Mike explores the role that shelf audits play in retail with Henry Ho (Co-Founder of Field Agent) and Ken Drish (VP of Sales at Trax).

Hear examples of how this solution is working at retail for CPG companies, Retailers and In-store Merchandisers to measure and fix on shelf availability issues.    

Well, greetings. My name is Mike Graen and I'm super

excited today to spend some time with a couple of really good

colleagues of mine, Henry Ho, who's the Co-founder of Field

Agent, and Ken Drish, who is the Vice President at Trax retail.

It's all going to be about on shelf availability and the role

that shelf audits play on today's podcasts. Let's get

started. Well, good afternoon, everybody. This is Mike Graen.

Welcome to our podcast. Gosh, Matt, I'm not sure what we're

number up to yet, but we are we've got several of these kind

of in the can. We these are both shared joint ventures between

Conversations on Retail, and the University of Arkansas and the

Sam Walton College. And my name is Mike Graen, and I'm going to

be kind of hosting this particular podcast today. It's

all about retail shelf retail on shelf availability, and I've

spent 25 years or 25 years with P&G, about 10 with Walmart. Ken

Drish and I spent some time at Crossmark together, and now I'm

working on all things on shelf availability. So we'll we'll

introduce those guys here in a little bit. But really as

background, we have been trying to host these podcasts to talk

about the really the importance of on shelf availability. We've

done several of these, and this is another series of that so.

Just a couple of just logistical things. We're going to try and

keep these fairly conversational and interactive, we would ask

you to stay on mute unless you have a question or a comment

that you want to ask at that point in time, we'll give you

the opportunity. We're gonna try something different this time

actually let you come off mute, and actually ask your question

rather than actually always using the chat function. If you

want to ask the question anonymously, you're more than

welcome to do that via the chat function. And we do have a

couple of companies, well, I don't think they're direct

competitors, some people might. So we're going to follow

antitrust guidelines as we review this in store data

collection. So we ask that you refrain from asking any

questions or discussing things about pricing your margins or

anything that would be competitive, competitively

sensitive. Okay. So

Mike, if I could, if I could add just one thing, if

anyone wants to

Absolutely.

if anyone wants to ask a question, hit the hit the button

that says raise hand, and that'll keep that'll make sure

that no one is unmuted unnecessarily and is a

distraction to the to the presenter. So just click that

raise hand, we'll keep an eye on it. And then when Mike's ready

for a question. We'll recognize you and turn your mic on.

Perfect. Perfect. Thank you, Matt. Appreciate

that. So we got a couple of companies on here, I told you a

few weeks ago, we were going to have Field Agent and Trax on,

but let me give you a little bit of context about sort of how

they fit with the on shelf availability platform. I know

you've seen this before, but I think it's important to kind of

show it. But we do have some suppliers that we've seen before

with like Retail Insights, and companies like Team Core that

have algorithms, and those algorithms are pretty useful for

high velocity kinds of things, to be able to say when you have

an on shelf availability issue. There's also store audits, which

is obviously the topic of conversation today. We've got

people who are actually going into stores, collecting in store

conditions, and then today's podcast is all about those. But,

but I want to make sure that you understand the context. But this

works really, really well for different tests you're doing,

different samples, things you're trying to do. It specially works

very, very well, I think, with lower velocity items, that don't

have a tremendous amount of movement and are very difficult

to work with an algorithm. We've also seen examples of shelf

scanning, scanning robots. I know we had a panel on with the

Brain Corporation, Zippity, Simbi, and Badger Robotics. And

we walked through kind of the options opportunities of shelf

scanning robots. And then I know we've had some some time with

the folks on the RFID side as well. There's two that we may

get into well this one for sure we may get into. These are what

I will call online shoppers. So this is a this is an example of

Instacart where you literally have a customer that's shopping

on behalf of a of a consumer, if you will. And anything that's an

on shelf availability issue potentially could get chat could

get captured and feed and on shelf availablity algorithm. And

then last week, last month, we had fixed cameras in store with

Focal Systems and SES etc. So these are a lot of different

tools and a lot of different capabilities and And today, we

really want to focus on just the on shelf availability as it

relates to in store conditions. So I want to introduce my good

friend, Henry Ho. Henry I think you and I have known each other

for probably close to 30 years, I think. We both kind of began

our careers at Procter and Gamble together, and he being

the entrepreneur he is, set out a vision for trying to do some

things entrepreneurial as it relates to Walmart and the

supplier. So he is the Co-founder of a company called

Field Agents. So Henry, I'm gonna have you have you unmute

and introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about Field

Agent.

Thanks, Mike. It's good to be here. I appreciate

this opportunity. Yeah, my name's Henry Ho, and I am one of

the Co-founders of Field Agent. I'm the Chief Strategy Officer,

Field Agent has been around since 2011, actually 2010. And

we crowdsource consumers, everyday shoppers, to go into

stores and help us do three main things: audits, provide insights

to shopping environment, and then lastly, provide trial

mechanisms for brands.

Awesome, thank you, Henry. You got a couple of

slides here. Do you want to walk through a couple of those just

to give a little bit more context to Field Agent?

