Since their founding in 1923, Leroy Merlin has achieved to become the leader of the DIY market in Europe and one the global actors in their field. The French company has a turnover of over 7 billion euros and hires over 30,000 people in France, but also looks to improve their customer journeys within their many stores. As one of the forerunners in innovation, Leroy Merlin started a partnership with Amoobi in 2021 in order to do so.

In three years partnering with them, Leroy Merlin has extended the use of Amoobi’s services to a second store and might expand it further in the future. So far, Amoobi has already proven to be useful to challenge what Leroy Merlin thought their customer journeys were and to help with the understanding of the actual behavior of their customers. 

With data provided by Amoobi through an in-store, GDPR-compliant customer-tracking technology, the leaders of do-it-yourself learned how to trust external recommendations and apply them to forge a new customer journey.

Progressing in the Dark

With the rise in importance of data in daily business, something became quite clear for Leroy Merlin three years ago. Unlike online sales which provide a lot of data on the customer journey and, therefore, on how it could be improved and instill a turnover increase, in-store sales just don’t work that way. Actually, it meant that, back then, Leroy Merlin could only track 5% of its turnover, as 95% still depended on in-store sales. In other words, they were progressing in the dark. 

« Like any company, when you don’t have data, decisions are made a lot by intuition or based on experience. (…) And intuition is interesting, it is still as important, but it is interesting to confront it with data ». Dominique Monfort, National Sales Manager, Leroy Merlin

That’s where their talks one year earlier with Amoobi came to plant the seed for a future, fruitful partnership. With initial talks starting deep into the COVID-19 pandemic, Leroy Merlin started to consider the necessity to gain more data within stores and found in Amoobi a company with a proven know-how. The proximity between Leroy Merlin’s headquarters in Lille, France and those of the Belgian company made it the perfect match in their search for a data-collecting tool. 

And Here Comes the Light

With Amoobi, Leroy Merlin found just the answer they needed for their lingering question: How could they analyze their customer journeys within the store?

“Amoobi allows you to record 100% of the customer journeys that come into the store with an accuracy close to, let’s say, 10 centimeters. For 100% of the customers who come into the store, we will know precisely – like online with your mouse – what they do, the time they spend, the interactions they can have with a department, the path they take, or the number of times they will go down such an aisle, such a path.“ Dominique Monfort, National Sales Manager, Leroy Merlin

This incredible precision came to be only one of the factors which enlightened Amoobi as the perfect solution. Another one to stand out was it’s completely GDPR compliant, as the system doesn’t identify the clients by name, but picture them as little dots in the system while also removing employees from the analysis. Those features aligned with the strong values of Leroy Merlin in a world driven by the big data. 

Forging a New Understanding

Once Leroy Merlin got their hand on the first data from their pilot store, they were not ready for the first conclusions. 

“We used to believe our DIY store customers came to browse, spend time in the inspiration areas like they would in a mall, but our first data showed an average visit time of 14 minutes and 35 seconds.“ Dominique Monfort, National Sales Manager, Leroy Merlin

The data collected by Amoobi challenged the way the company considered their customer journeys. As the initial thought was to make the journey longer so that the customer could buy more, it actually turned counter-productive. With the help of Amoobi’s expertise and powerful tool ASK, the way Leroy Merlin thinks their category management and merchandising evolved to become more precise and data-driven. 

The New Customer Journey

With the data in mind, Leroy Merlin changed their floor planning to optimize the customer journey through the store. This was made through several improvements:

• A space optimization for products within a section, often resulting in a 7 to 8% transformation rate;
• A more advanced space planning, in order to create new pathways and more direct journeys for the customer according to what they want in the store, such as shortcuts and express itineraries;
• A detection of the categories of products that generate the most requests and interactions with collaborators, allowing to correct potential problems or improve the merchandising of a category of products;
• A comparison with online customer journeys to apply similar improvements on in-store journeys.

The use of data in their store also helped Leroy Merlin prioritize some products in their category management.

