Retail Performance Metrics

From my last 10 years of building an omnichannel brand with significant offline presence, one of my biggest learning is that irrespective of whether you are a founder building a consumer brand or an investor evaluating a consumer brand, the one metric to obsess about while looking at the health of the offline business is “retailer repeats” Doing primary sales by appointing distributor is the easiest thing to do. Doing secondary sales by placing the product in retail counters is a bit tougher than primary, but still fairly straightforward But what is really difficult and really bares whether you have PPCMF( Product Price Channel Market Fit) is repeat and regular sales from the same counters where you have placed your product If you are not able to get repeat sales month on month from the same counters, it means either of the 2 things: a) You have placed your products in wrong counters ( Eg: If I sell premium fans and place products in counters which sell only economy fans, it is bound to fail). This often happens when sales team is incentivized on reach( number of counters you place the product) and they take shortcuts to achieve the reach target b) The product at this price point with current awareness levels is very difficult to sell from this channel So, track M1 repeats( repeat billing in next 1 month) and M3 repeats( repeat billing in next 3 months) obsessively. Unless you are in a very seasonal/slow moving category, M1 repeats should be 50% at least. M3 repeats should be 80% plus For investors investing in Series A/B stage in omnichannel brands who just went offline , start looking at quality of revenue. Because offline market in India is so deep, brands can get away just by doing primary and placement secondary sales for 9-12 months. And without repeats it will come crashing down at some point. And if investors valuing these brands on a revenue multiple will find themselves in a tough spot And in case you don’t have access to system secondary sales data, look at hard metrics like collections and geography split of sales. If the accounts receivables also keep on increasing with revenue, it is a sign of channel stock increasing. If the brand has to keep opening new markets and expanding to new geographies to get sales, it is a sign of no PPCMF The best brands will have high repeats, continuously increasing throughput from existing retailers and will not be spreading themselves too thin from a geography point of view in the early stages of offline expansion

I do dozens of interviews with top CMOs every year. I always ask what the best performing marketing channel is. And right now everyone is saying events. Post COVID events are back, but also now in an AI world, I think there's a stronger appetite to get out and connect with real people vs. just getting answers from ChatGPT. But: like anything in marketing, running events just because everyone else is doing them is a great way to set money on fire (and still not drive any incremental business). Whether it's a booth at a trade show. A VIP dinner. A 500-person conference. They can all work. They can all flop. The difference: having a real plan and strategy for that event going in. Why do it in the first place? (which continues to be the most important lesson in marketing - what's in it for me? what's the hook? why should people come to our thing?) We talked to two event experts on the Exit Five pod recently Stephanie Christensen and Kristina DeBrito — and here are 5 keys they shared for B2B event success: 1. Pick the right format. Not all events do the same job. Big splash? Go flagship. Want pipeline? Try VIP roundtables. Tiny budget? Host micro-events around existing conferences. Set real goals. 2. “Leads” are not enough anymore. Are you driving awareness? Accelerating deals? Generating pipeline? Define this upfront—or you’ll waste time measuring the wrong stuff. There are more metrics than just "did we get leads from this event" and in today's world leads are tablestalkes. 3. Align your team, bro. Sales and marketing must move in lockstep. Slack alerts for registrations. Sales meeting updates. Leaderboards. It all matters. This is a team effort. 4. Make it memorable. People forget panels. They remember custom pancakes and great venues. Was the food good? Did the WiFi work? Did Oprah show up? Just kidding. Making sure you'r reading. But think surprise and delight, not branded frisbees. 5. Put the work in on the follow up. Events don't close deals - follow-up does. Segment attendees. Create custom offers. Babysit the handoff to sales like your job depends on it. Because it does. You just went shopping and got all these fresh groceries - dont let them spoil. B2B buyers want real connection again. Events can create that. Are you feeling this desire for events? Are you doing events in your business right now? Let me know...

