Market intelligence in Traditional Trade is still analog. Store conditions change every day, but the systems used to read them often move too slowly, too narrowly, or too far from the shelf. Native’s merger with Frontline Research Group (FRG) brings a long-established East African market share feed into the operating system for offline trade. The result is a clearer path to digitise Traditional Trade: map the stores, read market movement, direct execution, and measure what changed.
Frontline Research Group has operated across East Africa for decades. Its work in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, and Ethiopia built a deep view of how consumer goods move through complex retail terrain. Inside Native, that capability becomes part of a broader system that makes physical stores machine-readable for commercial leaders who need precise action, not delayed abstraction.
Decades of East African market reading
East Africa is one of the most important growth regions for consumer goods. Traditional Trade remains central to distribution, availability, pricing, and local competitive pressure. The channel is fragmented, fast-moving, and difficult to read from the outside.
FRG’s long presence in the region created structured market data for the realities of African trade. It captured outlet conditions, product movement, retail structure, and category change across markets where formal data sources rarely describe what is happening store by store.
Continuous category measurement
FRG’s East African panels are strongest in beverages, personal care, beauty, home care, and nutrition. These recurring market reads capture sales and distribution patterns across independent shops, larger outlets, and the trade environment between them.
For beverage companies, the feed shows product movement across channels and markets. For personal care, beauty, home care, and nutrition companies, it shows where products are moving, where distribution is thin, and where pricing or competitive pressure is changing.
Native turns this recurring measurement into a stronger operating layer:
Together, the system connects the market read to the next store-level decision.
Two paths into the East African feed
Buying organizations can access the East African capability in two ways.
The first is historical market data. FRG’s archive shows long-term movement across countries, categories, and retail structures. It helps commercial teams understand past performance, demand shifts, and the conditions that shaped market outcomes.
The second is participation in recurring syndication programmes. Participating companies receive ongoing category measurement while sharing the cost of collection across a defined industry group. The model gives each participant a consistent view of the market without rebuilding the feed from zero.
Trusted by global and local consumer goods leaders
FRG’s East African work has been used by leading multinational consumer goods companies and locally focused businesses. These organizations depend on clear reads of distribution networks, market penetration, share movement, and store-level performance across diverse trade environments.
Native strengthens that foundation. The acquired capability gives Native a proven market share feed in East African Traditional Trade. Native adds the operating architecture needed to make the channel more readable, more actionable, and more measurable.
Retail census data that maps the trade
Beyond recurring category measurement, FRG built extensive retail census data across East Africa. This outlet-level base shows where stores are located, how markets are structured, and where distribution coverage can expand.
This is Lattice territory. Lattice maps the trade by structuring the store universe, coverage, routes, and territories. When combined with the East African feed, the census base helps commercial leaders see where to act and how to sequence store-level execution.
Digitising Traditional Trade
East Africa will keep growing, but growth will not be won through broad averages. It will be won store by store, category by category, and market by market.
Native’s merger with FRG moves a valuable analog intelligence base into a digital operating system for offline trade. The platform makes Traditional Trade machine-readable so commercial leaders can see the trade clearly, act with precision, and measure whether the market moved.
For more information contact: Steve Johnson, VP Sales l Africa , Tel: +230 5493 6376, email: steve.johnson@native.io or Art Janse van Rensburg, Director of Sales Africa, Tel: +27 (0)71 889 9080, email: art@native.io.
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