Experience with a large number of sku. Setting the display of products with SKU for each section of the catalog

SKU, SKU) – commodity item identifier, accounting unit, warehouse number. SKU in trade is a product identifier, used to record and track statistics on sold goods.

SKU, Stock Keeping Unit- stock storage unit, or unit warehouse accounting. The concept came to domestic merchandising along with network retail. Before that, without a concept of SKU, they just said: "warehouse unit". Each position accepted at the warehouse and sold through the store, as if a product, a different option for packaging the product, a set of goods (sold together at a promotion), is assigned your SKU. For an enterprise that sells goods, the number of SKUs is the number of separate goods that differ from each other in their properties.

For store supplier each SKU (nomenclature item) is an object of inventory management: inventory is analyzed, replenished, returned, sold, inventory turnover is analyzed by product groups and by assortment, for each SKU item. No matter how many SKUs are in circulation commercial enterprise, the largest amount of revenue accounts for 20% of the total number of item units, so the rational management of balances by nomenclature positions(SKU) is very important. A properly built inventory planning and sales forecasting system can save a company huge amounts of money, and vice versa, errors or fuzzy inventory management for each SKU can “freeze” huge amounts of money on inventory balances.

For retail in the assortment of which there are tens of thousands of assortment positions (SKU), supply management and maintaining stocks at the required level is the most difficult logistic task. That is, all these SKUs must be systematized, for each of the positions, control of the balances must be carried out. Along with the challenge of increasing profitability per square meter, per shelf, SKU management is a fundamental challenge for every retailer.

In the field of merchandising SKU - assortment position (a unit of one product group, brand, variety in one type of packaging in one container). SKUs are classified into groups. For this, an ABC analysis and an XYZ analysis are carried out. Based on the results obtained, all assortment positions (SKU) of each product group and brand can be divided into priority, main and additional. The criterion for determining can be, as I wrote earlier, turnover, the reason for good or bad turnover is the popularity of the position among buyers. The main SKU positions allow the supplier to keep a place on the retail shelf. The main assortment includes those positions that have a consistently large number of regular customers, high-turnover goods with high profitability per unit of output. Additional items to the main assortment have their own loyal customers and they are much less than the main and priority items. The number of additional items should ideally not exceed 20% of the range, otherwise there is a problem with the product and (or) brand.


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SKU(Stock Keeping Unit) - commodity item identifier, stock keeping unit, warehouse number used in trade to track statistics on sold goods/services. Each sold item, be it a product, product variant, bundle of products (sold together), service, or premium, is assigned a different SKU. SKU is not always associated with physical goods, being rather an identifier of the entity being submitted for payment. Rush shipping, membership fees, connection fees are intangible, may have their own SKUs if billed.

SKU is convenient when you need to track the sales statistics of a particular product, compare sales of different product options. Let, for example, mattresses from the same material and production technology be sold in options: 120x50 cm or 110x55 cm in white, beige or lilac colors. It makes sense to assign six different SKUs to any possible variant so that you can later track the number of sales for each variant individually.

SKU - professional vocabulary

Assortment goal setting is the definition of the number of SKUs that the manufacturer wishes to present at the point of sale. Assortment goals for different sales channels can differ significantly from each other. For what reason? Most often there are two.

  • First, shelf space varies across channels and is limited.
  • Secondly, buyers come to different trading channels with different needs and assortment requirements. This is where you need to answer the question: what to present on the shelf.

All assortment positions (SKU) of each product group and brand can be divided into priority, main and additional. The criterion for determining is the popularity of the position among buyers. Let's say orange juice and green apple juice are sold 4 or more times more often than any other juice. At the same time, regardless of price category. Such positions are called priority. In the total number of SKUs of one brand, they usually make up about 20%.

The next group of SKUs are the main positions that allow you to keep your shelf space. The main assortment includes those positions that have a consistently large number of regular customers. In the group of juices, such positions are most often tomato, cherry, pineapple, peach, apricot. They make up about 60% of the total number of brand SKUs.

