0:00

Are you struggling with out-of-stocks,

0:02

phantom imagery or lack of

0:04

shelf data? Well, if you

0:07

are, Trax's signal-based merchandising is

0:09

designed to give real-time visibility

0:11

into what's happening in-stores and

0:13

on-shelf so you can take

0:15

action when and where it

0:17

matters most. For more information

0:20

on this head to TraxTRAX

0:22

Retail.com and click the Get

0:24

Started button in the top

0:26

right-hand corner today. Hey

0:34

gang it's Friday March 28th Skye

0:36

Blake David analystners welcome to the

0:39

behind the number show and e-marketer

0:41

video podcast made possible by tracks

0:43

I'm Marcus today we'll be discussing

0:45

the impact of the empty shelf

0:47

for that conversation I'm joined by

0:50

three people let's meet then we

0:52

start with our principal analyst living

0:54

down in Austin Texas it's Sky

0:56

Canavis hey Marcus hey everyone

0:58

hello there we're also joined by

1:00

our New York based senior retail

1:02

analyst Blake Josh Hey everyone, good

1:05

to be here. And we have

1:07

with us the chief revenue officer

1:09

at Tracks who resides in Colorado.

1:11

It's David Gottlieb. Thanks for having

1:13

to Marcus. Yes sir, of course.

1:15

Thank you for being here. We

1:17

start with a speed intro. This

1:20

is when we get to know our

1:22

external guests a little better.

1:24

First three questions are just

1:26

for David. The fourth is

1:28

for everybody. Let's do it. David,

1:30

you are based in Colorado. But where

1:33

you from? That's right. I grew up

1:35

in Connecticut, born and raised there, and

1:37

now live in Denver. I've been here

1:40

for about 20 or so years with

1:42

my wife and twin 17 year

1:44

old daughters. Oh, so when people say,

1:46

ask you where home is, you say Denver.

1:48

Okay, Denver, that is out. Yeah, very

1:51

nice. What do you do in the

1:53

sentence? I'm responsible for

1:55

the overall go to market

1:57

function within tracks. Okay, and

1:59

what's morning drink? Copy

2:02

100% splash of skin

2:04

milk. Just a splash. Okay.

2:06

What was one of your

2:08

favorite toys to go to

2:10

the store to buy off

2:12

the shelf when you were

2:14

a kid? Something getting that

2:16

kind of toys are us

2:18

experience, if you will. Yeah. I think

2:20

for me, and I don't know if this

2:23

was something, probably you could find it at

2:25

Toys R Us, but you could also find

2:27

it at like a CVS or a convenience

2:29

store, it's those little balsa wood airplane kits.

2:32

And I think it was, it was always

2:34

the possibility that it was really going to

2:36

fly really, really well. It never did, but

2:38

that hope was always there when you fly

2:41

it. Yeah, you always like I can do

2:43

it. I'm the one person on the planet

2:45

that could make this work. Oh, such a

2:47

good choice. All right, a lot to

2:49

stack up against here. Sky, what

2:51

do you have? Mine were Barbies,

2:53

for sure. I was always in

2:56

the Barbie section, and they

2:58

were the original brand that

3:00

had all the limited editions

3:02

and collaborations and exclusives to

3:05

keep you buying more, so

3:07

I am asked quite a

3:09

collection. Good choice. All right, Blake,

3:11

bring the heat. Oh, Legos. Definitely

3:14

Legos. Classic. Well played.

3:16

Yep. Very nice. Very

3:18

nice indeed. There are

3:21

three guests for you

3:23

for today's episode. Let's

3:25

move now to the

3:28

facts of the day.

