Transforming the low-cost shelving leader into a strategic partner

About the client

For more than a century, Marmon Group (a Berkshire Hathaway company) has served global retailers and brand marketers with innovative products and services for retail settings ranging from grocery store stockrooms to automobile showrooms.

Opportunity

Marmon is a leader in selling high-quality, low-cost shelving solutions to retailers. With limited options to make the products at an even lower cost, it was struggling to create new growth opportunities.

Marmon engaged us to help it shift from incremental product improvements to a digitally transformed business.

Solution

We partnered with Marmon to create TraySense — a Smart Shelf solution focused on reducing the number of out-of-stock events on retail shelves. TraySense has had a significant impact on customer satisfaction while simultaneously reducing food waste by 8%. 

Product Transformation

We simultaneously developed a custom shelf sensor, retail out-of-stock management dashboard, and custom algorithms to help retailers optimize shelf replenishment.

Go-to-Market Transformation

After developing the product, it became clear that the existing sales teams were excellent at selling low-cost shelving units to the warehouse manager, but ill-equipped to sell a digital solution that required cross-department support and would often include CEO approval.

What used to be a simple transactional sale with one buyer was now a complex, strategic sale with multiple stakeholders.  Historically, the business had won deals selling as a low-cost provider. Now, the salesforce needed to transform to sell the more advanced solution.

We helped Marmon redefine its buyer’s profile, messaging, and pricing strategy and confidently positioned itself as a strategic partner.

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