Kingfisher, one of Europe's largest home improvement retailers, has rolled out Core IQ, a shared data platform designed to give vendors unprecedented access to performance metrics across its French operations. The platform, developed in partnership with Converteo and deployed in under six months, went live initially at Castorama and Brico Dépôt France, with plans to expand to B&Q and Screwfix in the UK. Core IQ provides first and third-party vendors with autonomous, real-time access to granular data spanning turnover, sales transactions, stock levels, and product performance—broken down store by store and product by product. The platform supports both foundational insights and premium analytics tiers, allowing vendors to select data access levels aligned with their operational needs. Currently, more than 900 users are actively leveraging the platform, which Kingfisher positions as part of its broader retail media strategy.
The launch represents a strategic shift in how traditional retailers manage vendor relationships and monetize their data assets. By centralizing performance data and offering self-service access, Kingfisher is addressing a longstanding friction point in retail-vendor collaboration: the time lag between data collection and actionable insights. Historically, vendors relied on periodic reports and aggregated metrics, making it difficult to respond quickly to inventory shortages, regional demand variations, or promotional opportunities. Core IQ inverts this model, enabling vendors to diagnose performance issues and adjust strategies in near real-time without requiring constant retailer intermediation.
Strategic Implications for Retail Media Infrastructure
The Core IQ deployment signals Kingfisher's intent to build a vertically integrated retail media ecosystem that extends beyond traditional advertising placements. While retail media has primarily focused on sponsored product listings and display advertising, data platforms like Core IQ create additional revenue streams by packaging performance intelligence as a premium service. This approach mirrors strategies employed by Amazon through its Brand Analytics and Vendor Central tools, where data access becomes both a vendor enablement feature and a monetization lever.
For Kingfisher, the platform addresses several operational priorities simultaneously. It strengthens vendor retention by providing tools that improve sell-through rates and inventory efficiency. It creates a foundation for performance-based advertising products, where campaign optimization relies on the same data infrastructure vendors use for assortment planning. Moreover, it positions the retailer to capture a larger share of vendor marketing budgets by demonstrating direct attribution between platform insights and sales outcomes.
The choice to develop Core IQ in partnership with Converteo, a consultancy specializing in data strategy and analytics, reflects the technical complexity of building unified data infrastructure across multiple banners. Castorama and Brico Dépôt operate with distinct merchandising systems, store formats, and customer bases, requiring normalization of data schemas and governance frameworks before vendors could access cross-banner insights. The six-month development timeline suggests Kingfisher prioritized speed to market over exhaustive feature completeness, likely relying on cloud-native architectures and pre-built analytics modules to accelerate deployment.
Impact on Catalog Management and Product Content Workflows
Data platforms like Core IQ introduce significant downstream effects on how retailers and vendors manage product information architecture. When vendors gain visibility into product-level performance across hundreds of stores, they inevitably identify gaps in catalog completeness, attribute accuracy, and content richness. A vendor discovering that certain SKUs underperform in specific regions may trace the issue to missing technical specifications, inadequate imagery, or poor categorization—all of which require updates to product feeds and content management systems.
This dynamic creates pressure on retailers to maintain high-quality product information management (PIM) infrastructure. If Core IQ surfaces that products with enhanced content—detailed dimensions, installation guides, sustainability certifications—consistently outperform minimal listings, vendors will demand tools to enrich their catalog entries efficiently. Kingfisher must ensure its PIM systems can accommodate frequent content updates without introducing errors or delays in syndication to e-commerce channels and in-store digital displays.
The platform also influences assortment planning velocity. Vendors analyzing Core IQ data may identify white space opportunities—product categories with high demand but limited availability—and propose new SKU introductions. Traditional assortment processes involve lengthy review cycles, buyer negotiations, and phased rollouts. Data-driven assortment decisions require retailers to streamline approval workflows and accelerate time-to-shelf, particularly for seasonal or trend-responsive products. This places demands on catalog onboarding systems to validate product data, assign taxonomy, and integrate inventory management without manual bottlenecks.
Retail Media Evolution and Data Monetization Models
Kingfisher's positioning of Core IQ as part of its retail media play reflects the industry's broader shift toward data-centric revenue models. Retail media networks have grown rapidly as retailers recognize that their first-party data—customer transaction histories, browsing behavior, loyalty program insights—constitutes a valuable asset that brands will pay to access and activate. Core IQ extends this logic by treating operational data as a complementary product alongside advertising inventory.
The tiered access model, offering foundational insights and premium analytics, suggests Kingfisher is experimenting with freemium monetization. Basic performance metrics may be provided at no cost to maintain vendor engagement, while advanced features—predictive analytics, competitive benchmarking, automated alerts—carry subscription fees or are bundled with retail media spending commitments. This approach aligns vendor data access with advertising investment, creating incentives for brands to consolidate spending within Kingfisher's ecosystem rather than fragmenting budgets across multiple retailers.
The platform's evolution toward a "one-stop shop for data and retail media" indicates plans to integrate advertising campaign management directly into the Core IQ interface. Vendors could transition seamlessly from analyzing product performance to launching sponsored product campaigns targeting underperforming regions or high-opportunity customer segments. This integration reduces friction in the vendor workflow and increases the likelihood of capturing incremental advertising revenue, as vendors no longer need to navigate separate systems for insights and activation.
Challenges in Cross-Banner Data Standardization
Deploying Core IQ across Kingfisher's portfolio presents technical and organizational challenges rooted in the heterogeneity of its banners. B&Q operates as a mass-market DIY retailer with extensive online presence, while Screwfix targets trade professionals with a focus on rapid fulfillment and product depth. Castorama and Brico Dépôt serve overlapping but distinct customer segments in France, with different merchandising priorities and store formats. Unifying performance data across these banners requires reconciling differences in product hierarchies, pricing strategies, and promotional calendars.