3:30

The Grand Canyon. National

3:33

Park is bigger than

3:35

the entire state of

3:37

Rhode Island. I don't

3:39

know whether this is... So,

3:41

like, shocking how big Grand

3:43

Canyon is or how

3:46

tiny a state Rhode Island

3:48

is. Sorry, Danielle. Daniel

3:50

works on her team. She's

3:52

from Rhode Island. I can't

3:54

believe it's that small. So,

3:56

according to National Park

3:59

Service, Well, first of all, let

4:01

me say this. So you can drive

4:03

around the whole Grand Canyon. It takes

4:06

about 15 hours. It's a 900 mile

4:08

drive. That's far. That's like

4:10

driving from Portland, Oregon to LA,

4:13

or from New York to Jacksonville,

4:15

Florida. So it's very far. It's

4:17

a big place. There are a

4:20

ton of caves there. 2,500 according

4:22

to the national estimated, according to

4:24

the National Park Service. There's only

4:27

a few hundred that have been

4:29

documented. So they're kind of guessing

4:31

that these others are there. There's only

4:33

one that you can go in. Of all

4:36

the caves that exist there, just one is

4:38

open to the public, the cave of the

4:40

domes located near Horseshoe Mesa at the end

4:42

of the Grandview Trail. So if you're planning

4:44

a visit, that's where you should head if

4:47

you want to get inside of a cave.

4:49

Have you guys been? Not to the cave

4:51

but to the Grand Canyon. I have,

4:53

yeah. I was just there last

4:55

October and while driving around takes

4:57

forever running across the Grand Canyon

5:00

is only about 20 some miles.

5:02

You ran it? Yes, it took

5:04

longer to get back to the

5:06

other side than to cross on

5:08

foot because of the driving you

5:11

have to loop around. Was this an

5:13

organized race or you just took

5:15

off? Just an adventure for my

5:17

birthday. Wow. Cool. That is very cool.

5:19

Go on, David. No, I was, I've never

5:22

been there. I'm embarrassed to say I

5:24

live probably the closest of all three

5:26

of us. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I'm

5:28

impressed by, by skies run across

5:30

the canyon. I have to wonder who

5:32

was. chasing her or was it just

5:34

this was just this is like voluntary

5:36

run across the canyon yes that's the

5:38

only reason to run David is it

5:40

your big chase or you need to

5:42

get to someone who's taking something from

5:44

you but no sky sky did a

5:46

double marathon once she ran the marathon

5:48

and then ran it backwards and then

5:50

ran it when everyone else ran it

5:52

so this comes there's no shock to

5:55

people who know her but bright yeah

5:57

shocking yeah shocking to everybody else absolutely

5:59

remarkable Final thing on this,

6:01

the have a super-pie tribe, a

6:03

Native American tribe, that they live

6:05

in the Grand Canyon. Still, I

6:07

don't think there's many of this

6:09

for a few hundred people, this

6:11

is not a huge community, but

6:14

they've lived there for the last

6:16

800 years, resigning the have a

6:18

super Indian reservation in the canyon.

6:20

What an amazing place to live.

6:22

Or run. away from something. We'll

6:24

talk about that later, this guy,

6:26

anyway, today's real topic. Signal-based merchandising

6:28

and the impact of the empty

6:30

shelf. All right, we've all experienced

6:33

an empty shelf or two in

6:35

our lives, but what actually happens

6:37

when the shelf is empty and

6:39

how can retailers avoid this happening

6:41

in the first place? David's here

6:43

to talk about this with us

6:45

as well as Blake and Sky,

6:47

but David, let's start with this

6:49

concept of signal-based merchandising and how

6:51

it relates to the empty shelf.

6:54

What is it? Yeah, absolutely. Maybe

6:56

before I talk specifically about signal-based

6:58

merchandising, I'll just give up a

7:00

quick overview for our listeners about

7:02

what is tracks because many people

7:04

may not have heard of us.

7:06

We really have three core things

7:08

that we bring to market to

7:10

help CPG companies win more at

7:13

the shelf. The first is our

7:15

image recognition solution. And so if

7:17

you can imagine sort of taking

7:19

a photo of something that happens

7:21

inside of a grocery store like

7:23

a shelf or a display or

7:25

a cooler, we're essentially helping manufacturers

7:27

who don't have eyes inside of

7:29

every store. understand the nature of

7:31

the execution of the shell. So

7:34

where are my products accurately and

7:36

correctly represented? Where are they priced

7:38

correctly? All kinds of questions like

7:40

that. We also have a dynamic

7:42

merchandising business where we deploy reps

7:44

essentially to go execute inside of

7:46

stores. So boots on the ground,

7:48

fixing problems. you know, building displays,

7:50

packing shelves out, building inventory, etc.

