Church & Dwight Tackles Phantom Inventory With AI-Enabled Merchandising
Church & Dwight, which manufactures such brands as Arm & Hammer, Zicam, Trojan and Hero, has elevated inventory visibility as part of efforts to improve decision-making in merchandising operations.
As part of these efforts, the company partnered with Storesight in 2023 to capture increased insights so it could reclaim lost sales, optimize product placement and bolster key retail relationships, including with Walmart and Target.
Since then, the tool has helped capture visual evidence of competitor activity, pricing discrepancies and SKU variations.
One of the key challenges Church & Dwight looked to solve involved phantom inventory — products that incorrectly appeared in the company's inventory system when they weren't actually on store shelves.
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Now, the AI-enabled technology allows Church & Dwight to collect real-time photos so it can identify any inventory gaps on shelves and address discrepancies with retailers.
"Because of the Storesight photos that proved the holes at shelf ... we were able to demonstrate that in-stocks were overstated," said senior national account manager Amy Maloney in a statement.
She added: "We found a number of stores that hadn't sold any units in four weeks. We were able to say, 'Look, the data is telling us stores are not selling, and we're seeing the photos saying there's no product at shelf.' We scripted manual orders to replenish ... that was a couple hundred thousand dollars in orders."
Additionally, the company wanted to address sales slowdowns related to retailer-installed anti-theft lock boxes, which ultimately hindered consumers from purchasing products. These were often used without Church & Dwight's knowledge and led to up to 60% in sales declines.
The new platform has helped quantify these adverse impacts so Church & Dwight can communicate them to retail partners, opening the lines of communication for merchandise planning.
Church & Dwight has also seen benefits within display execution and pricing, allowing the company to document any incorrect pricing or poor display execution and even identify areas of opportunity, such as a cost-saving redesign for Zicam so that the packaging wasn't obscured by shelf blades.
"The data alone doesn’t always tell the full story. People might say, 'Maybe it's just not selling because no one wants it. Maybe it's there, you're just not seeing it. … And now I have the evidence to back that up,” noted Maloney.
This story was originally published on P2PI, a CGT sister publication.
