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Frontline Research Group, the market intelligence business serving consumer goods companies across more than 14 African markets, has been acquired by Native, the New York-based agentic intelligence company building the operating system for offline trade.
The acquisition price was not disclosed.
The acquisition extends Native’s footprint from Latin America into Africa, marking the next step in the company’s plan to serve the world’s largest offline consumer markets.
This allows consumer brands to see everything from sales to results all in one subscription.
Frontline’s market share panels are trusted by global consumer leaders including AB InBev, Coca-Cola, Heineken, Diageo, Pepsi, and Unilever.
The acquisition adds valuable measurement data from key offline shopping areas to Native’s platform. This technology turns physical stores into digital 3D maps, allowing every product and fixture to be identified, placed, and measured.
As a part of the acquisition, Sean Barnes will join Native as Chief Strategy Officer following the close of the transaction.
“Frontline has built a unique regional position in the market by delivering Traditional Trade market share and other market intelligence in some of the world’s most important offline consumer markets,” said Sean Barnes, CEO of Frontline. Native’s platform gives that data a new dimension, pairing our regional depth with major advancements in machine-readable retail, agentic AI and subscription software. That is a fundamentally stronger offering than either company could deliver alone, and it opens up an exciting new chapter for our team.”
Native is creating a platform for offline trade that helps consumer goods companies understand and manage sales in diverse markets. Their global subscriptions include Lattice (for field execution), Strata (for distribution analytics), and Overwatch (for commercial optimisation).
These tools enable brands to identify opportunities for growth in fragmented physical markets.
“Most people would look at Frontline and see a regional research company. We see a proprietary data asset at the centre of a $1.7 trillion consumer economy,” said Matt McNabb, CEO of Native. “Frontline has built market share signals in 14 African markets that cannot be credibly scraped, inferred or bought off the shelf.”
