As an Einstein employee immersed in retail, I’m familiar with a study conducted for the Coca-Cola Company Retail Research Council, which reported that on a typical afternoon, more than 8.2 percent of supermarket merchandise is not available for purchase to consumers. Fast-moving items account for the lion’s share of sales lost to out-of-stocks.  Even worse, consumers refuse to buy an alternative product 34 percent of the time, resulting in lost sales.

Recently, I experienced this firsthand. While I was coming home from work I stopped by the nearest supermarket to pick up a specific razor with four sensitive skin blades that I needed immediately for an upcoming business trip.

When I arrived at the “Health & Beauty” aisle, I found similar blades, but not the one my I needed. In fact, I discovered an empty space in the display where it should be. Looking around for several minutes, I sought a store assistant to help locate the blades, but couldn’t find any.

Finally, I found a store assistant who told me that the supermarket “must have that product,” but when he looked at the shelf he realized that that section was empty. This confused him because he had refilled the entire shelf earlier in the day and was sure that there were plenty of those blades available. He now suspected that a theft had wiped them out. Had there been an alert when all the blades had been taken off the shelf, it might have prevented the theft.