Yeah, that'd be great. Thanks. Yeah. Next slide. You

know, the the five things I would say that are interesting

for people listening into this podcast is that we've

democratize access to OSA audits. Really, anyone

regardless of size, if you're a small vendor, or medium sized

vendor, large vendor, you have access to Field Agent and our

tools and solutions. Secondly, coverage and scale, we can

basically go anywhere, any market in the US continental US

as well as Hawaii and Alaska, any channel of trade and really

any retailer so that that's at any moment, if you have a need

to understand what's going on in the shelf, we can do that.

Speed, really anytime we give you near real time view of the

shelf. So our clients use us, whether it's Hey, I needed to

see what's going on today, or a week from now or two weeks from

now, whatever. And then we've worked really hard over the last

few years to continue to increase the value of what we

do. We developed pre built solutions to drive costs down

and to increase speed. We'll talk about that a little bit

later. And then key distinctive is the quality of the data we we

QC all of the things that we collect all the information and

we we aim to have just an incredible user experience for

our users. So

Awesome, thank you, Henry. Appreciate it. Appreciate

it. Mr. Drish. You and I have known each other for a while.

The great thing is been in this industry long enough, you run

into somebody, right? And so that's a nice thing about these

podcasts is I get to connect with old friends like Henry and

Ken and and we were different times doing different work

together, but it all comes back to Trax company has been around

for quite a while Ken, and you play a very role, important role

as the VP of Sales for that for I believe the US market if

that's correct. But tell us a little bit about yourself and a

little bit about Trax.

Sure. Absolutely. Thanks Mike and Henry and Matt.

Appreciate the time to be here. As Mike mentioned, I've been

with Trax retail now a little over two years, really spent the

majority of my career though working for traditional sales

and marketing agencies. I spent a long amount of time where I

met Mike at Crossmark. I've worked for Acosta. So really

kind of consider myself a student of the space and student

of the industry. Trax you know really is a company that got

it's start in 2010 with the vision of leveraging computer

vision for CPG companies to really kind of digitize the

retail shelf and then glean all sorts of insights out of that

share of shelf, planogram compliance, pricing compliance,

OSA etc. It had always been the vision of the company though to

have their own feet on the street, so that came about

through really two large acquisitions. One in 2018, we

acquired a company called Curi much like Henry's organization

was in kind of the the audit, on demand audit space, leveraging

crowd source. But then we also acquired a company in early 2020

called survey.com, based out of Boston, ironically still in in

business for about 10 years as well. Survey took it to one

incremental level so the ability to audit but then also be able

to react and fix. So what we have today is what we call Trax,

it's flex force, which is an on demand, flexible group of

individuals nationally, that can go out and not only audit, but

also audit and fix and do some of the general type of

merchandising work that would need to be done in stores. The

simplest way I like to describe it is really kind of the Uber

Lyft model of in store execution and merchandising.

Awesome, perfect. All right, well, we've got a few

questions that I know we're going to ask you up front. But

but we'll start out with those just so just so the audience

knows, we will, I'm going to ask these questions, I got three or

four of them. And then I'm going to open it up for question and

answers from the audience. So just based upon the the note

that Matt just said, if you do have a question at any point in

time, go ahead and raise your hand and we will unmute if you

just want to ask the question via chat, you can do that as

well. But first one, we'll just start this off with Henry.

Business drivers. You talked about a lot of things that this

particular does this technology does walk us through the

business drivers are these retail retailer as are they

brand owner as? Exactly, what are you doing? What are the

business drivers for shelf audits in retail?

Yeah, I think the primary driver Mike is the the

need to see and understand what is going on at retail visibility

to issues, problems, or even opportunities. And so they come

from a variety of clients, including retailers, mainly CPG.

Anybody really doing business at retail, and they they want to

understand either directionally what the what the performance

and execution compliance is to a particular program or initiative

that they have, as Ken mentioned, and then they want to

be able to be able to fix and get in and provide a solution

recommendation sometimes, sometimes an analysis of what's

going on. So that's the main thing. And as regards to on

shelf availability. You know, probably the best eye is the

human eye. Contrary to some some other folks because the you

know, the the computer technologies are really good and

they're getting better every every month. But right now the

consumer the on shelf shopper availability, there's no better

way to tell you what's going on than a shopper.

Got it. So, so classic example. I've got, I've

got a product let's say I'm Procter and Gamble. And I've got

a group of products in the wet shave category, let's say call

it razor blades. And I'm not sure that I'm I'm selling as

many as I would expect it in, let's say a Kroger store or a

Walgreens store or CVS or whatever. So what does that look

like? And this question Ken's for you, too. So what what does

that look like? So I believe I have a problem. I don't have the

access to all those stores. So what does that look like? What

do you guys do? And how does that portray back to me from a

result standpoint? Is it just a list of all the problems? Or is

it actually getting involved and actually fixing the issues that

you guys see at store?

