Summaries

TrN Opens in Northern California
TracNologies is continuing an eventful year by expanding its product offering, client base, and coverage area with the launching of services into Northern California on October 28, 2004. “Opening Northern California allows TrN to offer Audit-Plus, a powerful information tool now covering all of California." said Bob Glas, CEO of TracNologies, Inc.” [Full Article...]

TracNologies launches premier audit in Southern California
On March 2, 2003 TracNologies launched its premier auditing and reporting services in the Southern California Market arena. TracNologies audits nearly 1,000 stores monthly in the Southern California Market and will soon be expanding to other territories nationally. [Full Article...]

The Performance Group Adds Audit-Plus to Their Tool Set
TracNologies CEO, Bob Glas announced today, March 2, 2003 that The Performance Group, a premier regional food broker in Southern California, has signed with them to offer Audit Plus as part of their combined service offerings to their Principals.  [Full Article...]

TracNologies focused retail approach can increase sales
In a recent presentation given to an investors group Bob Glas, CEO of TracNologies, Inc. told of the benefit TracNologies (TrN) product Audit Plus had in potentially increasing sales of their target client base Grocery Retail Manufacturers, Retailers, Brokers, and Distributors. Citing recent studies from the Grocery Manufacturers of America as the basis of his talk Glas felt that, while the GMA studies addressed the industry as a whole and did not imply any endorsement of that group to his company, the studies clearly concluded the general lack of routine store coverage accounted for a great deal of product availability issues now facing the retail food industry and ultimately the consumer.  [Full Article...]

TracNologies announces completion of series 'A' financing round
On April 30, 2003 TracNologies completed its initial Series A Preferred round. The proceeds are being used to launch the company in Southern California.  [Full Article...]

Full Articles

TrN Opens in Northern California
Northern California: Novato: September 25, 2004

TracNologies is continuing an eventful year by expanding its product offering, client base, and coverage area with the launching of services into Northern California on October 28, 2004. “Opening Northern California allows TrN to offer a powerful information tool covering all of California, Audit-Plus, to our growing list of customers,” said Bob Glas, CEO of TracNologies, Inc., the premier store-based auditing and decision-support company. Glas continued, “Our charter is to increase our clients’ top and bottom lines. We provide customers with an absolute focus on the retail conditions a consumer sees when shopping. Consumers don’t buy what isn’t on the shelf.”

The consumer retail market is huge, competitive, and chaotic. TrN identified the need for an independent provider of accurate and timely store-level performance verification information specifically due to chronic product availability that puts billions of dollars in consumer sales in jeopardy for both manufacturers and retailers each year.

To address this, Audit-Plus is focused on the last 100 yards, between backroom inventory systems and the cash register. Audit-Plus was developed to drive a significant increase in product sales principally by expediting new item introduction in the critical first 90 days of marketing, verifying market readiness for promotional campaigns, directly reducing chronic out-of-stock conditions that products face in the marketplace. By highlighting in-store conditions, clients are able to focus local representation on remedying the problem and, as a result, optimizing revenues and better managing spending.

TracNologies’ Audit-Plus, through routine store coverage information, provides actionable product availability information to fast-moving consumer goods manufacturers and retailers. Audit-Plus has applicability to any branded consumer good where there is significant shelf competition and promotion or where limited market research exists. Audit-Plus information is derived from coverage, in stores representing a substantial majority of expenditures in each territory, thereby allowing clients to overcome deficiencies in product distribution and availability to consumers creating significant new sales opportunities.

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TracNologies launches premier audit in Southern California
Northern California: Novato: March 02, 2003

Today, we saw the new beginning of a journey that started nearly 20 years ago as TracNologies, Inc., a company based in Novato, California, launched its initial product called Audit Plus. "Dan Surgenor, our Chief Sales Officer and I created the first retail auditing system used in the US nearly twenty years ago. We have long thought this would be a great service to offer independently so we brought a team together to recreate this unique product for the retail food industry," said Bob Glas, TracNologies CEO.

Southern California represents about 7% of the retail grocery dollar spent in the United States and has a diverse mix of products in a concentrated territory. With the monthly auditing services covering such a large territory, the data collected and presented to TracNologies clients through Audit Plus, will uncover a great deal of opportunity.

TracNologies was founded in 2002 to address the pressing need of Manufacturers, Retailers, Brokers, and Distributors to track product availability at a store level. Dan Surgenor, TracNologies CSO, said "Currently, it is possible to get some statistical auditing done on your products but TracNologies Audit Plus takes it one step further by auditing the majority of stores in a given territory once a month. By giving clients this type of consistent and independent service they will be better able to pin-point their retail resources to do the most good."

TracNologies provides independent and accurate tracking services of new and existing products in the retail grocery industry. The real-time reports on specific product conditions at the store and shelf level, with information drawn from the majority of stores in a target territory, allow its clients to manage the selection and distribution of their new products and defend against competitors' shelf-space encroachment on existing items.

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The Performance Group Adds Audit-Plus to Their Tool Set
Northern California: Novato: March 2, 2003:

It was a banner day for TracNologies (TrN). Fresh from the launch of their auditing services in Southern California, Bob Glas, TrN's CEO announced The Performance Group, a noted Broker in Southern California, signed with TracNologies to be able to offer TrN's auditing services and interactive reporting products to their clients.