Data governance becomes particularly complex when vendors sell through multiple Kingfisher banners. A power tool manufacturer supplying both B&Q and Screwfix may need aggregated views of performance across both channels, while respecting each banner's competitive sensitivities around pricing and assortment. Core IQ must balance transparency—providing vendors with actionable insights—against confidentiality, ensuring that proprietary retail strategies and margin structures remain protected.
The gradual rollout strategy, beginning with France before expanding to the UK, allows Kingfisher to refine its approach based on early adopter feedback. French operations serve as a controlled environment to test data quality, user experience, and vendor engagement before scaling to larger markets. This phased deployment also accommodates regulatory considerations, as data sharing practices must comply with GDPR in Europe and evolving privacy frameworks that govern how retailers collect, store, and distribute customer and transaction data.
Implications for Vendor Operations and Strategic Planning
For vendors, Core IQ represents both an opportunity and an obligation. Access to granular performance data enables more sophisticated sell-through optimization, but it also raises expectations for responsiveness. Vendors who fail to act on insights—restocking high-performing SKUs, discontinuing underperformers, adjusting pricing in response to competitive dynamics—risk losing shelf space or promotional support. The platform effectively shifts some responsibility for category management from retailer buyers to vendors themselves, requiring brands to invest in analytics capabilities and decision-support systems.
Smaller vendors may face resource constraints in leveraging Core IQ effectively. While large brands employ dedicated retail analytics teams capable of processing real-time data feeds and executing rapid strategy adjustments, mid-sized and emerging brands may lack the infrastructure to fully capitalize on platform insights. This dynamic could create competitive advantages for well-resourced vendors, potentially influencing Kingfisher's assortment composition over time toward brands with stronger data literacy and operational agility.
The platform also influences vendor negotiations around terms and conditions. Armed with performance data demonstrating strong sell-through and low return rates, vendors gain leverage in discussions about pricing, promotional funding, and shelf space allocation. Conversely, Kingfisher can use the same data to justify tougher terms for underperforming products or to demand investment in content enhancements and marketing support as conditions for continued placement.
Technology Architecture and Scalability Considerations
Building a platform capable of ingesting, processing, and serving data across multiple banners, thousands of stores, and hundreds of thousands of SKUs requires robust technical infrastructure. Core IQ likely relies on cloud data warehousing solutions that aggregate transaction logs, inventory feeds, and point-of-sale data in near real-time. The platform must handle varying data latency—online transaction data updates continuously, while in-store sales may sync hourly or daily—and present unified metrics that account for these temporal inconsistencies.
User interface design plays a critical role in adoption. Vendors with varying levels of technical sophistication must navigate dashboards, configure alerts, and export data for integration into their own systems. Balancing feature richness with usability requires iterative testing and refinement, particularly as Kingfisher scales the platform to accommodate thousands of users across different regions and languages.
The partnership with Converteo suggests Kingfisher opted for a consultancy-led build rather than licensing an off-the-shelf retail media platform. This approach offers customization advantages, allowing Core IQ to align precisely with Kingfisher's data architecture and business priorities, but introduces ongoing maintenance and feature development responsibilities. As the platform evolves, Kingfisher must decide whether to internalize development capabilities or maintain external partnerships for enhancements and scaling.
Broader Industry Context and Competitive Positioning
Kingfisher's Core IQ launch occurs amid intensifying competition among retailers to build retail media capabilities. Home Depot and Lowe's in the United States have developed similar platforms, offering vendors performance data alongside advertising opportunities. These initiatives reflect recognition that retail media represents a high-margin business with significant growth potential, particularly as e-commerce channels mature and physical store traffic stabilizes.
The home improvement category presents unique characteristics for data-driven retail media. Purchase cycles are longer than in grocery or apparel, with customers often conducting extensive research before committing to high-value items like appliances or building materials. Performance data must therefore account for multi-touch attribution, where online browsing, in-store consultation, and eventual purchase may occur across different channels and timeframes. Core IQ's ability to connect these touchpoints determines its value in guiding vendor strategy and optimizing marketing investment.
As Kingfisher expands Core IQ internationally, it must navigate competitive dynamics specific to each market. In the UK, B&Q faces competition from Travis Perkins' portfolio of trade-focused banners and online-first disruptors like ManoMano. A robust data platform could serve as a differentiator in vendor negotiations, particularly for brands evaluating where to allocate limited merchandising and marketing resources across multiple retail partners.
The trajectory of Core IQ will likely influence how Kingfisher structures its internal organization and allocates investment across digital capabilities. Retail media and data services require specialized talent in analytics, software development, and vendor account management—skill sets distinct from traditional retail buying and merchandising. Building these capabilities signals a strategic commitment to evolving Kingfisher's business model beyond pure product resale toward a platform approach where data and services generate increasing shares of profitability.
The Kingfisher initiative highlights a crucial trend: data-driven decision-making is becoming paramount in e-commerce. The ability to rapidly analyze product performance, inventory levels, and market trends is shifting the balance of power toward those with the best data infrastructure. For e-commerce businesses, regardless of size, high-quality product feeds are a cornerstone in this new landscape. A robust PIM system like NotPIM ensures that the data flowing into platforms like Core IQ is complete, accurate, and readily adaptable to changing market demands, which is essential to stay competitive. Furthermore, ensuring data integrity is vital for any business looking to avoid common mistakes in product feed uploads. This is particularly important to consider when creating sales-driving product descriptions, which rely deeply on high-quality data. Without high-quality data, an online store runs the risk of experiencing data integration challenges. The need for a flexible system is even more apparent when considering the requirements for adapting to new sources of information, so it's always a good idea to research how to choose the right supplier.