7:53

And then finally we have a

7:55

shopper marketing business that we call

7:57

ShopK, which really sort of brings

7:59

it all together in the sense

8:01

that once we've helped manufacturers understand

8:03

the shelf, execute better, we actually

8:05

can drive shoppers to go into

8:07

store to experience the brand, experience

8:09

the product, buy the product, etc.

8:12

So we're sort of providing that

8:14

end-to-end set of capabilities. Where that

8:16

sort of puts us is we

8:18

see very clearly that what you

8:20

mentioned at the outset, product availability

8:22

at the shelf, is a real

8:24

challenge. Shoppers, they have a lot

8:26

of choices. They can buy online.

8:28

When they make the choice to

8:30

pack the kids in the car

8:33

and show up at the store,

8:35

it's really really frustrating when they

8:37

can't find the things that are

8:39

on their list that they need.

8:41

And manufacturer CPG companies. know pretty

8:43

well these problems exist but despite

8:45

all their efforts they're historically really

8:47

challenged to kind of address this

8:49

this challenge right to address this

8:52

issue quickly on that point there

8:54

was I was against research 84%

8:56

of retail decision-makers said maintaining real-time

8:58

visibility of stock levels is a

9:00

challenge Absolutely. Is Zebra's global shop

9:02

estate? So this is everyone basically

9:04

is struggling with this. Everyone is

9:06

struggling. A lot of money has

9:08

been spent on it, a lot

9:10

of tools are out there, but

9:13

at the end of the day,

9:15

the real challenge, it's very very

9:17

difficult for manufacturers to know with

9:19

a reliable sort of scalable view

9:21

what's actually happening in the store,

9:23

right? In any given store on

9:25

any given day, is my product

9:27

available for shoppers to purchase? And

9:29

that's really the sort of the

9:32

notion of signal-based merchandising is to

9:34

help address that challenge. And what

9:36

it does for our clients is

9:38

it combines a near real-time understanding

9:40

of what is happening at the

9:42

store. So a very objective empirical

9:44

view of, you know, is my

9:46

product on the shelf today, you

9:48

know, tomorrow, etc. our ability to

9:51

then essentially deploy reps only to

9:53

the stores where we know we

9:55

can have material impact on shopper

9:57

experience and sales. So it's those

9:59

two things together. So talk to

10:01

us a bit more about this,

10:03

how this signals, signal-based merchandising, how

10:05

the signals, as you call them,

10:07

translate into actionable store level decisions.

10:09

Yeah, so it's when we talk

10:12

about signal really what we mean

10:14

is what's happening in the store

10:16

and the way we're getting that

10:18

signal I mentioned a minute ago

10:20

we have a very robust shopper

10:22

engagement business and because of that

10:24

we have millions of shoppers roughly

10:26

a 35 million strong kind of

10:28

network of shoppers who are as

10:31

a normal part of earning rewards

10:33

for shopping are in store and

10:35

they're engaging with products and brands

10:37

and as they're doing that they're

10:39

actually generating highly valuable sort of

10:41

exhaust data for us. And that

10:43

data helps us understand what's available

10:45

and what's not available at the

10:47

store level, right, on a sort

10:49

of near real-time basis. And that's

10:52

when we talk about signal, that's

10:54

really what we mean. And sort

10:56

of think about how you react

10:58

to those signals. There's two things

11:00

you have to understand. There's how

11:02

disrupted is a location, meaning how

11:04

many items are missing from the

11:06

shelf, how many are not available

11:08

for purchase. And also, how valuable

11:11

is the remedy? So not every

11:13

store is created equal, right? Each

11:15

store has sort of its unique

11:17

sales, you know, selling pattern and

11:19

volume. And so part of our

11:21

solution and our job essentially is

11:23

to help each manufacturer each week

11:25

look at that data and this

11:27

is done automatically. It's not not

11:30

people, but essentially deciding which stores

11:32

are most valuable to go visit.

11:34

to spend money on merchandising, knowing

11:36

what kind of impact we can

11:38

have and what the resulting sales

11:40

increase will be from the manufacturer.

11:42

And those are the actions that

11:44

we're taking at a store level.

