LEAFIO AI is excited to announce its partnership with Quality Oil Company to implement innovative visual merchandising and assortment planning systems across its Quality Mart network.
Quality Oil Company, founded in 1929 in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, has evolved from a petroleum marketing company into a diversified enterprise encompassing fuel distribution, convenience stores, hospitality, and real estate.
Before adopting the LEAFIO AI software, Quality Oil managed gas station stores’ planograms and assortment through annual updates from a wholesaler. The process was largely manual or semi-manual, handled without dedicated software or a specialized team.
The company faced several problems in merchandising management, including a non-uniform process for creating and managing planograms across categories, no digitized merchandising system, and reliance on manual selection for new items. Along with data-based decisions in assortment planning, these limitations led to some instances of non-productive inventory assortment, outdated or incorrect merchandise displays, and inefficiencies in store layout and product placement.
“Recognizing the need for improvement, we sought a software solution to digitize and automate our merchandising and assortment management processes. The main triggers for selecting LEAFIO AI included the necessity to enhance process efficiency, reduce losses and write-offs from out-of-stock issues, and optimize category managers’ operational work.”
Jason Barger, Project Sponsor at Quality Oil
The implementation project of LEAFIO Shelf Efficiency at Quality Oil involves several key stages:
- Pilot Testing: This process begins with a pilot test involving up to 1200 SKUs in specific categories, such as beverages, in one store.
- Scaling: Expands to include more categories and additional stores, gradually integrating more products into the system.
- Training and Support: This includes training for key users and the provision of manuals, with ongoing support from LEAFIO AI’s Customer Success Team.
- Data Integration: Set up automatic data exchange with the client’s existing systems and transfer sales history data.
- Project Management: Managed through regular updates and meetings to ensure alignment and address any issues during rollout
Operational staff at the stores will be the primary daily users of the LEAFIO Shelf Efficiency system, interacting with it for all merchandising tasks, combined with Assortment management software for headquarters to achieve the highest level of automation. The IT team will manage the technical aspects of system integration.
Top management at Quality Oil anticipates significant improvements with the new system. The Project sponsor stated, “Through detailed floor mapping, we expect to enhance the efficiency of our merchandising process, reduce inventory losses, and better align product placement with customer traffic patterns. The LEAFIO AI’s system promises to bring a new level of precision and responsiveness to our operations.”
“The ability to make data-driven decisions will transform our approach to merchandising. We foresee substantial improvements in category KPIs and overall store performance,” adds Mike Roscoe, Project Manager from Quality Oil.
We look forward to the project’s completion and will happily share its outstanding results. Stay tuned for more news!
About LEAFIO AI
The LEAFIO AI Retail Platform offers retailers powerful, flexible, and responsive automation solutions. Serving over 200 retail companies across 30 countries,
- LEAFIO’s AI Shelf Efficiency software helps automate end-to-end merchandising processes: store and shelf space planning, planogram creation and auto generation, in-store planogram task management, deep analytics for each step of the process, and AI planogram recognition to ensure perfect planogram compliance and customer experience.
- Assortment Planning Software – Tool for improving assortment performance through data-driven planning and creating different assortment strategies to find the optimal product mix to meet diverse customer needs and optimize assortment.
LEAFIO’s AI-powered software supports various retail processes, including supply chain management, inventory optimization, merchandising, assortment performance, and promotion forecasting.
About Quality Oil Company
Founded in 1929, Quality Oil Company is a family-owned business based in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. With a diverse portfolio that includes fuel distribution, convenience stores, hospitality, and real estate, Quality Oil remains committed to delivering quality service and innovation.