Assortment strategies

A product range is all the products that your company produces. The product range can also be called all the products that are offered on the market in the niche you are interested in. If you sew beautiful women’s bags in ethnic style and sell them in the city where you live, all women’s bags that are offered in stores in your city will be the product range of interest to you.

Important characteristics of the assortment are its width and depth. The width of the assortment is the number of different product lines that the company produces. For example, a company that produces backpacks can only design and sell travel backpacks, and can have several product lines: travel backpacks, backpacks for schoolchildren, bags and backpacks for preschoolers, bags for sports shoes. Suppose that this company also sells related products and offers customers stationery, goods for sports and tourism. All this is the width of the assortment.

The second indicator is the depth of the range. Here, marketers take into account the number of product options in a product line. So, our backpack manufacturer can develop several tourist models for men and women and many options for school backpacks for boys and girls, with orthopedic support for the back and without it, for students of different ages, with different patterns

the number of backpack models can reach several tens in one product line - this will be an indicator of depth.

When working with a product range, it is very important to understand and skillfully use strategies for working with a product range. Let's consider them in more detail.

If we work with the depth of the range, we can deepen the range by adding our products, or reduce the range, excluding products from the line. Deepening the assortment is adding products in the same category or adding additional options for the same model. If you sewed only black and blue backpacks, and now offer the same backpack also in green - this is a deepening of the range. Another example is the deepening of the assortment - expanding the size range of clothes, adding to the line of sizes for women with small stature, or for very tall people.

On the other hand, a reduction in assortment is a decrease in such options: a dress that used to be available in three colors is now available in only one. So the company can manage the range of its products.

When working with the depth of the assortment, the company can maintain the assortment by supporting the brand, or narrow it down, excluding their assortment from certain positions. Brand support is the addition of other products to an already successful brand. For example, a milk producer may start producing yoghurts and sour cream under the same brand name, making the packaging recognizable and retaining the same name. The narrowing of the assortment is the reduction of varieties of goods of related categories. For example, a backpacker company decided to stop producing women's backpacks and focus on other niches. The narrowing of the assortment occurs if some products bring significantly less profit than other varieties.

The ability to work with the assortment correctly will help you get the maximum profit from the products that your company produces.