We hope you aren’t tired of reading about velocity! Velocity and distribution (which go hand in hand, as you’ll see below) are the topics we are asked about most often. We’ve reviewed our reader correspondence and pulled out a few more key points we wanted to share: Question 1: Is Velocity Independent of Distribution? Q. […]
Know Your Measures: Sales
Tip Sheet Mailbag: Q&A on Velocity
We get a lot of questions from readers. Sometimes our answers touch on things we haven’t fully explored in our articles. We want everyone to benefit from these nuggets of information so decided to post a series of Q&A articles which will highlight some interesting correspondence. Our first post covers three questions on the […]
Buying Nielsen/IRI/SPINS Reports? Avoid These Three Common Mistakes!
Many CPG companies purchase individual, Excel-based reports from syndicated data vendors Nielsen, IRI and SPINS. Rather than the six-figure investment required for an ongoing data subscription, individual reports can be obtained for a few thousand dollars. So it’s a great place to start with this data! The vendors are quite flexible in what can be […]
All About ACV
Earlier this year, we received a frustrated email from a reader. He wrote: “Once and for all, I would like to know exactly what ACV is. You hear several definitions depending on the site you visit. Then I would like to know how to calculate it, what it tells me, and why suppliers should care.” […]
Velocity: How Well Your Product REALLY Sells
Velocity questions have dominated the CPG Data Tip Sheet inbox this month, with a number of readers posting comments or writing with questions about this important measure. So we decided it’s time to turn our attention to what is, after all, the third most important measure in your database. Why is velocity the #3 […]
The Case of the Mismatched Volume: Comparing Shipments and Retail Sales
A common question that arises, especially when your company is new to syndicated retail sales scanner data, is “how come IRI/Nielsen sales data is different than our own shipment data?” This probably comes up most often in the context of forecasting, when you are trying to determine if you are going to “make the numbers” […]