The Performance Group represents manufacturers in all sections of the Retail Grocery Environment from Paper Goods such as Chinet, to the Juice Section with Florida Natural, and the Baby Food Section with Beechnut Products. In today's challenging market The Performance Group offers a wide range of services that uniquely targets the market place. Jim Swanberg, President of The Performance Group says of Audit Plus, "Our process at the Performance Group relies on efficient use of our manpower resources. The "real time" information provided by the Audit Plus database allows us to direct our efforts at the shelf to specific areas of opportunity. As the retail environment continues to change, we feel that TracNologies' auditing information enhances the sales solutions toolbox we offer our clients while positively impacting our bottom line."

"We are excited to be selected by The Performance Group to help enhance their retail service offerings. I have long admired them for their innovative approach to the grocery marketplace. I feel their addition of TracNologies' Audit Plus to their tool set is another example of The Performance Group's commitment to excellent customer service to their clients," said Dan Surgenor, TracNologies Chief Sales Officer.

To find out more about The Performance Group log onto their website at www.TPGSalesServices.com 

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TracNologies focused retail approach can increase sales

San Francisco: In a recent talk given by Bob Glas, TracNologies CEO, he pointed out some of the serious problems currently facing the retail grocery industry as a whole. As the general costs to service the retail arena increases for all the players in the market (retailers, manufacturers, brokers, and distributors) routine store coverage is being cut back. The grocery industry exemplifies the issues facing fast moving consumer goods manufacturers and retailers broadly. The grocery industry alone is $517B with supermarkets constituting the bulk of this activity, $398B in 32,265 stores. The average supermarket carried 30,580 items but manufacturers introduced 20,000 new items in 2001 alone. The introduction and failure of new items carry high cost tags. 70% of new items fail in the first 90 days and then the manufacturer has to remove the failed items. To even accommodate those new items, slow moving items are discontinued or have their shelf space reduced. The latter, combined with intense retail competition with value and convenience channels has caused store conditions to deteriorate due to the enormous amount of item and category change, further exacerbated by resource compression at the retail level to find and address shelf conditions.

Store deterioration is evidenced by:

• 32% of all new authorized items never make it onto the shelf,
• 48% of all items are OOS once every 4 weeks,
• OOS average 8.2% leading to total store sale losses of 4%,
• DSD OOS average 7.2%,
• 70% of OOS conditions are a direct result of retail store practices,
• 14% of households indicate they may switch primary retailer due to OOS conditions,
• Manufacturers and retailers spent $31B on promotions driving increased sales of $28B.

The industry challenge is that organizations do not have the tools or scale to leverage the cost of information collection and attempt to do this in the normal course of business to limited effect, with existing field staff burdened with many other activities. Both manufacturers and retailers have identified the issues in numerous studies but have not identified a cost effective means to tackle these on-going issues thereby absorbing them into the business models. TracNologies' Audit-Plus offers the solution to address these challenges with consistent, cost effective, and comprehensive item coverage from routine store coverage. With Audit-Plus the retailer, manufacturer and their agents will have the knowledge with which to communicate and overcome shelf and store issues and thereby drive increases to sales and profit. Glas further emphasized the benefit of Audit Plus is to allow clients the ability to focus routine store coverage directly at outlets that have product availability issues. This could revolutionize the way routine store coverage is handled in the Audit Plus Territories. Based on targeted routine store coverage Glas felt that their clients could reap the benefits of general store coverage as outlined in a recent study.

The Association of Sales and Marketing Companies (ASMC) conducted a study on the benefits of routine store coverage, which showed that it could:

• Drive new products to the shelf faster (27%),
• Increase new item cut-ins (12%),
• Increase promotional advertising compliance (8%),
• Increase shelf schematic compliance (13%),
• Reduce unauthorized item stocking (13%),
• Reduce missing tags (11%).
• Yielding greater sales (12.6%) and profit (10.1%) at the retail store.

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TracNologies announces completion of series 'A' financing round

Novato, California - April 30, 2003 - TracNologies, Inc., "TrN", the provider of actionable product availability information through the internet to the fast moving consumer goods market, completed its initial Series A Preferred round with Friends, Family, & Associate investors. David Buhler TrN's CFO said, "We are extremely pleased to complete this seed-stage investment which has enabled us to launch our internet portal and commence data collection in Southern California for the grocery industry with our Audit-Plus product."

Audit-Plus combines TrN's data collection and transmission software on a tablet PC with an integrated and web-enabled data warehouse. Information collected from stores daily is uploaded, verified, and provided to client desktops the next morning through TrN's internet portal. Audit-Plus was developed to help consumer product good manufacturers overcome severe product availability issues they face at the retail store level, such as out-of-stocks and timely new product cut-in.

According to Bob Glas, CEO of TracNologies, Inc., "one truth for a manufacturers' product is if its' not on the shelf the consumer can't buy it no matter how much money is spent to introduce and promote. TrN's Audit-Plus allows manufacturers and retailers to overcome the tremendous amount of shelf volatility they face by enabling them to identify product availability issues real time. With issues identified by store and shelf they can then drive their resources in a coordinated way to overcome specific product distribution issues in turn leading to significant increases to both sales and profit."

David Buhler said, "What has strikes me is the consistent identification from different grocery industry study perspectives, that high out-of-stocks and slow or no new product introduction are chronic issues, which participants aren't able to effectively address. One recent study estimated that this puts a staggering $20B of consumer sales in play to the detriment of both the retailers and the manufacturers."

"Our strategy all along has been to focus on identifying the key issues faced by customers in our target industries and then create and apply great technology that solves these business problems," said Bob Glas. "We are very excited to be actively marketing Audit-Plus to help manufacturers get at historically untouchable sales."

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