Local Range & Space Optimisation
Practice leader
Chris Dawson
Associate Director
Sell more through local range and space optimisation
Pets at Home raised LFL sales across all stores by 3 to 4%, using effective local range and space optimisation methodology from Javelin Group. Read how this was achieved in this Retail Week Space Planning feature.
Case Study: Pets at Home
"We were very impressed by Javelin Group’s practical approach in helping us to decide how to re-allocate space across our stores to maximise productivity. This is one of the key elements of our business growth strategy and we are already re-configuring our stores following a successful trial."
John Farrell, Group Development Director, Pets at Home.
Background
Pets at Home is the UK's leading pet care provider with over 200 stores. The stores are typically located in out-of-town and in-town retail parks ranging in size between 2,500 sqft and 26,000 sqft. Growth by acquisition has resulted in a store portfolio of diverse store sizes and layouts. The stores range around 6,000 different SKUs ranging from pet-food, pet-healthcare and pet-toys to large aquariums, pet-starter kits and pet-furniture.
Project
The objective of the project was to
- Adapt range and space at a more local level to take account of store differences
- Create a space allocation and store layout blueprint for a new store format
- Establish a systems 'roadmap' for space and range
Approach
Javelin Group built a database of store space, sales profile and catchment data, and grouped stores into clusters using this data. Using in-house tools, we modeled space by subcategory, using demand elasticity analysis to find the optimum space by store. This was then translated this into real world recommendations of bays by sub category by store, with projected sales uplifts. The new layouts were trialled in a selection of stores, proving the sales uplift, and were then rolled out across all stores over a period of 6 months.
Results
Pets at Home achieved sales uplift of between 3 and 4% in LFL sales across the whole chain using space optimization. This forms a major part of the 7.5% LFL sales increase for the year to March 2009.