This page is for a buyer who already calculates a selling-potential allocation, but has not yet learned that selling potential is only one of several methods, and that choosing the wrong one can produce a technically correct allocation that still fails on the shop floor. At work, a buyer who only applies one method to every shipment eventually applies it to a case it does not fit, such as splitting sizes within a shop or grouping small shops that do not justify their own individual calculation. This lesson mainly teaches the decision flow: it shows even spread, size curve and store cluster as three distinct tools, each solving a different allocation problem.
Cedar & Co., a domestic brand with 12 shops, has a 500-piece reorder of a T-shirt style ready to allocate. Its buyer already knows how to split a shipment across shops by selling potential, the method from lesson T21-C01-L02, but this reorder actually raises two further questions selling potential alone does not answer: how the sizes within each shop's own carton should be split, and whether every one of Cedar & Co.'s 12 shops really needs its own individually calculated share.
You need: lesson T21-C01-L02, which shows how to allocate a shipment across stores by their own selling potential.
By the end of this lesson you can:
Not covered here: reading real sell-through to adjust an allocation once a style is trading, covered in lesson T21-C01-L04, and building a complete allocation worksheet that combines every method, covered in lesson T21-C01-L05.
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Even spread | An allocation method that gives every store the same quantity, regardless of that store's own selling potential. |
| Size curve | The size ratio a style is cut in, used to split an allocation quantity across sizes rather than across stores. |
| Store cluster | A group of stores treated as one unit for allocation, because they share a similar level of selling potential. |
| Store allocation | Splitting a confirmed shipment quantity across a retailer's own stores or shops, rather than shipping it all to one central point. |
| Selling potential | An estimate of how much a specific store is likely to sell, usually built from that store's own past weekly sales rate for a similar style. |
| Weekly sales rate | The average number of pieces of a style sold in one week, found by dividing total pieces sold by the number of weeks elapsed. |
Even spread allocates a quantity equally across stores regardless of their own selling potential, and it is the right tool only when stores genuinely have similar selling potential or when a new style has no signal to split by at all. Size curve does not touch the store split at all; it works inside a single store's own carton, dividing that carton's own quantity across sizes according to a fixed ratio. Store cluster groups several stores into one unit before allocating, useful when a retailer has too many small shops to justify calculating each one's own individual share. A buyer often uses more than one of these methods on the very same shipment, at different stages of the same calculation.
| What can differ | The shapes you will meet | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| A first shipment of a genuinely new style | With no store-level selling potential signal at all, even spread across a small representative group is sometimes the only honest starting point. | Even spread here is not a shortcut; it is the correct method precisely because no better signal exists yet. |
| A style cut in multiple sizes | Cedar & Co.'s own T-shirt style is cut S M L XL in a fixed 1:2:2:1 ratio, and every shop's own carton must reflect that ratio. | A store allocation ratio decides how many pieces a shop gets in total; a size curve decides what sizes are inside that total. The two calculations are independent and both are needed. |
| A retailer with many small shops | Cedar & Co.'s smallest shops may have too little individual sales history to justify calculating each one's own separate share. | Grouping several small shops into one cluster, allocated as a single unit, avoids over-precise calculations built on very thin data. |
| A domestic Make to Stock reorder with real sell-through | Once a style has traded for a few weeks, Cedar & Co.'s buyer can replace an even spread or a rough cluster estimate with each shop's own real, recorded sell-through. | The best available method changes as better information becomes available; a method chosen for a first shipment is not necessarily the right one for a reorder. |
Cedar & Co.'s four representative shops have weekly sales rates of 20, 15, 10 and 5 pieces, the same selling-potential signal used in the previous lesson. For this reorder, the buyer treats the two smaller shops as a single cluster rather than calculating each one separately, and applies the T-shirt's own fixed 1:2:2:1 size ratio inside every shop's own resulting carton.
Rather than calculating the mid-size shop's own 20% and the small shop's own 10% separately, and risking two very small, noisy figures each based on thin sales history, the buyer allocates the combined 150 pieces to the cluster as one unit, then splits that 150 between the two shops using whatever simple internal rule Cedar & Co. already uses for shops of similar size, such as an even split within the cluster.