Additional positions have their loyal customers and they are much less than the main and priority positions. The number of additional positions does not exceed 20%.

see also


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See what "SKU" is in other dictionaries:

    SKU- UK US noun [C] (also SKU number) COMMERCE ABBREVIATION for stock keeping unit: a number or set of numbers given to a product to show which particular one it is. SKUs are usually printed along with a bar code: »Each product is given a separate… … Financial and business terms

    SKU- ist eine Abkürzung für: Stock Keeping Unit (Bestandseinheit) Stauraumkanal mit untenliegender Entlastung Sveriges Kommunistiska Ungdömsförbund (Schwedischer Kommunistischer Jugendverband) SKU steht für: SKU Amstetten, ein österreichischer… … Deutsch Wikipedia

    sku-Ⅰ*sku germ., Verb: nhd. schauen; ne. look(Verb), see(Verb); Reconstructions basis: got.; Hinweis: s. *skawwōn; Etymologie: Etymologie unklar; Weiterleben: got … Germanisches Wörterbuch

    sku-Ⅱ*sku germ., Verb: nhd. bedecken; ne. cover(Verb); Hinweis: s. *skuwōn, *skuwwan; Etymology: s. ing. *skeu (2), *keu (4), *skeu̯ə , *keu̯ə , *skū … Germanisches Wörterbuch

The SKU, or Product ID, is used by retailers to identify and track products or inventory. SKU is a unique code of numbers and letters that can tell about the following characteristics of a product: its manufacturer, brand, type, color and size.

Companies create their own identifiers to uniquely identify the products or services they sell to the public. Take yoga leggings for example: they can be made by the same company but have different SKUs in stores that sell them.

The point of product identification is to be able to keep records more accurately and quickly find the right products from stock. SKU is different from the conventional barcode. Some businesses choose not to enter product identification and use only the latter for product accounting.

Where is SKU commonly used in trading

You can find the use of the item identification system in the following places:

  • Warehouse companies.
  • Retail Stores.
  • Catalogs.
  • Order processing centers.

How an identifier is created

Companies create identifiers using their own software programs, but the set of letters and numbers itself has a certain general structure.

For example, shoes from UGG purple in the style of Bailey Bow size 7 would be written as: UGG-BB-PUR-07

Or a bottle of Tropicana orange juice without pulp would have an ID: TROP-NP-PLAS-89.

Does not exist single standard to create a SKU. However, keep in mind that this number will be watched by real people: the combination of numbers and letters should be as clear and understandable as possible to any employee.

What a product ID is not

SKU is not a barcode familiar to us from a store. The barcode is pasted on the product, regardless of the future place of distribution. This means that you can find a bottle of Pepsi with the same code in different retail stores. The product ID, in turn, is rarely seen on the product itself: it serves the internal workings of the company and is unique for each separately operating business.

And it does not end when the product or service is sold to the end consumer. Everything is much more complicated: the seller needs to calculate how many units of production he was able to sell over the past period, and also place the next order; the supplier - how many inventory items will have to be prepared; merchandiser - to think about how to properly place the remaining goods, occupying the vacant shelves. There is a lot of work, and the commercial success of the enterprise depends on the efficiency of each of the parties and the overall coordination of the partners.

One of the ways to systematize inventory (and hence the organization of trading processes in general) is the introduction of SKU. What is this system, what does it mean for the supplier, retailer and merchandiser and how to use it correctly - in the following paragraphs.

What is a SKU in trading?

SKU is (together with a number of other terms used in trade) an abbreviation, not a single word. It is formed by an abbreviation of the English phrase Stock Keeping Unit - “storage unit in storage”, “warehouse accounting unit” or “warehouse accounting unit”.

None of the correct Russian-language options can be abbreviated into an equally pronounceable and easy-to-remember abbreviation or acronym, therefore, in Russian retail and warehouse practice, tracing papers from English are used: SKU or SKU (by the names of the initial letters). The SKU variant is preferable and is used more often than SKU, however, there are no restrictions on the use of both neologisms.

