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Tina Wefer Rejoins Blacksmith Applications
June 16, 2009
Boston, MA [June 16, 2009] Blacksmith Applications is pleased to announce the return of foodservice technology veteran Tina Wefer to its management team. Ms. Wefer rejoins as Vice President, Marketing and Product Strategy, where she will be responsible for all marketing, strategic planning and thought leadership.
"We are thrilled that Tina is rejoining Blacksmith," said Paul Wietecha, CEO. "She helped grow our business significantly, establishing Blacksmith as a thought leader in the trade spending space and generating new revenue through our consulting business. Given Tina's significant industry experience and overall market knowledge, we are well-positioned to leverage the opportunity represented by manufacturers who want to evaluate and manage trade spending profitability."
During her earlier tenure, Ms. Wefer established a relationship with Technomic, a foodservice consulting firm, to provide analysis and consulting on clients' trade spend, price and contract management practices and processes. She established Blacksmith as the leader in the space through thought leadership webinars and white papers, sharing industry benchmarks and best practices.
Prior to her first position with the company, Ms. Wefer worked for EFS Network (now iTradeNetwork), to research customer requirements across the foodservice industry and design products for inter-enterprise order management and contract and rebate management. She also sat on the EFR-UCC committee responsible for developing industry standards for price synchronization. Most recently, she worked for ArrowStream, a foodservice supply chain software and solutions vendor and prior to that, for Initiate Systems, a master data management software provider. Ms. Wefer holds an M.B.A. from Northwestern University's Kellogg Graduate School of Management.
Ms. Wefer commented, "I am delighted to rejoin Blacksmith and work again with these talented and entrepreneurial professionals. Having been a part of the Company's evolution in the past, I look forward to furthering our position as the leader in trade spending for the foodservice industry. Blacksmith is an innovative company committed to helping manufacturers not only manage their trade spending and profitability, but also helping them understand the best way to spend their dollars. I am excited about the challenges and opportunities ahead."
In the past three years, Blacksmith Applications has seen its number of customer double. According to Mr. Wietecha, "Blacksmith Applications enables its customers to evaluate the profitability of proposed pricing, promotions and trade spending programs before offering them to customers, and to measure product and customer profitability. In today's economic environment, ensuring profitable performance is more important than ever." Ms. Wefer will be based in Chicago, IL.
About Blacksmith Applications
Blacksmith Applications provides software solutions and strategic consulting to empower foodservice manufacturers to manage their trade spending and pricing more profitably. Blacksmith specializes in solving the unique needs of foodservice manufacturers, while also meeting clients' needs for CPG and other lines of business.
FORGE Trade supports distributor pricing and trade program and operator contract and rebate management, including profitability evaluation and approval routing. FORGE Settlements offers tools for claim validation, deduction resolution, and settlement processing. FORGE Analytics offers robust enterprise reporting for managing across the transactions involved.
Blacksmith solutions enable profitable decision-making, provide insight into promotion performance and offer flexible configuration of role security, approval thresholds and process controls.
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