Why Retail POS Data is Crucial for Emerging CPG Brands

In the competitive world of Grocery Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG), emerging brands often face significant challenges when breaking into retail. One of the primary obstacles is a lack of visibility into market dynamics related to your products.

You are flying blind in buyer meetings with retailers if you don’t have an accurate foundation of data to draw upon to prove success. Category managers seek more than a familiar product with an inspirational brand story. They want proof that adding your products to their assortment could contribute to overall growth.

Point of Sale (POS) data refers to the information collected at the time and place of a sale. This includes details about the product, the time of purchase, and the customer.

POS data is crucial for emerging CPG brands as it provides real-time insights into product performance. It helps brands track sales trends, monitor inventory levels, and understand consumer buying patterns. This data is essential for making timely decisions and staying competitive in the market.

The best proof you can include in your sell story is sales data that demonstrates success.  You may have some existing sales data if you started in DTC (Direct-to-Consumer), but that doesn’t always translate to strong sales in brick-and-mortar. The next best thing is having data to prove that products in your subcategory are driving sales in the retailer’s channel.

SPINS Ignite unlocks free POS subcategory data for emerging brands to leverage in their sell stories and pitch decks. This resource is designed to equip you with strategic insights so you can make data-driven decisions to drive your business forward – all at no cost.

When you sign up for SPINS Ignite, you pick your subcategory to receive a Category Performance Report delivered to your email every month. This AI-generated video report enables you to:

• Track weekly growth in your category
• Benchmark subcategory growth to the overall department
• Uncover subcategory share dynamics
• Identify product attributes that are driving consumer demand

These insights are designed to build a foundation of data fluency to effectively navigate the grocery CPG industry. It continues SPINS’ commitment to supporting the next generation of innovative CPG brands. By harnessing the power of SPINS’ analytics and expert guidance, emerging brands can make data-backed decisions to secure a foothold in retail stores, drive category growth, and effectively message audiences.

Here is an example of a SPINS Ignite Category Performance Report:

Retail data insights encompass a broad range of information, from sales data to consumer behavior analytics. For emerging brands, leveraging these insights can mean the difference between success and failure in the retail space. By understanding what drives consumer purchases and how products are performing, brands can make informed decisions about product development, pricing, and marketing.

POS data is a crucial type of retail data, central to SPINS Ignite, providing foundational insights for decision-making and strategizing. Emerging brands aiming to build relationships with retailers and find paths to growth can benefit significantly from these insights. Here are four ways SPINS Ignite’s POS data helps achieve these goals:

1. Understand Category Health: To effectively target retailers for distribution, emerging brands need to understand their product category. A category health snapshot provides a clear view of how a category is performing across channels.
2. Enhance Pitch Decks: An effective retail pitch is rooted in data. SPINS POS data offers context for a product’s current and potential performance, which is what retailers care about. By incorporating these insights into a retail pitch, brands can tell a data-backed compelling story that goes beyond category and department trends.
3. Monitor Category Dynamics: Category performances fluctuate, and business decisions must be based on the most current data available. Brands using SPINS Ignite have insights into the current state of their category when making significant decisions, such as whether to expand into a new subcategory.
4. Identify Growth-Driving Attributes: SPINS Product Intelligence adds another dimension to the data by identifying product attributes driving growth. These attributes (e.g., certifications, label claims, nutrition information) reveal what consumers prioritize, allowing brands to effectively refine their messaging to reach consumers and category managers.

1. Sign up for SPINS Ignite
2. Select your desired category and subcategory
3. Complete the registration and a welcome email will be delivered to your email.
4. Click the link in the welcome email to get full access to the SPINS Ignite Portal.
5. Check back monthly for the latest POS data update on the Category Performance Video Report and new helpful resources.

By integrating comprehensive retail data insights, especially through POS data, emerging brands can build a foundation of data fluency to effectively navigate the grocery CPG industry. SPINS Ignite offers the tools and resources needed to make informed, data-driven decisions that align with current market trends. Emerging brands can leverage these insights to build strong retailer relationships, optimize their product offerings, and effectively communicate their value proposition. Sign up for SPINS Ignite today and take the first step towards securing your brand’s success in the retail space.