Mi9 Retail

Mi9 Retail is an enterprise software provider for large retailers. Based in Miami, Florida,^[1] Mi9 Retail also has offices in Pleasanton, California and Toronto, Ontario.^[2] The company’s namesake is inspired by MI6, the British intelligence agency, and its nine initial team members who formed it in 2001.

The company offers a lineup of software that includes Mi9 Merchant (merchandising system), Mi9 Intelligence (business intelligence and retail analytics), Mi9 Foundation (structural integration framework), Mi9 Store (POS and back office solution) and Mi9 Mobile (mobile extensions of the aforementioned systems).

Company History

1980’s – 1990’s: Leading Up to Mi9 Retail

UK natives Mike Burge^[3] and Roger Johnson^[4] were originally co-workers at MGB Computer Services, a UK-based software house founded by Mr. Burge, that designed commercial packaged software for the International Computers Limited marketplace. The company was later sold to Radius Plc in 1989. A partnership with Ernst & Young then led to the introduction of the team and its Unix-based OpenRSA (Open Retail Systems Architecture) product to clients in the United States and Canada, including Eaton’s, Canadian Tire, Kmart and CompUSA. During this time, 1989-1999, the company was based out of Milton Keynes in the UK, with an office in Toronto, ON.

2001-2014 Building the Mi9 Retail Brand

After a ten-year stint at the then publicly traded Radius Plc, the company went private, with Mr. Burge leading a buyout of the retail practice to form Transatlantic Software.^[5] Transatlantic Software was then acquired by ADS Group in 2001 and subsequently merged with STR Inc., a Cleveland-based POS software company whose flagship product was Trade Wind. Mr. Burge then acquired the rights to the OpenRSA product, and together with the core technical team of Transatlantic, formed MI9 Business Intelligence Inc., which commenced trading in 2002. The company’s original product was a business intelligence module Mi9 Retail – Wikipedia Entry developed on .NET framework in the back room of a schoolhouse in northern Toronto.

Later in 2009, the newly named Mi9 Retail acquired US-based Software Development, Inc., a Pleasanton, CA company specializing in store and POS systems.^[6] With the acquisition finalized, Mi9 Retail invested in modernizing the store systems product and integrating it with the core merchandising system to round out its “end-to-end” offering.

2014-present: Respida Capital Management

In 2014, Respida Capital acquired Mi9 Retail and integrated the respective management teams.^[7] Respida’s first acquisition to further augment Mi9 Retail’s capabilities was Gyes, a data aggregation platform formerly part of Fort Lauderdale-based Infinithread.^[8] 2014 also saw the company named as one of the “Most Commonly Selected ERP Software Vendors” by the Parker Avery Group in its article, “The State of Retail ERP 2014”.^[9]

As of Q1 2015, the company reported an 80% increase to its team compared to the year prior with plans to continue expanding.^[10] Since Respida’s acquisition of Mi9 Retail, the company and its software have been selected by the likes of Talbots, Century 21, Everything But Water, The Original Factory Shop and 24 Hour Fitness for its expanding retail operations.

On November 3, 2015, Mi9 Retail acquired retail solutions provider Raymark.^[11] That same week, the company announced funding from Summit Partners to support its rapid expansion.^[12] The Raymark acquisition added new solutions to Mi9 Retail’s line up including Mi9 Mosaic Store, Mi9 Mosaic Clienteling, Mi9 CRM, Mi9 Dashboard Reporting, Mi9 Affinity Merchandising.^[13][14]

Awards

2014

• RIS News ranked Mi9 Retail #1 on their Software Leaderboard in both the Ease of Administration and Leaders in Recommendation.
• The company also placed #2 in Ease of Installation & Integration and Leaders in Software Reliability that year.^[15]

2015

• Everything But Water is selected as one of Apparel Magazine’s 2015 Top Innovators for its implementation of Mi9 Retail’s end-to-end suite.^[16]
• Barneys New York is awarded a Store Operations Superstar Award from Retail Touchpoints for its use of Mi9 iMerchant^[17]
• Mi9 Retail ranks in Top 10 on RIS Software LeaderBoard 2015^[18]

References