At altr, we’ve always felt a certain kinship with companies that are pushing at the margins, with leaders who refuse to be constrained by even referring to their business using standard industry terms. It’s what we do – it’s why started altr with the promise “design the future every day.”

So when we met Sue Welch, the CEO of TradeStone software, a B2B retail technology pioneer whose business ostensibly competed in the world of Project Lifecycle Management (PLM) technology, we knew we had found a kindred spirit when she’d insist to anyone who asked that “we need to stop people from thinking that we are a PLM!”

Now, six months after we first sat down with Sue, we’re happy to be part of the next stage in her team’s history of leadership in world of retail, the merger of TradeStone and Bamboo Rose, into the new Bamboo Rose, the technology leader of the New Retail Economy. A relationship that started with brand and business consulting extended to new brand and messaging design, product experience design, marketing plan creation, website, print, social, and CRM marketing, culminating with the new brand launch at the 2016 National Retail Federation’s Big Show.

Bamboo Rose was born from the understanding that the old tools could no longer keep up in the complex, 24/7, borderless world of retail today. Emails, spreadsheets, and PowerPoint had increased productivity 20 years ago – but in today’s digital, consumer-driven world of retail, it was no longer sufficient to be more productive, people needed completely new ways of working to stay ahead and succeed. So Bamboo Rose changed the script, moving from one-to-one workflows and communications, to market-based information flow and activity; from text-heavy, data sorting to more visual, intelligence-aided decision-making.

To lead in today’s New Retail Economy, Bamboo Rose relaunched as the only B2B marketplace powered by proven trade engines that allows retailers, wholesalers, and suppliers to work in the same way that we live – socially, digitally and in real time. Bamboo Rose has rebuilt their company with the vision to know that yesterday’s solutions won’t work for today and tomorrow’s retail challenges – and we’re proud to have been at part of it at altr, a collective built around the idea that there’s a better way than the traditional agency model to serve companies’ product and marketing needs.