagle, Inc. here has uncovered substantial cost savings on new uniforms for the approximately 36,000 employees at its 216 supermarkets and 94 GetGo fuel and convenience locations, the chain said yesterday.

Giant Eagle said it worked with Ariba, a spend management solutions provider, to find the cost savings. "At Giant Eagle, we are aggressively pursuing ways to identify cost savings opportunities and are committed to reinvesting those savings to improve the value proposition for our customers," said Kevin Srigley, Giant Eagle s.v.p. of marketing. "The use of Ariba's spend management tools is one of the ways in which we have been achieving these goals. Our sourcing of uniforms is just one of many examples of the success we are having."

Working with category experts at Ariba, the Giant Eagle team structured an online event in which a field of national and local suppliers bid on seven uniform items. Nearly a dozen suppliers competed in the event, and when it was complete, Giant Eagle had lowered its costs by more than 20 percent.

"We were very pleased with the results, because we were able to source a key item at a substantially lower cost from a local supplier," Srigley said. "In doing so, we secured attractive and functional uniforms made to our exact specifications and ensured that they can be easily delivered to our retail locations in Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia and Maryland."

As one of the nation's largest food retailers and food distributors with approximately $5.5 billion in annual sales, Giant Eagle operates 140 corporate and 73 independently owned and operated supermarkets in addition to more than 90 fuel and convenience stores throughout western Pennsylvania, Ohio, north central West Virginia and Maryland.
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