VR

New item launch maintains momentum with channel insights

CE brand prevents $100K lost sales

When a new product had 50% out-of-stocks across all stores at a major nationwide retailer, this Alloy customer wasn’t concerned – at first. The most successful consumer electronics launches can lead to initial product scarcity as consumers clamor for the season’s hot new item.

But out-of-stocks stayed at about 25% even after supply caught up.

Key results
  • $100K lost sales prevented
  • Out-of-stocks reduced to low single digits
Capabilities
  • Automatic retailer point-of-sale and inventory data integration
  • Real-time visibility
  • Dynamic dashboards with drill-downs by sales channel

 

Using Alloy software to monitor daily performance post-launch, the Sales team could easily see the inventory management problem was hurting sell-through.

Executive dashboard

 

The problem? Inaccurate retailer orders.

With a few clicks, Sales drilled down into the retailers’ sell-through and inventory for that product and uncovered a key insight: The popular item had a high rate of Buy Online Pickup In Store (BOPIS), but the way the retailer did their accounting, they were not tracking the decrease in store inventory from these online sales that were being fulfilled in store. Instead, they were attributing the sales to their “online warehouse.”

The retailer's ordering system, which was based on in-store sales, was not taking into account the store inventory decrease from these BOPIS orders.
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As a result, it wasn’t ordering enough of the hot seller and regularly running out-of-stock.

The account manager explained the situation to the retail buyer, using the data in Alloy to convince them of the problem. They agreed to make replenishment adjustments to account for the inventory changes and trigger re-ordering to meet the demand of both in-store and e-commerce shoppers.

OOS and unit sales

By quickly catching and addressing the problem, they reduced out-of-stocks to the low single digits. More importantly, they prevented ~$100,000 in lost sales from consumers wanting to buy the product but not finding it on the shelf.

 

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