Burlington Coat Factory's Vendor Compliance Department

"Dear Trading Partner:

Burlington Coat Factory continues to make significant changes to our supply chain. As you may have heard, we are implementing a new warehouse management system (WMS). This overhaul of our supply chain software will result in higher levels of accuracy and substantially improved flow of your goods to our store floor. As you have experienced with most of your other trading partners, this new system relies on accurate ASN’s and UCC128 labels from you in order to achieve this enhanced efficiency.

Consequently, we will require ALL vendors to provide compliant EDI transactions and labels in the course of conducting business with Burlington Coat Factory. For a majority of our vendor partners, we do not anticipate any significant issues for you since this level of service is the norm for most of the retail world.

For those of you who are not EDI compliant, there are two options:
1) Test with BCF to become EDI certified utilizing your own system (preferred).
2) Enroll on the BCF Gateway for a free solution on our system.

With these two options at hand, fulfilling BCF requirements should be only a modest change in procedure and effort. For the 1000+ vendors who already fulfill orders to BCF with either traditional EDI or the BCF Gateway, no change in process will be required.

We only ask that you continue your efforts to maximize ASN accuracy and correct UCC128 placement. We expect 100% compliance from our vendors. With that said, I am writing you today on behalf of Burlington Coat Factory’s Vendor Compliance Department in regards to our ‘No ASN at time of receipt’ compliance charge. Your company has had 3 [or more] charges in the last 3 months. We have changed our charging structure from 5% of the cost of the purchase order [per occurrence]; to now escalate an additional 2.5% [7.5% of the cost of the purchase order] after your third charge and another 2.5% [10% of the cost of the purchase order] after your 4th charge.

I cannot express the importance of being [or becoming] compliant to this rule as soon as possible. We have been requesting our vendor’s compliance on this subject since September 2007. I have increased the charge amounts in effort to make you aware of our need for ASN’s before your merchandise arrives. If you would like to discuss this matter further please arrange a conference call or an onsite meeting by emailing Vendor.Meeting.Requests@coat.com. If you have any general questions please contact vendor.relations@coat.com. Traditional EDI testing can be initiated at edi.questions@coat.com. Inquiries for fulfilling EDI requirements through the BCF Gateway system can be directed to edi.gateway@coat.com.

Thank you for your strategic partnership and your ongoing support of BCF initiatives.

Michael Abruzzi
Manager of Vendor Compliance
Burlington Coat Factory
609.387.7800 x2611"