Assortment Planning
Assortment planning decides what the store carries, balancing the catalog like the portfolio it is.
What assortment planning is
Assortment planning decides what the store will carry: the mix of categories, products, variants, and price points for a season or period, balanced against budget, space, and what the customer comes for.
Why assortment planning matters
The catalog is a portfolio: too narrow and shoppers leave unserved, too broad and capital scatters across sameness. Planning allocates the buying budget where demand, margin, and brand point together, before the purchase orders make it permanent.
What assortment planning weighs
- Role per category: traffic drivers, margin makers, basket builders
- Depth versus breadth: how many options, how much stock each
- Price architecture: good-better-best coverage
- Last season’s sell-through as the honest teacher
Frequently asked questions
How do small stores plan assortment?
The same questions at spreadsheet scale: what role does each product play, what did sell-through say last time, where is the budget overexposed to one bet. The discipline matters before the tooling does.
What does review and search data add to assortment?
The demand you don’t carry yet: site searches with no results, review requests for variants, and complaint patterns all point at gaps and duds. The catalog customers ask for is written in the data they leave.