by John Keller | Feb 24, 2014 | Customer News, Fuel Price Management Solutions, Fuel Pricing Software
PriceAdvantage, a division of Skyline Products, announced today that Pic-n-Pac Convenience Stores has licensed PriceAdvantage SMART™ Fuel Pricing, a fuel price management solution, for their 15 stores in Texas. Pic-n-Pac will use PriceAdvantage on a subscription basis for a fully integrated fuel price management offering.
“Pic-n-Pac competes with some of the largest retailers in the country and we needed help to level the playing field. We feel that PriceAdvantage is the perfect solution as it will help us become more efficient in our daily operations by streamlining and automating our process for determining and implementing new fuel prices,” said Phil Wuest, Director of Operations of Pic-n-Pac.
“We welcome Pic-n-Pac to our family of customers and are eager to help them improve their fuel pricing processes,” said Chip Stadjuhar, CEO of Skyline Products. “PriceAdvantage SMART Fuel Pricing will help them evaluate pricing from headquarters, giving them the data to make informed pricing decisions rapidly.”
Stadjuhar adds, “PriceAdvantage SMART Fuel Pricing, a fully scalable solution, is as effective for a small growing chain of 15 stores as it is for a national chain with thousands of locations.”
Pic-n-Pac Convenience Stores is a privately held, family owned and operated business. Headquartered in McQueeney, TX, Pic-n-Pac is approaching its 50th year anniversary. The first convenience store was opened in 1964 and was the vision of our company’s founder, Harvey Edward Wuest. Today, the company has grown to 15 locations serving customers in Guadalupe, Comal and Caldwell counties.
by John Keller | Feb 7, 2014 | Fuel Pricing Software, Industry News, Retail Fuel Margins
OPIS reported this week that the average retail fuels margin remained steady since last week. Retail fuel margins across the US averaged $0.178 per gallon, compared to $0.179 last week. The year to date average ticked up $0.001 per gallon to $0.173 and the six week average jumped $.007 per gallon to $0.173 per gallon.
Our industry is in much better shape retail fuels margin-wise this year than last year. Consider that the average retail fuels margin is now $0.089 per gallon higher than the $0.084 national average across the US in 2013. That means retail fuel margins in the US are now double what they were this week last year.
According to the 2013 NACS Fuels Report, the industry switch over process from winter blend fuels to summer blend fuels begins in February, beginning with scheduled refinery shutdowns for maintenance. And that means an increase in wholesale cost to the fuels retailer, a cost increase that is not easily welcomed by the consumer. And that puts the squeeze on margins this time of year. Add all that up, and we can anticipate an increasingly competitive market for the rest of Q1, with difficult fuel margins, possibly in the negative range.
In 2013 we saw this trend where average retail fuel margins dropped one cent from February 1 to February 22, ending the month at $0.102 per gallon. That’s negative margin territory for many fuel retailers. Luckily this year our higher margin levels should keep us in positive territory, though that doesn’t mean we can rest easy in these coming weeks.
by John Keller | Jan 28, 2014 | Customer News, Fuel Pricing Software, Fuel Pricing Technology, Fuel Software
The PriceAdvantage team is pleased to announce that J & H Oil has joined the PriceAdvantage family. J & H Oil is running PriceAdvantage in the cloud, a configuration that has become quite popular with our customers over the past 12 months. The cloud configuration, also known as “Software as a Service”, frees up company IT resources because the server maintenance responsibility rests with the PriceAdvantage team.
J & H Oil is a family owned and operated company running 36 company operated convenience stores in West Michigan. J & H Oil had a rigorous evaluation process for their fuels pricing solution, including a pilot of running PriceAdvantage in the real world. J & H Oil found PriceAdvantage to be the best way to improve the speed at which they collect competitor information, and to make sure all price changes are accurate. J & H Oil also found the SNAP Analytics in PriceAdvantage to be quite valuable, so they elected to include that in their implementation.
We at PriceAdvantage look forward to a strong and long-term partnership with J & H Oil – welcome to the family!
by John Keller | Jan 14, 2014 | Fuel Pricing Software, Fuel Pricing Technology, Fuel Software, PriceAdvantage
The PriceAdvantage team is pleased to announce the immediate availability of version 2013.3. This version is a result of numerous feature requests from our customers.
Here are a few highlights of this new release.
- Display competitor survey prices based on the most reliable source on a store by store basis. In some cases the store may reflect the most accurate competitor prices using OPIS alone, while in other cases it may be best to display both OPIS and PriceAdvantage survey prices side by side for validation. You decide which source is best for which store.
- The new Volume Correlation report shows the trend of fuel volumes and prices with a configurable set of non-fuel metric options imported from PDI. This report helps determine the market profile of each store and the elasticity between fuels and in-store merchandise product categories such as food.
- The new Margin Percentage report shows calculated price with fuel volumes, and margin as percentage of price. This allows you to see side by side margins expressed as both cents per gallon and percentage of price, bridging the gap between traditional fuel pricing teams focused on retail fuels, and marketing groups who typically focus on non-fuel product categories.
- PriceAdvantage Web has a new menu navigation system, as well as analysis views, scheduled price changes, and a map view showing all stores and all competitors.
PriceAdvantage customers can contact their sales representatives to discuss upgrade options. Work is already well underway for version 2014.1 – stay tuned for more exciting capabilities, developed in close partnership with all our customers. We couldn’t do it without you!
by John Keller | Dec 30, 2013 | Customer News, Fuel Price Management Solutions, Fuel Pricing Software, Fuel Software
The PriceAdvantage team would like to congratulate Rutter’s for opening their 59th location. Rutter’s has been a long-time Skyline Products customer of both PriceAdvantage and Skyline electronic price signs.
Rutter’s started using PriceAdvantage as a pilot project in 2007, and seeing success there, they rolled out PriceAdvantage to all their stores in 2011. The Rutter’s implementation of PriceAdvantage is a complete closed loop fuel pricing software solution, including NCR Radiant POS systems, Skyline electronic gas price signs, and GasBuddy OpenStore.
Thank you Rutter’s for your great partnership, and congratulations to your successful launch of store #59.
by John Keller | Nov 25, 2013 | Customer News, Fuel Price Optimization, Fuel Pricing Software, Industry News, Retail Fuel Margins
In a recent update, J.P. Morgan announced they will begin financial coverage of CST Brands and Murphy USA. In their initial report, they make specific mention of their preference to the CST Brands strategy of focusing on higher margin in-store merchandise through larger store formats. The reason they gave was “Against a backdrop of stagnant gasoline demand and volatile fuel margins, the industry appears to be focused on growing higher-margin, in-store convenience merchandise through larger store formats. We prefer CST’s growth story, with new format stores driving margin growth over time and reducing the company’s dependence on fuel margins.”
In a blog dated November 14, 2013, I wrote about the correlation between fuel volumes an in-store sales. PriceAdvantage now allows you to select an unlimited number of product categories from an imported set of data from PDI, and run a report showing the correlation between retail fuel volumes and retail fuel prices with the selected data. That means you can see how fuel promotions impact in-store product category sales, along with the number of in-store transactions. You can even see how promotions of one in-store product category impact sales of another in-store product category, along with fuel volumes and fuel prices.
Clearly this strategic thinking is inline with what J.P. Morgan rewards. CST Brands has been a loyal PriceAdvantage customer since 2012. Does your fuel software allow you to investigate these correlations and maximize both fuel and in-store margins?