At first, the SKU system was used to account for real products stored in a warehouse. Each unit was assigned its own number in order; sometimes it was accompanied by alphanumeric designations of belonging to a particular class and subclass, sometimes not. As the products were sold, they were written off on a regular basis, and their places were occupied by new ones. Periodically, usually once a year, the numbering started over.

For example, company XXX long-sleeved T-shirts in red and white could have been assigned the following SKUs:

  1. For whites (in the amount of five pieces):
    • XXX-LS-WH-0001;
    • XXX-LS-WH-0002;
    • XXX-LS-WH-0003;
    • XXX-LS-WH-0004;
    • XXX-LS-WH-0005.
  2. For red (in the amount of three pieces):
    • XXX-LS-RED-0001;
    • XXX-LS-RED-0002;
    • XXX-LS-RED-0003.

Here XXX is the name (usually abbreviated) of the manufacturer, LS is the designation of long sleeves (Long Sleeves), WH is the color designation (white), RED is the color designation (red), 0001 ... 0005 are the serial numbers of each of the units stored in the warehouse .

With the development of production, the abbreviated version of the SKU finally became a thing of the past, since it became more and more difficult to process thousands of identical letters, but related to different product categories. Accounting and logistics processes in trade gradually merged, and certain standards were developed for the SKU.

They, like application methods, are not generally required. Each retail chain, each supplier and even each manufacturer may develop its own system or use the designations accepted by business partners.

Important: the main requirement for modern system SKU in trade - clarity. SKU numbers are handled by a variety of people who tend to make mistakes or create confusion. Therefore, the more “readable” the code is and the less room it leaves for ambiguous interpretations, the better - and vice versa.

For example, let's say that Aqua Vegetae and Arctic Vegetables cans are stored in the same warehouse. For green peas, the abbreviation GB is provided, for cans - IC. The numbering for each can is not used, instead the weight is indicated: 350, 500, 750 and so on.

In such a situation, it would be a serious mistake, given the similar nature of the products, to use the same or similar abbreviations for both manufacturers: AV, AQV / ARV, AVE, and so on. It is better to use longer, but clearly understood abbreviations: AQUAV and ARCTV.

In this case, the full SKU designations for cans will look like:

  • AQUAV-GB-IC-350- for canned food manufacturer Aqua Vegetae weighing 350 grams;
  • AQUAV-GB-IC-500- for cans of Aqua Vegetae weighing 500 grams;
  • ARCTV-GB-IC-350- for Arctic Vegetables canned food weighing 350 grams;
  • ARCTV-GB-IC-500- for Arctic Vegetables products weighing 500 grams, and so on.

Currently, the system can be used to systematize the following units of trade and commerce:

  • real goods (food, Appliances, shoes, clothes, etc.);
  • works or services;
  • financial transactions (transfers, payments, credit services, investments, membership fees).

Thus, today SKU is not a specific product, but a virtual object for which invoices are issued and payments are made. In addition, on the basis of sales and write-offs for each type of product, sales statistics are compiled: through ABC-, XYZ-, FRM- (less often) and other types of analysis.

Statistics allows, using not long official, but abbreviated conditional SKU names, to identify goods (services) with the highest conversion, calculate the variance for the rest and, as a result, draw up a sales schedule and a purchase plan for the following reporting periods. In practice, this is much more complicated and longer than simple, but forecasting in trading is indispensable.

To fully clarify the specifics of the purpose of the SKU, we should consider one more example. Let the Vasilyok Trade company sell goods, provide services in the field of apartment renovation and lend to the population under three main programs. In this case, taking into account the basic heterogeneity of products, it makes sense to supplement the SKU codes with a block indicating the field of activity:

  • G (goods)- for goods;
  • S (Services)- for services;
  • C (Credits)- for loan offers.

