Once you plan which product you want to demo and determine which stores are the best to target, you can prepare your inventory for the promotion to make sure you have enough product in stock in the target locations.
In this case, let's say we are running a demo of a cookie product with KeHE at Sprouts locations that are underperforming. Before you begin, review the workflow in Planning a store demo to determine the product and store you want to target for your demo.
Determine how much product you want to give away:
- Use your budget to determine how many units you want to give away for each store in the demo. For this example, let's say we want to give away 100 units per store for five stores.
- Calculate the target inventory level for each store:
- From the dashboard menu, select KeHE > Velocity.
- Filter the dashboard for the chain and stores and product at which you will run demos.
- In the Details table, take the units per store per week number for each store and calculate 3-4 times that amount to account for the boost in sales your demo will generate.
- Then, take the increase amount and add the amount of inventory you plan to give away (in this case 100 units) at the store. For the first store in the table the calculation works out as follows:
2.18 x 3) + 100 = 106.54 units -
Calculate the inventory needs for the weeks following the demo. You will likely see a sales lift, but less than during the demo week, so we'll say 2x the normal sales for the next 4 weeks. In this case:
(2.18 x 2) x 4 weeks = 17.44 -
Then, take the target inventory for the demo week and add it to the target inventory for the following weeks:
106.54 + 17.44 = 123.98 units
- From the dashboard menu, select KeHE > Velocity.
You now have the target inventory for the store for your demo week and the weeks after. Repeat this process to get the target inventory for the other stores in your demo list.
Ensure your inventory has arrived and is in the proper locations:
- Complete the following steps to check your inventory levels 2-3 weeks before the promotion:
- From the dashboard menu, select KeHE > Daily Sales.
- Filter the dashboard for the product, chain, and stores you are using for your demo over the past 2-3 weeks.
- In the Details table, check to see if the quantity shipped for each store in your list matches your projected needs.
In this case, we can see that for each store we have enough to meet our projected needs for the week of the demo.
- From the dashboard menu, select KeHE > Daily Sales.