Lesson 6.1 showed how one buyer's own large revenue share, Northline Apparel's illustrative 65% of Delta Garments' total revenue, turns an ordinary buyer decision into a large factory loss. That single number is only part of the picture. A complete concentration map lists every buyer, every market, and every business model behind Delta Garments' total revenue, so an owner, a merchandiser, or even a domestic buyer weighing a bigger order can see the whole shape of the factory's exposure at once, not just the largest piece of it. This lesson mainly teaches the information flow: turning scattered facts about many buyers into one map that shows exactly where a factory's business is concentrated and where it is spread.
You need: lesson 6.1's own single-buyer concentration calculation, and Delta Garments' own illustrative revenue figures for Northline Apparel and Cedar & Co.
By the end of this lesson you can:
Not covered here: positioning a factory against its own real competitors (lesson 6.3), and building a complete portfolio risk and positioning decision tool (lesson 6.4).
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Concentration map | A single document listing every buyer's and every market's own share of a factory's total revenue, so exposure is visible at a glance. |
| Concentration threshold | A share level, for example half of total revenue, above which a buyer or market is flagged as worth watching closely. |
| By-buyer view | A concentration map's rows organised by individual buyer, regardless of which market each buyer belongs to. |
| By-market view | A concentration map's rows organised by market, for example export or domestic, regardless of which buyer sits inside each market. |
| Open account | A payment method, used in Cedar & Co.'s own domestic purchases from Delta Garments, where the buyer pays a set number of days after delivery rather than in advance. |
| Standing forecast | The demand estimate an MTS buyer, like Cedar & Co., builds its own regular orders against, rather than placing one order at a time. |
Lesson 6.1 calculated one number: Northline Apparel's own illustrative 65% share. A useful map does not stop there. It lists every other buyer too, however small, and groups the same revenue a second way, by market, so a reader can see both how concentrated the factory is in one buyer and how concentrated it is in one type of market. A factory can be highly concentrated in one buyer but reasonably spread across markets, or the reverse, and only a complete map, not a single figure, shows which is true.
| What can differ | The shapes you will meet | Why it matters to you |
|---|---|---|
| Number of buyers behind total revenue | Delta Garments' own illustrative map lists three groups: Northline Apparel, Cedar & Co., and several smaller buyers combined. A factory serving twenty buyers of similar size produces a very different, flatter map. | Fewer, larger buyers concentrate risk in a small number of rows; many similar-sized buyers spread the same total revenue thinner. |
| Export and domestic mix | Delta Garments' illustrative by-market view splits 80% export, 20% domestic. A factory selling only domestically, or only exporting, has a one-sided by-market view with nothing to compare it against. | A mixed export-and-domestic map lets a market-specific shock, an export slowdown or a domestic downturn, be weighed against the other market's own share. |
| Business model behind each buyer | Northline Apparel's own share is MTO, ordered piece by piece; Cedar & Co.'s own share is MTS, built against a standing forecast. A map that only totals revenue misses this difference. | An MTO buyer's share can disappear faster than an MTS buyer's share of the same size, since an MTS relationship runs against a standing forecast. |
| Who asks to see the map | Delta Garments' own owner uses the map to manage risk; a domestic buyer like Cedar & Co., considering a larger order, may reasonably ask to see it too, to judge whether the factory can reliably prioritise a bigger domestic commitment. | A concentration map is not only an internal risk tool; a buyer weighing a bigger commitment has a genuine reason to ask a factory about its own concentration. |
Cedar & Co., Delta Garments' own domestic buyer, is considering roughly doubling its own standing forecast order for next year, paid on the same 60-day open account terms it already uses. Before committing, Cedar & Co.'s owner, Omar, asks Mona, Delta Garments' merchandiser, for a picture of the factory's own concentration, not because Cedar & Co. doubts Delta Garments' quality, but because Omar wants reassurance that Delta Garments is not so dependent on one export buyer that a domestic partner's own growing order could be squeezed for capacity later. Mona builds the map both ways, by buyer and by market, to answer the question directly.
The worked numberA factory that maps only Northline Apparel's own 65% share has answered an important question, but not the full one. Cedar & Co.'s own 20% share is itself large enough to matter if it were lost, and the remaining 15% spread across several smaller buyers is not risk-free either, since several of those buyers together could still represent a meaningful loss if several left at once for related reasons, for example a shared downturn in one export region. A map that stops at the largest row gives a false sense that everything smaller is safe by comparison, when the real test is whether each row, and each market, is sized in a way the factory could actually absorb losing.
