This page is for a buyer or store planner at a retail chain who already receives a season's stock plan for each category, but has never had to decide how many square metres of the store's own floor that category should actually occupy. At work, a planner who never questions an inherited floor split keeps giving each category the same space it has always had, whatever that category's own sales have done since. This lesson mainly teaches the decision flow: it shows how to compare a category's own share of a store's floor space against that category's own share of the store's sales, and to close the gap when the two disagree.
Fairway Stores buys Order A, the T-shirt, wholesale from Northline Apparel and sells it through its own flagship store alongside other categories. The T-shirt category currently holds 25% of that store's 500 square metres of selling floor. Its own sales for the last quarter were 35% of the store's total. Nobody planned that gap; the floor was simply divided the way it always had been.
You need: no previous lesson from this track. A working knowledge of a category's own sales figures, as a buyer already receives them, is assumed but not required to follow the numbers here.
By the end of this lesson you can:
Not covered here: arranging fixtures inside a category's own space, covered from lesson T22-C03-L02 onward, and measuring whether a layout is actually earning its space once it is set, covered in lesson T22-C03-L03.
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Floor space allocation | Deciding how many square metres of a store's own selling floor each category occupies. |
| Category sales share | One category's own sales in a period, divided by the store's own total sales in the same period. |
| Selling floor | The part of a store's own total floor area open to customers for browsing and buying, excluding stockrooms, fitting rooms and staff areas. |
| Target floor space | The floor space a category should hold if its own space matched its own sales share exactly. |
| Category footprint | The floor space a category actually occupies right now, measured in square metres. |
| Inherited split | A floor allocation carried forward from when a store first opened or a category was first added, never recalculated against later sales. |
A store's total selling floor is fixed at any one time, so giving one category more space always means giving another category less. The general rule a planner follows is to give each category a target floor space equal to that category's own share of the store's total sales, applied to the store's own total selling floor. A category that earns 35% of a store's sales and holds only 25% of its floor is under-allocated; a category that earns 10% of sales while holding 20% of floor is over-allocated.
| What can differ | The shapes you will meet | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Export range bought wholesale, no store history of its own yet | Fairway Stores buys Order A wholesale from Northline Apparel and has to allocate floor space for a category with limited sales history of its own in that specific store. | A new or thin sales history forces a planner to borrow a comparable category's own past sales share instead of this exact range's own history. |
| Domestic Make to Stock reorder, full sales history available | A domestic retailer such as Cedar & Co. reorders stock against its own forecast and can use a full quarter or season of its own real category sales to set floor space. | Real, recent sales data lets a planner set a target floor space with more confidence than a new range allows. |
| Flagship large-format store versus small-format store | The same category's own sales share can translate into a much larger absolute floor space in a flagship store than in a small-format store, even at the same percentage. | A percentage share must always be converted back to the specific store's own total selling floor before it means anything in square metres. |
| Hybrid model, wholesale range plus the retailer's own reorders | A brand selling both wholesale and through its own shops, or a retailer mixing a wholesale-bought range with its own domestic reorders, has to allocate floor space across categories fed by different supply routes at once. | Floor space allocation is decided by a category's own sales share, not by which supply route filled that category, so the method stays the same even when the sourcing does not. |
Fairway Stores' flagship store has 500 square metres of selling floor split across several categories. The T-shirt category, built mainly from Order A bought wholesale from Northline Apparel, currently occupies 125 square metres, 25% of the total floor. In the last quarter, the T-shirt category's own sales were 35% of the store's total sales. The planner responsible for the next floor reset has to decide whether that gap is large enough to act on.
The T-shirt category's own target floor space, based on its own sales share, is 175 square metres. It currently holds 125 square metres, a 50 square metre shortfall that has to come from somewhere else on the same fixed floor, since the store's own total selling floor does not grow simply because one category's own sales share has grown.