Availblity, Visibility and Accessblity: In FMCG In the FMCG (Fast-Moving Consumer Goods) industry, AVA (Availability, Visibility, and Accessibility) is a strategic framework used to ensure products reach the right customers in the right way, driving sales and brand growth. Here’s a detailed explanation of each component: ✅ 1. Availability:- Ensuring that the product is physically present where customers expect to find it. - Distribution Coverage: Products must be distributed across a wide range of channels (supermarkets, retail shop, etc.). - Stock Management: Preventing stockouts by maintaining optimal inventory levels at both retailer and distributor levels. - Route-to-Market (RTM): Efficient delivery systems ensure products are delivered on time to retail outlets. - Seasonality Considerations: Products should be stocked in higher volumes during peak demand periods (Eg.Soft drinks in summer). - Key Metrics: * On-shelf availability percentage * Out-of-stock rate * Distribution coverage percentage ✅ 2. Visibility:-Making sure the product is noticeable and stands out to customers. - Shelf Placement: Products should be placed at eye level or in premium spots within the store to attract customers. - In-store Merchandising: Use of branded displays, end caps, or standalone shelves to draw attention to the product. - Branding Materials: Point-of-sale (POS) materials like banners, posters, and danglers reinforce brand identity. - Competitor Analysis: Ensuring better or comparable visibility compared to competing products. - Promotions and Campaigns: Highlighting discounts, bundle offers, or special deals in-store. - Key Metrics: * Share of shelf (% of shelf space occupied by the product) * Visibility score (customer perception of the product’s prominence) * Percentage of outlets with branded displays. ✅ 3. Accessibility: Making the product easy for customers to find and purchase. - Store Placement: Products should be in high-traffic zones or conveniently located within the store (e.g., near checkout counters). - Channel Strategy: Ensuring the product is accessible across multiple channels, including physical retail stores, online platforms, and delivery services. - Affordability: Pricing strategies should ensure that the product is within the reach of the target audience. - Geographical Reach: Products should be accessible in urban, semi-urban, and rural areas depending on the target market. - Consumer Feedback: Identifying gaps in accessibility through consumer feedback and addressing them promptly. - Key Metrics: * Percentage of customers reporting easy access * Number of retail touchpoints (stores and channels) In conclusion, AVA (Availability, Visibility, and Accessibility) is a critical framework for success in the FMCG industry. Effective implementation of AVA requires strong distribution networks, impactful in-store marketing, and a deep understanding of customer needs.

Omnichannel Marketing: Reaching Customers Where They Are Introduction & Overview Omnichannel marketing is crucial in today's landscape, focusing on a seamless, integrated experience across various channels. Unlike multichannel marketing, which operates independently, omnichannel meets consumers where they are, offering a smooth, personalized journey. This approach enhances customer satisfaction, boosts conversion rates, and strengthens brand loyalty, driving growth. Key Concepts -Cross-Channel Integration: Ensures consistent messaging and experience across all channels. -Customer-Centric Approach: Focuses on understanding customer needs to create personalized experiences. -Personalization: Tailors messages based on user behavior, enhancing relevance. -Data-Driven Insights: Uses analytics to optimize channels based on customer behavior. Challenges Omnichannel marketing faces challenges like integrating diverse platforms for a seamless experience, managing and securing customer data from multiple sources, and balancing personalization with privacy concerns. Additionally, coordinating offline and online efforts to ensure consistent branding requires effective team collaboration. Strategies & Solutions Enhance your omnichannel marketing by creating detailed customer profiles, maintaining consistent branding, and using marketing automation for timely communication. Optimize the mobile experience, engage customers through social media, connect online and offline interactions, and continuously analyze data to refine your strategies. Benefits & Insights Omnichannel marketing enhances customer experience and engagement, increases retention and conversion rates, and provides valuable insights through integrated data collection. This approach builds a competitive edge by offering a seamless, personalized journey that meets customer needs across channels, fostering loyalty and driving sales. Conclusion Omnichannel marketing helps brands deliver a consistent, personalized experience by integrating online and offline channels, using data to enhance customer journeys. Though it requires initial investment, the approach strengthens customer relationships, boosts engagement, and drives sales growth. Next Steps Start with an audit of your marketing channels for consistency, then develop a strategy for gathering and using customer data while maintaining privacy. Invest in cross-channel marketing automation, explore online-offline integrations, and use data analysis to continuously refine your omnichannel strategy. #omnichannelmarketing #customerengagement #digitaltransformation #reachyourcustomers #marketingstrategy

