When a business is under pressure, the instinct is often to chase more product, more brands, or more traffic. Sometimes the issue is already sitting in the assortment. Too much depth in the wrong place. Too little conviction in the right products. Inventory that looks valuable on paper and behaves like a tax on the business.
My starting point is simple: what is earning its place, what is tying up capital, and what would you choose differently if you could buy the season again today?
We start where the money lives
A sales report tells you what sold. A strong merchandising review asks what should have sold, at what margin, how quickly, and with how much inventory exposure. That means examining the relationships between product roles, price architecture, size curves, replenishment, seasonality, customer behavior, and open-to-buy.
The objective isn't to make every SKU equally productive. Hero products, discovery styles, and image-driving products have different jobs. But every product needs a job, and that job needs to be understood.
Questions worth asking
- Which categories are producing genuine gross-margin dollars, not just top-line volume?
- Where is inventory aging because of poor depth decisions, inadequate distribution, or an unconvincing offer?
- Which products deserve more investment, and which are being protected because of past decisions?
- Does the good/better/best architecture help customers trade up, or just create confusion?
- Are buyers managing an assortment or simply receiving vendor assortments?
The selection is an expression of the brand
Customers experience an assortment as a whole. The balance of familiar names and discoveries, technical authority and style, core products and seasonal interest tells them what kind of retailer you are.
Curation is a commitment to a point of view. The products should make sense together, while presentation, storytelling, and knowledgeable service help customers see the value in the selection. A distinctive mix must also support margin, availability, and repeat business.
The work
Assortment diagnosis. Review product, brand, category, size, price, and channel performance. Distinguish inventory health from the illusion of variety.
Category architecture. Define clear roles for core, seasonal, statement, and test products. Look for duplication, missed adjacencies, and space that should be reallocated.
Merchant operating rhythm. Build a workable cadence for reviewing sell-through, margin, aging, commitments, and OTB. The point is to improve decisions between buy meetings, not only after the season ends.
Vendor and product judgment. Pressure-test proposals against a retailer's actual customer, contribution margin, and inventory exposure. A good product from a good brand can still be the wrong buy.
What a useful engagement produces
A prioritized action plan: protect, expand, rebalance, exit, or test. A clearer view of where the next inventory dollar should go. Specific decisions, owners, and checkpoints. The level of detail depends on the data available, but the outcome should be actionable even before anyone builds a new technology stack.
Good merchandising is not about having more choices. It's about earning the right to make fewer, better ones.
I work with founders, merchants, and leadership teams who need senior category judgment without introducing another layer of reporting for its own sake.