Your product is out of stock and nobody has told you
On-shelf availability monitoring for suppliers and brands in the UAE. Know when your facing is empty in a store you do not control, while there is still time to do something about it.
If you supply supermarkets, your sales stop the moment your shelf empties, and nothing in your systems tells you it happened. The store has no obligation to call you, your sales rep visits weekly at best, and the sale you lost on Tuesday afternoon never appears in any report. On-shelf availability monitoring closes that gap, alerting the person who can actually restock while the shelf is still empty.
You are responsible for sales on a shelf you cannot see
Suppliers carry the commercial risk of an empty shelf without holding any of the means to detect one. That asymmetry is the whole problem.
The store will not tell you
Staff are measured on their own priorities. An empty facing on your line is not an incident they log, and by the time anyone mentions it the week is gone.
Your rep arrives too late
A merchandiser visiting weekly sees the shelf on the day they visit. Everything that happened on the other six days is invisible, including every hour your product was unavailable.
Lost sales leave no trace
A sale that did not happen generates no transaction, no return and no complaint. It is the only kind of revenue loss that produces zero data, which is why it goes unmanaged for years.
The commercial consequence compounds. A shopper who finds your product missing twice does not complain, they switch to whatever is next to it, and the store’s sell-through data quietly rewards your competitor for your stockout.
Zero sales and no demand look identical in a report
This is the single most useful thing to understand about on-shelf availability, and it is why sell-through reporting cannot solve it.
What the report shows
Your line sold nothing between Tuesday and Thursday at that branch. The number is zero, and it is accurate.
What it cannot tell you
Whether nobody wanted it, or whether it was not on the shelf to be wanted. Those are opposite problems with opposite responses, and the data is the same in both cases.
Act on the first reading and you cut production on a line that was actually selling out. Act on the second and you chase a store about a product nobody wants. Without knowing whether the shelf was full, every decision downstream is a guess.
Watching the facing, not the transaction
Agree camera access with the retailer
Coverage of your fixture is arranged with the store or chain. This is a commercial conversation before it is a technical one, and it is the step that decides whether the project is possible at all.
Define the fixture and the facings
We mark the shelf area that belongs to your products and what a correctly stocked facing looks like, so the system is measuring your space rather than the whole aisle.
Detect the gap, not just the product
Vision runs on site and identifies when a facing has emptied or thinned below the agreed threshold, continuously through trading hours.
Alert the person who can fix it
An alert reaches your merchandiser, distributor or the store contact, with the branch, the fixture and a frame showing the state of the shelf.
Record how long it stayed empty
Duration is the number that matters commercially. A gap fixed in twenty minutes is an operational blip; the same gap on a Friday evening for six hours is a quantified revenue loss you can take to a trading meeting.
The numbers that change a trading conversation
| Measure | What it tells you | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Availability rate | The percentage of trading hours your facing was actually stocked, by branch. | Available |
| Gap duration | How long each stockout lasted, which converts an incident into a lost-sales estimate. | Available |
| Time of day pattern | Whether gaps cluster after peak trading or after deliveries, which points at the cause. | Available |
| Share of shelf | How much of the fixture your products occupy against what was agreed. | Available |
| Branch comparison | Which branches keep your line stocked and which consistently do not. | Available |
| Restock response time | How long after an alert the shelf was refilled, which is the measure of whether the process works. | Available |
Availability rate by branch is usually the number that changes behaviour. It moves the conversation from an anecdote about one bad visit to a documented pattern across a quarter, which is a different meeting entirely.
What this needs, and what it cannot do
Two constraints matter enough to state before anyone spends money finding out.
You need the retailer’s cooperation
A supplier cannot place or use cameras inside a supermarket unilaterally. Access has to be agreed with the retailer, and surveillance permissions in the UAE are processed by whoever operates the premises. Where a chain will not engage, this approach does not apply and we will say so rather than sell around it.
A camera sees the shelf, not the stockroom
We can tell you a facing is empty. We cannot tell you whether replacement stock is sitting in the back room or was never delivered. That distinction usually needs your delivery data alongside, which we can connect.
Suppliers who lose money on someone else’s shelf
Fresh and perishable suppliers
Flowers, bakery, produce and chilled lines, where a gap cannot be filled from a back room later and the sale is simply gone.
FMCG brands in multiple chains
Distributed across branches with different standards, where the head office cannot see which stores are actually executing.
Distributors and agents
Responsible to a principal for in-market performance, and currently reporting on it from rep visits and sell-through alone.
Promotional and seasonal lines
Where the whole commercial case depends on being available during a short window that cannot be repeated.
Own-brand and private label
Supplying under a retailer’s label, where availability failures land on your account performance rather than theirs.
New product launches
Where an early availability failure gets misread as weak demand and the listing is lost before the product had a fair trial.
On-shelf availability FAQs
We are a small supplier in one chain. Is this worth it?
It depends on what a lost trading day costs you and how quickly anyone could act on an alert. If your product is perishable and a gap cannot be recovered, the case is stronger at small scale than most people expect. If nobody could restock within a day even after being told, fix that first, because an alert nobody can act on is just a notification.
Do we need the supermarket’s permission?
Yes, for camera-based monitoring inside their premises. Surveillance approvals in the UAE are the responsibility of whoever operates the site. We will help you frame the conversation, including the point that better availability improves the retailer’s sales too, but we cannot bypass it.
Can you use the store’s existing CCTV?
Often yes, where the retailer agrees and the cameras happen to cover your fixture usefully. Existing cameras are positioned for security rather than shelves, so coverage has to be assessed per site before anyone assumes it works.
How is this different from the retailer’s own stock system?
Their system tracks what they believe they hold, which is a building-level number. It routinely says stock is available while the shelf is empty. Monitoring observes the shelf itself, which is the only place your sale actually happens.
Who receives the alerts?
Whoever can act. Usually your merchandiser or distributor, sometimes a store contact where the relationship supports it. Routing is configured per branch, because the person who can help differs by chain.
Can this connect to our ERP?
Yes. Availability events and gap durations can feed Odoo alongside your sales and delivery data, which is what turns availability into a number your commercial team reviews rather than a separate dashboard nobody opens.
Will it tell us why the shelf was empty?
It tells you it was empty, for how long, and at what time of day. Cause usually becomes obvious from the pattern, for instance gaps that always appear after Thursday deliveries. We would rather give you a reliable observation than a guessed cause.
Find out how often your shelf is actually empty
Tell us which chains you supply and how your merchandising works today. We will tell you honestly whether camera monitoring is realistic for those sites, and what the alternative looks like if it is not.