Case Study: A Retail Execution Platform for Field Merchandisers

Distribution companies send merchandisers into supermarkets, pharmacies and shops every day. Their job is to make sure the company's products are on the shelf, in the right place, at the right price, with stock in the back. Managers need to know that each visit happened and what was found, and they rarely get that from paper forms and WhatsApp photos.

We built Merchandiser, a retail execution platform, for exactly this work. It is our own product, and it is used by a distributor team in Jamaica. This case study explains the problem, what the platform does, and what we learned.

The problem

• Proof of visits. Managers could not easily confirm that a store visit happened, when, and for how long.
• Scattered data. Prices, stock counts and shelf photos arrived in chats and spreadsheets, if at all.
• No history. Comparing a store's prices or availability over time meant digging through old messages.
• Many roles. Merchandisers, sales reps, company admins and the platform's own administrators all need different tools.
• Weak signal. Stores often have poor mobile coverage, especially at the back of large shops.

What Merchandiser does

For field merchandisers

• GPS check-in and check-out at each store, so the visit's location and times are recorded.
• Tasks from templates, such as "check the end-cap display" or "count stock of product X".
• Product availability and shelf facings: what is on the shelf and how much space it has.
• Stock counts, photo uploads and store issues (a broken fridge, a missing price label).
• Special requests and repairs, plus their own schedules, leave and time logs.

For sales reps

• Store location capture with GPS, so the store list stays accurate.
• Product availability updates.

For company admins

• Stores, products and categories, with store assignments for each merchandiser.
• Recurring visit schedules and task templates.
• Price surveys: product catalogues assigned to stores, store-level prices, price history and tax settings, with analysis.
• Reports and exports, including Excel, plus settings, support and an audit log.

For the platform team

• A super-admin area for companies, platform users, impersonation for support, database backups, platform settings and support issues.

Works like an app, without an app store

Merchandiser is a progressive web app (PWA): staff open it in the browser and install it to the home screen. It has an offline fallback, an install prompt, a banner when a new version is available and notifications.

The stack

• Next.js and React with TypeScript for the web app.
• PostgreSQL with Prisma for data.
• Firebase for authentication and file storage.
• Tailwind CSS and accessible UI components.
• Vitest tests, including security tests that check one company cannot see another's data.

How it is sold

Merchandiser is a multi-company platform billed per active user. A distribution team gets its own company space, its own stores, products and users, and pays for the people actually using it. Account management for the team is handled together with a local manager who onboards users and handles day-to-day support.

What we learned

1. GPS check-ins change the conversation. When visits are recorded automatically, managers stop asking "did you go?" and start asking "what did you find?".
2. Templates beat free text. Task templates and structured fields (price, facings, count) make data comparable across stores and weeks.
3. Price history is the feature managers love. Seeing a competitor's price move across stores over a month is worth more than any single report.
4. Design for the back of the store. Weak signal is normal; the app must save work and recover gracefully.
5. Separate companies from day one. Multi-company isolation, roles and an audit log are much harder to add later.

Similar problems in other industries

The same pattern, field staff capturing structured data at locations and managers seeing it in one place, fits many businesses: field service and repairs, inspections, deliveries, sales routes and property checks. We have built related systems such as job tracking for a repair business, and our CrewLog app kit (coming soon) focuses on GPS attendance for field teams.

A day in the field with Merchandiser

To make this concrete, here is how a typical visit flows.

1. Morning. The merchandiser opens the app on their phone and sees today's schedule: the stores assigned to them, built from recurring visit schedules set by the admin.
2. Arrive at the store. They check in. The app records the GPS location and time against the visit.
3. Work through tasks. The visit shows the task templates for that store: check availability for a list of products, record shelf facings, count stock in the back, photograph the display, note the price of key products and competitors.
4. Log problems. A missing price label, a damaged display or a product out of stock becomes a store issue with a photo, rather than a message lost in a group chat.
5. Check out. The visit closes with its times recorded. If the signal drops at the back of the store, the app keeps the work and recovers when the connection returns.
6. Next store. Repeat.

Meanwhile, the company admin sees visits come in, can filter by store, merchandiser or date, and exports the data for the weekly meeting.

What managers do with the data

The value of the platform is less in any single visit and more in the patterns:

• Coverage. Which stores were visited this week, and which were missed.
• Availability. Which products are regularly missing from which stores, so sales and delivery can act.
• Pricing. How a product's price varies between stores and over time, including competitors, from the price survey history.
• Execution. Whether displays and facings match what was agreed with the store.
• Issues. Which stores keep raising the same problems.

Because every record has a location, a time, a person and often a photo, these discussions move from opinion to evidence.

Building it as a product, not a one-off

We chose to build Merchandiser as a multi-company product from the start rather than a custom system for a single client. That decision shaped the design: every record belongs to a company, roles are defined per company, a super-admin area handles platform tasks, and automated tests check that one company can never see another's data. It also means improvements made for one team, such as better exports or a smoother check-in, benefit every team on the platform.

Rolling out a field app to a team

Software only helps if the field team uses it. What made the rollout work, and what we recommend to any company introducing a field app:

• Start with a small group of merchandisers and a few stores, and fix the rough edges they find before everyone joins.
• Train on real phones, in a real store, not in a meeting room. Check-in, photos and weak signal behave differently on the shop floor.
• Keep the first version of each task short. Long forms get skipped or rushed; add fields only when managers actually use the data.
• Show the team their own data. When merchandisers can see their visits and results, the app feels like a tool for them, not just a way to watch them.
• Have one local contact who can answer questions and reset passwords the same day.
• Retire the old method on a set date. Running paper and app side by side for too long doubles the work and splits the data.

Need something like this?

If your team works in the field and reports back by chat and spreadsheets, a platform like Merchandiser, or a custom system built around your process, can give you reliable data and less chasing. Contact us about Merchandiser for your team, or read what a custom web app costs and see our custom web app service.