Pilot with Village Supermarkets uncovers $24,000 in unaccounted inventory and cuts audit labor by 75% in first month
Focal Systems (Focal), the AI-powered retail technology company specializing in computer vision and shelf intelligence, announced Top Stock, a purpose-built module that gives retailers automatic, hourly visibility into inventory stored above the shelf line, without store associate audits, ladder climbs, or manual scanning.
Top stock has long been one of retail’s most persistent blind spots: inventory that exists in the store but sits outside standard replenishment workflows, leading to missed restocking opportunities, inaccurate inventory records, and wasted labor. Focal’s Top Stock module addresses this directly, using the company’s existing in-store camera network to scan above-shelf inventory every hour and connect findings to prioritized replenishment tasks, no manual audit required.
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Results from a one-month pilot with Village Supermarkets demonstrate the scale of the opportunity. During the pilot, Village Supermarkets achieved:
- $24,000 in previously unaccounted-for inventory identified and recovered in the first month
- 75% reduction in weekly audit labor, from four hours to just one hour
- 10 hours saved weekly on the night crew
- 36% reduction in top stock inventory
- 1% on-shelf availability improvement across test store, on top of an existing Focal-driven baseline of 97%, where marginal gains at that level translate to hundreds of thousands in incremental annual sales
- Increased day crew replenishment rates and planogram compliance
“The first thing Top Stock showed us was how much inventory we had above the shelf that wasn’t making it into our replenishment workflow. Finding $24,000 in unaccounted inventory in the first month wasn’t what we expected, but it told us immediately that this was a problem worth solving,” said Bob Belsky, Senior VP of Village Supermarkets, ShopRite. “The labor savings on top of that made it an easy decision to keep going.”
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“Top Stock gives store teams something they’ve never had before: automatic, hourly visibility into inventory sitting above the shelf, without anyone having to climb a ladder or run a manual audit,” said Allison Johnson, Director of Retail Consulting at Focal Systems. “Village Supermarkets’ results show just how much inventory and labor value is hiding in plain sight for retailers who don’t yet have this visibility.”
Top Stock integrates directly with Focal’s existing Action Tool, mapping top stock locations store by store and connecting available inventory to prioritized replenishment tasks, reducing the time and effort required even for staff unfamiliar with the store layout. The module is also configured to trigger replenishment tasks only when a full case pack will fit to shelf, avoiding the labor cost of breaking down a case prematurely.
Top Stock is the latest addition to Focal’s shelf intelligence platform, which gives retailers continuous visibility into every part of their store, from on-shelf availability and planogram compliance to shrink detection with Theft Spotter. Top Stock is available now.