A common mistake is a planner leaving a category's own floor space untouched at every reset because that is the space it has always had, without ever comparing that space to the category's own current sales share. What this costs is real: at Fairway Stores' flagship store, the T-shirt category's own 50 square metre shortfall means the category earning the store's highest sales share is also its most cramped, while another category with a falling sales share keeps space it no longer earns. A planner who never runs the sales-share comparison has no way of knowing this gap exists at all, and the store keeps losing the extra sales a properly sized T-shirt floor space would likely generate.
A store only has so much floor, and giving one part of the shop more space always means another part gets less. The fair way to split that floor is to give each category a share of the space that matches the share of sales it actually earns, worked out from real sales figures, not from the space it happened to start with when the shop first opened or the category was first added. A category earning more of the store's sales than its own floor space suggests deserves more room; a category earning less deserves less. Checking this regularly, rather than assuming last year's split still fits, is what keeps a shop's floor working as hard as it can.
Fairway Stores' head office wants to add a small accessories category to the flagship store next season. The store manager suggests using a free corner near the fitting rooms, about 15 square metres, because no other category is using it right now.
Is "whatever corner is free" a sound basis for setting the new category's own floor space? Decide before opening the answer.
No. A free corner tells the planner what space is currently unused, not what space the new category's own expected sales share actually justifies.
First, the memo has no target sales share for the new category, so there is no figure to convert into square metres in the first place.
Second, even once a target sales share is estimated, from a comparable category's own past performance, it should be converted into a target floor space using the store's own 500 square metre total the same way the T-shirt category's own target was calculated, not accepted at whatever size a free corner happens to be.
The planner should estimate the new category's own expected sales share from a comparable category first, calculate its own target floor space, and only then decide whether the free corner is the right size, too small, or too large.
Using the store's own average sales per square metre as an illustrative estimate, the T-shirt category's own 50 square metre shortfall is worth roughly USD 20,000 in sales per quarter, a figure the next floor reset can recover once the category's own target space is actually applied. Lesson T22-C03-L03 shows how to check whether a layout is earning its space once fixtures, not just square metres, are also in place.
Open the course workbook's "Floor space allocation" sheet. Enter each category's own sales for the period, the store's own total sales, and each category's own current floor space in square metres; the sheet calculates each category's own sales share, target floor space, and the gap against its own current space with a live formula.
[Download the Space planning and store layout worksheet](../../templates/T22-C03-space-planning-and-store-layout-worksheet.xlsx)
Download the Space planning and store layout worksheet (Excel)
1. A category earns 40% of a store's sales and holds 500 square metres of a store's 2,000 square metre selling floor. What is its own target floor space?
2. A new range has almost no sales history of its own in a specific store. What should a planner do to estimate its own target floor space?
| EN | AR | FR | TR | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Floor space allocation | تخصيص المساحة الأرضية | Allocation de l'espace de vente | Zemin alanı tahsisi | Deciding how many square metres of a store's own selling floor each category occupies. |
| Category sales share | حصة مبيعات الفئة | Part des ventes de la catégorie | Kategorinin satış payı | One category's own sales in a period, divided by the store's own total sales in the same period. |
| Selling floor | مساحة البيع | Surface de vente | Satış alanı | The part of a store's own total floor area open to customers for browsing and buying, excluding stockrooms, fitting rooms and staff areas. |
| Target floor space | المساحة المستهدفة | Surface cible | Hedef alan | The floor space a category should hold if its own space matched its own sales share exactly. |
| Category footprint | البصمة المساحية للفئة | Emprise de la catégorie | Kategorinin kapladığı alan | The floor space a category actually occupies right now, measured in square metres. |
| Inherited split | التقسيم الموروث | Répartition héritée | Devralınan bölüşüm | A floor allocation carried forward from when a store first opened or a category was first added, never recalculated against later sales. |
You now know how to size a category's own floor space by its own sales share. The next lesson shows how to arrange the fixtures inside that space to match how customers actually move through the store. Back to the course map