Launching in the UAE
You paid for that shelf. Who's checking it?
Skawt sends an independent auditor into any UAE store, on the day and in the window you choose. GPS-verified photos, scored automatically, findings on your dashboard in under an hour.
Modern trade across all seven Emirates
Lulu · Carrefour · Spinneys · Choithrams · Union Coop · Nesto · Viva
The people reporting on your shelf are the people paid to stock it.
Your merchandising agency visits the store, fixes the facings, then writes the report that tells you how the store looked. When execution slips, that report is the only thing standing between you and the truth — and it was written by the party responsible.
It isn't dishonesty. It's structure. Nobody grades their own homework well.
- 8.3%Shelves sit empty
- The global out-of-stock rate. Unchanged in twenty years, and worse during promotions — exactly when you've spent the most to be there.
- 4%Of annual sales, gone
- Measured across 29 countries. On AED 50M of UAE revenue that's AED 2 million a year walking out of stores you're already paying to be in.
- 75%Caused in-store
- Not the supply chain. Execution. Which means it's visible, and it's fixable — if somebody independent looks.
Self-reported compliance is not data.
Four steps. Under an hour.
- 01
Launch a mission
Pick the store, the SKUs and the window. Tuesday morning before the shelf gets reset. Saturday at 6pm when it's stripped. The hour that actually tells you something.
- 02
A skawt accepts it
Someone independent, with no relationship to your brand, your distributor or your agency. They're paid the same whether the shelf is perfect or empty.
- 03
Evidence gets captured
In-app camera only. GPS-gated, timestamped. If they aren't standing at your shelf, the submission doesn't count.
- 04
AI scores it, you see it
Availability, facings, planogram match, price accuracy, promo compliance, competitor presence. On your dashboard within 60 minutes of acceptance.
No contract. No retainer. No account manager. No quarterly review deck.
Two windows. Pick the one that tells you more.
The same shelf tells you two different stories depending on when someone walks in. Most brands only ever see one of them.
- Morning
- The shelf as your agency left it. Facings straight, stock replenished, everything where the planogram says. This is the version that ends up in the report.
- Evening
- The shelf as your shopper finds it. Picked over, gaps open, the promo end-cap stripped. This is the version nobody photographs.
Pick one, or run both and compare. Both is two visits, so it's two credits.
Findings, not photographs.
Anyone can send you pictures. Skawt scores them against your brief and puts a number on what's wrong.
Shelf health score
One number per store, per visit. Trend it and see which outlets are quietly failing.
In-stock rate
SKU-level availability. Which lines are gone, in which stores, right now.
Share of shelf
Your facings against your competitors', measured from the photo, not estimated.
Price and promo verification
Is the shelf price the price you agreed? Is the promo you paid for actually running?
Planogram match
Does the shelf look like the plan you signed off on?
Revenue at risk
Empty shelves translated into AED, per store, per SKU. The number you take to your commercial meeting.
AED 300 a store visit. That's the whole price list.
Agencies quote on consultation, which usually means a meeting, a scoping call and a proposal before you learn what anything costs. Ours is one number. Larger SKU sets run 1.5 or 2 credits, and we'll tell you which before you spend anything.
- No minimum commitment
- No annual contract
- No implementation fee
The UAE shelf is the most contested on earth.
800+ doors, seven emirates, no visibility
Lulu alone runs around 175 stores here. Add Carrefour, Nesto, Viva, Spinneys, Union Coop, Choithrams and the rest and you're past 800 modern trade outlets. Each group buys centrally and by format, so a listing in one banner doesn't carry to the next. You're paying listing fees, trade margins and marketing investment across all of it, and checking almost none of it.
The cost of looking just collapsed
Crowdsourced shelf auditing used to need a proprietary image recognition stack and years of funding to build one. Today the validation runs through an API for pennies per photo. That's why an independent audit now costs AED 300 instead of a retainer, and arrives in an hour instead of a quarter.
Questions we get asked first.
Who are your auditors?
Independent people holding valid UAE self-employment permits, verified at onboarding. They aren't our employees and they aren't anyone's merchandisers. That independence is the entire product.
Do you replace my merchandising agency?
No. Your agency stocks the shelf. We tell you whether it worked. Most brands use both, and the ones who do tend to find their agency performs better once somebody independent is checking.
Is photography in stores allowed?
We capture shelves, never people. Faces are detected and redacted on-device before anything is uploaded, and our capture rules are built around UAE privacy law rather than bolted on afterwards.
What if the store won't let someone photograph?
Our people shop like shoppers, because that's what they are. If a mission can't be completed cleanly, it isn't submitted and you aren't charged.
How do you know what my shelf is supposed to look like?
You send us the planogram and the SKU list when we set the audit up. That's a five-minute conversation, and it's why the request form only asks which store you want looked at.
Pick a store. We'll audit it. No charge.
Tell us which store and we'll come back within one working day to set it up — the SKUs, the planogram, the window you want it hit. One store, up to three SKUs, on us.
We're onboarding pilot brands in the Emirates now. Slots are limited by auditor coverage, so we're taking them in order.