This page is for a buyer or planner who has already worked through floor space allocation, fixture placement, sales-per-square-metre measurement and season-change adjustment, covered in lessons T22-C03-L01 through T22-C03-L04, and now needs all four decisions in one place rather than scattered across separate notes. At work, a planner who keeps these four decisions in separate documents risks changing one without checking its effect on the others, such as cutting a category's floor space without noticing its sales per square metre was above average. This lesson mainly teaches the decision flow: it shows how one worksheet ties floor space, fixtures, performance and season change together for a single category.
Cedar & Co. sells the T-shirt category through a hybrid mix of wholesale-bought stock and its own domestic reorders, across its 12 shops. One shop's own T-shirt category holds 40 square metres, earns USD 600 per square metre against a USD 500 shop average, and is due a partial reset, estimated at 30 hours, for the coming season. Bringing all four figures onto one sheet is what lets a planner see, at a glance, whether this category's own layout still makes sense as a whole.
You need: lessons T22-C03-L01 through T22-C03-L04, which set the floor space, fixture plan, sales-per-square-metre figure and season-change plan this lesson combines. No new calculation method is introduced here beyond what those four lessons already cover.
By the end of this lesson you can:
Not covered here: any new calculation beyond the four already taught in lessons T22-C03-L01 through T22-C03-L04; this lesson only assembles them.
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Combined space plan | A single record, for one category, holding its own floor space, fixture plan, sales-per-square-metre figure and season-change status together. |
| Decision conflict | A case where one of the four space planning decisions for a category no longer agrees with another, such as a floor space cut proposed for a category earning above the store average. |
| End-to-end check | Reviewing a category's own floor space, fixtures, performance and season-change status together, rather than checking each one separately. |
| Hybrid stock mix | Stock for one category supplied through more than one route at once, such as a wholesale-bought range alongside a retailer's own domestic reorders. |
| Layout review cycle | The regular point, such as each reporting period or season change, when a category's own combined space plan is checked again. |
| Category record | The one row or entry in a space planning worksheet holding every decision made about a single category's own floor space. |
Lessons T22-C03-L01 through T22-C03-L04 each cover one decision on its own: target floor space, fixture placement, sales per square metre, and season-change adjustment. The general rule for assembling them is to hold all four for a single category in one category record, so that a proposed change to any one of them, such as a floor space cut, is checked against the other three, such as that category's own sales-per-square-metre figure, before the change is made.
| What can differ | The shapes you will meet | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Hybrid stock mix, wholesale range plus domestic reorders | Cedar & Co.'s T-shirt category combines wholesale-bought stock with its own domestic reorders inside the same 40 square metre floor space and one combined category record. | A category record does not need to separate figures by supply route; floor space, fixtures, performance and season status are all measured at the category level regardless of where the stock came from. |
| Export order coordinated through an agent | Meridian Sourcing, coordinating Fairway Stores' own season change in lesson T22-C03-L04, still feeds its fixture-sort result back into that category's own single combined record. | A category record stays useful only if every party working on it, including an agent, updates the same shared record rather than keeping a separate note. |
| Category earning above the store average, floor space proposed for cutting | A category's own combined record shows sales per square metre above the store average at the same time a floor space cut is proposed, exactly the conflict raised in lesson T22-C03-L03's workplace scenario. | Seeing both figures on the same record, rather than in separate documents, is what actually catches this kind of conflict before a decision is made. |
| Small, low-priority category with only one or two figures actively changing | A stable, low-turnover category may keep the same floor space and fixtures for several review cycles, with only its sales-per-square-metre figure updated each period. | Even a stable category still benefits from a combined record, since it is the one place a future change, such as a season shift, can be checked against everything already known about that category. |
Cedar & Co.'s planner pulls together the T-shirt category's own combined record: 40 square metres of floor space, gondolas and a wall bay as its fixture plan, USD 600 sales per square metre against a USD 500 shop average, and a partial reset estimated at 30 hours for the coming season change. Reading all four together, the planner confirms the category is earning above average, its fixtures are placed correctly, and only a partial, not full, reset is needed, so the existing floor space is approved to carry forward unchanged into next season.