In turn, each industry can include SKU codes for the following types products:

  1. For goods:
    • G-MOUC-STS-8800 - for Mountain Crash bikes, StarSee brand, model 8800;
    • G-BBL-T-0200-600 - for pickled vegetables from the BBL company sold in cans (manufacturer's own designation 0200) with a net weight of 600 grams;
    • G-LIGF-TS-SS-GRE-COT-45 - for T-shirts with short sleeves from the manufacturer LightFocus, green, made of cotton, size 45.
  2. For services:
    • S-HOME-KITCH-15 - for home repairs in the kitchen area with an estimated period of 15 days;
    • S-HOME-FULL-20 - for home repairs in the entire apartment with a completion date of 20 days.
  3. For credit services:
    • C-FAM-IND-25 - consumer loan "Family" at a rate of 25% per annum;
    • C-FAM-HOME-15 - mortgage loan "Family" at 15% per annum;
    • C-BUIS-IND-20 - credit for individual entrepreneurs under 20% per annum.

In the future, in order to compile sales statistics for any of the goods offered by the company, it will be enough to use its SKU. Data processing is carried out in the standard way according to ABC- or any other scheme of interest to the entrepreneur.

The SKU system can be used not only by "physical" retail chains, but also by owners - also for reporting and analyzing the current situation. Since there are no generally accepted standards for assigning SKU codes in trade, an entrepreneur or a responsible person can use any convenient designations that allow staff to more comfortably and quickly navigate the warehouse.

In domestic realities, it would be more logical, if it is possible not to break the existing system, to use Cyrillic designations, using the same system of abbreviations that are understandable for staff and unambiguously perceived. At the same time, since the appointment and use of the SKU code is a purely internal matter of the enterprise, not related to consumers and other third parties, if necessary, you can use both Latin and Cyrillic letters (for example, denoting departments and areas of activity as the second, and brands and brands as the first). distinctive features products).

Important: when recruiting new employees, it is worth explaining to them the difference between a barcode and a SKU code. The first refers to global identifiers, is assigned according to a single developed algorithm and is mandatory applied to the product. The second is designed to organize and systematize products in the warehouse and is usually absent on sold products.

Identifier Features

The SKU system is actively used in all areas of trade, replacing the previously existing, but now almost unused, classification of products by article. The use of codes in each of the three areas (retailing, supply and merchandising) has its own characteristics, which will be discussed below.

For retail

The main purposes of assigning SKU codes in retailing are organizing the products available in the warehouse, controlling stocks and planning future purchases. In accordance with the tasks set, the following requirements can be made to the developed SKU codes:

  1. readability. Despite the fact that SKU is a set of several alphanumeric designations, they should be understandable to employees. The more quickly each of the employees can understand what product is in front of him and perform certain manipulations with it, the more profit the owner of the retail network will ultimately receive due to the growth of production conversion.
  2. Operability (machinability). In addition to ease of perception for staff, SKU codes should also be convenient for analysis, and subsequently for statistical calculations and forecasting. Since calculations are usually carried out in spreadsheets, the articles, while maintaining unambiguity, should not be too cumbersome. That is why it makes sense to use abbreviations even for short names of manufacturers, brands, and so on. Continuous numbering for each unit stored in the warehouse is now almost completely a thing of the past, which somewhat simplifies things; it is enough for an accountant to enter the SKU code of the product category, indicate in separate columns the total quantity, the number of products sold and the number of products remaining in the warehouse, and then proceed to process the result.
  3. Uniqueness. Any of the assigned codes in the SKU system must be unique within an enterprise, a group of enterprises or a holding, so that employees cannot make mistakes even under the most incredible set of circumstances. It would be even better if the SKU classification used by the organization turns out to be original in relation to the systems used by competitors. This will help prevent leakage. trade secret concerning the infrastructure of the company or the way it is organized.
  4. Ease of application and reading.If SKU codes are applied and at least partly processed automatically, it is necessary to configure the equipment so that there are no problems with the labeling of each product. Otherwise, the entrepreneur will have to use a mixed mode of processing, which will significantly increase costs while reducing productivity.