Yes, I think it really depends and I love what

Henry said about, you know, there's no better way than the

human eye of seeing what's going on out there. And he's right,

looking at tools like retail link, and Nielsen and IRI data

are all excellent tools. But in many cases, in most cases,

they're they're backward looking, rather than looking at

what's really going on at the shelf today. So, Mike, it really

depends. And I'm glad you brought up the wet shave

category. We had a client that we audited literally 65,000

stores for because their concern was sales were declining, but

they felt that there was a opportunity in some stores that

had locked that product up versus leaving it out. And

obviously there are some locations where you need to do

that because they're high theft, but you can't apply a one size

fits all. So getting out there and seeing what exactly was

happening at store level. And then in their case, we weren't

taking corrective action. We were just providing the data

back and they were utilizing the data to go back to their

merchant and identify you know, here are here's a block of

stores that we know are high theft areas, they need to be

locked up. Here are other ones that probably aren't and you'd

probably do better if you have that product available for the

reps.

Gotcha. Great example. Great example. Any

other business drivers that you'd like to add to the list

that Henry provided, Ken, anything else that we're

missing?

Yeah, I think there's, I think there's so many

around OSA especially with the recent supply chain challenges

that that have come up and they're not all done yet.

There's there's still challenges out there. But I think being

able to utilize groups like ours, like Henry's and Traxs',

really allows you to kind of pinpoint where you know the

known issues are and then go and get the real idea of what's

really happening out there. And of course, Henry's team can do

it in lightning speed. Ours is a little bit more, because we're

doing more of an audit and fix situation. But I would say OSA

is always say, audits are great, too, you know, where you've got

an issue that the data, you're pretty much stopped at the data,

you need to see what's exactly going on out there in the field.

But several other audits, you know, are requested of us to

display execution, planogram compliance, even retailers now

asking us for compliance on their own stores. Whether or not

the marketing materials that are up are what should be, etc.

Yeah, I'm sure it's a sensitive topic, but I've also

understood that there are some CPG companies out there that use

that to drive and measure compliance of the third party

service providers in store, did you really set everything the

way you said you did? I'm sure that's one of those little

things that people don't really talk about, but if I'm paying

real live money to a third party to go out and execute work, and

they say, Yeah, I'm getting it all done. But you guys

potentially providing an audit service afterwards to say that

was or wasn't the case.

Yeah, but I would say that that is without a doubt

that that is coming up. And also for the handful of CPG companies

that still have their own direct teams. Many of them like Coca

Cola, Mondelez, have developed what they call a perfect store

program, they utilize our image recognition, to really verify

that it truly is a perfect store, rather than just an

audit. So it's leveraging digital images and insights out

of that. And in many cases, they utilize that to measure the

performance of their reps and incentivize them.

Awesome, awesome. Adoption seems to be going up.

Tell us about where you see this kind of going in the future

more? Are you just getting the word out of the services that

you guys provide? Or are there other new capabilities that

people are starting to latch on to that are starting to make

sense for store audits?

Yeah, I think Mike, I think adoption is is increasing,

it's never been more important to be on the shelf in stock.

And, you know, programs that supply suppliers are are been

exposed to at places like Walmart, where they may swap you

out, you know, if, if you're not in stock over a period of time

that that's, that's the real, there's a real penalty box, if

you're not it. And, you know, we talked about drivers that give

gaps in the data, that people need to understand that not not

not all algorithms, people are using a lot of algorithms,

algorithms, to predict OSA. And, in some categories, it makes

sense to, to use algorithms to be predictive. And those tend to

be high turn categories, or items. And for us, we we do a

fair amount of work with people with slower turn items where

they're, you know, the their retail link, or their POS data

does not really give them the insight that they need. So more

and more people are, are using and need these types of services

to just get a knowledge base of what's going on out there so

they can take action or partner with their retailers to go fix

some of these things.

I would agree that adoption is definitely

Got it

increasing. One thing that I have noticed the trend of is

people who are seeking these types of services want to be

able to truly target where they go. They know where they believe

the issues are, and rather than just having a, you know, a

blanket, you know, audit of all 4000 Walmart stores, for

example, they want to go to these 15 121 stores. And I think

organizations that can can do that and can do that quickly,

are going to continue to benefit and it's really going to benefit

the, the the client in this case as well.

Right. Great example.

Hey Mike, one of the things you know, I've been

Well and you met, and you mentioned other

following this series, and had been listening to this with a

technologies we've clearly spoken to the folks who run the

great deal of interest. And I think the technology that's

coming into place is very, very exciting that whether it's

algorithms and with algorithms, you said exactly right Henry

robots on shelf, cameras and whatnot. The reality is there's

business that still need to be able to view the entire channel

with high velocity things that are selling 8 to 10 to 12 a day.

or grocery and they need to see the picture now and those

technologies are emerging and they're coming along, but

If I'm selling eight, and then 10, then 12 then 15, then 000, I

anybody who really needs to see their distribution or on shelf

availability, across all the grocery, drug mass and whatnot

have a pretty good idea that product wasn't on the shelf.

can mention a big, big project that he had. There's nobody who

That's hard to do with a toothbrush. It's hard to do with

can do it with current technology, because they're in

limited phases of pilots. Our solutions are solutions that are

a cosmetic, it's hard to do with a razor blade, because you may

now and we can get out to any channel any, right any market,

any retailer. And so we have a major client that are not

only sell one or two a month. Is it not on the shelf? Or is it

looking for acute or necessarily acute problems, but they want a

steady beat and flow of what's going on in the shelves, week in

just not selling enough to make a blip, right. And so, to me,

and week out. And so we have major programs, with with

clients, where we're giving them visibility across all of retail,

that's where you guys come in. I think the question becomes,

to understand what's going on. And it gives them the holistic

there are other tools in the tool bag that can be used by

view of the business, maybe not just at Walmart, or in the drug

channel, or whatever it may be. So our tools are now here now,

especially for the retailer, we've talked about shelf

and they're effective, and they're of high quality so.

scanning robots, we've talked about fixed cameras in the

apparel and general merchandise kind of the RFID, etc. So I

think what you just did was say exactly why that's a benefit a

it's in the CPG suppliers control. Those other decisions

are more the retailer control. Number two, they're immediate. I

can I can have a question today and get the answer literally by

the end of the day. I don't have to wait for some infrastructure

to be deployed and spent and all that is that is that what some

one of the biggest advantages to you guys as platforms?

