Event overview
For more than 20 years, one stubborn retail problem has barely moved.
At any given moment, around 8% of products are still unavailable on the shelf. Despite billions invested in supply chains, inventory systems, shelf technology and analytics, the industry appears to be stuck at almost exactly the same level of on-shelf availability.
Our latest OSA research, the most comprehensive global study for twenty years, asks a simple question: why?
Drawing on a survey of 55 major retailers and the experience of retailers participating in the ECR OSA Working Group, we found a striking performance gap. The strongest retailers average 97.3% OSA, while the lowest-performing group averages just 86.2%.
Surprisingly, technology does not explain the difference.
Shelf Leaders and Shelf Learners use broadly similar combinations of gap scans, inventory data, lost-sales analytics, picking information and shelf-imaging technologies. What separates the leaders is what happens next: how they organise work, diagnose problems, correct inventory, manage backrooms, empower colleagues and maintain management attention on availability.
At this meeting we will share the new research and introduce the Shelf Leadership Flywheel — a practical operating model for turning signals about poor availability into sustained improvement.
We will also explore why OSA is becoming even more important as stores become fulfilment centres for online orders. At 92% item availability, the probability of fulfilling a 15-item basket completely is only around 29%. Improving OSA is therefore increasingly about much more than protecting a shelf sale.
Join fellow retailers and CPG partners to explore what Shelf Leaders do differently — and whether, after two decades of limited progress, we may finally have a better way to shift OSA.