Are you an Old‑School Event Marketer or a New‑School Event Marketer? Old‑School: - “Bigger booth, bigger budget” = strategy - Swag splurges & steak‑house dinners with zero ROI math - Measures success by registrations instead of pipeline - Treats the conference as a one‑day stunt, then closes the spreadsheet - No persona segmentation, same agenda for prospects, customers, & partners - Relies on badge scans, fishbowls, and luck for lead capture - Ignores virtual or hybrid formats (“We’re an in‑person company!”) - Engagement stops when the lights go off, no post‑event nurture track - Decisions made on gut feel, not unit economics or understanding the P&L New‑School: - Begins with ICP clarity and a revenue‑backwards event brief - Maps the entire attendee journey: pre‑event teasers → in‑event moments → post‑event campaigns - Uses AI for smart matchmaking, personalized agendas, on‑site coaching, and post‑show enrichment - Integrates every touch into CRM & RevOps dashboards: CAC, payback, influenced ARR, CLTV - Collaborates with Sales & CS to find expansion opps with customers, not just hand-offs - Blends formats: micro‑webinars, community roundtables, regional pop‑ups, to lower CAC and widen reach - Scores success on quality meetings, pipeline velocity, and expansion revenue - Runs Calendar & Capacity tests to right‑size staffing before adding headcount - Partners with the CFO, budget tied to strategic KPIs, not vanity metrics - Knows why the event hit (or missed) the number and evolves assumptions quarter‑to‑quarter Event marketers can’t win on their own. The best know how to involve each team throughout the process. It’s not just execution. It’s communication, evaluation, and impact. In conclusion, new-school event marketers are strategy partners. Not task rabbits. New-School event marketers pick modern event tech. Check out Accelevents --> https://hubs.la/Q03fjrP30

🔍 Understanding Omnichannel Strategy: An omnichannel strategy is an approach to marketing and sales that aims to provide customers with a seamless experience across various channels and touchpoints—be it websites, mobile apps, social media, physical stores, or customer service. The idea is to meet customers wherever they are and ensure consistent interaction with the brand, regardless of the channel they prefer. 💡 The Reality Check: a) Aspirational? Absolutely. Achievable? Not always. Few companies have the scale, resources, and skills to truly nail omnichannel. b) The landscape is ever-changing, with regional differences, evolving social media platforms, and shifting consumer habits. Being everywhere at once? A Herculean task. Doing it consistently? A chimera! c) Many claim omnichannel status, but often it's just a fancy way of saying they're not operating in silos and encouraging cross-channel collaboration. That’s all great, but true omnichannel requires deeper integration, which can be costly and demanding. d) Today's customer journey isn't just physical and digital—it's also virtual. Navigating this three-dimensional journey adds another layer of complexity to seamless integration. e) Channel proliferation means an attribution nightmare, especially for those companies that are not vertically integrated. If the store is now owned by the company, would it incentivise a customer to purchase online? 💥 The Optichannel Alternative: Instead of chasing the omnichannel unicorn, let's embrace optichannel. This strategy focuses on optimising the most relevant channels for a brand's target audience, rather than trying to be everywhere. It involves identifying key channels that drive value and engagement and allocating resources accordingly. The goal is to prioritise channels that effectively deliver the brand's value proposition and meet customer needs. 📢 Join the Conversation: Do you agree? Disagree? Share your thoughts and let's dive deeper into the omnichannel debate. -gs

How can retailers activate in-store experiences that can scale efficiently and measure incremental impact? 🤝 In-store media requires cross-functional collaboration across marketing, merchandising, and retail media teams. Merchant alignment is essential to ensure in-store media supports broader category goals, promotions, and pricing strategies. However, fragmentation between teams often leads to inconsistent execution. 💰 High upfront investment in digital screens, infrastructure, and maintenance makes scalability a challenge. Retailers must balance technology costs with expected ROI. Additionally, ensuring planogram compliance and optimizing store layouts for maximum visibility and shopper impact requires coordination across teams. 📊 In-store media success is evaluated through POS data, sales lift analysis, customer sentiment surveys, and match market tests. These methods help brands understand the impact on purchasing behavior, optimize budgets, and refine in-store strategies. 🐢 Crawl Phase: Retailers should pilot technologies, gather initial data, and build a scalable business model while training teams and refining measurement approaches. Early-stage collaboration with merchants ensures that in-store media aligns with overall store operations and merchandising priorities. 🚶 Walk Phase: Use data insights to optimize content, improve store-level targeting, and scale successful pilots. Refining planograms and integrating in-store media with category management strategies help maximize effectiveness. Introduce advanced features like interactive displays, mobile integration, and AI-driven recommendations to enhance engagement. 🏃 Run Phase: Fully integrate online and in-store strategies to create seamless in-store experiences that can measure omnichannel impact. Collaborate closely with merchants, store operations, and category managers to ensure store layouts, promotions, and digital touchpoints work together.

