Case Study: Interacting Challenges

Category performance comes later ... early in a project, I look for high level trends that help guide me to solutions.

I liberally borrow analytics from my Elite Program runs. The rolling twelve-month view of customer behavior is always illuminating.

There's all sorts of goodies in the table.

Customer counts fall away during 2025.

Annual orders per buyer have declined from about 1.17 per year to 1.14 per year ... in other words, customers are only buying once per year. More on that in a future post.

Items per order collapsed in November 2025.

Price per item purchased accelerated in November 2025. It is usually not a coincidence when items per order decrease and price per item purchased increases ... customers have a budget.

AOV decreased for years, but in the last three months of the year AOV increased at a healthy rate.

I mentioned yesterday the problem with new items. This table clearly illustrates the challenge, and the challenge is a two-year challenge that accelerated late in 2025.

The last two columns illustrate trends among items selling at/above their historical average price point (i.e. a $30 item selling for $30) and items selling below their historical average price point (i.e. a $30 item selling for $20). In the past year, items selling below their historical average price point declined faster than items selling at/above their historical average price point. Though demand collapsed, demand collapsed faster among items selling below their historical average price point. The merchandising team was trying to sell at full price. Good job!

Another important Elite Program table is the Comp Segment table. Here is the table.

There are many tidbits here that shape where the analysis is headed. I'll explain those tomorrow. Interestingly ... there IS a marketing challenge that the table above identifies. Can you see it?

So far ...

• A clear merchandising problem with new items.
• Customers only purchase one time per year.
• Customer counts are decreasing throughout all of 2025.
• Prices increased late in 2025.
• More full-priced selling in 2025.