Absolutely, I would you know, in we are in the image

recognition space so we have programs across the globe where

we're deploying fixed cameras. We're putting them on robots,

where we have partnerships with folks who provide the robots,

but that is a much longer burn. And quite candidly, it's a

pretty big capital outlay to do that. And to Henry's point, I

think it will continue to improve and like most

technologies that will get less and less costly to do so. But in

the meantime, you're still going to have this need and to Henry's

point and I think our types of platforms, fill that niche and

fill that need pretty quickly.

Got it. So let's transition to that question.

It's a question that I've gotten before. So there's a data

capture component, which I'm assuming is a cell phone, an

iPad, something to collect this information. And then there's

turning that particular picture into something that's actionable

quickly. Ken you said product recognition, that's been the age

old nemesis. If I could just go up and take a picture, and it

could tell me all the things that were wrong, rather than

having to take it back and analyze the center. What what do

you think that where are we in product recognition today? And

where do you think the future looks like?

We have kind of an incredibly long way. You know,

it was interesting as Trax was recruiting me, I knew exactly

who Trax was. I knew they were an image recognition company,

you know, for for several years. But it really has come a long

way. And it continues to improve with AI and things of that

nature as as you go forward. The simplest way to think about

image recognition as it stands today with consumer products is

if the human eye can recognize the difference between two

products simply by looking at them, image recognition will

work to do all sorts of things, and glean all sorts of insight.

However, it's when you get into smaller SKUs of things that look

incredibly alike. Color Cosmetics, great example, things

that our side face, very hard for image recognition to be able

to understand. But again, it's getting better and it evolves

literally on a monthly basis.

Let me let me stop you there. Is it because of the

fact that the product is so small and you're not getting a

quality image? Or is it literally hard even if you're at

a really high quality image to be able to tell the two

together, which is it?

It's the latter. It's really

You know it's small, it's still hard to get an image

Got it. Got it. So it's in much better shape than it was before.

Okay.

that clarifies the difference between the two. And what's

interesting is some things that I would thought we would have a

tough time with like gift cards, for example, we can recognize

It's at a better platform, but I'm sensing based on your

gift cards. But when you get into side faced lipsticks, or

nail polishes or things like that, that's where it gets

comments, there's still a lot of opportunity in the image

really, really challenging to do.

recognition space.

There is, and I think there are a handful of manufacturers, some

of our largest clients that have really gone all in and adopted

it. Whether it's like I mentioned before, the perfect

store type programs, or things of that nature that have really

seen the benefit. Or they use it for better understanding

category compliance, planogram integrity, and they use it as an

opportunity to go in position with their buyers to get better,

a more advantageous shelf position in the next line

reviews. So as more and more of those companies adopt, I think

more and more will will see the benefit.

Okay. Yeah, I don't want to, I don't want to steal

the thunder for the next podcast. We'll talk about that

at the end. But I think product recognition is one of those

things that has come a long way, and there's still a lot of

opportunity. And that's part of this is, do I need to know that

that particular label is not that product? Or do I need to

know it's that label and I can tell you what product it is

right? So there's a there's a big distinction. Am I looking

for, I can tell you it is the correct product or it's

something else, I can't tell you what it is, but I know it's

wrong, it's a plug, it's a spread something else like that.

Henry, your thoughts on this space?

Yeah, I mean, there's there, you're you're hitting on

some of those nuances. And my buddy Sarjun, you know, I that I

meet with from time to time. You know, we talk about all these

different dynamics as we're trying to look at technology,

his technology and our capabilities coming together to

provide some different distinctives for the market.

But, you know, one of the things that we're starting to see

across the world, and I see from different solutions in Europe as

well here in the US, is that people are starting to think

about, maybe we don't need to be perfect in this space. And maybe

it's just good enough to give us perspective. So if you're if

your objective is to get to perfect view of a shelf, Ken

mention a lot of those nuances where it just makes it nearly

impossible, right? To, to to come up with accurate

information. But if then if you you can use a solution and you

can get the rational perspective on a variety of issues, you

know, OSA being one of them, right? Then I think the

integration of that technology with our capabilities start to

make more sense. And I think we're going to get more

practical as we go forward. And well, both the providers and the

solution providers and the clients have to come together

and say What problems are we really wanting to see. Now we

talk about, Ken mentioned this, they want, people want to know

share a shelf. You know, but you don't want to know share shelf

every day. You need to know that periodically, but a lot of

people have this thing in their mind that, hey, I want to I want

to use this fancy technology to tell me my share shelf to the

nth degree, and you spent a lot of money doing that, a lot of

time chasing that. So I think there is a practical application

that's coming. As well as the technology continues to improve.