The methodA common mistake is a buyer trying to split sizes across stores using a store's own selling-potential ratio, or trying to split a store's own carton across sizes using an even spread meant for stores, treating the two calculations as if either one could substitute for the other. A store allocation ratio answers "how many total pieces does this shop get"; a size curve answers "what sizes are inside that total"; applying one method to the other's own question produces numbers that look calculated but answer nothing a merchandiser actually needs. What this costs is real: a shop that receives its correct total piece count but in the wrong size mix still cannot sell through as planned, because customers wanting a size L T-shirt find only S and XL sitting on the rail.
There is more than one way to split stock, and each way answers a different question. Splitting evenly makes sense when there is truly no better information to go on. Splitting by past sales makes sense once a store has a track record. Splitting by size inside one store's own box is a completely separate job from deciding how many total pieces that store gets. And grouping several small, similar stores together, rather than calculating each one alone, keeps the maths honest when there is not enough data to justify treating them separately.
Cedar & Co. has confirmed a 500-piece reorder of its T-shirt style. Two of its shops are large enough to have their own reliable weekly sales rate; several smaller shops have too little individual sales history to calculate separately. Every shop's own carton, regardless of size, must reflect the fixed 1:2:2:1 size ratio.
Is it correct to use three different methods on this single reorder? Decide before opening the answer.
Yes, and this is the intended approach, not an inconsistency. Each method answers a different question this reorder actually raises.
First, the large shops have real selling-potential data, so a selling-potential allocation, from lesson T21-C01-L02, is the right tool for splitting stock between them.
Second, the small shops do not have enough individual data to justify their own separate calculation, so grouping them into one cluster and splitting evenly inside it avoids over-precise numbers built on thin history.
Third, every shop, large or small, is cutting the same style in four sizes, so the 1:2:2:1 size curve applies inside every single carton regardless of which method decided that carton's own total. Using three methods together is exactly how a real allocation is built.
Using this lesson's own illustrative figures:
Ten fewer size-L pieces than the fixed ratio calls for means Cedar & Co.'s best-selling size runs out well before the smaller and larger sizes do, even though the shop's own total piece count and its own store allocation were both calculated correctly, showing that a correct store split alone is not enough without a correct size curve inside it.
Open the course workbook's "Method comparison" sheet. It lets you enter a shipment quantity once and see the resulting split under even spread, selling-potential allocation, and a fixed size curve side by side, plus a cluster grouping tool for small shops.
[Download the Store allocation worksheet](../../templates/T21-C01-store-allocation-worksheet.xlsx)
1. What question does a size curve actually answer, as distinct from a store allocation ratio?
2. A retailer has 2 large shops with reliable sales data and 6 very small shops with almost none. What is the most defensible allocation approach?
| EN | AR | FR | TR | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Even spread | التوزيع المتساوي | Répartition égale | Eşit dağıtım | An allocation method that gives every store the same quantity, regardless of that store's own selling potential. |
| Size curve | منحنى المقاسات | Courbe de tailles | Beden eğrisi | The size ratio a style is cut in, used to split an allocation quantity across sizes rather than across stores. |
| Store cluster | تجميع المحلات | Grappe de magasins | Mağaza kümesi | A group of stores treated as one unit for allocation, because they share a similar level of selling potential. |
| Store allocation | توزيع المحلات | Répartition entre magasins | Mağaza tahsisi | Splitting a confirmed shipment quantity across a retailer's own stores or shops, rather than shipping it all to one central point. |
| Selling potential | إمكانية البيع | Potentiel de vente | Satış potansiyeli | An estimate of how much a specific store is likely to sell, usually built from that store's own past weekly sales rate for a similar style. |
| Weekly sales rate | معدل المبيعات الأسبوعي | Taux de vente hebdomadaire | Haftalık satış oranı | The average number of pieces of a style sold in one week, found by dividing total pieces sold by the number of weeks elapsed. |
You now know how to choose between even spread, size curve and store cluster allocation. The next lesson shows how real sell-through data changes an allocation once a style is trading. Back to the course map