11:46

So let's think about. the consumer

11:48

from their perspective. What happens when

11:51

the shelf is empty? It's really

11:53

frustrating. We've done some interesting shopper

11:55

research. I think there's probably a

11:57

lot of literature on this. In

11:59

our specific primary research, we find

12:01

that 40% of shoppers will brand

12:03

switch when they can't find the

12:05

item that they're looking for. Right,

12:07

probably not for Barbies, like this

12:10

isn't for Sky, but when you,

12:12

you know, if you're buying a

12:14

consumer good like a soup or

12:16

a mac and cheese or, you

12:18

know, a home cleaning product, people

12:20

are brand loyal to a point,

12:22

but if they need something for

12:24

a recipe or to complete their

12:26

shopping mission, they're probably not going

12:28

to go home empty handed. And

12:31

that's a real challenge for brands

12:33

because brand loyalty is built slowly

12:35

over time, and it can erode

12:37

very quickly, right. you're giving them

12:39

an opportunity that you don't want

12:41

them to have essentially as a

12:43

as a as a loyal brand

12:45

shopper. Yeah, yeah, I guess the

12:47

brand wants you to, because I

12:50

found some some research from the

12:52

same source from Zebra, they were

12:54

saying out of stock items, the

12:56

number one reason customers leave a

12:58

store. without buying what they came

13:00

for. The hope there I guess

13:02

is that they leave the store

13:04

and go buy it somewhere else

13:06

for the brand, not for the

13:09

retailer. Either way it's a problem,

13:11

but to your point, worst case

13:13

scenario for a brand is they

13:15

pick up another. brand off the

13:17

shelf. This was also an issue

13:19

for store associates, over 40% of

13:21

associates complaining about out-stock items. So

13:23

it sounds like it's a big

13:25

headache, not just for the customer,

13:27

but also for the people that

13:30

work in the store. No doubt.

13:32

Right. And that seems like it

13:34

would become more important as more

13:36

consumers shop online and they're looking

13:38

for products online. doing buy online

13:40

pickup in store, and then you

13:42

need to have store associates or

13:44

third parties that go into stores

13:46

and are able to pick the

13:49

orders and find the products. I

13:51

know for me it's very frustrating

13:53

when I place online orders and

13:55

then I get out of stocks

13:57

and all these substitutions and it's...

13:59

Like 50-50 do I actually want

14:01

that substitution or not? Sometimes it's

14:03

really not what I not what

14:05

I want and I end up

14:07

going without it And now a

14:10

lot of shoppers, because they do

14:12

a lot of research online before

14:14

they buy, they want to know

14:16

what's in stock, they really want

14:18

that inventory, transparency, and visibility. In

14:20

research that we've done before, this

14:22

was one of the big features

14:24

of online shopping that consumers want.

14:26

They want to know not only

14:29

what's on the store shelves, but

14:31

like how many of them are

14:33

there, so they know like whether

14:35

they need to buy it now

14:37

or if they can wait to

14:39

go in the store and pick

14:41

it up there. Absolutely. I mean,

14:43

this problem is going to persist.

14:45

And it's and it's amplified by

14:48

the fact that just like Sky

14:50

talked about, the there's not multiple

14:52

fulfillment paths for shoppers, right? So

14:54

whether you're buying online, whether you're

14:56

buying through one of the big

14:58

delivery companies, you know, instakart, door

15:00

dash, at the end of the

15:02

day, somebody's picking that product off

15:04

that same grocery store shelf. And

15:06

so you have all these different

15:09

sources of demand that are creating

15:11

a lot of havoc for store

15:13

associates to try and keep those

15:15

shelves full. And interestingly, if you

15:17

if you look at sort of

15:19

the insta cart and door dashes

15:21

of the world, one of their

15:23

biggest challenges is to avoid that

15:25

substitution problem that that sky just

15:28

talked about because no shopper wants

15:30

that and nobody really wants to

15:32

trust somebody else to make that

15:34

choice or have to have those

15:36

interactions while they're waiting for their

15:38

for their groceries at home. So

15:40

really understanding what's actually in the

15:42

store available for purchase clearly isn't

15:44

isn't working well yet. as a

15:46

result of sort of the, I

15:49

mean, as evidenced by those challenges

15:51

that we see both from shoppers

15:53

as well as from the third

15:55

parties and in kind of retail,

15:57

click and collect execution. Mm-hmm. Blake,

15:59

when you think about the impact

16:01

of the empty shelf, what comes

16:03

to mind the most for you?