I think that will create adoption in a more wide variety

of category categories and retailers.

Awesome. Awesome. All right, we're gonna turn it

over to audience I'm gonna ask Mike Price why don't you go

ahead and unmute your phone and your video if you'd like and go

ahead and ask your question.

Thanks very much. Hi Ken, good to reconnect. It's

been a while. Henry, you made some brilliant points about I

guess, the, I guess the scope that you can measure with the

crowd in one day or you know, in one particular situation. I

guess the challenge I have and I saw this in my long career,

Unilever is working with all the different technologies with POS

data and algorithms with some stuff with cameras. I was a big

advocate of crowd and also of image recognition. But I think

the challenge I have to I guess to both of you is, how do you

sort of bring it all to gather to really sort of understand

that true cause and effect, because I've also followed the

series. And I think it's been brilliant. But I've sort of sat

here slightly with a sort of, you know, I guess a slight

frustration thinking, how do you actually build an ecosystem to

really understand that sort of cause and effect, because you

can go out and measure, as we did across the US.

Unfortunately, it was with one of your competitors, you know,

Saturday afternoon ice cream category, you know, really,

narrow availability. So the question comes back, okay, so so

we know we've got a problem or burning platform, but they did

have, but it's the why. Then how'd you get into that, then

you start looking at the POS data, and that tells you

something possibly slightly different. And then you've got

the image recognition piece to look at the, you know, the Shara

shelf and the real ground versus the planogram. So it's how do

you actually bring all these fantastic components together?

To, you know, to really, I guess, take it to the next

level? That's my question.

Yeah. Mike, I think it's a I think it's a terrific

question. It's interesting, because we are the company that

is providing the, the audit data or the image recognition data.

And there's a certain set of analysis that comes with that

that is standard that we do, but we only have access to what our

data shows us, right? Whether it's the image recognition data,

or the causal data that actually comes from the rep being out in

the stores. It really heavily depends on our client, we have

some clients that are highly sophisticated, and they only

want, they only want what we can give them, right, these are

going to be larger CPGs, obviously, like the one that you

went to and, and then you have medium type of companies that

are going to want us to, you know, maybe they'll share their

data with us their point of sale data, and then we'll do some

analysis or smaller companies who, who frankly, just don't

have a grasp on how that all comes together. So it really all

depends that the challenge for us is it's not going to make

first off, we're not going to get access to retailing data,

because we're not a supplier. You know, we could go and

purchase Nielsen or IRI data, and POS data, but there's got to

be a cost analysis there to see if that that actually makes

sense. So it really depends on at least in our world, on who

were, who we're working with, and to what level they they have

the extent. We have the analysts that can go very deep, if we

have the data to look at it, but some of them frankly, just want

to do it on their own.

Yeah, Mike, again, brilliant question. You know, I

would throw in a, an equally important partner in the

solution set is that we've got to figure out how to bring the

retailers into this equation. You know, because the our

clients, the CPG companies, etc. You know, they, they want this

problem fixed, but a lot of times, there are just issues at

the retailer, in getting those those solutions implemented, and

having, you know, the retailer with their labor shortages and

whatnot, be able to react to the data. But it is it it's got to

be a collaborative solution, I think we're gonna have to create

incentives in the industry for for labor to go in and fix that

and for for those solutions to be implemented and adopted by

retailers, you know, this, this is a this is a age old problem.

Mike and I have talked this before, you know, on shelf

availability has been around my whole career, 40 years. And we

have brought more technology, we have brought more labor, and we

have brought our services to the marketplace. We have a better

understanding and better analysis on the issues at hand,

but the problem still persists. So we are going to need as an

industry come together and figure out ways to collaborate

to really fix this. I don't think Field Agent or Trax or

Acosta, you name them. We're gonna fix that problem. It's a

collaborative effort.

It is according to IHL a trillion dollar

opportunity. If you believe that. And on shelf availability

is one of those things that if you ask a retailer, what is your

on shelf availablity, they probably couldn't tell you,

right? They can tell you in stock, which is basically how

many do I have versus how many I think I'll sell. But how many

are actually available on the shelf or on the display for a

customer becomes a much tougher thing. And that's why we've been

talking about some of this thing. Ken you actually showed,

and I would like to put that example up on the screen, you

sent me an actual case study, where there was a real issue,

you guys worked with the CPG company. I'm gonna go ahead and

bring that up there. But why don't you you walk us through

that, because I think that's a real practical example of how

you could potentially use these services for this kind of work.

