Lesson 6.1 showed that a collection is a group of styles planned together, and lesson 6.2 showed how that group is timed to reach the shop floor on one date. This lesson teaches the decision that sits between those two steps: whether the group of styles, taken together, is actually a sound range. A merchandiser or buyer can check every single style's costing (Course 1) and get every one of them right, and still approve a range that will not sell well, because the group as a whole is unbalanced. This lesson mainly teaches that decision: how to look at a full range plan sheet and judge the balance of the group, not any one row in it. Without this check, a business can end up with a range of individually well-priced styles that customers cannot actually shop from, because the mix itself was never examined. By the end, you can run four specific balance checks on any range plan and say, with reasons, whether it is ready to approve.
You need: lesson 6.1's idea of a collection as a deliberately planned group of styles, and lesson 6.2's idea that a collection is timed to reach the shop floor together.
By the end of this lesson you can:
Not covered here: how each style's own FOB price is built (Course 1's lessons), how a collection's calendar is timed to a shared shop date (lesson 6.2), and how a buyer decides how much money it can commit to a balanced range (lesson 6.4).
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Collection | A group of styles planned, made and sold together for a season, rather than as a single, standalone order. |
| Range plan | A single sheet listing every style in a collection, so its category, price and colour balance can be checked at a glance. |
| Price point | A specific price level a style is planned to sell at, used to balance a collection across cheaper and more expensive items. |
| Category balance | Having enough styles in each product category, such as tops and bottoms, that customers can put outfits together from the range. |
| Colour balance | A mix of safe, reliably-selling colours and a smaller number of newer or seasonal colours across a range, rather than betting on only one approach. |
| Volume balance | Planning higher quantities on safer, proven styles and lower quantities on newer or higher-risk styles within the same range. |
| Make to Stock (MTS) | Producing against the seller's own sales forecast, rather than a single confirmed buyer order. |
A range plan is not a list of styles to be approved one row at a time. It is a group that has to work together in a shop. A well-balanced collection mixes categories (tops and bottoms, and any other category the business sells), mixes price points (entry, mid and premium, not one price repeated on every style), and mixes colours (a majority of safe, reliably-selling colours with a smaller share of newer or seasonal ones). Checking each style's own numbers in isolation, the way earlier courses checked a single order, cannot catch any of this, because a balance problem is a property of the whole group, not of any one style in it. A range plan sheet exists specifically to make the group visible, side by side, so this check can even be made.
A range plan sheet lists every style with its category, quantity, price and colour count in one place. Once the styles are together on one sheet, four separate checks become possible that a single-style view cannot run.
| What can differ | The shapes you meet | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Category balance | Enough tops relative to bottoms, and any other categories the business sells, that customers can actually put outfits together from the range, not just buy isolated pieces. | A range with only tops, however well priced, leaves a shop unable to sell a complete outfit. |
| Price-point balance | A spread of price points, entry, mid and premium, rather than every style priced the same. | A range priced at one level only reaches one kind of budget, narrowing who can buy from the range in a single shop visit. |
| Colour balance | A mix of safe, reliably-selling colours and a smaller number of newer or seasonal colours, rather than the whole range built on one approach. | Betting the whole range on only safe colours limits newness; betting it all on new colours raises the risk that none of them sell. |
| Volume balance | Higher quantities on safer, proven styles and lower quantities on newer or higher-risk styles, visible at a glance in the range plan sheet's quantity column. | Committing the same quantity to an unproven style as to a proven one raises the forecast risk carried on the whole range. |
None of these four checks replaces the others, and a range can pass three of them while failing the fourth. A range plan sheet is read across all four checks together, every time.
The case we followCedar & Co., the domestic brand with 12 shops, plans its own small range using the same range plan sheet Northline Apparel's buyer Sara used for the T-shirt-and-jeans example in lesson 6.1. The sheet's logic does not change: list every style, its category, quantity, price and colour count, then read the group. What changes is who carries the risk of the decision. Cedar & Co. is Make to Stock: it makes to its own sales forecast rather than filling an already-confirmed buyer order, so it carries the forecast risk of its own range decisions itself, exactly as Course 4 established for Make to Stock production. Sara's range, by contrast, is planned against Northline Apparel's own confirmed buying plan. Both businesses use the same sheet and the same four checks; only the party carrying the consequence of an unbalanced range differs.
Cedar & Co. must therefore decide its own category split, price points and colour counts for its own forecast range, then run the same four balance checks against its own rows that this lesson applies to the reference example.
The worked numberUsing the range plan sheet's own two example rows as the reference balance to check against: Order A's T-shirt (top, 15,000 pieces, USD 3.20) and Order B's jeans (bottom, 3,000 pieces, USD 9.80).