16:05

Yeah, I mean, I think, you

16:08

know, we've already touched on basically,

16:10

you know, you don't want to

16:12

give as a brand, you don't

16:14

want to give your customer on

16:16

another. opportunity to try a competing

16:18

product, right? I mean, we've seen

16:20

a lot of research that consumers

16:22

who switch from brands to private

16:24

labels or other competing products, because

16:27

they're trying to save a few

16:29

bucks at the grocery store because

16:31

of inflation, they're likelihood to basically

16:33

go back to the brand once

16:35

they've had a positive experience with

16:37

a competitor, is very unlikely. And

16:39

that's already happening just because of...

16:41

the ways that consumer preferences and

16:43

the way that macroeconomic conditions are

16:45

impacting the way that people shop.

16:48

It happens way more often now

16:50

than it used to. So I

16:52

think just having the out-of-stock issue

16:54

compounding that only makes things worse

16:56

for the brand. And then on

16:58

the retailer side, looking for a

17:00

product at another location, obviously doesn't

17:02

hurt the brand, but could really

17:04

hurt the retailer. As David mentioned,

17:07

You put the kids in the

17:09

car, you go to the store,

17:11

sometimes you're driving 10, 15 miles.

17:13

If this is a problem that

17:15

you encounter frequently, you know, brand

17:17

loyalty for retailers is also on

17:19

the table here in a lot

17:21

of these instances. And then, of

17:23

course, as Kyle alluded to, the

17:25

online shopping competition as well, I

17:28

think as someone, you know, who

17:30

lives in a city dealing with...

17:32

You know pharmacies and retailers locking

17:34

up shelves and things like that

17:36

It's not necessarily you know, there's

17:38

a lot of friction with with

17:40

the physical stores that You know

17:42

these online retailers are really jumping

17:44

out to to replace it as

17:47

delivery gets faster the competition is

17:49

just it's getting even even even

17:51

more stringent by the day and

17:53

having And basically what it comes

17:55

down to for retailers or physical

17:57

retailers is mastering the basics is

17:59

really the best thing that you

18:01

can do to. whether sort of

18:03

this competition that's coming from all

18:06

different fronts from from retailers from

18:08

online and also just matching you

18:10

know how consumer habits are how

18:12

consumer expectations are rising and habits

18:14

are changing very quickly. David yeah

18:16

to that point in your opinion

18:18

how did retailers stay ahead of

18:20

the empty shelf? Yeah I mean

18:22

I think that the sort of

18:24

conventional approach to this is is

18:27

not working terribly well, right? If

18:29

you look at sort of industry

18:31

metrics, it depends on the category

18:33

and the product, but in general,

18:35

out of stocks sort of persist

18:37

at the low double digit, you

18:39

know, 11, 12% depending on who

18:41

you look at and how they

18:43

measure it. And what the general

18:46

sort of the the approach has

18:48

been, well, I have perpetual inventory,

18:50

right? So I have a system

18:52

that tells me I took X

18:54

product in in the back when

18:56

it was delivered to the store.

18:58

I packed that on the shelf

19:00

and then I measured as it

19:02

scans through the till and the

19:04

difference is what I should have

19:07

on the shelf. And the problem

19:09

is that data just isn't accurate.

19:11

There's too many ways that it

19:13

gets out of sync. You know,

19:15

a shopper buys six, six yogurts

19:17

of different flavors and the person

19:19

in the front doesn't think much

19:21

about it and scans six of

19:23

the same flavor. Right. So those

19:26

kinds of things happen all the

19:28

time. You know, Blake mentioned the

19:30

stop loss procedures because, you know,

19:32

shrink is a real problem, right?

