What is a demand event?
A demand event is a discrete, timestamped notification raised when a product’s demand state changes materially. Where a demand signal is a continuous measurement, an event marks the moment a change crosses a meaningful boundary — the thing a merchandiser would want to know about as it happens.
What types of demand event does Flockr raise?
Six: a lifecycle transition (a product moves between lifecycle states), a cart surge (a sharp rise in active carts), a demand spike (a sudden jump in views or purchases), a rank change (a product’s category rank moves materially), a low-stock alert, and a restock detected. Each event records a before-and-after value pair, so the magnitude of the change is queryable rather than just flagged.
Why are some demand events debounced?
Each event type has a minimum gap before the same event repeats for the same product, which keeps the live feed signal-dense rather than noisy. Cart surges carry the shortest gap because cart counts are the most volatile metric; rank changes carry the longest because ranks move slowly. Inventory crossings — low-stock and restock — have no debounce, because a discrete inventory change should always surface.
How do merchandisers use demand events?
Demand events appear in the portal’s live demand feed and turn “discover after the fact” into “act as it happens”: restock a product whose stock runway is short while demand is accelerating, give placement to a product riding a demand spike, or respond to a cart surge before stock runs out.