Practical guide
What is Perfect Store
Perfect Store is an approach to work in the retail outlet in which a manufacturer or a distributor describes its own presence standards - assortment, display and planogram, additional points of sale, POSM, price - and regularly assesses every outlet against that list.
- AI Shelf Recognition for Retail Execution
- Trade Marketing Promotion Execution
In detail
Perfect Store is a supplier’s instrument rather than a method for managing a shop. Its standards describe how a particular brand’s presence should look in an outlet of a given format; the shop itself is not run by them and often does not know about them. “Perfect” here means conformity to the brand’s standard, not a perfect shop in general.
The approach answers a problem of comparability. While display requirements live in presentations and in a supervisor’s head, two outlets cannot be compared with each other and a merchandiser’s work cannot be judged except by their own report. Perfect Store turns the requirements into a list of checkable points worded identically for every outlet of one format.
Standards differ by format. What is achievable in a hypermarket is not achievable in a kiosk, so the list of points and their weight are set per format rather than as one list for the whole territory. An outlet’s score is made up of the points it met and is compared with its own earlier scores.
It is not a project that finishes. The standard sets a cycle: a check on the visit, a recorded deviation, a corrective task, a re-check. Without the cycle what remains is a list of requirements nobody measures conformity to, and the approach comes down to its name.
How it is applied
- Standards are described per retail outlet format: assortment, display and planogram, additional points of sale, POSM, price, trade equipment.
- Each point is worded so that it can be checked on a visit and confirmed by a photograph rather than judged by eye.
- The check is performed on the visit: execution is confirmed by a photo report and geolocation tied to that visit.
- The display is compared with the approved planogram and the brand standards from a shelf photograph, with share of shelf computed and missing items identified.
- A breach of a standard is recorded and becomes a corrective task with an owner and a due date.
- The visit produces a report and updates the outlet’s rating, while the spend, sales and returns of the activity are collected into promotion reporting.