St. Louis-based Nestlé Purina Petcare has implemented Blue Yonder’s category management solution integrated with 3DVR Solutions’ 3D virtual reality technology to assist its retail partners with better merchandizing of their store shelfs.
Purina is the No. 1 pet care company in the U.S. and offers more than 20 brands, feeding 65 million dogs and 51 million cats annually. Purina provides its retail partners with planograms that design shelfs aimed at merchandizing products to meet customer needs. However, with travel restricted during the COVID-19 lockdowns, it needed an alternate way for its employees to work with its retail partners to replicate tasks that would otherwise be performed in front of a physical planogram or in store.
3DVRS’ Retail Visualisation Suite combines planogram data from Blue Yonder with a virtual reality headset provider to deliver an interactive, networked avatar-based merchandising solution. This solution brings people from all over the globe into a common unique headset experience in the metaverse where they can plan, present and interact. The integrated solution is also available to other companies who are looking to solve similar challenges.
Thanks to this integrated solution, Purina has achieved some key benefits:
- Removed the need to be in a physical store to make shelfing decisions by bringing people together in the metaverse, which has in turn reduced environmental impact from less travel and decreased training costs.
- Reduced time to merchandise a shelf via an interactive planogram before moving real product.
- Incorporated true-to-life factors into shelf planning.
- Partner with retailers to enhance the customer journey in store and share global best practices.
“Purina is a fantastic partner to innovate with as they are always looking to the latest technology to give their business the edge,” said Nigel Hemer, CEO and founder, 3DVR Solutions.
“The challenges they presented pushed technological boundaries. Our integration with Blue Yonder gives us the platform to support large enterprises such as Purina. It’s great to bring new tech to the market that makes a real difference. It’s amazing what we have achieved together already, but I sense there’s a lot more to come.”
Together, Blue Yonder’s category management and 3DVRS’ RVS VR Headset solutions have enabled Purina’s retail partners to more accurate and localized space allocation decisions to help customers find the products they need.
“Working with 3DVRS has allowed us to bring Blue Yonder’s planograms to life in the metaverse where users can merchandise, analyze, interact and meet as avatars to design shelfs that meet customers’ needs,” said Phillip Teschemacher, corporate VP of manufacturing, EMEA, Blue Yonder.
“This is cutting-edge technology at its finest and Purina was one of the first companies to benefit from it. By creating a culture of innovation and thought leadership throughout the organization, Purina is building a great place to work for both their associates and retail partners.”
Learn more about Blue Yonder’s category management solution here.
