What Your Assortment Looks Like

Have you ever asked your marketing team to describe the merchandise assortment sold by your brand?

You'll get a different opinion than what your merchandising team says, that's for sure.

Now, have you ever asked your analytics team that question?

Your analytics team is not going to have product knowledge, and they sure won't understand how the assortment "communicates the myriad values of the brand proposition" that you'll hear from your marketing team.

But they might start off with a graph of annual sales by item, ranked by 1%-tiles.

This brand sold 72,000 different items last year. Only a handful of the items generated meaningful volume. Somebody on the inventory team has to know that the 55,000th best selling item sold 9 units at $20 each, and has to have the ability to get those items and have them shipped quickly.

Meanwhile, almost all customers have a relationship with about 12% of the items being sold ... about 8,000 items in total.

The analyst, therefore, is going to take a different view of this brand. The analyst is going to focus on +/- 8,000 items ... probably more ... and will make judgements about how those items contribute to the success of the brand.

More on this topic tomorrow.