Knowing that one buyer is large is useful, but it is not the whole picture. A full concentration map lists every buyer, however small, and shows what share of the factory's total business each one represents. It also groups the same business a second way, by market, export against domestic, so a slowdown specific to one country or one type of buyer can be weighed on its own. Cedar & Co., a domestic buyer thinking about placing a much bigger order, has a real reason to ask to see this map too, not because it doubts Delta Garments, but because it wants to know whether the factory's capacity is already stretched thin by one very large export buyer. A complete map answers that question honestly, buyer by buyer and market by market.
Omar, the owner of Cedar & Co., tells Mona he is considering roughly doubling his own standing forecast order with Delta Garments next year. Before committing, he asks a direct question: "If I double my order, will my own business actually get the capacity it needs, or is most of your factory already spoken for by one buyer?"
Here is the map Mona shares with Omar:
Should Omar read this map as a reason to hold back on the larger order, or as useful information that still supports going ahead? Decide before opening the answer.
The map is a reason for Omar to ask Delta Garments a further, specific question about capacity planning, not a reason to cancel the larger order outright. Two facts decide this together.
First, Northline Apparel's own 65% share is well above the flagged threshold, confirming Omar's instinct that Delta Garments is heavily weighted toward one export buyer. This is real information Omar did not have before, and it is reasonable for him to ask how Delta Garments plans to protect his own growing order's capacity if Northline Apparel's own volume stays high.
Second, the map does not show Cedar & Co.'s own order being squeezed today; it shows a structural concentration that could, in future, create pressure. Doubling the order does not by itself become unsafe because of this map; it becomes a decision Omar should make with the map's own facts in hand, alongside a direct conversation about how Delta Garments would prioritise capacity between its two largest buyers.
The map's value is turning a vague worry into a specific, answerable question, not producing an automatic yes or no on its own.
Framed against lesson 6.1's own worked figure, an unmapped, 65%-concentrated factory risks losing 19.5% of total revenue to a single buyer's ordinary decision; the map itself costs only the time to build and update it.
A concentration map's own cost is small and recurring; the exposure it reveals, left unmapped, is large and sudden.
Open the Portfolio risk and positioning tool workbook linked below. Its "Customer concentration" sheet lists every buyer, its illustrative share, its business model, and its market, then flags any row above the threshold you set, the same map this lesson built for Delta Garments. Fill in the yellow "Your factory" column with your own buyers for practice.
[Download the Portfolio risk and positioning tool](../../templates/T16-C06-portfolio-risk-positioning.xlsx)
1. Why does a complete concentration map need both a by-buyer view and a by-market view, rather than just the largest buyer's own share?
2. Why does Cedar & Co.'s owner have a genuine reason to ask to see Delta Garments' own concentration map before doubling his order?
3. A different factory's map shows Buyer X at 45%, Buyer Y at 30%, and eight smaller buyers sharing the remaining 25%. Using a 50% single-buyer threshold, what does this map show?
| EN | AR | FR | TR | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Concentration map | خريطة التركّز | Carte de concentration | Yoğunlaşma haritası | A single document listing every buyer's and every market's own share of a factory's total revenue, so exposure is visible at a glance. |
| Concentration threshold | عتبة التركّز | Seuil de concentration | Yoğunlaşma eşiği | A share level, for example half of total revenue, above which a buyer or market is flagged as worth watching closely. |
| By-buyer view | العرض حسب المشتري | Vue par acheteur | Alıcıya göre görünüm | A concentration map's rows organised by individual buyer, regardless of which market each buyer belongs to. |
| By-market view | العرض حسب السوق | Vue par marché | Pazara göre görünüm | A concentration map's rows organised by market, for example export or domestic, regardless of which buyer sits inside each market. |
| Open account | حساب مفتوح | Compte ouvert | Açık hesap | A payment method, used in Cedar & Co.'s own domestic purchases from Delta Garments, where the buyer pays a set number of days after delivery rather than in advance. |
| Standing forecast | توقعات ثابتة | Prévision permanente | Sürekli tahmin | The demand estimate an MTS buyer, like Cedar & Co., builds its own regular orders against, rather than placing one order at a time. |
You now know how to map exactly how concentrated a factory's own business is, across buyers and across markets. The next lesson teaches how to position that same factory against its own real competitors, using price, lead time and reliability. Back to the course map