None of the T-shirt category's own four figures conflicts with another: performance is above average, fixture placement matches recorded flow, and the season-change estimate fits comfortably inside the available reset window. On this combined check, the planner has a documented basis to approve the category's own layout unchanged into next season.
A common mistake is a planner updating a category's own floor space, or approving a season-change reset, without checking that decision against the category's own already-recorded sales-per-square-metre figure or fixture plan. What this costs is real: a floor space cut approved without checking sales per square metre, exactly as nearly happened in lesson T22-C03-L03's own workplace scenario, can remove space from a category that is earning well above the store average, costing sales the combined record would have flagged immediately had it been checked as a whole rather than one figure at a time.
Once a shop has worked out how much space a category should have, how its fixtures should sit, how well that space is actually earning, and how to handle a season change without redoing everything, those four answers are only useful kept together. A single record for each category, holding all four figures side by side, lets anyone reviewing that category see immediately whether a proposed change to one of them still makes sense next to the other three. Checking each figure on its own, in separate notes, is how a shop ends up cutting space from a category that was actually earning it, or booking a full reset a category never needed.
Cedar & Co.'s regional manager, recalling the crowded feel noted in an earlier visit, sends approval for a 10 square metre cut to the T-shirt category's own floor space ahead of the next layout review cycle, without requesting the category's own complete record first.
Should this floor space cut proceed without checking the category's own complete record first? Decide before opening the answer.
No. The approval is based on one earlier observation about crowding, not on the category's own complete record of all four figures.
First, the category's own sales per square metre is USD 600 against a USD 500 shop average, a figure the approval memo does not mention and that argues against cutting space from this category.
Second, the crowded feel the memo refers to is a fixture placement question, addressed in lesson T22-C03-L02's own method, not necessarily a floor space question at all.
The planner should pull the category's own complete record before this cut proceeds, and raise the sales-per-square-metre figure with the regional manager, since approving a space cut from a category earning above the shop average would very likely cost more in lost sales than the crowding itself, exactly the same conflict already worked through in lesson T22-C03-L03.
Approving a 10 square metre cut without the category's own complete record risks roughly USD 6,000 in quarterly sales, the same exposure lesson T22-C03-L03 already calculated, now shown as the direct cost of skipping the combined check this final lesson's own worksheet exists to provide.
Open the course workbook's "Complete space plan" sheet. Enter each category's own floor space, fixture plan, sales-per-square-metre figures and season-change status in one row; the sheet flags any category where sales per square metre stands above the store average at the same time a floor space cut is entered, so the conflict is visible before approval.
[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's own combined record shows sales per square metre well above the store average, and a floor space cut is proposed for that same category. What does the combined record show?
2. A category's own season-change reset is estimated at 40 hours, and the store's own reset window is 36 hours. What should the complete record trigger?
| EN | AR | FR | TR | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Combined space plan | خطة مساحة مُجمَّعة | Plan d'espace combiné | Birleşik alan planı | A single record, for one category, holding its own floor space, fixture plan, sales-per-square-metre figure and season-change status together. |
| Decision conflict | تعارض في القرار | Conflit de décision | Karar çatışması | A case where one of the four space planning decisions for a category no longer agrees with another, such as a floor space cut proposed for a category earning above the store average. |
| End-to-end check | فحص شامل من البداية للنهاية | Contrôle de bout en bout | Uçtan uca kontrol | Reviewing a category's own floor space, fixtures, performance and season-change status together, rather than checking each one separately. |
| Hybrid stock mix | مزيج مخزون مختلط | Assortiment de stock hybride | Karma stok karışımı | Stock for one category supplied through more than one route at once, such as a wholesale-bought range alongside a retailer's own domestic reorders. |
| Layout review cycle | دورة مراجعة التخطيط | Cycle de révision de l'agencement | Düzen inceleme döngüsü | The regular point, such as each reporting period or season change, when a category's own combined space plan is checked again. |
| Category record | سجل الفئة | Fiche de catégorie | Kategori kaydı | The one row or entry in a space planning worksheet holding every decision made about a single category's own floor space. |
You now have a complete space planning and store layout worksheet covering floor space, fixtures, performance and season change. The next course in this track continues Visual Merchandising. Back to the course map