Case Study

Ongoing Retail Merchandising, Photo Verification, and Reporting for Gift Card Brand

Client Profile

Industry: Retail

Store Types: Drug, Specialty, Convenience, Discount

Company Type: Financial Services – Gift Card

Services Delivered: POG Resets & Verification, Ongoing Retail Merchandising, Photo Verification & Reporting

Overview:

A nationally recognized leader in financial services with sales positions on retail gift card malls, checkout lanes, and business centers had challenges with out-of-stock data, POG compliance, and marketing piece placement. The company saw an opportunity to decrease OOS, increase sales, and control inventory levels by gaining better insight into in-store on-peg compliance and counts.

Their currently used retail merchandisers worked on their own timeframe for regularly scheduled co-op visits, not exclusive for Company. The reporting provided was often delayed and incomplete, with a low level of actionable data and showing an unacceptable level of project completion. Sometimes the project completion level was as low as 60%.

Stores Visits

Marketing Pieces Placed

Products Merchandised

Challenge

Having detailed, comprehensive insight into in-store conditions in a timely manner.

The challenge was:

Get detailed, actionable, verified data quickly

Fix OOS and POG issues immediately to prevent loss of sales

They needed a solution that would:

Reduce OOS and POG
Control merchandising costs
Lead to growth in sales

Proposed Solution

Single-partner projects
CI would only work on customer’s project to ensure complete attention on it and reduce visit time and cost.

Targeted store lists and visit timing as chosen by customer
Custom store and service window parameters to optimize ROI and compliance.

100% Quality Control with detailed visit data including time stamps and pictures
All reporting data from retail merchandising store visits was individually reviewed by CI’s in-house Quality Control team to assure project accuracy and completion.

CI retail merchandisers carried product into store locations to guarantee product on the shelf if no backstock was available
Materials shipped directly from CI’s warehouse to retail merchandisers provided an end-to-end solution to ensure POG compliance and mitigate backroom inventory product loss.

Outcome

The reimagined retail merchandising approach yielded significant benefits:

Increased Per-Visit ROI
By going to targeted stores for largest impact, i.e. no sales or sales drop stores, and carrying product in, increased sales per store per visit.

OSS Reduction
Reduced out of stocks from a high as 22% in a major retailer and mid-teens in others to less than 5% across over 100,000 doors.

Increased visibility into overall POG including competitors
By receiving detailed photos, audits allowed customer to get clear picture of over all POG’s and their competitors positioning, product selection, and inventory levels.

Reduction in Inventory Costs
By having clear, timely understanding of what product is on shelves and in backstock, reducing product shipping into “backroom blackhole” and production amounts which reduced costs.

Increased project completion rates and tighter, quicker timelines
Project timelines dropped from 4-6 weeks to 2-4 weeks with reporting available almost immediately and completion rates of 95% instead of 70-80%.

Get started with Customer Impact

Step 1: Schedule a Call

We want to learn about you, your retail execution needs and business goals.

Step 2: Receive a Customized Project Scope

Our onboarding team will develop a strategic action plan based around your needs.

Step 3: Retail Execution

Your dedicated project team will take it from here, delivering flawless in-store retail execution.

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