Every week my team and I walk the aisles across UK grocers, and beyond and write up what’s really happening in store and on shelf.

Not what a strategy deck says should be happening.

But what the customer actually meets at the shelf edge.

Two rules:

1. The store is never named.

2. One store is one store too many.

You can derive a lot from the store visits.

I feel that many people view stores as an entity (sales, or cost) but so few people actually see the stores, and the people, for what they are.

My insight, sharp eye, ability to decode and spot trends and events is now sharpened by Cartwright, our retail AI no less.

He’s trained on millions of our own store images and years of my writing, thousands of my reports, 99,000 tweets and 39,000 emails.

We will start to share some of our AI based insights too.

AI is enabling us to reach scale far quicker than we could have in the past, at a lower cost too.

For this service - it’s a way to share insight at pace without having to build a community, offer YouTube channels and LinkedIn Live.

Substack has it all.

Free subscribers get the weekly headlines and a taste of the insight.

Paid subscribers get the full read: every retailer, the insight, the share of shelf and pricing updates, my take on what it means, and the whole archive to boot.

To start with, and to recognise so many people have helped me down the years, and we’ve perhaps even worked together.

Claim your Manager’s Special.

Subscribe before 30 June and lock in 40% off a yearly sub, for life.

Just £120 a year instead of £200, for as long as you stay.

After that it goes to full price, and early subscribers keep their rate for good.

If you want to go further, the Keyholder tier adds video analysis and quarterly deep dives into retailer performance as well.

That’s priced at £300 per year.

Either way, welcome.

Hit reply any time, it comes straight to me.

Trade well.
Steve