Industry News

ActionWatch Retail Panel Grows to 200 Stores

Surfersvillage Global Surf News, 19 November, 2008 : - - Loma Linda, Ca -- The ActionWatch Retail Panel now includes 200 stores actively participating in this action sports market tracking program. 'This is a significant milestone,' states Cary Allington, co-founder.

“The panel is large enough to very accurately reflect the market in most of the product categories we track. With most of the industry’s major suppliers and many of the smaller suppliers subscribing to the ActionWatch service, we are proud to offer a service that is adding so much value to this industry.”

Small portions of the ActionWatch data are currently featured in the “Core Retail Report” in Transworld Business and also in the Shop-Eat-Surf blog, which is also using ActionWatch data as a component of their new market index available to their Executive Edition subscribers. Company managers are also currently in discussions for ActionWatch data to be a major component of a new industry newsletter.

Most of the retailers participating in the ActionWatch Retail Panel are single-store operations, but the panel also includes a few multi-store retailers. The participating stores are spread throughout the U.S. and are diverse in size and volume, including shops under 1,000 square feet to stores over 15,000 square feet. The majority of stores on the panel are surf- and/or skateboard-brand focused.

“Like similar market-tracking programs in other industries, ActionWatch provides very important information for both industry suppliers and retailers,” states Allington. “It exposes the health and trending of product categories and brands within the core specialty retail channel – the heart of the industry.”

ActionWatch is a sales and inventory tracking program specifically designed for the action sports industry. Modeled after similar programs that have existed for decades in other industries, it is a free service for participating industry retailers, who get access to a series of monthly reports that show top-selling brands and models as well as product category breakouts.

The reports are made by combining data from all the participating retailers so that each member can see sales and inventory information representing the broader industry. This allows ActionWatch Retail Panel members to participate in a program that keeps their individual store data confidential, but gives them industry averages, a.k.a. benchmarks, to which they can compare their own stores.

Participation in ActionWatch involves no cost to retailers, but participants are required to be true action sports retailers and to use a computerized POS system to track sales and inventory. Aggregated data is available for purchase by industry suppliers.

www.actionwatchreports.com

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Cary Allington

Industry - Surfersvillage