On the road to Chubbies >$100M exit, a mistake I made was thinking DTC was our most profitable channel. 5 lessons & 1 Action: Lesson 1: DTC isn't really DTC Early on, we thought DTC was the future. It's DIRECT to consumer, after all I was wrong As Facebook acquisition costs worsened over time, we learned DTC is a misnomer Beholden to an algo we have no control over, a more fitting acronym is DTZBA: Direct to Zuckerberg's Bank Account Lesson 2: DTC Has Benefits, but The Favorable Economics of the Good Ol' Days Are Gone: CAC was a fraction of today You could actually reach most of your social following Shipping, 3PL labor, Shopify and Klaviyo were cheaper Free shipping/returns weren't standard etc If you're spending the vast majority of your ad dollars on DR measured on 1d click, solid chance adding disciplined wholesale can generate accretive incremental contribution $$, assuming you're willing to invest in brand Lesson 3: Under-Appreciated Additional Benefits of Wholesale Predictability in CAC: the margin hit you take from retail partners, while large, does not have the volatility of DR, and certainly hasn't 2, 3 or 4x'd like Meta. Forecasting gets a bit easier Access Massive TAM: Wholesale = 7-10x larger than Shopify Diversification of Cashflow Streams: adds resilience, downside protection. A growth story for investors/acquirers Higher Quality Brand Building: Physical products = wearable billboards. The quality of the impression is 1000x more impactful than an IG ad. Fuels DTC too. You look bigger & more legit when in a great retailer Lesson 4: Avoid Hell on Earth: Get your ops house in order Inventory Mgmt: Make sure that's in a good place. If not, checkout Kyle and Dave's new co. Ensure 3PL can do wholesale: Don't learn on the day 10,000 units are going to 3 retailers, each w diff't EDI rules Negotiate COGS or terms: Rationale for "why now?" is sound since buys are going to start 📈 Lesson 5: Brand Building Drives It All To experience any of these benefits, you've got to reach more people and get them to feel something Classic product/offer/urgency creative has some impact, but it won't maximize the chance someone chooses you when they walk into the store, & it def won't get the retail buyer to bang down your door to carry you You'll see Brand dollars go further here Action: Every brand is different, so here's an action to consider as you make the right call for you Review DTC cost increases since day 1 Incorporate the "risk" costs on your biz like CAC volatility Forecast continued trends. See when economic model breaks Takes multiple years to ramp wholesale, so work back to when you need to start Make a call Takeaways: Right now, few things are more important than finding incremental accretive contribution $ While all channels have pros & cons, adding wholesale could help Experiencing those benefits requires incorporation of broad reach, feeling-driven, net-new demand generation (Brand building)

Total credit card average value is $113 per transaction, but look closer and no transaction type is actually close to that. How? In store, the average size is $70. Tapping a card, the average is $68, but a mobile wallet is $55. Why? Different demographics, different types of purchases. Card Not Present, however, is 3 times larger! Are people that are shopping online just spending more? Not exactly; card not present (which includes online) also includes bill payments, airline tickets, etc, which inflate the volume. Comparing and improving your business using data is a vital strategy for companies today, but it needs expertise and context like this to do it right. #data #payments

Visual Merchandising (VM): The Game-Changer in Retail In the competitive world of retail, Visual Merchandising (VM) isn't just about making a store look good it's a strategic tool that directly impacts footfall, sales, and customer loyalty. But how exactly does VM transform a store's performance? 1️⃣ VM as a Silent Salesperson A strong VM strategy guides customers effortlessly through the store, showcasing key products and promotions. Organized, thematic, and visually appealing displays encourage customers to explore, leading to higher conversions. For instance: A simple adjustment in product placement or an eye-catching window display can significantly boost impulse purchases. 2️⃣ Attracting Footfall Your store's first impression begins at the window. A well designed VM acts as a magnet, drawing customers inside. Creative displays tell a story, evoke emotions, and differentiate your brand in a crowded marketplace. Example: We revamped our window display with a festive theme, and footfall increased by 30% in just one week 3️⃣ Enhancing the Customer Experience A good VM makes shopping intuitive and enjoyable. Customers can easily find what they are looking for while discovering new products they didn't know they needed. This seamless experience builds customer loyalty. Did you know? Research shows that 70% of in store purchase decisions are influenced by how products are displayed. 4️⃣ Building a Brand Story VM isn't just about selling it's about storytelling. Whether it's a luxury boutique or a casual retail store, VM helps convey the brand's identity and values, leaving a lasting impression on customers. 5️⃣ Leveraging Psychology Colors, lighting, and layouts influence customer behavior. For example, warm tones create a welcoming vibe, while spotlighting premium products can enhance their perceived value. #VisualMerchandising #RetailStrategy #GameChanger #RetailSuccess #CustomerExperience #StoreDesign #RetailInnovation #BoostSales #RetailTrends #MerchandisingMatters