Today Wholesalers, just like their multiple retail competitors seek to achieve assortment and space optimisation but this is a difficult objective for wholesalers, when depots are aiming to stock the extensive product lines that their independent retail customers demand.

Unlike their multiple retail competitors whose stores receive carefully selected product assortments and merchandising advice, independent retailers have to develop their offerings through listening to their customers and a fair amount of trial and error. This relative disorganisation results in wholesale depots receiving requests for products that, in total, demonstrate very high levels of substitution. With the emphasis historically being, upon new line introductions rather than range rationalisation, the wholesale sector is recognised to suffer from being over ranged.

The fear of losing custom through inappropriate product removal has always been a barrier to addressing this expensive situation and therefore rationalising depot ranges remains the challenge facing many of todays wholesalers. The ideal must be to emulate the multiple grocers' supply chain integration, and to provide to the independent customer targeted, specific advice on range and space use. Through helping their client base evolve towards improvements in efficiency by way of product offering and space use, the depots can then better target their own product ranges, which ultimately create cost savings and business improvements throughout the whole process.

Until recent times, these improvements have been practically impossible, with the best processes available revolving around general planogram distribution and merchandising guidelines. Now, however, and for the first time in the industry, the powerful automated assortment and space planning engines pioneered by Galleria in the FMCG multiples sector are available to the independent sector through the use of web technology. With powerful industry sponsors from, for example, Spar UK, NISA Today's and Costcutter, independent retailers access our store specific engines via the web and, following some simple inputs receive back, within minutes, their store specific planogram. This planogram will fit the real space available in store and have a targeted product assortment. In addition these automated store-specific planograms will display merchandising strategies and product space allocation in line with true local performance.

Major players in the industry, Makro and Booker, have been Galleria clients for a number of years and lead the way in Wholesale Sector category management evolution.