Unitas to benefit from ‘must-have solution’
Unitas Wholesale has become the first wholesaler and/or wholesale buying group to sign up to SmartView Convenience
Launched by TWC Group in partnership with I-TG Group, SmartView Convenience (SVC) provides a comprehensive EPOS market read covering independent retail and wholesaler-supplied symbol stores in GB. It comprises a sample of more than 5,000 stores which have been cherry-picked and extrapolated up to represent the total GB market of 30,000 independent convenience retail and wholesaler-supplied symbol stores.
As the first wholesaler client to subscribe to SVC, Unitas will be able to use the market read to support many functions, including marketing, trading and core range planning, enabling Unitas to understand performance by category, sub-category, supplier and brand, down to SKU level.
Cheryl Hope, Unitas Wholesale trading director (pictured), said: “There has never been a reflective market read for the part of the market we serve and historically this has made ranging, performance benchmarking and strategic planning challenging.
“SmartView Convenience will help us develop bespoke category growth plans for our members and their stores and will identify the ‘must-stock’ SKUs based on what is actually selling in independent c-stores. We will also be able to identify high-growth products and emerging trends.”
Unitas already partners with TWC for shipments data (both retail and foodservice) and Tom Fender, TWC development director, said: “We wholeheartedly believe our truly representative market read is a must-have solution for this part of the market.
“The mults have been awash with data for years – our sector hasn’t had nearly the same quality of market data to aid decision making for wholesalers and their suppliers. Too often we see suppliers presenting range recommendations based on data which doesn’t reflect the independent convenience sector and we want to help everyone produce truly appropriate category plans”.
Cheryl Hope convenience data SmartView Tom Fender TWC Unitas Wholesale