Sure, absolutely. Do you want to want to go ahead and

bring that up. So this is a very typical use case that we, we

tend to get from our clients around OSA. And this happened to

be to the point that I just was telling Mike about, Mike price

about. This is this is a customer who's got a very deep

analytical bench. So in this case of leading HVC manufacturer

noticed a sharp sales decline for a line of deodorant,

antiperspirant Target stores. And they ruled out distribution

issues or supply chain issues, they have a stated goal for this

category of 96% OSA that's very high. And they have a metric for

every 1% that the product is below 96% OSA. So the audit

scope itself is very simple at 1857 Target stores that audited

over a one week period. 11 SKUs audited and we were able to show

them in that time period that five SKUs were under 96%, some

as low as 48 48%, some as high as you know 75. But the company

was then able to utilize that data and take it to their

merchant at Target and work to get orders pushed out. And I

think that brings up another point and one thing that we

really strive to do as business development people in selling

any program that we have, but you know, just because a client

comes to us with an OSA audit opportunity. That's great, and

we want to execute it. But we're always asking them, okay, what

are you really trying to solve? What does success look like

here? What is the end in mind, because at the end of the day,

we want to be able to show stories like this, where they

were able to go back and there's a tangible result, a

quantifiable result that they were able to come up with. So

trying to start with the end in mind around all of these audits

is really important for us.

Great example, great example. Hey, let me switch

gears to some of the things that I hear from other people

regarding store audits just in true, full transparency. These

are things people go Yeah, but you always hear a, yeah, but at

the end of it, and I'll just throw these out there just kind

of random and you guys can respond to them. The first one

is, yeah, that's all really good, but it's way too expensive

and there's no ROI. Well, this is a pretty good example Ken

where that's not the case. But react to the it's too expensive.

And there's no ROI comment.

You know, I would just go back to what I just

said, you know, we try and start these with the end in mind. And

candidly, we've turned down some of these if, if the client

doesn't have a clear understanding of what the

potential ROI is, and obviously we give them examples about how

to measure that etc. And, and truly and honestly, mostly

today, people that are looking to secure or procure these kinds

of services, rather, have an OS have an ROI in mind with what

they're trying to accomplish. So, you know, that's what I

would that's what I would have, we're always trying to do a

program that has some sort of a return on investment, whether

it's a return on investment of sales, or cost or in the case of

a retailer, increased productivity, etc.

Gotcha. Henry, any builds on that.

Yeah, in terms of, I've seen two different types of

programs. The majority of our programs are very similar to

Ken's, Ken's outline here, but there are, you know, more

sophisticated players that are needing to have a pulse. They

have enough business in these major retailers to want to have

a pulse of what's going on in the stores because those are the

triggers in which their supply chain their operations teams can

go to work. They can't afford not to know that five SKUs are

less than 96%. And with the dynamic nature of retail, we

have programs that we're tracking all year long for for

teams, and looking across, you know, 15 retailers. And so there

are some tracking and and directional data that some of

the bigger guys are using to drive the business. They can't

afford to be out of stock or be in a place where their

competitor is, is is in stock, and they're not in stock. So

there is a competitive activity side of this. That's just as

important than No, you go back to the time of the pandemic,

when it was free for all. Shelves were just, you know,

bare, and retailers were looking at, you know, we had retailers

wanting to know who has inventory.

Yeah.

Am I get short? Right?

Yeah.

So those are different dynamics that again, when an

audit or subtracting helps decision makers take action,

that have big ramifications for their categories and their

business.

Yeah. Awesome, great perspective, by both of you a

couple other questions I've heard from people. Will the

retailer allow me to take pictures in the store, although

I think that concern has been really minimized over the years.

But I remember every time we brought a camera out, you get a

you're not allowed to take pictures in here kind of thing.

And the second one is any concerns from a privacy

perspective of your folks in stores taking pictures that they

potentially could capture privacy information of shoppers

in the aisles or anything like that? Any any feedback on either

one of those two?

Yeah, I'll take I'll take a shot at that. You're

right. I mean, the, it used to be that was, you know, if you're

taking out a camera, the retailers were suspect or, or

wouldn't allow it. From a process perspective, we follow a

process of always introducing ourselves, advising the manager

on duty of what we're there to do, and honestly, more than 99%

of the time now it includes a photo, whether we're doing a

reset or an audit or something, we're, we're definitely

collecting a photo. As far as the privacy issues, I know in

our image recognition technology, the system

automatically removes if if there was inadvertently a photo

taken of a customer, it will automatically remove that. I

can't speak to 100% of it, but I know we have some guardrails in

place around privacy. And then of course, there's contracts

with the the individual clients as well, that will stipulate

what we can and cannot share.

Gotcha. Henry, how about you?

Yeah, we you know, we're proud at Field Agent that

we created the space of going in and sending shoppers in back in

2010, that that, that was not a thing. And that was, that was

the overriding issue that people were asking. Today, everybody

wants you to use your smartphone in store.

Yeah

It really doesn't make sense for retailers, in store

personnel to acost any shopper. Smartphone. In fact, you know,

that doesn't make sense. So that that issue is gone. You know,

with the smartphone, people are taking pictures of product and

sending it to their husband or wife or kids and say, What do

you think of this item? It's just a normal way of living. So

that issue is gone. In terms of privacy, we have very strict

policies. In terms of, you know, all of all of the pictures that

we get, we don't we don't we don't have an issue with that.

That's a very, very important issue, but not an issue for us.

Gotcha. Gotcha. Well, I'm going to open it up

for questions from any audience members. But I would like to get

you guys to give us a very, very incredibly helpful understanding

of what does sales audits look like? What's the business

drivers for them? What exactly can we do with them? I guess my

big question for both of you just to think about it

individually, what's the future look like? Well, I mean, given

where we are today, you started in 2010, it's now 2022. We

expect you'll be around for 10 more years, 20 more years,

whatever it looks like, I don't know what it was gonna look

like. But what's the future look like? Henry, we'll start with

you. What does the future look like from your perspective?

