Smarter Shelf Intelligence: Scandit and MarketLab

How many times have you gone into a store, only to find that the product you wanted wasn’t on the shelf?

You’re not alone. The global retail sector loses around $634 billion every year due to problems with on-shelf availability, according to research from IHL Group.

At Scandit, we’ve been making shelf intelligence smarter since 2022 with ShelfView — our shelf management and analytics software for constant shelf visibility and near-real-time, actionable insights.

Other smart data capture companies have been tackling it from different angles. One of these is MarketLab, a Polish image recognition and AI software company specializing in the retail industry. Its customers include major retailers such as Carrefour Poland.

Today, I’m excited to share that Scandit has acquired the technology assets from MarketLab, and that the talented MarketLab team will be joining us.

While Scandit has primarily focused on data capture using mobile devices, MarketLab’s expertise is in fixed camera solutions. We believe combining our complementary shelf intelligence technologies creates a flexible, hybrid, scalable solution that will add value across all store formats.

Why poor shelf intelligence is holding retailers back

Over the last 10-15 years a huge amount of investment has gone into both supply chain visibility, and understanding consumer behavior. But although retailers have a clear picture of what gets into a store (through inventory management/supply chain systems) and what goes out (through point of sale systems), there’s a gap in the middle — what is the state of inventory in-store right now.

Did the inventory make it to the correct shelf? Are prices and promotions applied correctly? Did the stores execute planograms correctly?

The truth of the matter is that most retailers don’t know this exactly. And that’s because, more often than not, shelf intelligence and conditions still depend on store associates walking the aisles and visually auditing on-shelf availability, prices, and planogram compliance.

A customer shared with us that it took their store associates about 1.5 hours to audit 100 price labels. In a typical supermarket with 15,000 SKUs, that means it would take 225 hours (or 30 working days) to audit every label.

Prices change every day. Approaching full price label accuracy requires exponentially more work. It’s pretty clear that’s a time investment no retailer can get close to. Major trade offs are made, such as spot checks or rotating audits. And these tradeoffs have consequences. A price label integrity audit we recently did with a major US retailer showed that no fewer than 9% of its price labels were wrong.

Intelligent shelf management depends on smart data capture

ShelfView is already enabling retailers to improve shelf intelligence and execution. We developed it using smart data capture principles, with a focus on giving data instant purpose and value. ShelfView delivers accurate, comprehensive, accessible shelf-level data and insights in near-real-time — rather than hours, days, or weeks later.

ShelfView was developed to run primarily on affordable, accessible smart devices, such as commodity smartphones or handheld computers already in many retail businesses. Actionable insights and alerts are provided to store associates that they can easily implement to improve shelf management.

Now, the addition of MarketLab’s technology adds its expertise in fixed camera solutions to build ShelfView out into a larger, more flexible solution through a hybrid data capture approach.

Testing, validating, and investing in shelf intelligence solutions can be complex for retailers. Our hybrid data capture offering simplifies and accelerates the evaluation process. Retailers can easily pilot the solution using their existing mobile devices with minimal upfront investment and assess all the expected ROI and benefits before committing to full-scale implementation. The use of mobile devices offers a highly scalable and adaptable solution, suitable for all store sizes and formats.

Once the ROI is demonstrated, retailers can gradually increase automation by deploying fixed cameras in critical areas for high-frequency updates, such as aisles with fast-moving products. Hybrid data capture is the most cost-efficient approach, effectively optimizing operational costs and minimizing initial capital investments, making it a financially savvy choice that adjusts to evolving business needs.

I’m excited to be bringing the MarketLab team, led by CEO Piotr Wardaszko, into the Scandit fold. Our joint product and engineering teams are already getting their teeth into integrating our complementary products.

Because better shelf intelligence doesn’t just benefit retailers. Think of a beverage company (or any other consumer packaged goods firm) participating in a seasonal promotion. With near-real-time shelf intelligence, it could effortlessly audit on-shelf availability as well as planogram and pricing compliance against what was agreed with the retailer.

It also enables the company to keep a close eye on on-shelf availability to make sure its products are actually available for consumers to buy, to boost both sales and customer satisfaction. One existing customer experienced a significant improvement in on-shelf availability, which led to an approximate 2% increase in sales over a six-month period.

The real world — real shelves, real products, real store associates, and real businesses — is unstructured and variable. Our work on smart data capture has taught us the importance of flexible, pragmatic, scalable, and software-led approaches.

To make your shelf management intelligent, you need to make your data capture smart.