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Advancing product innovation with consumer insights in retail
In today’s rapidly evolving retail industry, speed to market is a key advantage. With supply chains, sourcing strategies, technology, and consumer expectations all changing and the increased demand for sustainable products and accelerated product lifecycles, it’s important to stay ahead of the curve.
Our commitment to the retail industry
As a global safety science leader, UL Solutions is dedicated to helping companies deliver quality, demonstrate safety, demonstrate regulatory compliance, enhance sustainability and manage risk.
To support our commitment to continually evolving our range of retail capabilities and expertise, our new Retail Center of Excellence in Lowell, Arkansas, USA will open in December 2023. The Retail Center of Excellence is purpose-built to support innovation of private label products early in their life cycle at the design stage and place valuable consumer insights at the center of quality assurance programs.
Benefits of working with UL Solutions Retail Center of Excellence
This advanced retail testing laboratory will feature deep technical expertise to help retailers, brands and suppliers identify critical risks, quickly bring products to market and evaluate to safety, quality and sustainability requirements.
- Speed and scale: Spanning across 100,000 square feet in Lowell, Arkansas, the new Retail Center of Excellence is one of the largest testing laboratories in North America dedicated to retail and consumer products. Our workflow is optimized for speed, scale, and flexibility.
- Expanded capabilities: We have expanded testing capabilities and capacity in strategic areas, including packaging, reliability, tear down, furniture, electrical and electronics, sporting goods, and chemistry, with space for future expansion.
- Consumer insights: Our Product Experience Center helps you gain valuable perceptions from consumers on product performance, assembly, instructions, and usability to identify potential issues prior to production. This unique service puts the consumer at the center to help our customers reduce risk and improve star-ratings.
- Expertise: Key subject matter experts will be onsite for real-time collaboration with customers. Our experts will leverage the UL Solutions global safety science network across product categories to help solve problems and provide valuable insights.
- Collaboration: This facility will be a showcase center for meetings and events. Retailers, brands, suppliers, and test partners can come together in this location to address industry and customer challenges, educate stakeholders on testing and quality assurance processes, and bring safety, sustainability, quality and performance to the forefront of the product development process.
Product categories we serve
Our global team of experts can develop comprehensive quality assurance programs to help ensure compliance with regulatory requirements and brand specifications. We serve a wide variety of product categories including:
Current capabilities
Hardlines
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Candles
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Houseware and cookware
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Electrical
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Footwear
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Hardware
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Luggage
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Jewelry
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Optical
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Stationary/art/paint
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Toys
Softlines
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Color lab
Chemistry
Technical support services
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Market surveillance
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Benchmarking
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Product experience
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Full program/data management
Key new service areas
Why UL Solutions
UL Solutions supports the consumer products and retail industry by providing services and solutions to help you deliver safer, quality and more sustainable products that your consumers can trust. Thanks to our extensive technical expertise and our accredited high-tech global network of laboratories, we help foster safer living and working conditions for people everywhere through the application of science to solve safety, security and sustainability challenges.
Everyone at UL Solutions shares a passion for making the world a safer place. We support you with:
- Extensive technical and regulatory expertise
- Customized programs
- Scientific leadership
- Collaborative partnership
- Deep industry and technical problem-solving expertise
- Comprehensive risk management approach
- Extensive global footprint
- Broad marketplace trust
Contact us to learn more about how UL Solutions helps support product innovation with consumer insights and speed to market.
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