Important: as to the identification system, does not exist general requirements to the order of setting the SKU code. It can be pasted on, applied automatically as a barcode, or even handwritten; the main thing is that the chosen method does not reduce the productivity of the retail network employees.

For supplier

The supplier of goods marked within the system of storage accounting units of its own or adjacent to the receiving party can be either a manufacturer or an intermediary, including transport company. Regardless of the relation of the supplier to the manufacturer and the final buyer, the use of articles helps to significantly simplify the process of processing applications and error-free delivery of goods.

It hardly makes sense for an intermediary company to develop its own labeling system, given the short stay of products in a warehouse, transshipment points and on the road. It is more logical to use the SKU system offered by one of the "extreme" parties to the transaction: the manufacturer or the retailer.

However, major carriers of regional or federal significance can also use their own classifiers, focusing on the following requirements:

  1. The applied code must not merge with the previously affixed manufacturer or any other third party. It may well be that the customer and the recipient have agreed to use a single numbering; in such a case, damage to the inscription will make it difficult to classify products in the retailer's warehouse.
  2. If the SKUs are included on invoices, which happens quite rarely, the reseller needs to put "original" and not "own" SKUs in the documents so as not to create confusion.
  3. When automatically applying codes according to the SKU system in warehouses, it is necessary to ensure the readability and accessibility of the inscriptions - otherwise they may not be recognized or partially marked, which will create additional inconvenience and force the entrepreneur to hire additional workers.

Advice: since the supplier, regardless of the form of organization, is the financially responsible person who is obliged to deliver the goods to the retailer, the use of the SKU system is highly desirable. You won’t have to use them in internal reporting, but codes may be needed when concluding contracts or additional agreements with a manufacturer or consumer, and subsequently when drawing up acts of non-compliance and during litigation.

For merchandising

The main goal of merchandising is to increase the saleability of goods and, consequently, the profitability of a retail outlet or network in all possible ways: from the collection and processing of statistical data to the placement of individual items on the shelves.

In accordance with the many times modernized and revised Pareto principle, adapted to trade, in any group of similar products, 20% of products account for 80% of consumer demand. Therefore, it is these 20% that should be located on the most “demanded” among visitors shopping center shelves - on the middle, at the level of an outstretched arm or eye. According to statistics, they account for about 40% of purchases due to visual accessibility. On the second shelf, just below the first, - about 30%, the remaining 30% are distributed between the other two in the standard arrangement: the topmost and the lowest.

To identify the most popular products, you can use both empirical observations, which is quite difficult, tedious and unproductive, and ABC analysis technology, which allows you to identify the most popular products (the same 20%), which are less popular and almost not purchased. To simplify data processing and standardization within the enterprise, a system of SKU codes developed by the retailer is used. Obviously, it is not advisable to come up with your own classification for processing statistical data.

The goods identified using the SKU codes are placed, as mentioned, on the “golden” shelves, taking into account the requirements of the facing. However, the most serious mistake would be to refuse to purchase less popular product samples in favor of the most sold ones. The consumer needs freedom of choice, and the remaining space on the shelf, taking into account the dispersion of demand and the ranking of other goods, is occupied by other products or products.

In the future, in order to further increase the profitability of the outlet using the placement of goods and achieve greater forecasting accuracy, other analysis methods are added to calculations using SKU articles: XYZ (by seasonality), FRM (by frequency), and so on. Comparison of all the results obtained allows the merchandiser to determine the optimal location for each of the goods.

SKU-codes are also needed for workers involved in the placement of products on the shelves. To complete the task in accordance with the scheme, they will have to focus on the same articles; the use of names on the invoice will greatly slow down the business, which means it will lead to a decrease in the profit of the owner of the outlet or the retail network.

In the future, with a gradual selection of goods by visitors, employees will need to compensate for “losses” on the shelves in time. It is also much more convenient to do this by using universal designations within the enterprise, rather than looking for the desired product in the vastness of the warehouse.

