2 minute read
THE WEEK IN RETAIL ISSUE 30
EDITOR’S COMMENT
CJ LANG TAKES DATA GENIE OUT OF THE BOTTLE
Amidst the flurry of news, trading updates and initiatives unveiled at last week’s Spar Scotland virtual trade show, was the announcement that Spar Scotland wholesaler and retailer CJ Lang will make its sales data available to suppliers and stakeholders. I’m assuming that “will make available” means “will sell” but that little detail aside, this is potentially very big news.
As far as I’m aware, no other wholesaler sells its sales data to suppliers – but it’s a huge opportunity that has lain unexploited and unmonetised for years. If suppliers want grocery data, they can easily get it from Nielsen and Kantar and, by all accounts, the data is pretty robust. After all, the research agencies are essentially only dealing with the four major supermarkets. (The discounters don’t sell their data to these guys, I believe.)
But if you are a supplier and you’re looking for reliable data on the huge convenience market, you’ve got a job on your hands. Your only three practical options are 1) going direct to around 50,000 independent retailers to ask them to part with it, which isn’t very practical at all; 2) go to the Epos companies who see a lot of sales data from independent stores – but that route is also fraught with huge practical, tech and political issues; or you go to symbol groups and wholesalers. Thus far, wholesalers haven’t proven very keen to share their sales data – for obvious reasons.
But this deal between CJ Lang and digital and data specialists TWC has broken a mould – and I would not be surprised to see other wholesalers follow suit. The deal sees CJ Lang make its wholesale sales data and retail data from its 109 company-owned stores available. OK, it’s only a fraction of the total Scottish market, but it’s a decent-sized fraction and, most importantly, it will be by far the best data available to suppliers to get a handle on what’s actually selling in Scotland.
Suppliers routinely pay very handsomely for good data – and this data will be good.
This could signal a big shift moving forward. So many big decisions by suppliers in the convenience channel are currently made based on pretty low volume, low quality data. Gaining an accurate read on the Scottish convenience market, arguably the first ever accurate read, has the potential to trigger some major changes in future – and CJ Lang should be commended for starting that ball rolling.
