Hello, welcome to our July newsletter, diving into the most interesting things we’ve spotted from the world of retail and CPG over the last month.

At IGD's Future of Category Leadership 2026, VST founder and CEO Nick Theodore was asked the question a lot of category teams are quietly weighing up: is AI genuinely ready for the day job, or is it still mostly a promise? Here is what he told the room, and what it means if your team is only just getting started.

Hello, welcome to our June newsletter, diving into the most interesting things we’ve spotted from the world of retail and CPG over the last month.

Hello, welcome to our May newsletter, diving into the most interesting things we’ve spotted from the world of retail and CPG over the last month.

Hello, welcome to our April newsletter, diving into the most interesting things we’ve spotted from the world of retail and CPG over the last month.

We've opened our first U.S. office in Bentonville, bringing our shelf-first approach to one of the most important hubs in global retail.

Hello, welcome to our March newsletter, diving into the most interesting things we’ve spotted from the world of retail and CPG over the last month.

Beer, Wine & Spirits is one of the most context-driven categories in grocery. Shoppers rarely enter the aisle thinking in brands or SKUs. They arrive with an occasion, a mood, or a constraint in mind - tonight, the weekend, guests, gifting, unwinding, moderation.

Petcare is one of the most purposeful categories in grocery. Shoppers arrive with specific missions - caring for a puppy, managing health concerns, rewarding behaviour, supporting an ageing pet. They navigate with intent, and they expect the aisle to make sense.

For years, planogram data has existed quietly in the background of grocery retail - essential, operational, but rarely accessible to the people who need it most.

Hello, welcome to our February newsletter, diving into the most interesting things we’ve spotted from the world of retail and CPG over the last month.

Stepping into 2026, slowly remembering how to “do work”. January’s here, and with it comes the latest slice of interesting things happening around the world of retail.

December’s here! And with it, a packed out newsletter featuring some of the interesting things from the world of CPG mostly falling into two camps important on the minds of both shoppers and the wider industry right now - AI and Health.

If you’re reading this on Monday, Halloween will have been and gone (sadly, given the wealth of excellent in-store displays), and we now canter towards the end-of-year holiday season.

Read on for September’s interesting things including Kraft Heinz’s decoupling, Whiny Baby’s acquisition, more CPG, and a podcast featuring ME (and others).

A happy Labor Day to those in North America! At the time of writing from the UK, I can say it’s not just the “unofficial end of summer”, as I look out onto another day of rain. Anyway, I’ll be back in Minneapolis and Bentonville for most of September - let me know if you’re around.

Read on for the interesting things happening in retail and CPG last month, including an anti-competitive ingredients purchase, “Fridge Cigarettes”, and the wildest set of Celebrity CPG launches I think we’ve ever featured (warning; do not read with your breakfast).

Positives and negatives from the month of May for UK retail. Where we’ve seen positives (hopefully!) in trade deals with the US and the EU that should help ease complexity and cost pressures on the industry, cyber security divisions are on red alert after hackers infiltrated systems at M&S, Co-op, and, Harrods.

Over the past two decades, the value of shared data at the retailer-CPG interface has been proven time and again. Data-driven retailers…

Note: this article is an extract from a workshop by VST. If you’d like to book a workshop for your brand or category, please get in touch…

We’re approaching the worst recession in decades. Following on from a pandemic (or potentially into the next stage of it), supply-chain…

Imagine as a CPG brand if you could zoom into any grocery store and view where your product is and what it’s sat next to.

Most years are dynamic in CPG strategy, but this year has been one of the busiest. If 2020 was defined by ‘stay at home’ orders and a rush…

Category management is at a crossroads - so what happens now?

Why leading brands are using planogram data to win shelf space and trust.

The executional blind spots costing brands sales at the shelf.

The hidden cost of ignoring shelf data — and the upside of fixing it.

From opinion to evidence: testing shelf decisions before they go live.

What UK shopper behaviour in 2025 really tells us about value, confidence, and choice.