Unitas has become the first wholesaler or wholesale buying group to sign up to SmartView Convenience (SVC), a market read for independent convenience stores launched in mid-2023 by TWC Group in partnership with I-TG Group.
SVC provides a representative EPoS market read covering independent retail and wholesaler-supplied symbol stores in Great Britain. The read samples more than 5,000 stores which have been cherry-picked and extrapolated up to represent the total GB market of 30,000 independent convenience retail and wholesaler-supplied symbol stores.
Subscribers can use the market read to support marketing, trading and core range planning. SVC’s drill-down function lets users understand performance by category, sub-category, supplier and brand – down to SKU level.
Unitas joins a number of convenience industry suppliers that have already signed up to SVC.
Cheryl Hope, Trading Director at Unitas commented: “There has never been a reflective market read for the part of the market we serve and historically this has made ranging, performance benchmarking and strategic planning challenging.
“SmartView Convenience will help us develop bespoke category growth plans for our members and their stores and will identify the ‘must-stock’ SKUs based on what is actually selling in independent c-stores. We will also be able to identify high growth products and emerging trends.”
Tom Fender, Development Director at TWC, added: “We wholeheartedly believe our truly representative market read is a must-have solution for this part of the market. The mults have been awash with data for years – our sector hasn’t had nearly the same quality of market data to aid decision making for wholesalers and their suppliers.
“Too often we see suppliers presenting range recommendations based on data which doesn’t reflect the independent convenience sector and we want to help everyone produce truly appropriate category plans.”
Learn more and book a demo on the TWC website.
