Line reviews are an important opportunity to deepen a partnership with your buyer. The retailer, brand, and customer all win when the product is in stores where it fits best, and the purpose of a line review is to work together to find an ideal set of store/product combinations. 

When your brand participates in a yearly line review, Crisp dashboards can help you build a case to your retailers for expansion. You can pinpoint where velocity is high to recommend regions in which it would be beneficial to add points of distribution or incorporate additional or new products. You can also demonstrate partnership and improve your velocity numbers by identifying low-performing areas in which to cut distribution. 

Before you begin, find out your buyer's expectation for velocity for your category, so you can assess which product/store combinations meet, exceed, or fall below your buyer's expectations. You can ask the buyer directly or get an IRI SPINS or Neilsen report to see what velocity is typical for your category at the retailer.

Steps:

  1. For each product, make a case for expansion by identifying regions where your velocity is highest. In this case, let's assume we are preparing for a line review at Whole Foods and want to start with our highest velocity product.

    • From the dashboard menu, select Whole Foods > Velocity.

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    • Using the Units Per Store Per Week by Product table, identify your highest velocity product (in this case, chocolate almond milk) and select it to filter your dashboard by this product. Category_Review_002.png

    • Using the Units Per Store Per Week by Region table, identify and filter the dashboard for the region where your velocity is highest. In this case, the chocolate almond milk is performing best in the Northeast region. 
      Note: Whole Foods distribution is based on region. Other retailers may organize distribution differently.  
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      You can recommend to your buyer that you expand your product offerings in this region or expand distribution into similar regions.

    • If you want to share a heat map in a presentation, you can download the visualization by selecting the Tile actions menu at the top right corner of the heat map, then selecting Download data.
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      Then, from the Format drop-down menu, choose PNG (Image of Visualization) and click the Download button.
    • If you want to export a list of your best performing stores for the product, from the table in the Velocity Details section, select the Tile actions menu at the top-right corner of the table, then select Download data. 
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      Then, choose an export format and select the Download button. You can then share this list with others. 

    • If you want to share the entire report, follow the instructions in Sharing saved reports.

  2. For each product, find regions that are low-performing and could benefit from cuts in distribution. 
    • From the Velocity dashboard, using the Units Per Store Per Week by Product table, identify your lowest velocity product (in this case, coffee almond milk) and select it to filter your dashboard by this product. 
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    • Using the Units Per Store Per Week by Region table, identify and filter the dashboard for the region where your velocity is lowest. In this case our coffee almond milk has lowest performance in the Florida region. 
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      You can recommend to your buyer that you remove distribution for this product in the region or replace it with a new or existing product that is more likely to perform well in the region. 

    • Once you filter your dashboard by the lowest velocity region, you can sort the Velocity Details table by Units/Dollars per store per week to find your lowest velocity stores. You can then export this store list and share it. 

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You now have data you can use to provide informed recommendations to your buyer about how to achieve the best store/product combinations for your brand.