All heart, no sleeves
Uncovering customer preferences and behaviors within A-shirts
Traditional metrics can provide unclear answers, and clarity is exactly what you need when making high-stakes decisions.
When Walmart considered removing the Fruit of the Loom men's A-shirt six-pack to make room for new fashion offerings, the apparel manufacturer turned to Scintilla to demonstrate the product’s value to Walmart and their shoppers. By analyzing buyer behavior, purchasing patterns, and product preferences, the company uncovered that category sales could be at risk and built a data-backed case for keeping the essential on the shelves.
The opportunity: Making room for fashion without losing essential sales
As Walmart looked to expand their fashion and apparel assortment, limited shelf space meant taking a closer look at everyday basics. For Fruit of the Loom, that meant looking at which products were essential to category performance, and which could be removed to make room for new styles.
The brand's A-shirt six-pack was under scrutiny as part of the assortment evaluation. Traditional productivity metrics offered conflicting answers, though. Fruit of the Loom led in sales dollars per store per week, while a competing product held a slight advantage in sales per linear foot.
Fruit of the Loom needed to go beyond shelf productivity to understand whether shoppers would switch to alternatives if the A-shirt disappeared—or take their purchases elsewhere.
The approach: Connecting customer behavior with category impact
Fruit of the Loom used Shopper Behavior to evaluate the potential impact of removing their A-shirt. Unlike traditional productivity measures, Assortment Deep Dive helped distinguish between sales that would remain in the category, purchases that would transfer to other products, and sales that would be lost altogether.
They uncovered significant risk: Removing the A-shirt could cost the Walmart category nearly $12 million in sales over 52 weeks. Clearly, the product was more than a productive basic that competing products couldn't fully replace.
To strengthen the business case, Fruit of the Loom combined external sales and geographic data with Shopper Behavior insights to map their top 1,000 shipping ZIP codes, identifying more than 350 Walmart stores in those areas. Census data showed that consumers ages 30–59 and households earning $75,000 or more were overrepresented in these markets, closely matching the demographics of Walmart's existing A-shirt shoppers. The findings confirmed that the product's core customers lived near Walmart stores, highlighting an opportunity to capture existing demand by keeping the A-shirt in stock.
Validating the product with real customers
Fruit of the Loom used Customer Perception to conduct an In-Home Usage Test (IHUT), gathering feedback from hundreds of consumers on the existing A-shirt design and potential fabric and trim variations. Overwhelmingly positive feedback on the original design, particularly its quality and hems, validated the decision to preserve it.
By combining predictive assortment analysis, demographic validation, and direct customer feedback, Fruit of the Loom developed a stronger, consumer-led recommendation for Walmart's merchant team.
The results: Protecting sales while informing smarter assortment decisions
Fruit of the Loom's initial analysis identified a potential annual category sales loss of nearly $12 million if the A-shirt was removed. Demographic research reinforced the product's value to Walmart shoppers, while the $8.1 million in category sales generated in the months following the analysis demonstrated its continued contribution. Customer Perception also reinforced the decision to maintain the existing A-shirt design, with testing showing strong customer preference for its current construction and quality. Together, these insights made a compelling case for protecting an established essential while supporting Walmart's evolving apparel assortment.
