Steve Montgomery

FD Buyer: Let's Try Coordinating the Time of Category Reviews

March 8, 2010

FROM RETAILWIRE:
Let's say you're a manufacturer with a new product breakthrough, and you're ready to present it to the trade this month. But let's also say that several of your key retailers won't be reviewing your category until the following January. Would an effort at standardizing which categories are reviewed when be beneficial for the industry?      [more...]

I agree with Mr. Ball that there are pluses and minuses to this type of standardization. One of the minuses is that if everyone launched their new products at the same time within a category, the customer might be bombarded with several new items at the same time, meaning none of them got a chance to shine.

One way to potentially overcome this is if you are in a category where you have a lot of items you could delete (did I say that out loud?) a slow selling item from your line so that the new items could be slotted.