“Thanks to Amoobi, we identified the categories that attract the most visitors and where we must maintain the shelves daily. Instead of trying to keep all 50 categories in perfect order, we focus on about 15, which impact the overall conversion rate significantly and should be maintained from Monday to Saturday.“ Dominique Monfort, National Sales Manager, Leroy Merlin

The Expansion

The reality of one store is sometimes not the reality of all. That’s why, after their satisfaction with Amoobi in a first store, Leroy Merlin expanded their partnership to a second store. 

The first reason for a second store was to be able to challenge results between stores. By doing so, they realized a lot of results were actually similar in both stores and they took those lessons to another level by implementing those conclusions into the floor planning of an all-new store they opened recently. 

With a second store also comes a bigger testing capacity, which Leroy Merlin found really useful for A/B tests, with one store doing the A test and the other the B test, for example. The data provided by Amoobi also helps with the detection of any problem in the space planning in a store.

“We’re working in a 10,000m² store. With Amoobi, I can pinpoint where I should go to make the most improvements in the store. It saves a lot of time.“ Dominique Monfort, National Sales Manager, Leroy Merlin

Taking note of similar results in both stores also allows Leroy Merlin to run different tests in those. The company decided to run five major tests in one store and five others in the second one, therefore doubling test possibilities and decreasing the time between tests. 

Building the Future

The use of Amoobi changed the way Leroy Merlin works with their category management and floor planning, after challenging their belief of how customers were behaving in their stores. With customers and collaborators at the heart of their activities, their partnership with Amoobi was the tool they were waiting for. 

“At Leroy Merlin, our aim is to improve the customer journey, making it as fast and effective as possible. That’s what we mean. Revenue is indeed a result of what we’ve put in place, not the other way around. That’s why it’s essential to highlight that Amoobi is great because it allows us to understand our clients, to provide answers to them, to know how we’re going to proceed.“ Dominique Monfort, National Sales Manager, Leroy Merlin

Now, Leroy Merlin is looking ahead to new challenges and new improvements to tackle with the help of Amoobi’s data. An extension of the partnership to a third store in a larger city, or even beyond the French borders, is in the works. As a forerunner in the DIY market for a century, Leroy Merlin continues to build the future.

Click here to download the whitepaper.

Click here to download the whitepaper.

Click here to download the whitepaper.

Our new whitepaper shares insights and actions on why space optimization is often underutilized in boosting category performance.

Click here to download the whitepaper.

Our CEO Olivier Delangre and Benoit Nachtergaele (ex-Walmart, ex-Kearney) co-authored this new report documenting their view on how to approach a performing promo strategy, a subtle balance between the right offer to attract shoppers but also the optimal amount of space to keep store operations light.

Full report

Click here to download the whitepaper.

So, instead of trying to summarize it all, I’ve decided to share my key learnings from the conference with a focus on space planning. A charter focused on space planning was started about a year ago inside the CMA. It’s growing in speed and ambition under the leadership of Flora Delaney. There are so many exciting things going on in this field that it’s definitely worth watching (if interested, check out https://spaceplanning.global/ ).

Space planning is a critical aspect of retail merchandising that requires careful consideration and attention to detail. Being floor planning, planogramming, or space analytics, space planners must ensure that products are displayed effectively and customers can easily find what they are looking for. However, there are several challenges associated with space planning that retailers must contend with, making it an exciting but complex field.

Many exciting challenges and opportunities in space planning

As covered in the “Space planning for non-professionals” session, one of the most significant challenges retailers face when it comes to space planning is managing conflicting requests from various stakeholders. Operations, category, and merchandising leadership often have different priorities (stock holding, assortment reduction, customer experience, etc.), which can make it challenging to come up with a cohesive plan. 

The first step is defining categories. It is essential to start with an alignment on each category definition and which products belong in each category. It’s also essential to align on the core goals that we’re trying to achieve and to work as a team. 

While theory and tools are helpful for space planning, walking the store is also crucial — both your own stores and competitor stores! It allows us to see firsthand how customers interact with products and what colleagues experience as potential difficulties. That way, we can visualize how the assortment is presented in a real environment. 

