Riparian — Retail Intelligence Riparian

Analytics · BI · AI  —  for suppliers who sell through retail

Find the signalin your retail data.Act on it first.

Riparian is a boutique consultancy for suppliers who sell through home center, hardware, farm and B2B retail. We show you what is driving sales, where opportunity is being missed, and what to do about it, with reporting your team will actually use.

Explore an Interactive Dashboard
  • Owners and executives of small and midsize suppliers
  • Sales and account leaders preparing for line reviews
  • Teams with POS in one portal, inventory in another and co-op reporting in a third

The Current · many threads, one signal

Start with your question

Most engagements begin with one of five problems.

Each one maps to a specific piece of work. Pick the one closest to yours to see what we would do, what you would receive, and a worked example.

Or start by role: Owner or executive the whole book Sales or account lead the next line review Operations availability and fill rate Analyst the weekly consolidation
  1. 01 Understand our retail performance What is driving sales — distribution, velocity, price, mix or promotion — and where are we quietly losing ground?Analytics
  2. 02 Bring retailer reporting together Several retailer portals, several file formats, one spreadsheet that takes a week to update. Replace it with one consistent view.Business Intelligence
  3. 03 Improve inventory and availability visibility Know which stores and SKUs are out of stock, for how long, and what it is costing you before the retailer raises it.Analytics · Business Intelligence
  4. 04 Prepare stronger merchant conversations Walk into the line review with the evidence organised around the merchant's decision, not your org chart.Analytics
  5. 05 Put AI to work in our business Automate the reporting and administrative work that eats your week, without hiring a specialist team to run it.AI Services

Services

Analytics and BI lead; AI extends what they can do. And if you would rather own the capability, we help you build it.

Every engagement is scoped to your retailers, your data and your team's capacity. We build what you will use, or help you build it yourself.

Full service detail

Analytics

Know what is driving your numbers.

Retail performance analysis, opportunity identification and commercial decision support.

What you receive
  • A driver analysis across distribution, velocity, price, mix and promotion
  • A ranked opportunity list with the value of each, and the evidence behind it
  • Merchant-ready summaries you can take into the next review
Illustrative scenario
A lawn and garden supplier's sales were flat while units at their largest home center fell 6%. The analysis showed distribution had been cut in 140 stores where velocity was in the top quartile. The merchant conversation changed from "why are you down" to "where to restore."
Analytics in detail

Business Intelligence

One view across every retailer.

Dashboards, reporting systems, data consolidation and accessible business visibility.

What you receive
  • A consolidated data model across retailer portals, distributors and your own systems
  • Dashboards built around the decisions each role makes weekly
  • Scheduled reporting that refreshes itself, with definitions written down
Illustrative scenario
Two home center portals, a hardware co-op's distributor report and a farm retailer's weekly file, three layouts, one analyst spending two days a week pasting. Replaced with an automated weekly load and a dashboard the sales team opens before every call. The analyst now spends those two days on the opportunity list.

AI Services

Practical AI, put to work in the week.

Practical implementation, workflow automation and team enablement.

What you receive
  • Automation of reporting, reconciliation and retailer paperwork, with a person still accountable
  • Assistants grounded in your own data and documents, with clear limits
  • Working sessions so your team can use and extend what we build
Illustrative scenario
A monthly retailer scorecard that took a commercial manager a day to assemble now drafts itself from the data model, flags exceptions, and leaves the manager to write the two paragraphs that matter.

Enterprise AI Programs & Capability Building

Build it in-house, with someone who has done it.

Consulting for companies standing up their own analytics, BI or AI function, and for leadership teams rolling AI out across the organization.

What you receive
  • An AI strategy, governance and phased rollout plan by function, with training built around each team's real work
  • A capability roadmap, architecture and tool selection, and hiring support for your first analytics or BI roles
  • A planned hand-off, so the capability is yours and runs without us

How the work flows

From the retailer's portal to the merchant's desk, in four moves.

