Dive into the transformative realm of localized retail assortment with HIVERY Curate. Discover how tailoring product offerings to consumer preferences elevates customer satisfaction and drives revenue growth, giving retailers a distinctive competitive advantage in today’s dynamic market landscape. Welcome to the future of retail, where data crafts a localized shopping experience.  What is powerful about using the AI approach to localization is its ability to optimize clusters within. 

A recent analysis of 400 stores discovered that by using AI to create store-specific assortments, 8% of the stores (33 stores) could see an increase of over 15% in total incremental sales.  You can read more here: Can you find individual stores worth visiting store-specific assortments? AI can

There are six reasons CPG & retailers should localize their product assortment, and HIVERY Curate can assist in achieving this goal:

1. Customer satisfaction: Localizing the assortment allows retailers to cater to customers' needs and preferences. Retailers can enhance customer satisfaction and loyalty by offering products that align with individual tastes, preferences, and purchasing patterns. At HIVERY, we believe “Data Has a Better Idea.” Our ML algorithms can pick up distinct customer shopping differences from store to store and optimize their purchase needs.
   
2. Increased sales and revenue: Retailers are more likely to attract and retain customers by providing localized assortments. Retailers can increase their sales and revenue by offering products that customers are more likely to purchase. Localization helps to improve the relevancy of the product selection, leading to higher conversion rates and average order values. HIVERY Curate reports on key metrics such as distribution changes, time supply improvements, revenue growth, and unit movement changes, delivering optimized assortment solutions in just minutes.
   
3. Competitive advantage: Localization can provide a significant edge in today's competitive retail landscape. Retailers who offer localized assortments stand out from the competition and create a unique shopping experience for their customers. This can help attract new customers and retain existing ones, fostering a loyal customer base. At HIVERY, we can iterate assortments within hours to a day instead of the weeks of iteration required in traditional category management processes. HIVERY’s assortment fits the shelf because we are space-aware.
   
4. Inventory optimization: Localization enables retailers to optimize their inventory management. By analyzing customer data and understanding their preferences, retailers can streamline their assortment and avoid stocking products with low demand. This reduces the risk of overstocking or carrying items that are unlikely to sell, leading to better inventory turnover and improved profitability. HIVERY Curate’s suite of rules allows you to customize your assortment and remove store-specific slow-moving low-revenue items precisely, preserving those items in stores where they perform well, thus aligning with shopper preferences within your retail outlets.
   
5. Improved operational efficiency with better clusters: Localization allows retailers to tailor their supply chain and operations to meet customer demands better. By understanding customers' preferences and purchasing patterns, retailers can optimize their procurement, production, and distribution processes. This leads to more efficient operations, reduced costs, and improved overall performance. With HIVERY Curate, the assortment we build is space-aware. We set time supply unique to each store/item combination, improving store and warehouse efficiency and lowering operational costs for retailers and suppliers.
   
6. Data-driven insights: Personalizing the assortment requires collecting and analyzing customer data. Retailers can gain valuable insights into customer behavior, preferences, and trends through data analysis. These insights can be used to make informed business decisions, identify new market opportunities, and develop effective marketing strategies. HIVERY Curate is a robust tool for hypothesis testing and exploring new ideas. The data we provide can be exported, analyzed, and compared to other scenarios in Curate to select the optimal assortment customized to your specific retailer/supplier combination. Moreover, the rules applied in a scenario can be easily reviewed and shared between the retailer and supplier, ensuring transparency throughout the sales and category management process.

Localizing assortment helps retailers enhance customer satisfaction, increase sales, gain a competitive advantage, optimize inventory, improve operational efficiency, and leverage data-driven insights. By tailoring the product selection to individual customers, retailers can create a more localized and engaging shopping experience, fostering long-term customer relationships.

Next Generation (NextGen) merchandising solutions aim to enhance category management effectiveness by leveraging today's vast datasets. These solutions incorporate sophisticated machine learning algorithms that enable category managers to make merchandising decisions with a precision impossible to achieve with current FirstGen solutions. NextGen solutions consolidate assortment analysis, category assessment, assortment optimization, and planogram development, allowing category managers to focus on their core strengths of strategizing, rapidly responding, and maintaining transparency in their assortment decisions with retailers.

As an industry, we are moving towards using NextGen solutions to enhance our assortment strategies and market actions with more transparency. This is exactly where HIVERY and HIVERY Curate are focused on. We aim to create a new "solution space" for the next generation of category management professionals. This space will allow for localized assortment and profitability with just a button!

About the author:
With 15 years in Bentonville, Craig Hamilton has navigated the retail analytics sphere, beginning at Goodyear with Walmart, then delving into CPG at a startup, followed by a seven-year stint at Coca-Cola focusing on category management and sales. Now a Director of Solutions Consulting at HIVERY, Craig melds his extensive experience with innovative analytics to drive retail transformation, showcasing the prowess of HIVERY Curate in optimizing retail assortment and reinvigorating declining categories with precise, data-driven strategies.

Visit Craig Hamilton's LinkedIn Profile

Related resources you might be interested in:

• Edge Assortment Strategy: Is It the Retail Revolution You Need?
• Discovering 'Sleeper Stores': How AI is Redefining Retail Insights and Shaping Buying Behaviors
• Interactive Assortment Planning: Using AI-Driven Visual Insights to Make Difficult Decisions
• Can you find individual stores that are worth going to store-specific assortments? AI can