Managing product assortments for hundreds of stores that belong to different chains and have different store profiles is anything but straightforward. You try to make assortment decisions on chain level while balancing to meet the local needs and being ready to delist the slow movers that don’t have an impact on customer flow and shopping basket. Also, a certain percentage of the assortment renews on regular basis and there are hundreds of novelty products to be considered monthly. That is when you want to make sure you have a structured, strategic approach in place, and introducing assortment classes to your planning process allows you to take a giant leap towards more structured way of making decisions.

But what are assortment classes? Stores and chains can be divided into different clusters based on their size, clientele or, for example, location. We call these different store and chain clusters assortment classes. A store can belong to different assortment classes depending on the category and assortment class structures can vary across categories. Essentially, stores that belong to the same assortment class receive the same assortment in that specific category or merchandising group.

Essentially, stores that belong to the same assortment class receive the same assortment in that specific category or merchandising group.

With A² Assortment Planning you can create your own assortment class structures and utilize them throughout all the planning. Assortment classes enhance efficiency, make it faster to include novelties and increase transparency across chains and store clusters significantly. When chain and store cluster level assortment classes for an individual product are managed in parallel, you can be sure all the listing decisions are made consistently.

When adding novelty products to the assortment, you can easily define which assortment class they belong to and make sure they are considered in different chains. You can define whether a novelty product is part of the mandatory assortment or if it belongs to the optional assortment and an individual store can make the listing decision. You can also instantly see the available space in the different assortment classes and plan the assortment according to this space. This info helps you when deciding on new product listings or when allocating shelf space to your suppliers.

You can define whether a novelty product is part of the mandatory assortment or if it belongs to the optional assortment and an individual store can make the listing decision.

With A² Assortment Planning you can also create own product groups on the go and make assortment decisions for products within a certain group together. This makes it faster and easier to plan and manage seasonal assortments or, for example, when you want to focus on one specific brand that is present in several product segments.

Interested to know how assortment classes could help you in planning better, localized assortments - don't hesitate to reach out to us!