Every engagement follows the same path, however many retailers are involved. The signal step is where most of the value is created, and the one most suppliers never reach because the first two eat the week.

01 · Collect

Every source, on schedule

  • Retailer POS and inventory portals
  • Hardware co-op and distributor reports
  • Your orders, shipments and deductions
  • Promotion and planogram calendars

Missing or changed files flagged before anyone reports from them.

02 · Reconcile

One model, your definitions

  • Items, stores and weeks mapped once
  • Retailer definitions aligned, differences documented
  • Warehouse withdrawals read against store POS

Reported in your language, with the retailer's shown alongside.

03 · Find the signal

Drivers, exceptions, opportunities

  • Distribution, velocity, price, mix and promotion separated
  • Availability gaps sized in lost sales
  • Ranked opportunity list with evidence

The analysis, with a person's judgment on it.

04 · Act

Views built for the meeting

  • Owner's weekly view, account manager's retailer view
  • Merchant-ready evidence packs
  • Automated scorecards, exceptions and drafts

Opened before the call, not after.

Approach

One implementation. Then we stay close.

An initial engagement establishes your analytics, BI and AI capability. Ongoing monthly or quarterly support keeps it accurate, used and improving as your retailers and range change.

  1. Step 1

    Understand the business

    Your retailers, your range, your data sources and the decisions you need to make better. We leave with a scoped plan, not a deck.

    Outcome: a scope you can approve

  2. Step 2

    Establish the solution

    Consolidate the data, build the model and the dashboards, implement the automation. Reviewed with you at each stage.

    Outcome: a working system on your data

  3. Step 3

    Put it into use

    Train the people who will use it, in their own meetings and workflows. Adjust what gets in the way.

    Outcome: adoption, not a handover

  4. Step 4

    Support and improve

    Monthly or quarterly: data checks, new retailers and SKUs, new questions, and a standing review of what the numbers say.

    Outcome: a capability that keeps pace

Interactive example

Which retailer is really growing, and is it distribution or velocity?

Who uses it
Sales and account leaders before a quarterly review; owners tracking the whole book.
How to explore
Switch the measure, then show or hide retailers. Hover or tap a point for the week's values.
Decision it supports
Where to invest the next quarter's trade spend and sales time.
Explore an Interactive Dashboard
Multi-retailer performance
13 weeks · indexed to week 1 = 100 · illustrative data
Retailer C's units are up 14% on the quarter, but stores selling are flat: that growth is velocity. Retailer A's growth is almost all new distribution.
Index · base week 1 · illustrative supplier POS

A dashboard nobody opens is a cost. A number without a decision attached is noise. We build for the Monday meeting, the pre-call check and the line review, because that is where retail suppliers make money.

About Riparian

Founded by a practitioner who builds this for a living, for the retailers you actually sell to.

Riparian was founded by Taylor Tolley, whose background is in business intelligence and analytics on the supplier side of retail, working with clients across multiple retailers and channels, with particular depth in The Home Depot, and who leads data analytics, business intelligence and enterprise-wide AI rollouts for a retail consultancy providing representation and advisory services to a broad portfolio of brands. Riparian brings that discipline directly to small and midsize suppliers who need it and cannot staff it: tailored work, commercial judgment, and solutions built so your team can run them.

About Taylor and the firm

Your 4 facings · 1.8× the category's turn per facingILLUSTRATIVE SHELF · ONE BAY · ONE CATEGORY
The merchant conversation, reframed: not "more space" but "space the category is wasting." Illustrative.

Begin with a conversation

Tell us about your business. We will tell you plainly if we can help.

A discovery call takes 30 minutes and costs nothing. If you are not ready to schedule, send a question and we will reply by email.

  1. 01
    You send a note or book a timeThree fields. No phone number, budget or questionnaire.
  2. 02
    We reply with a viewWhether the problem fits our work, and what we would want to see on the call.
  3. 03
    We talk, then you decideIf it makes sense to continue, you receive a written scope and proposal.

Prefer email? [email protected]

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