The age old problem of how many SKUs or Brands should a company sells is very well captured in this article. Those who have been in the US would know about the Girl Scouts and the cookies that they sell. This article speaks about how they are rationalizing the number of different varieties that they will now offer. What I did not know until I read this article was
- that these cookies are manufactured by a subsidiary of Kellogs
- the amount of $ sales that these cookies generate
- these are now advertised
- and how they instill the sense of business amongst the girl scouts
I am sure that SKU performance is a major analytic need of the CPG and even the Retail sector. For P&G it surely was, because it had thousands of skus for its multi brand portfolio and it was very interesting to see how each of these brands performed and also how the SKUs did as well. It was also very interesting to see how someone would use the concept of bundling to combine (shrink wrap or just co sell) two different SKUs. How the price points were used in the developing economies and the hundreds of skus that would result into.
