A Powerful Tool for Lean Teams: How EOS Relies on Storesight for Insight

Evolution of Smooth (EOS), a lean and innovative personal care company, sought a powerful solution to monitor retail execution, competitive activity, and product launches across diverse channels. Facing the logistical and time-consuming challenges of traditional store visits, EOS adopted Storesight to gain real-time visual insights. This partnership empowered their small category management and business insights team to make data-backed decisions, optimize merchandising, and proactively address pricing and stock issues, directly contributing to successful product launches and improved sales velocity.

Challenge

• Time-Consuming Manual Store Checks: The lean EOS team spent excessive time on physical store visits to gather retail insights, detracting from other critical responsibilities.

• Limited Visibility for New Product Launches: Launching into new categories like body wash required extensive monitoring of planogram placement, competitive presence, and pricing across numerous, often partially rolled-out, stores.

• Difficulty Tracking Off-Shelf and Promotional Execution: EOS lacked a consistent way to monitor the execution of off-shelf displays (end caps, side caps) and seasonal promotions, hindering their ability to assess effectiveness and justify future investments.

• Pricing Inconsistencies and Market Impact: A single retailer's refusal to align pricing with cost increases could create a "downward spiral" across the entire market, a difficult issue to identify and rectify quickly.

Solution

• Implemented Storesight for "100 Store Checks in Five Minutes": EOS leveraged Storesight to instantly access a vast library of store photos, significantly reducing the need for physical store visits and saving valuable time.

• Utilized Real-time Visuals for Launch Monitoring: The team used Storesight daily during product launches to monitor planogram positioning, facings, competitive brands, and pricing, even in stores where product rollout was partial.

• Proactively Identified Off-Shelf Displays and Promotions: EOS regularly filtered for "displays" on Storesight to discover unplanned off-shelf placements and assess the execution of both their own and competitor promotional activities, including holiday displays.

• Averted Market-Wide Pricing Issues: Storesight was used to quickly obtain visual proof of pricing updates in specific stores, enabling EOS to prevent other retailers from lowering their prices and avoid a "relationship nightmare."

Results

• Accelerated Product Launch Success: Storesight provided critical real-time visibility into new body wash placement, competitive landscape, and pricing, allowing EOS to quickly adapt strategies and contribute to a successful category entry.

• Identified High-Performing Off-Shelf Displays: A serendipitous discovery via Storesight of an unauthorized EOS body lotion display in a Walmart store led to a 50% increase in sales velocity for that store, directly demonstrating the impact of off-shelf merchandising.

• Maintained Market Pricing and Avoided Financial Loss: By quickly confirming price increases in "troublemaker" stores, Storesight prevented a market-wide price reduction that would have significantly impacted revenue and retailer relationships.

• Enhanced Strategic Planning for Displays: Access to historical and current display photos, including those of competitors, allowed EOS to better understand retailer guidelines and "push the envelope" on future display designs, particularly for critical holiday seasons.