You know, I think I think there's going to be a lot

of, you know, a lot of change from the technology standpoint,

the stores are getting digitized. You know, the

Walmarts of the world are digitizing the store every which

way they can. And so, I think your your next episode, with

this image recognition folks, that's going to become more and

more important. Those technologies, they're going to

be integrated. They still need sources of input, and they're

going to have to address the capital. But I think, if I had a

vision for the industry is I would love for suppliers and

retailers to develop Win Win solutions for having product on

the shelf versus that carrot versus the stick, right. We

actually worked with a supplier who was leading or bringing a

breakthrough concept of saying, you know, let's agree to a to a

level, an OSA level, that's beneficial for both of our

products and your category. And if we can hit that, we want to

offer you financial rewards for executing that. And if you don't

get that, then there is no financial reward. So it's less

about I'm gonna penalize. But hey, there's more because the

ROI for my business is better when we have product on the

shelf. And I think that level of collaboration or partnership,

which still requires you to be able to prove that your level is

x, right. But I think it's going to have to change the way the

scorecards have measured and the way the people are going to

incentivize the retailers to play their role. And if we can

get to that, I think we can change the game. Otherwise,

we're gonna continue to do the same things over and over again,

we may have better knowledge of what's going on, but we have to

change the game in order to change the results. So that's

the future.

Yeah, so I didn't hear a lot about, other than

product recognition, I didn't hear a lot about technology

investments. It's really more how do you measure it? And how

do you use it to drive OSA, right?

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, that's good. Ken, how about yourself?

Yeah, I would tend to agree with with what Henry was

saying, as well, the only thing that I would say is, I believe,

obviously, and I said this already, today, image

recognition is going to continue to get better. I also believe

that you're going to start seeing US retailers, and

retailers in general start adopting what some of the

retailers are doing in Europe, where they are utilizing, and

other parts of the globe as well, where they are utilizing

image recognition, whether it's a fixed camera, or it's on a

robot to not only make themselves more efficient, and

with their labor in terms of what they're doing in the

stores. But I also believe that you will see somebody come

together and collaborate and ultimately turn that insight

maybe initially only in a handful of categories, but into

another stream of data that can be purchased by CPG companies,

much like Nielsen is today or IRI is today. Because it is

truly when you when you affix a camera and that camera is taking

a photo every five minutes. It's truly giving you a real picture.

I think Mike Price used the word realagram, it really does give

you a real idea of what's going on at the shelf. And we all know

the retailers aren't gonna pay for it, it's going to be a data

set that I believe will be shared, the cost will be shared

with retail.

Great perspective. Great perspective. Well, you

prompted a question from Mike Price. Thank you very much.

Because this hand went up, no his hand actually went up before

you said his name again. But Mike, go ahead and unmute and

ask your question for us.

So I really feel like I'm given the guys a hard

time. And I'm not meant to it's really about. It's really about

the future building, I think of what you both alluded to, and I

guess it might exist i think i've reasonably well connected

on I've been in execution for 25 years. But one of the challenges

is if you want if today, if you're in a major CPG. And you

wanted to do an audit, shall we say at key trading time on a

Saturday afternoon, across the globe in a number of key markets

for key SKUs in that market. How could you do it? Because I had

that I got given that challenge when I was in my former life.

And you know what, I couldn't do it. We managed to do the US, we

managed to do Europe working with a partner there, but we

struggled in Latin America, I struggled to get stuff some odd

bits from Asia. Is there a crowd association or network? Because

I appreciate you might be. Henry, I know you're very strong

in the US and Ken I know I think you've got operations in a

couple of other markets outside of the US. But you know if

you're in a a top tier CPG or CPG with global coverage and you

want to look at something like that, when I got given that

challenge, I said a business I just can't do this. Now in the

markets we could do it in, the briefing went out on a Thursday

and we did the audits on Saturday afternoon. And we blew

people away partly with the speed and the accuracy. And it

created some real eye opening moments of just how bad or what

some of the opportunities were. But it's round the scope, I

guess is the future. What I'm really asking the question

about, when do we get to global crowdsourcing in a controlled

way without, you know, loads of different apps with, you know,

partners that we've never heard of? And it's, it's all so

fragmented? Sorry, tough question. I know. Get this guy

off the line, my God.

No, no, no, that like, I think I think Ken's got a

solution. So go Ken!

Well if I did, I wouldn't, I wouldn't have to,

you know, be working every day. But yeah, I would love to see

something like that. Unfortunately, I think it's

still a ways off. There are you're right, Mike, there are in

market solutions that are out there. But no one has yet, you

know, pulled together a coalition, if you will, of

global crowdsource auditing companies that can do that. I

think it's a, I think it's a terrific idea. You know, in

theory, in theory on paper, I think once you start getting

into the specifics of country by country specific details, I

think I certainly think somebody could probably set up a platform

that would work globally, from from a reporting perspective,

but it's the nuance of how do you organize all of that and get

all of those get all of those companies to operate together.

Henry, I don't know what else you'd add to that, I don't have

that solution today.

