Fry Inc. buys consultants Pinnacle Rock Associates

Design, development and managed services provider Fry Inc. has acquired Pinnacle Rock Associates, a San Francisco-based firm that provides business and technology consulting services to multi-channel retailers, catalogers and CPG manufacturers. The 35-employee PRA will operate as a division within Fry. Terms weren’t disclosed.

The acquisition extends Fry’s offering beyond services and technology centered primarily on e-commerce transaction capability into consulting services that more broadly cover the operational interface of online and offline retail. “Fry’s customer-facing design and transactional web capabilities are a natural complement to our retail operations expertise. Together we can provide our customers with everything it takes to be successful in multichannel retail,” says Mark Pierce, a principal of PRA.

The combination of the two companies will give Fry the opportunity to provide customers with a wider range of services that may start with the web site but end elsewhere, says Fry CEO David Fry. “We’ve always told our customers we are about the services surrounding transactions online. Software and creative aspects are involved in that, but the bigger picture is about the aspects surrounding transactions. PRA strengthens that story,” he says.

Specifically, that means that in addition to transaction-related technology and consulting services, Fry will now offer e-retailers consulting services in areas such as merchandise selection, logistics, distribution and fulfillment. “In working with our clients, we’ve often seen these opportunities; for instance, pointing out to a client that if they had a different product assortment, they may do better online. But we didn’t have a lot of avenues by which to make that situation better," Fry says, adding that there is no overlap of services in the combination of the two companies and that there will be no staff reduction. “It was an easy decision that the two companies were stronger together than they were individually,” he adds.

Fry will speak in a session entitled, What Technology Is Coming and Why You Should Care at the Internet Retailer Conference & Exhibition, June 4-7 in San Jose.