Assortment Planning: O'Reilly Automotive Teams With IRI To Drive Assortment And Space Planning Optimization

Information Resources, Inc. (IRI), the world's leading provider of consumer, shopper, and retail market intelligence and insights, recently announced that O'Reilly Automotive, Inc., one of the largest specialty retailers of automotive aftermarket parts, tools, supplies, equipment and accessories in the United States, is the latest retailer to implement the IRI space planning software suite, including Apollo Designer Workstation and Apollo Professional, to effectively optimize category assortments and planograms for its 1,700 stores.

"O'Reilly's goal is to provide the ultimate customer shopping experience to each and every customer we serve," says Ted Wise, chief operating officer and co-president of O'Reilly Automotive, Inc. "Our new relationship with IRI is extremely valuable, as it will enable our organization to customize shelf assortment and shelf merchandising plans at the local and store level to better meet the needs of O'Reilly's customers."

Apollo Designer Workstation is an easy-to-use shelf assortment and space planning solution that leverages rules-based optimization to revolutionize the retail space planning process. It combines assortment, capacity and merchandising rules to automatically generate unique assortments and planograms for each store.

Recognizing that critical factors such as income, education and ethnicity drive purchasing habits, and that addressing space planning at the regional level is no longer adequate, Apollo Designer Workstation makes cluster- and store-level space planning a reality that was not attainable with manual or one-size-fits-all approaches. Users can rapidly model and evaluate merchandising and assortment rules, eliminate unproductive inventory, select optimal planograms and generate higher revenue and profitability.

"The IRI space planning solutions will empower O'Reilly towards their consumer-centric merchandising objectives on a large scale and recognize sales benefits immediately," says IRI Retail Solutions and Strategic Consulting President Thom Blischok. "According to O'Reilly, their customers have grown to expect superior service, and the Apollo solutions will not only help O'Reilly meet these demands but will take their customers' shopping experience to the next level."

Additional details on the IRI Apollo space planning solutions and other IRI Consumer-Centric Retail Solutions can be found at: us.infores.com/page/retailers/consumer_retail_execution.

About O'Reilly Automotive, Inc.
O'Reilly Automotive, Inc. is one of the largest specialty retailers of automotive aftermarket parts, tools, supplies, equipment and accessories in the United States, serving both the do-it-yourself and professional installer markets. Founded in 1957 by the O'Reilly family, the Company operated 1,731 stores in the states of Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming as of June 30, 2007.

About Information Resources, Inc.
IRI is the world's leading provider of consumer, shopper, and retail market intelligence and insights supporting 95 percent of the FORTUNE Global 500 consumer packaged goods (CPG), retail and healthcare companies. Only IRI offers the unique combination of integrated market information, automated and predictive analytics, innovative enabling technologies, and domain expertise. With IRI, leading retailers and manufacturers are able to quickly discover breakthrough insights driving smarter decisions and actions across the enterprise for breakthrough results. Companies around the world depend on IRI for improved productivity, stronger brands, and dramatic revenue growth. For more information, visit us.infores.com.

SOURCE: Information Resources, Inc.