It's a loose network, Mike, as you know, you know,

collaborative partners. But, you know, covering the world is a

challenge. There's some geopolitical reasons, and

there's just a lot of a lot of things outside of our control.

And, you know, I think, I think it's like anything else that are

that you got to develop is, is there a big enough addressable

market for this, and I will take today, there isn't, doesn't

need, but there isn't a big enough addressable market. So

it'll be hard for entrepreneurs, to want to go and make that

happen. But we do try to provide that from time to time I have, I

have people that we can contact for China, in Europe, we are we

operate in seven countries outside of the US. But I can

tell you any multi country project is a major complexity

for us to execute.

Got it. We got a couple of questions from George.

And we're gonna go ahead and try and summarize what I'm seeing

from him, which is, I think building on exactly what you

guys are just talked about, can you talk about the duplication

of effort, we've got shelf data being collected by retailers, by

brokers by data companies buy you guys's service. Is there is

there any discussion in the near future to streamline any of that

or do you just see this continuing to grow

independently?

I have, I have a very personal opinion of that. Just

based on my my history in the business, I've worked for

several of the large brokers today. And I believe that the

National brokers and sales agencies are incredibly talented

at the headquarter selling piece, the category management

piece, the analytics piece, I think they're very, very good at

that. In all, transparency, they've been executing at retail

the same way for decades. I think the crowd model of being

flexible, pinpointed and have the scale and the speed to be

able to react is truly going to make a difference going forward.

And candidly, I believe that that's what we bring to the

table, it really is a different way of doing things. And I

believe, as effective if not more effective.

So do you two guys feel like you're completing work

with these service providers, those brokers or do you feel to

a certain degree, you're competing against them?

You know, I remember the days when Ken was on the on

the broker side, and, you know, and now he's on this side. And

you know, there is this, there is competition. And you felt

that we were exploring across all the major brokers, how do we

partner and I think when push comes to shove at the board

levels, at the senior management levels, that's where it breaks

down. I think at the operating levels, you know, it only makes

sense when a broker says I can't cover these stores to look to

someone who can, and we used to be about hey, how can we

complement a supplement what you're doing. And for a variety

of reasons, that just doesn't happen. Maybe Ken you have,

again, you, you've been on both sides. Maybe you have a special

point of view on that. I, we haven't been able to break

Yeah, the ironies of the conversation, Mike is, is

through that.

all of the major brokers, and at least seven or eight service

providers that are national today, our clients at Trax. And

it's exactly what Henry was talking about, we augment their

teams, we offset where they've got open territory coverage, the

crowd model, the gig worker, while it has its negative

connotations to many, is truly amazing in the sense that it

does fill gaps where traditional agencies have had a tough time,

or can't fill up enough of a territory to to staff a full

time territory. It's also just a difference in the mentality of a

crowd worker, a crowd worker tends to be much more

technologically savvy, they're much more entrepreneurial. I

tell the story all the time. Every time I get in an Uber,

I'll ask the driver, what is this the only thing they do? And

95% of the time they're telling me no, no, I work two other

jobs, or I'm trying to my wife bought a pool and I'm trying to

pay that off or student debts that I've got to pay down or

medical debt, whatever it might be. These are hungry people. And

we really saw it kind of rear its head in the, you know,

largely in the in the pandemic, for sure.

Wow. Interesting. Henry, any closing comments?

Anything I should have asked you that I didn't?

No, I just want to make one point is that I think

the early distinctive I'd made was, hey, how do you serve

people that may not be you know, some of the small medium sized

folks? How do you get them on our product that gives them

visibility to what's going on. We've been moving into that

space, developing products that can be self serve, that provide

the same quality and speed and coverage that, you know, large

clients of ours get to enjoy. So democratizing this capability is

one of the one of the strategies and goals that we have in

providing for that. And so yeah, our plum marketplace is one of

those things that we've done, to make it easy, to get this type

of capability without without being a big guy.

Awesome.

We all want to chase those and we want those clients, but we've

democratized that for many of the other players in the market.

Perfect. Ken any closing comments from you?

Yeah I would, I would just say that, you know, I've

been doing this for a while. And I've not seen as much change, as

I've seen in the last probably 36 months. Obviously, the

pandemic drove a lot of that. But I'm seeing things that I

never thought I would see before and the way things are going.

I'm seeing incredible technologies emerge and people

that are very creative in the way that they're trying to solve

problems. And I would just like to thank Henry and Matt and Mike

for allowing me the opportunity to talk and be happy to have

further conversations offline. Mike, I think you've got my

contact information and Henry's there as well.

Yeah, yeah. And these QR codes will will

definitely get you to both the Field Agent and the Trax folks.

So guys, thank you very, very much for your participation.

really do appreciate it to do. Definitely appreciate both the U

of A and Conversations on Retail for hosting it. Well, I hope you

enjoyed that podcast with Henry and Ken talking about the role

that store audits play in determining on shelf

availability. It is a very important part of the OSA puzzle

and it will continue to play a role for many, many years. Next

time, I'm really excited. We actually had an opportunity to

spend some time with a group of folks who have 130 years of

expertise of RFID at retail, exciting times. 20 year kind of

anniversary of RFID at retail. We'll be talking about it next

time, right here on our podcast. Take care.