To manage merchandising across more than 150 neighborhood stores, the Ukrainian chain box Market chose PlanoHero. The platform helped the team not only automate planogram creation but also effectively manage store space and assortment. With PlanoHero, store managers got a single source of up-to-date information and merchandising tasks.
Learn how box market set up the full planogram cycle and established communication between the head office and its stores.
box market is a Ukrainian chain of stylish neighborhood stores
✔️Assortment ranging from everyday essentials to delicacies from Ukrainian and European producers
✔️Kyiv and Kyiv region
✔️In-house production: box Cafe ready-made meals, Bakery box bakery, 120+ Pizza box pizzerias
Case at a Glance
box market |
|
|---|---|
| Integration | About one month |
| Data transferred to PlanoHero | Products, stores, categories, stock levels, dimensions, photos, assortment status |
| Most valuable features for the team | Planogram creation and setup, library planograms, sending planograms for execution, merchandising execution control, assortment management, product rotation and archiving |
| Result | An established planogramming process, communication between the head office and stores, and assortment management based on up-to-date merchandising data |
Integration
The box market chain integrated PlanoHero in about a month. To load data into the platform, the team used PlanoHero Connector, a tool for self-service integration and data upload monitoring.
Through Connector, the chain set up the transfer of the core information needed to create planograms and manage merchandising:
- products and categories;
- stock levels and cost price;
- stores;
- product dimensions;
- product photos;
- assortment status.
The chain set up daily updates, so the data in PlanoHero is always current. New products, assortment changes, stock levels, dimensions, and photos flow into the platform every day, so the team always works with up-to-date assortment information.
Fast Planogram Creation and Updates
The box market team uses a range of PlanoHero capabilities to create effective planograms quickly.
Creating a new planogram in PlanoHero takes a few steps: the team adds fixtures, places them on the store plan, and sets up the product layout on the shelves.
To avoid building similar layouts from scratch every time, the chain uses planogram copying and comparison. An existing layout becomes the basis for a new planogram, and comparison makes it easy to spot differences quickly. To work conveniently with a large number of planograms, the team organizes them into groups.
PlanoHero lets you create a planogram once and use it across multiple stores. For stores in the same cluster, box market uses the planogram library: a ready-made planogram is placed on the plans of several stores without being recreated. The planogram stays shared, so any change to it is automatically applied in every store where it is placed.
Sending Planograms and Controlling Execution: What the box Market Team Values Most
The box market chain uses PlanoHero at every stage of the planogram workflow.
Work in the platform doesn’t end with creating and updating planograms. The next key stage is sending tasks to stores, monitoring implementation, and controlling merchandising quality.
With PlanoHero, the chain set up a process to send updated planograms to store managers on time for execution. These are the capabilities the chain considers essential in its day-to-day merchandising work.
The PlanoHero Layout mobile app consolidated all their merchandising tasks in one place and helped speed up planogram execution. They simply scan a product barcode, and the app highlights where the product should go on the store plan and on the planogram. The app also shows changes compared to the previous version of the planogram.
The photo report confirming execution is also created in the app. If needed, the store manager can add a comment to it or contact the person responsible for the planogram via the built-in chat.
The chain uses PlanoHero just as actively to control merchandising execution. In the Control section, the team tracks the entire planogram lifecycle, from creation to photo report review. The planogram status shows at a glance what is happening with it in a specific store: it hasn’t been sent yet, is in progress, is awaiting review, has been returned for revision, or has already been approved. The head office team reviews photo reports, and either confirms that the planogram was executed correctly or returns it to the store if it finds errors.
Up-to-Date Shelf Assortment and Rotation in a Few Clicks
PlanoHero brings together information about the assortment on the shelves: which products are displayed and which aren’t, where shelf gaps have appeared, and which products are running low on stock. Products to be removed are also collected separately. These are inactive items that are still on planograms even though they have already been dropped from the store’s assortment, for example, because a seasonal line has ended or sales have declined.
For merchandising work, information on assortment relevance is one of the most valuable capabilities. The merchandising team sees the actual state of the shelves, responds in time, and runs rotation in a few clicks, replacing inactive products with new ones across all layouts at once.
More Than Merchandising: Planogram Data for Assortment Management
Planograms in PlanoHero reflect the current state of the shelves in every store. That’s why the chain also uses this data beyond merchandising: for assortment management and automatic replenishment orders.
For the auto-ordering system to work correctly, the chain exports data on the required minimum shelf stock from planograms. This way, product orders match the current layouts in stores.
Conclusion
The box market case shows how a chain of more than 150 stores can manage merchandising systematically, without sending planograms via messaging apps or relying on in-store printouts. For retailers who are just building such a process, this case offers four useful takeaways.
Launch in a month. That’s how long it took the chain to set up data transfer and start creating planograms based on the current assortment.
Scale runs on process. With more than 150 stores, managing merchandising manually is very difficult: you need a process that works consistently across all stores. At the box market, this process covers the entire planogram journey, from creation to execution in-store. The team creates new planograms based on existing layouts and the current assortment, which flows into the platform automatically. Finished planograms are sent to stores directly from PlanoHero. Layout changes are made once and immediately appear in all stores that use that layout. To make this work, the team relies on the planogram library and rotation functionality.
Full merchandising control. Planograms are sent to stores via the mobile app, and the results are sent back to the head office as a photo report. The head office team tracks planogram statuses, reviews photo reports, and returns planograms for revision when needed. As a result, the chain knows the merchandising status in every store and can respond in time.
A planogram is data. For the box market, a planogram shows exactly which products should be on the shelves and in what quantities. Based on this data, the chain builds its assortment management process and supplier orders.
This is how merchandising at box market becomes a managed process for the entire chain, from the head office to every shelf.
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