Francis Nicholas, James Marrero-Allen, and Joe Moore share real results from eStore's groundbreaking retailer partnership
When Francis Nicholas took the stage at London's Connected Commerce Summit on 23rd October, he opened with a simple question to the audience: "Hands up if you've got everything you could possibly want" in terms of retailer data.
Not a single hand went up.
That moment perfectly captured the data visibility challenge facing brand manufacturers today and set the stage for understanding why ASDA Xpert represents such a significant shift in how brands and retailers can collaborate.
The E-Category Management Gap
Francis, eStore's VP Product, outlined a familiar challenge: most brands use digital shelf analytics to understand their own performance, but struggle to access the category-level insights needed to drive meaningful retailer conversations.
"You have to think across all channels," Francis explained. "Your digital shelf analytics is typically focused on helping you win as a brand within the category. It doesn't necessarily have the data or the opportunity to look at how I drive the full category."
The disconnect between what brands need to demonstrate category growth and what retailers are willing to share has created a persistent barrier to strategic collaboration. ASDA Xpert was designed to bridge that gap.
ASDA's Perspective: A Watershed Moment in Retailer Transparency
James Marrero-Allen, ASDA's Senior Manager for Insight Commercialisation, didn't shy away from acknowledging the retailer's recent challenges. Ownership changes, leadership transitions, and a complex separation from Walmart's technical infrastructure had created difficult trading conditions.
But those challenges also created clarity about what needed to change.
"We've not been where we want to be, and we lost our way a little bit," James acknowledged candidly. "We're now back to our heritage and our DNA. We're implementing our turnaround plans which include a desire to work collaboratively with our partners to drive growth."
When an audience member asked how ASDA overcame the typical retailer reluctance to share data, James was direct:
"It's an easier conversation when it's about driving growth. Here's the data. Come to us and let us know what you think the right thing to do is so we can drive mutual growth together."
This represents a fundamental shift in retailer-brand dynamics. Rather than brands submitting recommendations based on limited visibility, ASDA Xpert provides:
- Sales performance data broken down by brand, product, and channel (including Q Commerce)
- Order fulfilment metrics at store level, identifying exactly where stockouts and substitutions occur
- Search performance data showing actual customer keywords and search behaviour
- Traffic and conversion analytics enabling benchmarking between products
- Actionable playbooks detailing exactly which levers ASDA can pull to improve performance
The Secret Sauce: A Collaboration Manager Who Makes Things Happen
But providing data alone doesn't guarantee results. The critical difference with ASDA Xpert is the dedicated collaboration manager, David Shallcross, who sits within ASDA and ensures recommendations actually get implemented.
"Having David there is fantastic," James explained. "When you come to us and ask for a change, we know exactly what you're asking. We cut out a lot of the back and forth trying to understand what you're trying to achieve."
For Joe Moore, Unilever's Digital Commerce Channel Manager who led their proof of concept, this was transformative: "Historically, we have submitted organic recommendations on the basis of hypothesis with limited visibility of whether they have been implemented and what they delivered. The launch of ASDA Xpert has step changed our approach."
Real Results: From Insight to Six-Figure Uplifts
Joe shared three specific examples from Unilever's early experience with ASDA Xpert:
Case 1: Solving the Traffic Mystery
Unilever noticed declining traffic for a condiment SKU that had one of their highest conversion rates. The data revealed poor discoverability across multiple levers: search performance, taxonomy placement, and product tagging. Once rectified, the result was double-digit incremental sales growth.
Case 2: Fulfilment Intelligence
"One of the great features of the tool is the fulfilment data," Joe noted. The team identified repeat vendor SKUs and stores with poor substitution rates and nil picks driven by suboptimal stock holdings. Addressing these issues delivered substantial improvements, whilst also enabling more strategic deployment of field sales teams to the right locations.
Case 3: Search Keyword Quick Wins
Drilling down to search keyword level highlighted SKUs with poor search tagging. "Rectifying this led us to some organic quick wins, in turn delivering a sizable increase in product views and cart adds."
Whilst corporate communications constraints prevented sharing specific numbers publicly, Francis revealed that one of Unilever's case studies delivered "a very juicy uplift, like a six figure uplift."
More importantly, Joe emphasised the strategic value: "Having someone in place to press the buttons and make those changes and then give us the insight back to say what actually happened allows us to deploy ourselves in the right spaces, and particularly with our investment, put that in the right place as well."
The Triple Win in Action
The presentation reinforced what Henkel had articulated the previous day at the same conference: effective e-category management delivers a triple win for shoppers, brands, and retailers.
For shoppers: Better product availability, improved discoverability, and optimised content that helps them make confident purchase decisions.
For brands: Data-driven recommendations that deliver measurable ROI, systematic rather than ad-hoc improvements, and stronger retailer relationships built on shared category growth goals.
For retailers: Category acceleration, reduced operational friction (fewer stockouts and improved fulfilment), and genuine strategic partnerships with their brand suppliers.
Speaking the Same Language
One of the subtler but crucial benefits of ASDA Xpert is alignment on terminology and metrics. As James noted: "We know that each retailer has a slightly different way of saying the same thing. The way that we've developed this site is so that you absolutely know what we're looking at internally."
This shared language, combined with the playbook detailing exactly which levers ASDA can pull, streamlines the entire collaboration process. Brands can submit recommendations that ASDA understands immediately, reducing the typical back-and-forth whilst accelerating implementation.
Accessibility: From Global Multinationals to Startups
During the Q&A, an audience member asked whether ASDA Xpert was available across all categories and to smaller brands. Francis confirmed complete category coverage: "If you are selling variants of onion, we could actually do variants of onion."
On accessibility for smaller brands, he explained that whilst there is a charging structure, eStore has created what they believe is a fair and reasonable rate card. "Every single brand that we've so far worked with has seen a meaningful initial startup on something which might not have covered the initial fees, but certainly gone a long way to cover them already in the first couple of months."
What This Means for Digital Commerce
The ASDA Xpert presentation represented more than just a product demonstration. It signalled a potential inflection point in how retailers and brands can collaborate in digital commerce.
Jason's presentation earlier that same day had highlighted the industry's frustration with limited retail media measurement capabilities. ASDA Xpert demonstrates that when retailers are willing to share granular data and establish clear processes for actioning insights, the results benefit everyone.
As Joe concluded: "ASDA Xpert really has step changed our approach. I'm looking forward to developing the future features of the platform and the roadmap with Francis and the rest of the team."
For brands still struggling with that opening question (whether they have access to all the data they need), ASDA Xpert offers a compelling answer. Not just more data, but actionable insights, clear playbooks, dedicated support to make changes happen, and measurable results that justify the investment.
Want to learn more about ASDA Xpert? Connect with the eStore team to arrange a detailed demonstration.
