The Branded Pantry

The CPG Industry appears, once again, to be focused on in store execution and compliance.  Mantras like the In-Store Implementation Network’s Plan-Do-Measure can be heard by numerous groups.  Some experts opine that measuring and managing at the store level is the best way increase sales dollars.  Others seem to think actually understanding issues at the store level is too large a task to undertake and it remains on the “too hard” pile.   

We thought it appropriate time to chat with an Industry Icon who is as responsible for modern day category and space management as any other industry figure, Ted Gladson.  Ted has roamed stores for five decades and has witnessed many changes over the years, playing an important part in many of the positive changes.

Service - One Store at  Time

Armed with a glassine sheet, a grease pen, a Polaroid camera and a vivid imagination, Ted helped pioneer the process known today as Space Management.  One store at a time, Ted walked into pharmacies all across America.  First, he took a Polaroid image of the shelf to memorialize what the store had in place.  Then he sat down with a calculator and sales reports to lay out the retailer’s shelf based on what he thought the customer would view as a logical and easy-to-shop pattern.  Ted gave preference in both shelf position and facings to the brands and items most popular with those consumers.  When he was done perfecting his new shelf design, Ted would reset the section for the owner and then he took another picture to capture the desired set . . . in order to publish it to his sales force.   Ted employed his skill for perfecting product placement and created shelfsets designed to improve the customer’s purchase experience and increase the retailer’s revenue - one store at a time.After years of proving the very substantial ROI that both retailers and manufacturer could achieve from these practices, Ted left the corporate world to found Gladson Interactive.  Ted would run Gladson from 1971 until he sold the firm in late 2005.

Industry Leader and Icon

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2009 will be a hallmark year for the paucity of new items introduced by manufacturers.  However, Fabric Care is a category with numerous new products and many of these deliver substantial innovation to consumers.In late April the first of these laundry brands hit the market, clamoring for space on key retail shelves.  Soon after both introductory trade promotion and heavy consumer advertising began pulsing through magazines and television.  Both were quite substantial outweighing most new product introductions from recent years.  The product was first seen on the grocery shelf in early May at least in outlets such as SUPERVALU and Safeway.ShelfSnap looked at the launch of this product in the largest U.S. retailers.  We picked a point in time 4-5 weeks after the product launch and promotion in feature advertisements.  We ran a second wave 4 weeks later.

PerformanceWave 1 - June 2009:

• 31% of the stores did not stock the new product at all. 
• Of the stores that did handle the products, the average store stocked only 4 of the 6 SKUs in the brand. 
• In total only 48% of the possible distribution was in place 6 weeks after the launch in these critical retailers. 
• The average SKU had 1.2 facings per store.
• In two-thirds of the stores the products were scattered across multiple shelves.

Wave 2 - July 2009 - 4 Weeks Later: 

•  All of the stores in these chains handled the product.
• However, only 85% of the possible distribution was in place at this 10 week point.
• The average facings per item had increased to 1.3 with only 5 of the 6 SKUs in the brand on the store shelf.
• The brand was always stocked on a single shelf level.
• Over 40% of the stores had changed the location of the brand from the prior wave.

Tools This type of performance occurred in the largest retailers in the U.S.  All of the most sophisticated traditional tracking and detection tools are in-place and being used by the retailers, broker and manufacturer.  The amount of scrutiny placed on this launch was very significant.  Somehow the tools were not up to the task of clearly laying out to the trading partners that compliance was compromised. (more…)