Retail merchandising · Store audits
Merchandising audit, store by store
A merchandising audit answers one question your sales data cannot: is the range actually on shelf, in the right place, at the right price, with the right point of sale around it. Head office believes it is. The audit tells you which stores agree.
Executional supplies the merchandising auditors who go and look. They walk the stores on your list, check execution against your own standards rather than a generic template, photograph what they find and hand back a compliance answer per store the same day.
Audits are booked by the visit, so a twenty store sample and a full estate sweep are costed the same way, one line per store per visit. Audit merchandising sits inside our wider retail merchandising service.
An itemised quote, usually back within hours, with a day rate, travel and on-costs listed against every store on the list. No retainer, no hidden fees, one invoice at the end.
Assigned as soon as the quote is signed off and kept on the account for the life of the programme, with 24/7 support while visits are running.
Staff are matched on retail experience and on the hub nearest the site, so the person walking into the store did not spend three hours on a motorway to get there.
Your planogram, your brand standards and your compliance questions become the brief the team carries into the store, not a generic checklist.
Right to work and ID verified on every person. Employer and Public Liability cover on every visit. DBS and risk assessments available on request.
We are the employer. PAYE, tax, National Insurance and HR are all handled in house, so nothing lands back on your finance team.
Shift reminders, geo-tagged check-ins and live attendance monitoring, which is what keeps a two hundred store list honest.
Dated photographs and exception reports come back the day of the visit, not in a month end summary when it is too late to act on them.
I just wanted to say thank you for your professionalism. The report was very thorough and way better than others that I usually receive. We will definitely look to use your services again.
Charbonnel et Walker, on the reporting
What the audit covers
Five checks in every store visit
Most briefs want the same five answers. We run all five on one visit rather than charging you for five, and you choose which of them the report leads on.
Retail compliance checks
Execution measured against the standards you set, not against what the auditor thinks good looks like. Range, position, facings, pricing and signage, answered store by store.
- Listed range present, and what is missing where it is not
- Facings counted against the agreed layout
- Shelf edge pricing and promotional signage matched to the current mechanic
Answers: which stores are compliant and which are not
Stock availability
Gaps cost more than bad placement, because a gap cannot sell at all. The audit records availability at the moment of the visit and separates a genuine out of stock from stock sat in the back.
- On shelf availability recorded line by line
- Stockroom checked where the retailer allows it
- Rotation and date codes checked on short life lines
Answers: is the gap a supply problem or a store problem
Promotional and POS compliance
Whether the promotion you paid the retailer for was actually built, and whether it was built the way the brief drew it. This is usually where the largest single number on the report comes from.
- Feature space, ends and off shelf displays confirmed as present
- Point of sale material checked for placement, condition and function
- Promotional pricing confirmed as live at the till point
Answers: did you get the space and the execution you paid for
Competitor and category view
The same fixture, recorded for the category rather than just for your lines, so you can see what your brand is being judged against on the day.
- Competitor space, position and pricing on the same fixture
- Competitor promotional activity running in store
- Category layout changes the retailer has made without telling you
Answers: what changed on the fixture and who moved first
Reporting and evidence
A report is only useful if it can be sent to a buyer without being rewritten first. Ours comes back store by store, with the photographs attached to the answers rather than in a separate folder.
- Dated, geo-tagged photographs from every store visited
- Compliance answered per store against your own question set
- Exceptions flagged the same day so there is still time to act
Who we do this for
Brands whose estates we already audit
Every one of these is a brand we have had auditors in store for. The three highlighted are the ones photographed on this page.
The store formats those audits cover. Each has its own compliance questions, so the question set changes with the channel rather than being reused across all of them.
If the finding you expect is layout drift rather than compliance, planogram merchandising fixes the shelf on the same visit instead of only reporting it. If it is the promotional material you are worried about, a point of sale placement check goes deeper on that one question.
Fix as well as find
An audit that can correct the shelf
Most merchandising audits stop at telling you. Ours do not have to. Because the auditor is a trained merchandiser rather than a data collector, they can rebuild the bay, refill the gap and install the missing point of sale while they are stood there, if you want the visit scoped that way. You get the compliance answer and the corrected store from one visit and one fee.
Get a quote
Send us the store list and your standards
Tell us the stores, what you want checked and how often. Send your compliance questions and brand standards with it and we will build the audit around them. An itemised quote comes back, usually within hours, broken out store by store so you can see what each visit costs.
