Ghost Hunting: How Church & Dwight Catches Phantom Inventory with Storesight

Church & Dwight, a global consumer goods leader, leveraged their long-standing partnership with Storesight (then known as Field Agent) to adopt Storesight, a virtual store walk platform. Faced with challenges like "phantom inventory"—products appearing in stock in retailer systems but missing from shelves—and a need for real-time visibility into merchandising and competitive activity, Storesight provided the crucial visual evidence and insights necessary to reclaim lost sales, optimize product placement, and strengthen their relationships with key retail partners like Walmart.

Challenge

• Persistent "Phantom Inventory": Products frequently appeared in retailer inventory systems but were missing from shelves, causing significant lost sales that were difficult to prove without extensive physical store visits.

• Sales Impact of Lockbox Implementation: Retailers' increasing use of anti-theft lockboxes, often without brand knowledge, led to immediate and drastic sales declines (up to 60%) that were hard to track and influence.

• Inconsistent Display Execution & Pricing Compliance: Promotional displays and end caps often suffered from incorrect pricing or disadvantageous product placement, hindering their effectiveness and wasting marketing investment.

• Limited Real-time Visibility for Packaging & Modular Changes: Home office teams lacked immediate insight into how new packaging appeared on shelves or how modular changes impacted product visibility, risking costly errors and missed opportunities.

Solution

• Provided Visual Proof of On-Shelf Issues: Church & Dwight used Storesight's "Stock Levels" feature to gather real-time photos, identifying "holes on the shelf" and proving inventory discrepancies to retailers.

• Tracked Lockbox Prevalence and Impact: Storesight enabled the team to identify stores implementing lockboxes and quantify the adverse impact on sales, providing crucial data for internal discussions and merchant communication.

• Validated Display Execution and Pricing: Account managers utilized Storesight photos to document incorrect pricing or poor display execution, providing irrefutable evidence to drive "correction of errors" with retailers.

• Enabled Virtual Store Walks and Pre-Launch Insights: Storesight served as a "time saver," allowing teams to remotely assess shelf layouts, identify packaging flaws (like obscured messaging), and inform proactive design changes before mass production.

Results

• Reclaimed Lost Sales and Boosted Orders: Visual proof from Storesight for Batiste Dry Shampoo helped demonstrate overstated inventory, leading to manual replenishment orders for over 14,000 units and "$100k+ in orders."

• Increased Credibility with Retail Buyers: Storesight provided account managers with "bulletproof evidence," enhancing their credibility with retailers and demonstrating a proactive approach to managing their business.

• Avoided Costly Packaging Mistakes: Storesight's early visual insights helped identify and prompt a redesign for new Zycam packaging that would have been obscured by shelf blades, preventing a "costly mistake."

• Enhanced Competitive and Assortment Intelligence: The platform allowed for detailed visual analysis of competitor activity, pricing, and SKU variations, saving time and improving strategic decision-making.