This page explains where a range plan actually starts: not with what a factory or a brand happens to be showing, but with the store's own customer and the store's own physical space. It is for a retail buyer or merchandiser at a store or chain, whether they buy wholesale from a brand or direct from a factory.
At work, a buyer meets suppliers who arrive with a finished range already built, priced and photographed. Fairway Stores' buyer sees Northline Apparel's whole T-shirt-to-jeans range this way every season. The trap is building a store's own range plan around whichever supplier range looks best, instead of around who actually shops at Fairway Stores and how much space Fairway Stores actually has to display the goods. A range plan sized to a supplier's catalogue, not to the store's own customer and space, either fills the shop with the wrong mix or buys far more stock than the floor can ever display at once. This lesson gives you the method for building the plan the right way round.
You need: nothing but this page. Familiarity with Order A (the T-shirt) is useful background but not required.
By the end of this lesson you can:
Not covered here: balancing core, fashion and basic styles within the range (lesson 2.2), setting exact quantities per colour and size (lesson 2.3), and phasing delivery across the season (lesson 2.4).
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Customer profile | A description of who a store actually serves, used to decide what a range should include before any style is chosen. |
| Selling space | The physical floor, rail or shelf space in a store available to display a range, measured for planning purposes in linear metres or units. |
| Store network | The full set of a retailer's own shops that a single range plan must supply, not one shop alone. |
| Range plan | A single sheet listing every style in a collection, so its category, price and colour balance can be checked at a glance. |
| Range planning | Deciding a collection's mix of styles, price points and colours before any single style's order is confirmed. |
| Assortment | The specific set of styles, colours and sizes a retailer actually decides to stock and display for a season, built from a wider range plan. |
| Space allocation | The share of a store's selling space set aside for one style or category, used to size how much of it to buy. |
A range plan is not built by taking whatever a supplier shows and shrinking it to fit. It is built the other way round: first describe who the store's customer actually is and how much selling space the store actually has, then decide what mix of styles fills that space for that customer, and only then go to a supplier such as Northline Apparel to see how much of that mix it can supply. Fairway Stores' buyer who instead starts from Northline Apparel's own range risks filling the shop floor with a mix built for a different customer, in a quantity that never matches the floor's real capacity.
| What can differ | The shapes you will meet | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Export, wholesale buyer | Fairway Stores' buyer plans a range for its own store network, then places a wholesale order with a brand such as Northline Apparel to fill it, in a made-to-order arrangement built to the plan. | The retailer's own customer and space set the plan; the brand supplies against it, not the reverse. |
| Domestic, brand-owned shops | A domestic brand such as Cedar & Co. plans a range for its own 12 shops, then places its own make-to-stock order with Delta Garments to fill that plan from forecast, not from a wholesale catalogue. | The same customer-and-space logic applies even when the retailer and the brand are the same company. |
| Single flagship store | A single large store plans a range against one detailed customer profile and one measured selling space. | The simplest case: one profile, one space, one plan. |
| Multi-store network | Fairway Stores plans one range across 25 stores of differing size, then allocates the resulting buy quantity across stores by each store's own share of total selling space. | A single range plan sheet must still work for a network, not just for one shop. |
Fairway Stores' buyer is planning next season's basic-tops range. Northline Apparel shows its full catalogue, several T-shirt styles across many colours. Instead of buying a slice of that catalogue, the buyer first sets out Fairway Stores' own customer profile for this category (value-seeking shoppers who buy basic tops in low-to-mid price bands) and its own selling space: an illustrative 40 linear metres of hanging rail set aside for basic tops in each of Fairway Stores' 25 stores. Only once that plan exists does the buyer turn to Northline Apparel's catalogue and select Order A, the basic cotton T-shirt, as the single style that best matches the plan.
| Question | Started from Northline Apparel's catalogue | Started from Fairway Stores' own customer and space |
|---|---|---|
| What decides which styles are chosen? | Whatever the brand happens to be showing this season | The store's own customer profile for this category |
| What decides the quantity bought? | The brand's own minimum order or catalogue pack sizes | The store network's own measured selling space |
| Who carries the risk of a mismatch? | Fairway Stores, if the catalogue mix does not suit its customer | Reduced, because the plan was built for Fairway Stores' own customer from the start |
For this worked example, say each linear metre of Fairway Stores' basic-tops rail displays about 15 folded T-shirts at planning density, an illustrative figure specific to this lesson, not a reported industry standard.
