GUEST ARTICLE: Whole Foods will be sharing its sales data again. Why now? What now?

At the end of 2006, Whole Foods did not renew its information supplier cooperation agreement, isolating itself (and the vendor community) from a common partnering practice to use marketplace scan data to make fact based decisions. 

From WFM’s perspective, I believe it felt this was necessary to insulate itself from competitors learning about and more easily replicating and competing against it.  Last week, 10 years later, an announcement​​ was made that Whole Foods Market was returning to cooperation status. 

Timing was not announced for when its sales information would begin reporting.  These things take time to build, prepare and test before release, but suffice it to say this is yet one more seismic development for our industry to strengthen its momentum, importance, and influence within the larger consumer packaged goods sector.

Isolation ultimately did not insulate Whole Foods, and more likely put it at a disadvantage ​

There are many reasons why Whole Foods would now return to being a cooperating retailer.  However, one only need to look at its sales, comps, and profit trends, alongside the state of the increasingly competitive retail and ecommerce environment for natural/organic/specialty (premium) products across retail formats, to see that its well-intentioned move of isolation ultimately did not insulate it, and more likely put it at a disadvantage. 

Certainly its absence from cooperation the past ten years is hardly the sole reason for its current business status.  But on the surface, Whole Foods experienced exactly what Walmart did: Walmart withdrew from cooperation in 2000 for the same reasons mentioned above, and returned in 2010 (also ten years later) after an extended period of competitor evolution to which it had limited line of sight to, and poor financial performance. 

Isolation may temporarily solve some issues, but ultimately, accepting some give and take to work together leads to better long term outcomes for all parties.  To paraphrase from Whole Foods’ own vision statement, our reliance on each other speaks to our interdependence.  So true – we are all part of a perfect system that depends in some way or at some point on other parts and processes of the system in order to thrive.

A ‘retail cooperator’ is defined in the syndicated market research industry as a retail chain that agrees to share its point-of-sale (POS) scan data with a market research reporting agency.  That sharing agreement typically permits the agency to incorporate a retailer’s data into an aggregate of other retailer’s data that defines a channel or market (i.e., natural supermarkets, grocery stores, etc.), and license that aggregated data to manufacturers and other suppliers who partner with or support the business in that marketplace.

A majority of the time, the sharing agreement also permits the agency to license a retailer’s data as stand-alone information (‘key account data’) to allow vendors to measure their performance specifically at that account, as well as collaborate with the retailer on product assortment, introductions, promotion, pricing, merchandising, and myriad other initiatives. 

The benefits to the retailer include receiving its raw POS information back from the agency cleansed, categorized, and appended with product attributes (flavor, size, organic, natural positioning, etc.); being able to measure and evaluate its own performance & opportunities against the rest of the marketplace; and of course working with its vendors in close collaboration to optimize its opportunities for success.

The devil is in the detail​

However, there is a lot of work still to be done and many decisions to be made before vendors will start to see Whole Foods data again.  Further, on the surface, market coverage will be improved, but this is an over simplified take away.

For example, as a condition of their cooperating agreement, retailers will sometimes restrict reporting of exclusive items or departments of high internal value (including private label).  Reporting agencies may be required to include a retailer’s sales in an aggregated channel or channel segment to inhibit clear reads on a given retailer’s business (think Walmart only reporting in the all-channel aggregate of “Multi Outlet” that includes club, military, dollar and others). 

Reporting agencies are also sometimes only allowed to use a small sample of stores instead of all stores in the chain.  All of these conditions are intended to balance retailers’ willingness to cooperate with protecting retailers from exposure of what they deem to be unique or sensitive products in their chain.   

The impact and visibility of WFM in conventional channel reporting will be nominal at best​

Consider too that at $15bn in sales, Whole Foods represents about 2.5% of the $600bn brick & mortar grocery retail landscape.  However, if WFM sales information is being reported within the $1trillion 'Multi Outlet' channel aggregate including Walmart, club, etc, WFM represents about 1.5% of this total. 

In either case, the impact and visibility of WFM in conventional channel reporting will be nominal at best.  Couple this with the fact that WFM’s model, and particularly its assortment and velocities of premium products, is quite unlike traditional grocery and mass retailers. 

The integration of WFM sales information into this dissimilar ‘comparable market’ leads to a lot of noise and challenges when attempting to understand data trends if the right tools and resources are not being used.  It also further accentuates the line blurring, convergence and emerging ubiquity of premium products already underway for our industry over the past several years.  

We don’t know yet how WFM information will be reported, what its expectations of the vendor community will be, and whether any of these reporting tactics will be employed.

Account level specific reporting is the only clean read on a retailer’s performance, and customarily, only manufacturers selling in a chain are permitted to license account specific data.  We don’t yet know if this will be offered to vendors or in what form. 

Putting the move into context​

All of this being said, I would make the analogy of Whole Foods returning to cooperation status being similar to a CPG investing in or acquiring a core natural products brand. 

Whole Foods and the entire natural products industry – including all manufacturers, supply chains, and the people and families behind them - will get bigger, stronger, and more influential faster thanks to the sophistication, resources, breadth, depth, and reach of cooperation partners and deeper engagement with its vendor community.  

This move underscores the momentum with which the market is evolving, and the need for all businesses to adapt and transform to new realities to remain relevant.  It’s great WFM will be back, as well as to see the progress it is making to evolve and transform its business - not to just stay competitive, but to remain differentiated, a destination, and a leader in retailing.

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Michael Movitz - founder of ​The Movitz Group LLC​​​ - has more than 25 years natural/organic products industry experience across retail, manufacturer, broker and market research organizations, including 16 years with SPINS, the leading provider of retail consumer insights, analytics and consulting for the natural, organic and specialty products industry.​