Deleting Product Lines

Every good buyer makes an occasional bad buy.  Buyers must use judgement based on experience and be prepared to take risks.  Nevertheless, many bad buys result from lack of discipline or analysis to complement or test that judgement.

Therefore buyers need to continuously seek information to better assess buying opportunities and work closely with their selling partners in the stores.

Inevitably buyers also need to delete products from the range. Display space is always at a premium and there is a continuous stream of new products.

To avoid over ranging and lowering stockturns, through excessive stock, buyers have to continuously monitor stock for poor performers that can be deleted.

The following guidelines offer points to be considered by buyers in approaching this issue.

GUIDELINES FOR PRODUCT DELETION - 
Select products/product lines for possible deletion based on and gather and analyse information about these products such as:

• declining sales trends;
• declining price trend;
• declining profit trend;
• appearance of substitutes;
• loss of usefulness;
• excessive demands on store owner's time
• profitability (sales, GP, stockturns, GMROI
• customer profile
• employee reactions
• strategic marketing factors
• desire to carry full line
• complementary nature
• supplier implications

Consider non-deletion strategies including:

• supplier support
• cut costs, inventory
• review distribution
• adjust prices
• review presentation in store
• promotion
• (advertising, in store)

Delete the product but consider:

• timing
• parts and replacements
• inventory
• holdover demand
• customer communication
• substitution

Does this help?