19:34

Retailers lose product to theft all

19:36

the time. And so part of

19:38

what we find when we actually

19:40

execute these types of signal-based merchandising

19:42

programs, we're not only measuring availability

19:45

of the product using our shopper

19:47

and data collection kind of continuous

19:49

data collection capability, when we go

19:51

in and we execute at the

19:53

locations that are problematic. we find

19:55

things like phantom inventory, right? We

19:57

find that the store thinks they

19:59

have product that they don't have

20:01

and that's problematic not only because

20:03

it causes a near term, you

20:06

know, shortage for for the shopper,

20:08

but because it's not going to

20:10

get fixed automatically, right? The ordering

20:12

system is never going to be

20:14

triggered because it thinks it has

20:16

inventory. And so these things can

20:18

be really harmful for the long-term

20:20

health of the shelf. And so

20:22

long-winded way of answering your question,

20:25

retailers have to get more aggressive

20:27

about getting a pragmatic and real-time

20:29

view of what's actually happening in

20:31

the store and use that to

20:33

kind of fine-tune how they think

20:35

about inventory management. and make sure

20:37

their ordering systems are informed not

20:39

just by sort of a sort

20:41

of older view of perpetual inventory,

20:43

but actually a real-time view of

20:46

what's in the store at any

20:48

given point time. Could you, I

20:50

mean, we talked a bit about

20:52

signal-based merchandising and people might be

20:54

familiar with the traditional merchandising approaches,

20:56

could you outline how those differ,

20:58

like some of the main ways

21:00

or the main way that those

21:02

two methods differ? Yeah, absolutely. It's

21:05

pretty fundamental. I would say traditional

21:07

merchandising is you say, hey, I

21:09

really care about this retailer, Target

21:11

or Walmart or whoever. And then

21:13

you invest some money in a

21:15

program with a merchandising company and

21:17

they say, great, thank you very

21:19

much. Here's our schedule, right, and

21:21

we're going to cover this store

21:24

on Monday and then we're going

21:26

to go to this store on

21:28

Tuesday. So it's quite fixed, right.

21:30

And it's based on every week

21:32

I'm going to hit. you know,

21:34

X percent of the chain. So

21:36

it's sort of static. And the

21:38

reason that we think that that

21:40

approach has a lot of room

21:42

for improvement is we were doing

21:45

some sort of some work similar

21:47

to that as well. And what

21:49

we found was a lot of

21:51

the stores that we go to

21:53

visit to try and drive value

21:55

for a specific manufacturer. What our

21:57

reps found and supported by photo

21:59

evidence is, you know what this

22:01

store is actually pretty good. Right,

22:04

so you have up to 50%

22:06

of the locations that you're spending

22:08

money to go try and impact.

22:10

And all your learning is, hey,

22:12

it was a good visit, the

22:14

stores is okay. So it's incredibly

22:16

unproductive from kind of an investment

22:18

and ROI perspective. So the major

22:20

difference with signal-based merchandising is we

22:22

are using a data-driven approach to

22:25

prioritize which stores we visit and

22:27

when we visit them, such that

22:29

we're only going to locations where

22:31

we have a very very high

22:33

probability of being able to move

22:35

the needle on sales. And that

22:37

is the fundamental difference. So what's

22:39

next for signal-based merchandising? Where's it

22:41

go from here? So we have

22:44

two sort of vectors that we're

22:46

excited about. First, the current solutions

22:48

really focused, like we talked about

22:50

on this episode, squarely on addressing

22:52

the kind of persistent out-of-stock problem,

22:54

like product availability. We have a

22:56

variant coming pretty soon that we

22:58

use these same principles and techniques

23:00

to address the promotional execution problem.

23:03

Right. So this is not the

23:05

everyday home location, but. You know,

23:07

brands invest a lot of money

23:09

in trade marketing to put secondary

23:11

displays in store, points of interruption.

23:13

That could show up as a

23:15

pallet, a shipper, an end cap,

23:17

right? These are incredibly big investments

23:19

that manufacturers make. And just like

23:21

measuring the home location, there isn't

23:24

really an effective scaled way today

23:26

to measure whether or not those

23:28

promotions are being executed in the

23:30

way they've been planned. and to

23:32

help sort of provide better transparency

23:34

between the brand and the retailer

23:36

in that conversation. So that's one

23:38

focus. We're also going to be

23:40

really expanding the breadth of the

23:43

kind of data that we collect

23:45

as part of our continuous shelf

23:47

monitoring or signal creation. So today

23:49

it's really quite binary. It's the

23:51

product there or not there on

23:53

the shelf. In the relatively near

23:55

future, it will also include things

23:57

like sheriff's shelf placement, price. Think

23:59

about your category management type principles.

