Nearly six years ago Walmart sent 500 shelf-scanning robots home after concluding that workers picking online orders could see the
Conversations On Retail
July 20, 2026
Excess and short-dated inventory is inevitable in CPG. The advantage comes from how fast you recover value, protect channels, and reduce waste.
In this Solution Spotlight, Ricky Ashenfelter (Co-Founder & CEO, Spoiler Alert) explains how leading brands digitize discounting and modernize liquidation using a purpose-built sales and analytics platform.
Spoiler Alert helps manufacturers and distributors turn slow-moving and distressed inventory into revenue and impact through workflow automation, vetted buyer connectivity, and AI-driven intelligence (Spoiler Alert iQ). Trusted by more than 1,000 brands, including Kraft Heinz, Nestlé, Mondelēz, Danone, Hormel, and Campbell Soup Company, Spoiler Alert supports value recovery at enterprise scale.
In this episode, we discuss:
About Spoiler Alert
Where Slow-Moving Inventory Meets Fast-Moving Results
Spoiler Alert is the CPG industry’s only purpose-built sales and analytics platform designed to digitize discounting and transform excess and short-dated inventory into opportunity. The platform helps suppliers streamline liquidation workflows, strengthen buyer engagement, and unlock data-driven insights to systematically recover value while reducing waste.
Customers report faster speed to market, higher discount revenue, and less processing time. Since launching in 2019, Spoiler Alert has helped partners sell 1.8 billion pounds of inventory, supported impact reporting using ReFED’s impact calculator, and has been recognized by Fast Company’s World Changing Ideas Awards for its collaboration with Land O’Lakes to reduce food waste.
About Ricky Ashenfelter
Ricky Ashenfelter is the Co-Founder and CEO of Spoiler Alert. Before founding the company in 2015, he worked in Deloitte’s Sustainability practice, supporting major food, retail, and CPG companies including Walmart, WhiteWave, Nike, and SC Johnson. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Georgetown University and an MBA from MIT Sloan and was named to Forbes 30 Under 30 in 2017.