Summing up

The SKU code system is used in trade to unify documentation and organize warehouse activities within a particular company. In the article, you can encrypt the field of activity, the name of the manufacturer, the characteristic features of the product, weight and size. At present, serial numbers in the SKU are practically not used, with the exception of piece products.

SKU codes are used both to streamline the work of retail networks and suppliers (carriers), and to simplify the statistical processing of information. The merchandiser can, in order to reduce the time for data entry and unify reports, use not full names, but articles, and then (based on calculations) predict future profitability, analyze other failures and give advice on the optimal placement of goods on the shelves.

Determination of the standard number of SKUs in the assortment is the determination of the total number of SKUs in the assortment of the store and the determination of the number of SKUs in each individual category of goods.

How many SKUs should be in a category? This is the question most often asked by store managers when talking about assortment. And the second question - why so many? What does it depend on?

This question is really extremely important, one might say strategic, - it is related to the financial efficiency of the assortment - the more items in the product category, the longer the inventory turnover period. Accordingly, with a low margin, the necessary high turnover inventory is achieved by narrowing the assortment, its reduction. This issue is also related to the organization of merchandising - the goods must “fit” on the shelves of the store, and the shelf stock must be sufficient to ensure average daily sales and from the point of view of the possibility of replenishing the shelf stock during the day.

First, consider what factors determine the total number of SKUs in a store (Figure 2.5).

Firstly, store format In those industries in which standard formats have developed, for example, in grocery retail, there are established ratios between format and number of SKUs. Grocery store format "discounter near the house" with an area of ​​about 150 square meters has an assortment of 3-4 thousand SKU, and a supermarket of 800-1000 square meters. m. - about 15,000 SKU. Hypermarket in 10 thousand square meters. m. can have 40,000 SKU Of course, the ratios are approximate, but they set guidelines, as they have been developed by the practice of many retail stores and have already confirmed their effectiveness. Therefore, when determining the number of SKUs, first of all, you need to focus on the number of SKUs for stores of a similar format in other (large) chains.


Fig 2. 5. Factors that determine the number of SKUs.

Secondly, competitive situation For example, if you have a small store "near the house" local network, and there are several similar stores of large chains near your store offering goods cheaper than yours. If you offer the same number of products as your competitors, but your prices are higher, customers will not understand why they need to go to such a store. You will have to create a difference, and since you cannot lower prices, you need to create an attractive difference for buyers in the assortment, that is, you need to offer buyers a larger (and better) choice of goods than competing neighbors.

To determine the number of SKUs within product categories and subcategories, a number of other conditions must be taken into account. It should be said that there is no “magic formula” for calculating the optimal number of SKUs in a category and subcategory. Truth is a balance of a number of factors.

First - number of responses to a need, or the number of options, product offers within the framework of one buyer's need. This indicator depends on the format of the store. It is traditionally believed that a "hard" discounter offers one, maximum two responses to a need, i.e., for example, to satisfy the need "buy a whole loaf of black bread" there will be one type of black bread, and to satisfy the need "buy still water to drink immediately” there will be one or two types of non-carbonated water with a volume of 0.5–0.6 liters In the main, or priority, categories, the number of answers may be more (2–3). In the hypermarket low prices the average number of responses to a need is three, since three price segments appear: the cheapest product, the average price and the expensive one. The supermarket, of course, offers 5–7 or more responses to a need, differentiating the product line by price and quality. In fact, this determines depth the retailer's assortment (besides the fact that the premium store will offer a different, wider set of needs to satisfy).

Second - capacity, or capacity, commercial equipment. If the store already exists, then it has a certain number of units of commercial equipment - shelving, refrigeration, etc. This equipment can accommodate a finite number of types of goods. For example, you have one rack 1 meter wide and 5 shelves high to hold juices. The average width of one juice package is 8 cm, that is, 12 packages can be placed on one shelf, 60 packages on a rack. Of course, we cannot place 60 SKUs for 60 “seats”, since some of the most popular positions should receive doubling or tripling of faces (one face is a line of products of the same name (SKU) with a width of one package, placed from the edge of the shelf, facing to the buyer, in the depth of the shelf in the amount of several pieces).

