The landscape
Visibility from the brand to the shelf.
Beverage alcohol is one of the few industries where the maker of a product is legally separated from the shelf it sells on. The three-tier system, state-by-state ABC regulation, and franchise laws mean suppliers and distributors operate with less retail visibility than almost any other consumer category — while competing for the same shelf, the same search results, and the same consumer dollar.
We build software that closes that gap. Our ShieldSuite product line tracks what's actually happening at retail — who's in stock, at what price, with what placement and promotion — and our services practice builds the custom data and workflow tools that suppliers, distributors, and brokers run their commercial teams on.
3-tier
Built for the system's realities
4 products
ShieldSuite retail intelligence
Retail-level
Banner, market, and SKU detail
Weekly
Decision-cadence reporting
Challenges we hear
Where commercial teams lose the shelf
No line of sight to retail
The three-tier system means the brand owner is two handoffs away from the shelf. Depletions tell you what left the warehouse — not whether the consumer could find, afford, or even see your product.
Invisible out-of-stocks
Every empty shelf or "unavailable" listing is revenue handed to a competitor. Most suppliers find out weeks later, in a depletion report, after the reorder window has closed.
Price execution drift
Agreed pricing and what the consumer actually sees diverge by banner, by market, by week. Unmanaged, that drift erodes margin, breaks price ladders, and strains retailer relationships.
Competitor blind spots
New SKUs, price moves, and promo pushes from competitors show up at the shelf first. Teams relying on syndicated data see it a month later — after the reset decisions are made.
Marketing compliance risk
Tied-house rules, state advertising restrictions, and brand standards all govern how your product is promoted — by partners you don't control. Violations surface only when someone happens to look.
Manual audits don't scale
Field teams photographing shelves and spot-checking websites cover a fraction of the footprint, inconsistently. The data arrives stale, unstructured, and impossible to trend.
How gmware helps
ShieldSuite — retail intelligence for beverage alcohol
Competitive Intelligence
Track competitor assortment, pricing, placement, and share of voice across retailers and markets — and see new-item launches and price moves the week they happen.
Out of Stock Reports
Banner-and-market-level availability monitoring that flags out-of-stocks while they're still fixable — routed to the distributor or account team that can act on them.
Price to Consumer
The price the shopper actually sees, tracked over time — against your ladder, against competitors, across every banner that matters. Catch drift before it becomes precedent.
Marketing Monitoring
Continuous monitoring of how your brands are presented and promoted at retail — content accuracy, promo compliance, and brand-standard violations surfaced automatically.
Custom Data Engineering
Depletion and inventory pipelines, distributor data normalization, trade-spend analytics, and the integrations that make VIP-style data usable by commercial teams.
Commercial Software
Bespoke portals and workflow tools for sales, key-account, and trade-marketing teams — built on the retail data ShieldSuite already collects.
Standards & Compliance
A regulated category, by design
Supplier / distributor / retailer
Federal trade-practice rules
50 states, 50 rulebooks
Advertising & inducement limits
Distributor relationships
State-run retail & wholesale
Compliant digital experiences
Industry code adherence
Outcomes
KPIs we help teams move
Out-of-stock rate
By banner / market / SKU
Share of shelf & voice
vs. the competitive set
Price realization
Shelf price vs. strategy
Distribution depth
Points of distribution by market
FAQ
Common questions
Services we deliver here
ShieldSuite products
- Shield Suite - Competitive Intelligence Identify the best opportunities to win distribution at points of sale where competitors are …
- Shield Suite - Out of Stock Reports Daily SKU-level product-availability tracking across 60,000+ beverage alcohol storefronts. Get products back in stock …
- Shield Suite - Price to Consumer Daily SKU-level retail pricing across 60,000+ storefronts - regular, promotional and case-discount pricing - …
- Shield Suite - Marketing Monitoring Track retailer digital merchandising at scale across 80+ retailers and channels (Instagram, X, Facebook, …
Want to see what's really happening at the shelf?
30 minutes with our beverage-alcohol team — we'll show you ShieldSuite on the banners and markets you actually compete in.