A common mistake is to let whichever supplier presents first, or presents best, set the shape of the store's own range plan, buying a slice of that catalogue instead of building a plan from the store's own customer and space first. If Fairway Stores' buyer had simply bought a proportional slice of Northline Apparel's full catalogue without first measuring its own 25-store rail capacity, it could easily have bought more T-shirts than the network's floor space could ever display, leaving the excess in a stockroom for the whole season.
A range plan should start with the store itself: who its customers are, and how much space it actually has to show goods. Only after those two things are known should a buyer look at what a supplier can offer, and pick the styles and quantities that fit the plan already built. Building the plan the other way round, starting from a supplier's own catalogue, risks a mix that suits the wrong customer and a quantity that the store's own floor space cannot display. Measuring space in linear metres or unit capacity, multiplied across every store in the network, turns a vague sense of "enough stock" into a specific target quantity a supplier can be asked to fill.
Northline Apparel's sales team shows Fairway Stores' buyer a basic-tops catalogue covering four T-shirt styles at a combined 22,000 pieces, and suggests Fairway Stores take the full catalogue to "maximise the range" in its stores.
Fairway Stores' buyer's note back to the sales team:
Should Fairway Stores take the full 22,000-piece catalogue because the range looks stronger on paper? Decide before you open the answer.
No. A stronger-looking catalogue is not the same as a range the store's own space can display, and two facts settle this, not the catalogue's own size.
First, the store's own measured capacity. Fairway Stores' 25-store network holds an illustrative 15,000 pieces of basic tops at planning density, a fixed ceiling set by the store's own space, not by what any supplier offers.
Second, what happens above that ceiling. Any quantity bought beyond 15,000 pieces cannot be displayed on the floor at once; it either sits in a stockroom unsold or forces an early markdown to clear space, eroding the very margin the range was meant to earn.
Fairway Stores' buyer should hold the order to the measured 15,000-piece capacity, choosing which of Northline Apparel's styles and colours best fit that quantity, rather than take the larger catalogue on the strength of its own size. Lesson 2.2 develops how that quantity is then split across core, fashion and basic styles.
Framed in money and space rather than a single penalty figure: if Fairway Stores had accepted the full 22,000-piece catalogue against a measured 15,000-piece display capacity, the extra 7,000 pieces would have had nowhere on the shop floor to go.
At Order A's own wholesale price of USD 8.00 per piece, those 7,000 excess pieces represent USD 56,000 of stock with no floor space to display it, likely to sit in a stockroom or move only after an early, margin-reducing markdown. Measuring the store's own selling space before committing to a quantity catches this mismatch before the order is placed, not after the goods have already arrived.
The range and assortment plan workbook's "Range plan" sheet lists each style alongside a customer-profile note, a selling-space figure per store, a store-network count and the resulting target quantity. This lesson fills the customer-profile, selling-space and store-network columns for Order A, letting the target-quantity column calculate itself from the space figures rather than from a supplier's own catalogue quantity.
Fairway Stores' buyer's row records: T-shirt category, value-seeking basic-tops customer, 40 linear metres per store, 25 stores, target quantity 15,000 pieces, matching Order A exactly. A second, blank row is ready for the buyer's own next category.
1. Where should a retail buyer's range plan start?
2. Fairway Stores' 25-store network has an illustrative display capacity of 15,000 pieces for a category. Northline Apparel offers a 22,000-piece catalogue in that category. What should Fairway Stores' buyer do?
3. Why is a store's selling space measured per store and then multiplied across the whole store network, rather than measured once for the network as a whole?
| EN | AR | FR | TR | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Customer profile | ملف العميل | Profil client | Müşteri profili | A description of who a store actually serves, used to decide what a range should include before any style is chosen. |
| Selling space | مساحة البيع | Espace de vente | Satış alanı | The physical floor, rail or shelf space in a store available to display a range, measured for planning purposes in linear metres or units. |
| Store network | شبكة المتاجر | Réseau de magasins | Mağaza ağı | The full set of a retailer's own shops that a single range plan must supply, not one shop alone. |
| 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. |
| Range planning | تخطيط التشكيلة | Planification de la gamme | Ürün gamı planlaması | Deciding a collection's mix of styles, price points and colours before any single style's order is confirmed. |
| Assortment | التشكيلة المعروضة | Assortiment | Asorti | The specific set of styles, colours and sizes a retailer actually decides to stock and display for a season, built from a wider range plan. |
| Space allocation | تخصيص المساحة | Allocation d'espace | Alan tahsisi | The share of a store's selling space set aside for one style or category, used to size how much of it to buy. |
You now know how to size a range from a store's own customer and space. The next lesson looks at what fills that space: how a retailer balances core, fashion and basic styles inside one assortment. Back to the course map