As a rule, stores set the average number of faces per SKU at 2 or 3 or more (for a discounter), supermarkets can calculate based on 1–1.5 faces per SKU.

Consider the procedure for calculating the number of SKUs based on the capacity of the retail equipment of an existing store.

It should be noted here that two options are possible.

The first is the calculation of the number of SKUs based on the existing retail equipment assigned to product categories and subcategories.

For example, you already have a store, and it has two racks allocated under the “Juices” category. Then we calculate the maximum number of juice faces for these two racks, divide by the average number of faces per SKU selected for your format, and get the maximum number of juice SKUs in the assortment.

Rack dimensions: width 1 m, height 5 shelves.

Number of racks: 2.

Weighted average size of one juice box: 8 cm.

Number of juice faces on two racks: 120 faces.

Average number of faces per SKU: 3.

Maximum juice SKUs: 40 SKUs.

The second option is to calculate the number of SKUs with simultaneous adjustment (if necessary) of the amount of shelf space allocated for a product category or subcategory. Of course, this method is more laborious, but also more accurate.

In this case, you first need to analyze the effectiveness retail space by comparing the share of a category or subcategory in income with the share in area trading floor(for large formats) or with a share in installation area shop (for small formats). Normally, there should be an approximate correspondence of these shares (for more details, see Chapter 3).

Third, calculation economically sound number of SKUs.

This requires the same data that is used for ABC analysis - shares with a cumulative total by SKU.

Consider an example from real practice (Figure 2. 6). The subcategory “Interior paints” in the DIY hypermarket included 254 SKUs (horizontal axis), along the vertical axis – shares with a cumulative total. By the nature of the curve (graph), it is obvious that in the range between approximately 180 and 220 SKUs, the assortment is “saturated” - a further increase in SKUs does not give an increase in turnover. This is a conditional "corridor" of the optimal number of SKUs Conditional, since this number, as already mentioned, is influenced by a number of factors.


Fig 2. 6. Conditional "corridor" of the optimal number of SKUs

Usually, the shares of product classes in the assortment are strictly regulated, since different classes goods in one store are sold in completely different ways, have different profitability and require different approaches to management. For example, it is necessary to strictly define the shares of food and non-food products, the shares of clothes and shoes, the shares of clothes, shoes, furniture, food, toys in a children's goods store.

In stores with a certain product specificity and a certain format, there are “settled” ratios. For example, in a hypermarket, about 40% of the assortment is foodstuffs and about 60% are non-food. In the supermarket and department store, approximately 80% are food products, 20% - non-grocery goods. Shoes in a mixed clothing and footwear store occupies no more than 10-15% of the assortment. In a multi-profile children's goods store, clothes and shoes usually dominate, followed by toys and food, furniture in terms of share in the assortment in last place.

Regarding product groups and product categories, there are no strict rules for the distribution of shares, they must be determined by the store itself, based on established practice, the results of financial efficiency and positioning of the store. For example, in ordinary jewelry stores of a low and medium price segment, the shares of product groups can be approximately the following:

Silver items - about 10%;

Gold items without inserts - about 20%;

Gold items with non-precious inserts - about 25%;

Products made of gold with inserts of ornamental stones - about 20%;

Gold items with semi-precious inserts - about 15%;

Jewelry made of gold with precious inserts - about 10%

Chains - 25%;

Pendants - 20%;

Rings - 20%;

Earrings - 15%;

Bracelets - 10%;

Necklace - 7%;

Piercing - 3%

Next important point- highlighting the main characteristics of the product, those that are the selection factors in the tree purchasing decisions The classifier, limited to 3-5 levels of the hierarchy, does not cover all the important properties of the product - the characteristics of the product must be reflected in the product card in the company's information system. This is necessary to analyze sales in the context of all important characteristics and, accordingly, adjust and form the range of goods within the category and subcategory.