Resources
Frequently asked questions
Straight answers on Shelftrak, The Perfect Store, and how the pieces fit.
Shelftrak basics
What is Shelftrak?
Shelftrak is a retail intelligence platform that measures how well stores actually present a brand — what it calls Retail Quality. A field agent photographs the shelf through the Shelftrak app; VISTA, Shelftrak’s computer vision engine, reads the fixture down to SKU level; trained retail specialists verify every result; and each store appears in a dashboard as a compliance score with the photographic evidence attached.
Who uses Shelftrak?
Shelftrak is used by FMCG and drinks brands, retailers and field marketing teams — typically category managers, trade and shopper marketing, commercial directors and field sales leaders. Brands use it to check the space, pricing and promotions they agreed with retailers; retailers use it to check execution standards across their own stores; field teams use it to replace manual audit forms with a single shelf photo.
What problems does Shelftrak solve?
Shelftrak measures the difference between what was planned for a store and what is actually on the shelf: lost facings, missing must-stock lines, incorrect prices, promotions that were never set up, and empty shelves. Because every store is measured and scored monthly, these gaps are identified during the current audit wave — early enough to fix — rather than discovered at the next quarterly review.
How do brands know what’s happening on shelves in stores they don’t own?
Three common routes: their own field teams visiting stores, third-party audit providers, or retailer-supplied data — each with trade-offs in cost, coverage and objectivity. Shelftrak combines the first two: any field team (the brand’s or Shelftrak’s) photographs the fixture through the app, and the analysis, verification and scoring are done centrally so results are objective and comparable across stores.
How is Shelftrak different from POS or panel data?
POS and panel data record what sold; they can’t show why something didn’t sell. Sales data won’t reveal that a promotion was never set up, a facing was lost to a competitor, or a price tag was wrong for three weeks. Shelftrak measures the physical shelf itself, which makes it a complement to sales data rather than a replacement: the shelf explains the sales line.
What’s the difference between a retail audit and mystery shopping?
A retail audit measures physical compliance — is the product present, priced correctly, displayed as agreed. Mystery shopping measures the shopper experience — staff knowledge, service, recommendation behaviour. They answer different questions: use an audit to verify execution, mystery shopping to test service. Shelftrak does the former: photographic, SKU-level measurement of the shelf, scored consistently so stores can be compared.
How do I get started with Shelftrak?
Request a demo. From there you agree target stores, standards and reporting, and choose whether your field teams or Shelftrak’s network captures the data.
Speaking Shelftrak — the terms, in plain English
What is Retail Quality?
Retail Quality is Shelftrak’s measure of how well a store, an airport or a retailer presents a category: is the product there, is it visible, is it priced and promoted as agreed? Shelftrak scores it against one consistent global standard, so a fixture in Singapore can be directly compared with one in São Paulo. Expressing Retail Quality as a number is what makes it possible to benchmark, track and improve.
What is the Retail Quality Benchmark?
The Retail Quality Benchmark is Shelftrak’s scored comparison of retail execution across locations: every store scored and every airport ranked using the same methodology. It shows each location’s Perfect Store score, share of space and must-stock compliance, tracked audit wave by audit wave — so it’s visible where execution is strong, where it’s slipping, and which direction the trend is moving.
What is “The Perfect Store”?
The Perfect Store is a widely used retail execution concept — originally coined by Bain, and run under different names by major FMCG players (Unilever’s Perfect Store, Coca-Cola’s RED, P&G’s Golden Store). It describes a store where a brand’s availability, visibility, pricing and promotions are all executed exactly to plan. Shelftrak turns the concept into a measurement: each store gets a Perfect Store score based on verified shelf photographs, re-measured monthly, so how close any store is to “perfect” — and whether it’s getting closer — is a tracked number rather than an aspiration.
What is a Perfect Store score?
A Perfect Store score is a single number rating how completely one store executes a brand’s agreed standards — planogram, must-stock lines, pricing, promotions and positioning. Shelftrak calculates it from verified shelf photographs, so every point on the score has photographic evidence behind it, and re-measures monthly so improvement or decline is visible within one cycle.
What Perfect Store score should a brand target?
There’s no universal target, because scores are only comparable within one methodology — a “90” from one provider isn’t a “90” from another. The practical approach is relative: benchmark your stores against each other and against the category, target the gap between your weakest locations and your best, and track the trend wave on wave. Shelftrak’s benchmark exists precisely to make those comparisons like-for-like.
What is the Perfect Store Growth Programme?
The Perfect Store Growth Programme is Shelftrak’s structured growth offering. It uses monthly measurement to work the four pillars — space & assortment, distribution, price & promotion, and execution excellence — and turns the gaps into a prioritised, store-by-store action plan. Worked together, the four pillars unlock up to 20% total sales growth.
What’s the difference between the Benchmark and the Growth Programme?
The Retail Quality Benchmark is the measurement layer: scores, rankings and trends across every store. The Perfect Store Growth Programme is the improvement layer built on top of it: category experts convert the measurements into quantified opportunities and monthly action plans. In short, the Benchmark tells you where you stand; the Programme is the structured work of improving it.
What is Shelfcheck?
Shelfcheck is Shelftrak’s monthly audit cycle — the operating rhythm the rest of the platform runs on. Five steps: Capture (a shelf photo taken in seconds through the app), Analyse (VISTA reads it to SKU level), Report (every store scored against agreed standards), Act (gaps flagged and prioritised), Win (fixes show up as recovered availability and visibility in the next wave’s score). Then the cycle repeats.
What is VISTA?
VISTA — Visual Intelligence System for Tracking and Analysis — is Shelftrak’s proprietary computer vision engine. It turns a shelf photo into SKU-level data in seconds: products, facings, positions, prices and promotional materials, matched against a proprietary database of retail SKUs. Every VISTA result is then checked by trained retail specialists before it reaches a dashboard.
What are SDR, MSL and SoS?
They’re Shelftrak’s shelf economics metrics. SDR (SKU Density Ratio) measures SKU and facing concentration against physical space — how productively each metre of fixture is used. MSL (Must Stock Lines) compliance checks that agreed priority SKUs are present in every store, every wave. SoS (Share of Space vs Market Share) compares the shelf space a brand holds with the market share it holds, to show whether it is over- or under-spaced relative to its sales.
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