24:01

And so very quickly we're going

24:04

to start adding that to our

24:06

packaging either as kind of an

24:08

ad. on to a signal-based merchandising

24:10

program or as a standalone data

24:12

product that manufacturers can use for

24:14

planning, retail or engagement, you know,

24:16

joint business planning, etc. It seems

24:18

like these would be even more

24:20

important now for brands, these kinds

24:23

of tools, given the competition with

24:25

private label and figuring out how

24:27

to. stand out from that because

24:29

retailers are increasingly becoming sophisticated with

24:31

their private label strategies, offering broader

24:33

assortments, better products, better quality at

24:35

premium price points. And brands need

24:37

to find every tool and technique

24:39

that they can leverage to, you

24:42

know, stand out and get ahead

24:44

of that. 100 percent. Yeah, private

24:46

label is a huge factor. And

24:48

innovation is a huge factor. I

24:50

think, you know, it continues to

24:52

be the trend in the industry,

24:54

at least from our viewpoint, there's

24:56

just a lot of new market

24:58

entrance in key categories where we

25:00

see just intense competition. I'm thinking

25:03

about, you know, sparkling water, better

25:05

for you, soda. So it's absolutely,

25:07

you're right, Sky, it's more important

25:09

than ever to really understand what's

25:11

happening where the rubber meets the

25:13

road at the point of decision

25:15

for shoppers. Blake, final thought from

25:17

you on what they would say

25:19

about where single-based merchandising goes next

25:22

and just how people continue to

25:24

think about the empty shelf going

25:26

into the future. Yeah, I think,

25:28

you know, competition for brands is

25:30

only going to get more intense.

25:32

I think we've seen, you know,

25:34

a lot of the major CPG's

25:36

latest rounds of earnings, you know,

25:38

they're continuing to struggle. There's a

25:40

lot of shifting consumer habits, supply

25:43

chains becoming more difficult. There are...

25:45

you know the issues a lot

25:47

of uncertainty around tariffs costs of

25:49

production it's it's and that's really

25:51

going to impact sort of the

25:53

bottom line and I think that

25:55

the only way that So, brands

25:57

can really stay ahead of the

25:59

game and sort of meet this

26:02

uphill challenge head on is by

26:04

continuing to invest in technology, particularly

26:06

around in-store technology, right? I mean,

26:08

we've seen e-commerce sales, particularly in

26:10

a lot of CPG categories, the

26:12

sort of the boom years of

26:14

the pandemic, they're starting to taper

26:16

off, and I think the writing

26:18

on the wall is really maintain,

26:21

you know, becoming clear that that,

26:23

you know, upwards of 80% of...

26:25

total U.S.S. retail sales, perhaps much

26:27

higher in a lot of household

26:29

categories, you know, the store is

26:31

going to, you know, still be

26:33

king and the way that these

26:35

brands can continue to, you know,

26:37

keep their, keep their sales healthy

26:39

is by this type of, you

26:42

know, smart strategy. So only going

26:44

to get more important as in

26:46

the years to come, that's for

26:48

sure. A great point to end

26:50

on. Thank you so much to

26:52

my guest for hanging out with

26:54

me today. Thank you first to

26:56

David. Thank you very much. Pleasure

26:58

to be here. Yes sir. Thank

27:01

you to Sky. Thanks Marcus. Yes

27:03

indeed and of course to Blake.

27:05

Always a pleasure. Thank you fella

27:07

and thank you to the whole.

27:09

editing crew Victoria John Lawrence and

27:11

Danny Stewart who runs the team

27:13

and Sophie does our social media

27:15

thanks to everyone for listening into

27:17

The behind the number show and

27:19

you marked a video podcast made

27:22

possible by tracks. We're back again

27:24

Monday talking about how AI is

27:26

starting to affect the job market

27:28

and some tips for using it

27:30

at work