A range that was, say, all tops and no bottoms, or all priced at USD 3.20, would fail this lesson's balance check even if each individual style's own costing (Course 1) were perfectly correct.
A common mistake is treating correct individual costing as proof that the range as a whole is ready. It is not. A range plan sheet full of individually well-priced tops, with no bottoms at all, is still an unbalanced collection: correct pricing on every row says nothing about whether the group of rows, read together, gives customers a workable range to shop from. Balance is a property of the group, not of any single style, and the only way to see it is to read every row of the range plan sheet at once, not one row on its own.
Checking a whole range of styles is not the same as checking each style's price. A group of styles works well together when it mixes tops and bottoms, mixes cheap and expensive pieces, and mixes safe colours with newer ones, so customers can actually shop the range and different budgets are covered. A range plan sheet lists every style together so this can be seen at a glance. Even if every single style is priced correctly, the range as a whole can still fail: all tops and no bottoms, or every style at one price, or every colour the same kind of new or the same kind of safe. Read the whole sheet, not one row.
Omar, the owner of Cedar & Co., is handed a range plan sheet with six new styles for the coming season. Each style's costing has already been checked against Course 1's method and is correct. The range plan sheet's category column reads the same word on every row.
Does correct individual costing on all six styles mean this range plan is ready to approve? Decide before opening the answer.
No — correct individual costing (Course 1's lessons) says nothing about category balance. Two facts decide this together.
First, the category column. All six rows read "Top." Not one style in the proposed range is a bottom, and the range plan sheet's category check exists precisely to catch a gap like this one.
Second, what a shop needs. Cedar & Co. sells through its own 12 shops. A range with no bottoms at all leaves customers unable to complete an outfit from those shops, no matter how well each individual top is priced.
Correct costing on every row and a balanced category split are two separate questions. This range plan answers the first question well and fails the second. Omar should send the range plan back for at least one bottom category before approving it, regardless of how correct the six tops' own costing is.
An unbalanced range, such as one category missing or one price point repeated across every style, risks slower sell-through even when each style is individually well made and priced, because the range does not match how customers actually shop a collection: looking for an outfit, at a budget they can afford, with some safe choices and some new ones. This lesson deliberately does not attach an invented dollar figure to that risk, because it depends entirely on the specific shop, its customers and the season, not on a fixed number that would apply to every range. The cost is real, but it is a cost in slower sell-through and unsold stock, not a number this lesson can responsibly invent for Cedar & Co.'s own range.
The Range plan sheet holds the reference rows: Order A's T-shirt and Order B's jeans. Add rows below for Cedar & Co.'s own range, same columns. Describe its styles qualitatively, not with invented numbers; use the reference rows only as the balance to compare against.
| Balance check | Reference range (already filled in) | Cedar & Co.'s own range |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Top and bottom both present | Check every category your shops need is present |
| Price point | Two price points, USD 3.20 and USD 9.80 | Check the range is not priced at one level only |
| Colour | One colour on each reference row | Check safe and new colours are both represented |
| Volume | 15,000 against 3,000, higher on the simpler style | Check higher quantity sits on your proven styles |
1. What does "range balance" check, that checking each style's own costing does not?
2. Can a range plan be individually well-costed on every style and still fail this lesson's balance check?
3. A different brand plans a 20-style range where every style is priced at exactly the same entry-level price point. Which balance check does this range plan clearly fail?
| EN | AR | FR | TR | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Collection | التشكيلة | Collection | Koleksiyon | A group of styles planned, made and sold together for a season, rather than as a single, standalone order. |
| Range plan | خطة التشكيلة | Plan de collection | Ürün gamı planı | A single sheet listing every style in a collection, so its category, price and colour balance can be checked at a glance. |
| Price point | نقطة السعر | Point de prix | Fiyat noktası | A specific price level a style is planned to sell at, used to balance a collection across cheaper and more expensive items. |
| Category balance | توازن الفئات | Équilibre des catégories | Kategori dengesi | Having enough styles in each product category, such as tops and bottoms, that customers can put outfits together from the range. |
| Colour balance | توازن الألوان | Équilibre des couleurs | Renk dengesi | A mix of safe, reliably-selling colours and a smaller number of newer or seasonal colours across a range, rather than betting on only one approach. |
| Volume balance | توازن الكميات | Équilibre des volumes | Hacim dengesi | Planning higher quantities on safer, proven styles and lower quantities on newer or higher-risk styles within the same range. |
| Make to Stock (MTS) | إنتاج حسب المخزون | Fabrication sur stock | Stoğa üretim | Producing against the seller's own sales forecast, rather than a single confirmed buyer order. |
You now know how to check whether a range is balanced across category, price point, colour and volume. The next lesson looks at the step after that: how a buyer decides how much money it can commit to the range it has just balanced. Back to the course map