Omnichannel retailing also brings new challenges. Online promotions delivered from the store can be a challenge, altering how space productivity is usually measured (with ‘real’ shoppers).

Another challenge retailers face is the disconnect between shopper insight teams and space planning teams. While shopper insights provide valuable information about customer behavior, it can be challenging to translate that information into actionable plans for space planning (or simply make it available to space planners).

Finally, there are several aspects of space planning that cannot be solved by planograms alone, such as how/where to integrate new segments or innovations into existing plans, where to integrate new signage/education material, how to improve adjacencies within a category but also across categories in the store or where to locate the customer service in store. This is particularly relevant to Amoobi as it is an area where we bring a lot of value.

Innovative technologies for category managers and space planners

Despite these challenges, several exciting technologies are emerging that can help space planners and category managers optimize their processes. For example, artificial intelligence can make decision-making on assortment more rapid by analyzing and making recommendations based on customer data. Examples were presented by Hivery in a session co-presented with Tyson as their AI platform provided Tyson with store-specific assortment recommendations. This allowed Tyson to focus on the top 150 stores where the change was going to deliver the biggest return. 

Tools, like ShelfIQ (by Nuqleous), can speed up the process of building planograms for each store, though creating a personalized planogram for each store remains an (unrealistic) dream for now. We also observed multiple 3D/VR solutions (like Incontext or 345). A full virtual environment (digital twin) can enhance collaboration between teams and offers more flexibility. Can a fully virtual environment be realistic and compliant enough to be a useful tool in the future?

Many new solutions struggle to cope with the reality of the store: how to integrate the realogram (instead of theoretical planogram), how to deal with dual locations, and potential issues with the new products launched with an AI model built on past data. 

Amoobi, with our in-store customer tracking solution, has an opportunity to transform space planning by using customer data to inform plans. While many solutions are still focused on legacy 1P data like sales, product, and space, incorporating customer data (like we do) provides critical insights into customer behavior and preferences — e.g., where shoppers stop, the sections jointly visited by shoppers, and the conversion of each section) — enabling you to make more informed decisions about space allocation in the store. 

A brilliant future!

What’s next in Space Planning was discussed in the « State of Space Planning » Panel (Jenny Tornow, Chris DeFinizio, Kent Rodina and Flora Delaney). Looking to the future, space planners must develop skills to adapt to the changing retail landscape. Understanding operations, precision, an analytical mind, and even courage are among the skills space planners need to be successful as the field progresses. The role of space planners will evolve and partnerships between space planning and other teams will be key. How can we create bridges between space planners and CPG companies but also integrate the space planners in the category strategy? Space planners must be at the decision table. 

Solution providers must continue to innovate and try to better understand each retailer and their own process. They must become even stronger partners to space planners to tackle the growing number of challenges ahead. 

Despite several challenges associated with space planning, emerging technologies like AI and image recognition offer significant potential to help retailers optimize their processes. Looking to the future, space planners must continue to develop their skills and adapt to the changing retail landscape. Great challenges ahead but also exhilarating innovations on the horizon. We’re excited to be part of it!

Xovis has recently published one of our use cases that shows how much value can be generated with customers analytics at category level. In this case study, we show how we helped a home improvement retailer generate significant sales uplift by re-thinking the endcap at the entrance of the category. We also show how much value was gained thanks to the in-store analytics of Amoobi

Check it out!

https://www.xovis.com/insights/detail/optimizing-merchandising-with-subcategory-analytics

Together with Benoit Nachtergaele, we spend time together to think about the category review process based on our individual experience but also the projects done by Amoobi over the years. What works and what can be improved? How do we ensure maximum chance of achieving a positive sales lift post review? In a world where shopper behavior is changing incredibly fast, winning the in-store conversion is critical. With this whitepaper, we share some tips from our combined experience working with merchandising teams across Australia, Asia, Europe and North America.

Click here to download the whitepaper.