The NPD Group has withdrawn its investment from travel retail resulting in the closure of NPD Travel Retail.

TRBusiness had been aware of plans to fold the division for some months, but it is understood that a small handful of staff – around five or six working from home – were to be kept on until the end of April, marking the official end of business.

A spokesperson from NPD Group confirmed the decision was made in February, whereupon work began to transition over parts of the business including NPD Travel Retail’s ‘Traveller Statistics’ service to partner ForwardKeys.

That agreement comes into effect tomorrow (1 May), after both parties joined up to launch the service last year.

FOCUSING ON ‘CORE’ BUSINESS

Several of NPD Travel Retail’s existing employees have been and continue to be involved with the transition to ForwardKeys, TRBusiness has been told.

“ForwardKeys will leverage NPD resource expertise going forward,” said the spokesperson.

Formerly Counter Intelligence Retail (CIR), NPD Travel Retail specialised in traveller statistics, shopper and nationality insights and key market trends for the sector. It operated under the umbrella of US market research firm NPD Group.

Part of the NPD Group family since 2016, CiR was rebranded to NPD Travel Retail last year. TRBusiness can confirm that other services acquired from CiR have now been terminated.

“NPD acquired Counter Intelligence Retail in 2016 with the goal of establishing a point-of-sale (POS) tracking service, complementing our portfolio of businesses and changing the game for travel retailers with data and insight to drive growth,” said the spokesperson.

“However, after years of effort, we were unable to sign on all of the key retailers, and were unable to launch the service. We decided to exit travel retail in order to focus on our core businesses – NPD offers POS tracking and industry expertise in more than 20 other vertical markets – and opportunities for growth through our innovation efforts.”

‘MISSED OPPORTUNITY’ FOR TR

Garry Stasiulevicuis, former President of CiR and now working for Duty Free Innovation as Senior Vice President Commercial Strategy labelled the demise of NPD Travel Retail as ‘a very sad day for the future of travel retail data sharing that should not be lost in the midst of the pandemic’.

“I was incredibly proud to work for the NPD Group, such a forward thinking and professional business and one that achieved more for the development of a data sharing culture in the TR industry than any other business before.

“After significant investment in people and processes, the data sharing dream was almost a reality for NPD and the industry. Their departure from travel retail is not because they are at fault in any way, but because of the trepidation of others as to what it could have really meant for the industry.

“Although understandably overshadowed by the ongoing Covid crisis, when the industry does get back on its feet and is crying out for data to help the recovery, I’m certain hindsight will show us what a huge missed opportunity this was.”

In a LinkedIn post announcing his departure from NPD Travel Retail, former beauty analyst Luke Stockton said: “NPD’s ambition to make the POS data sharing dream in travel retail a reality sadly came to a halt a couple of months ago.

“We tried our best, but unfortunately some key stakeholders in the industry weren’t quite ready for us.”

He praised the travel retail community for its support and shared plans to continue his career in data and insights with big data, analytics and insights firm IRi.

Products and Insights Manager Stuart Hawes also showered praise on the ‘fantastic people’ at the company via his own LinkedIn post.

Another former CiR/NPD employee Rocio Barber said on LinkedIn: “After five and a half [sic] amazing years, my time with CiR/NPD has come to an end. It has been an incredible journey!

“I am forever grateful to the people whom I’ve worked with over the years, who’ve shared their knowledge and skills with me and I will miss them all terribly.”