Out of Stock Attack

SmartSpotter has been crowdsourcing over half a million smartphones in over ten countries to offer instant visibility inside stores everywhere. With operations in Australia, Belgium, Czech Republic, Colombia, Croatia, Ireland, Nederland, Portugal, Slovenia, and the United Kingdom, we continue working with very important brands, building a strong network within the FMCG industry, and setting and maintaining standards and best practices.

Vege Chips, created over 30 years ago, is the market leader in producing gluten-free chips Australia-wide. Smartspotter continues to help the business grow and maintain its leadership position, using the power of crowdsourcing to collect all the information they need in-store in real time and with quality, transparent, and unbiased results. 

Avoiding Out-Of-Stock Situations

Avoiding stockouts is perhaps one of retailers' and brands' top concerns, and for a good reason. Not only do they lead to lost sales, but out-of-stock reduces customer satisfaction and lower conversion rates. 

The situation

Vege Chips had an agreement with one of Australia's biggest retailers to display 20,000 cartons of various SKUs of Vege Chips on Front Gondola-ends across all supermarkets for a seven-day promotional period. 

The objective was to track the promotion's implementation in real-time to ensure the execution was successful and according to plan. We needed to check if any store was found running low on stock or non-compliant with the terms negotiated, taking immediate and accurate action if that was the case.

The challenge?

The speed and quality of the data were critical to increasing promotional effectiveness, as we had to gather the needed information in real-time so we could have it available on the first day of the promotion.

The solution

Using the power of crowdsourcing, SmartSpotter managed to visit 200 supermarkets across Australia in less than one day.

Our unrivaled network of field reporters collected insights from 200 stores in a matter of hours, helping to perfect the retail execution.

Vege Chips' Team monitored every time-stamped and geo-located visit in real time and accessed live data and photographic evidence to deploy an accurate and synchronized action plan. All are powered by SmartSpotter's dashboard, supported by an in-house development team), business intelligence, and AI integrations.

The results

Hours after the promotion began, SmartSpotter showed that 45.39% of the stores visited either had no gondola ends with the promotion, were out of stock, or had low stock levels of Vege Chips.

Products Not Found

Panoramic pictures of all gondola ends were provided in those stores where no promotion was found to ensure quality.

Low stock / Out of stock

Stores with critical stock levels were found using photographic evidence and measuring on-shelf availability & facings count per SKU.

The Outcome

Hours after the promotion was live, the Vege Chips team provided the retailer with valuable, unbiased, and fact-based information. The retailer and the Vege Chips team took immediate action to:

  • Fix the non-compliant stores (No gondola-end present) 

  • Place an additional order of Vege Chips 

In a matter of hours, Vege Chips placed an incremental order of 6,300 cartons, generating a 31.5% increase in the original order to stock the stores with low/no stock. That is 31.5% more sales for Vege Chips and the retailer.

We provided neatly packaged real-time, automated, and shareable analytics that empowered the brand and retailer to take effective action, avoiding out-of-stock situations that could potentially damage the brand and the promotion's implementation.

If you want to improve promotional execution and compliance, please get in touch with us!