Tangma2088 Merchandising Notes: Editing the Range: How to Cut a 300-SKU Catalogue Down to the Twelve That Sell
Editing the Range: How to Cut a 300-SKU Catalogue Down to the Twelve That Sell
By Claire Fontaine, Retail Merchandising Consultant · September 2026
A catalogue is a list of possibilities, not a plan. The tangma2088 and qiqiyg sheets run to three hundred styles in a season, and every one of them looks viable in a photograph. The buyers who make money are not the ones who order the widest selection; they are the ones who can say no to 288 of them and be right about it.
Editing is the least glamorous job in merchandising and the one that decides whether your cash comes back. Below is the filter we use with partners buying out of Guangzhou, the arithmetic behind it, and the two places where I have watched a tidy range quietly grow back to twice its intended size.
Why A Wide Range Loses Money
Every SKU carries a fixed cost that has nothing to do with how many units you bought. A six-piece buy of a colour nobody asked for still needs a shelf facing, a barcode, a stock count, a product photograph, a line on the stock sheet and two minutes of a sales assistant's memory. At eight units that overhead eats a real share of the margin. At forty units it disappears.
Depth is where the leverage is. Ten units of one bag that sells through in five weeks beats one unit each of ten bags, because the bag that sells earns its overhead ten times and the nine that do not earn it once. This is the same argument as mixing categories rather than colours, applied one level down: breadth without depth is just a slower way to hold stock.
Then there is the floor itself. A sales assistant can tell the story of four bags — what the leather is, why the base is structured, who it suits. Ask her to tell the story of forty and she will tell the story of whichever four happen to be closest to the door. The range you edited is not the range your customer sees.
The stock-turn numbers make the point bluntly. Accounts running twelve to sixteen active SKUs turn their stock about 4.2 times a year. Accounts running sixty or more sit closer to 2.1. Same supplier, same freight, same rent — one of those businesses buys twice as much product with the same cash.
The Three Filters
Run every SKU through three questions, in this order, and stop at the first no.
Sell-through. Did it clear 50 per cent in twelve weeks? This is the only honest measure of demand. Units sold flatters a cheap accessory; sell-through does not.
Gross margin per facing per month. Not total margin — margin per shelf facing. A slow, expensive bag can look like a hero on paper and still be the worst use of the four facings it occupies.
Repeatability. Can you reorder it in thirty days, in a colour that will still sell next season, at a cost you can still hit your margin on? A piece that cannot be repeated is a test SKU forever, and test SKUs do not get core shelf space.
The Edit Matrix
Four tiers, one threshold each, and a hard share of open-to-buy. This is the 70/20/10 split applied to the shelf rather than to the cheque.
Tier
What it is
Sell-through test
Action
Share of open-to-buy
Core keep
Year-round proven shape
≥50% in 12 weeks
Never out of stock
60%
Scale
Verified, still climbing
45–50% and rising
Double the depth
25%
Test
New shape or colourway
No history
30–50 units, one colourway
15%
Kill
Failed either test
<25% in 60 days
Clear it, do not reorder
0%
Twelve to sixteen active SKUs is the working answer for most independents: eight to ten core keeps, three to four scaling, and four rotating test slots. Four slots is a ceiling, not a starting point. If you are carrying eight tests you are not testing, you are browsing.
The Facing Test
Here is the number that settles most arguments. Take your rent, your wages and your target profit, divide by your facings, and you get a monthly gross margin each facing has to earn. For a mid-size independent that figure lands around $120 a facing a month. Set your own; the method is what matters.
Piece
Retail
GM%
Gross margin per unit
Turns a month per facing to hit $120
Hero bag
$220
62%
$136
0.9
Mid sneaker
$85
58%
$49
2.4
Accessory
$28
68%
$19
6.3
Seasonal piece
$58
55%
$32
3.8
Read that table twice. A $28 accessory has to turn 6.3 times a month on a single facing to earn what a $220 hero bag earns in 0.9. That does not make the accessory a bad SKU — it makes it a volume SKU, and volume SKUs need a different kind of space: a bin near the till, an open wall, no storytelling, constant refilling. Put a $28 accessory in a glass case at the back of the shop and it will fail the facing test while still "selling fine."
It also kills the favourite buyer's argument, the one that goes but it's only twenty-eight dollars, what's the risk. The risk is the facing. Twenty-eight dollars of product occupying a slot that needed to earn $120 a month is not a small bet, it is a losing one.
The Ninety-Day Edit Cycle
Editing is a date, not a mood. Put it on the wall next to the reorder calendar.
Week
Action
Output
1
Pull 90-day sell-through by SKU
Ranked sheet, no opinions
2
Add gross margin per facing
The real ranking
3
Tier every SKU: keep, scale, test, kill
Written list
4
Cut decisions signed off by the buyer
Kill list, with dates
6
Markdown the kills, one step at a time
Cash released
8
Reorder the core and the scalers
Depth, not breadth
10
Write the brief for the next four tests
One page, one SKU each
12
Reset the twelve-SKU list for the quarter
The plan
Three rules make the cycle hold. Cut anything under 25 per cent sell-through at the sixty-day mark, without a debate. Demote any scaler that has sat in the same tier for two consecutive quarters — it has told you what it is. And cap any single SKU at 15 per cent of your inventory value, however well it sells, because concentration risk is the other way to lose a season.
What Went Wrong In One Autumn
A partner account opened autumn 2024 with 87 active SKUs across six categories and $41,000 of open-to-buy. The logic at the time was reasonable-sounding: cover every category, see what the customer picks. By the end of the season, 52 of those 87 SKUs had sold through below 30 per cent and were sitting on $14,600 of cash. The top twelve SKUs had produced 71 per cent of the season's gross margin.
The second error followed the first, and it is the one I watch for now. Because the cash was spread across 87 lines, there was no depth anywhere, so the eleven best-selling SKUs went out of stock in weeks five and six and stayed out. The buyer had bought the right twelve and then failed to fund them. Breadth did not just waste money on the losers — it starved the winners.
Since then that account runs a hard one-in-one-out rule. A new SKU does not enter the range unless a named SKU leaves it. It is the only mechanism I have found that actually stops a range creeping back up.
The Order Of Operations
Count your facings before you open the catalogue — the shelf is the budget, not the cheque. Rank by gross margin per facing, not by units sold and not by what you personally like. Write the twelve-SKU list and the kill thresholds down on launch day, and treat the week-four cut as a fixed date rather than a judgement call. Then keep a graveyard list: every SKU you have killed, with the reason and the date. Buyers without a graveyard list re-buy the same failure every eighteen months, because the memory of a dead style fades faster than the photograph does.
One habit worth borrowing from the tangma2088 desk: photograph the shelf, not the sample. A style that reads beautifully on a showroom table and disappears on a crowded wall has failed the only test that counts, and you will see it in a photo of the floor long before you see it in a sell-through report.
If you want the current stock depth and ex-works bands before you set your own twelve, message the tangma2088 official whatsapp and ask for the Sanyuanli shelf sheet. Ask specifically which styles have been on the floor longer than one season — those are the core keeps, and the fresh arrivals on that same sheet are your four test slots.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many SKUs should a small shop actually carry?
Twelve to sixteen active SKUs for most independents: eight to ten core, three to four scaling, up to four tests. Under 30 square metres of selling space, treat sixteen as the ceiling. Below eight you start losing the cross-sell; above sixteen you start competing with yourself for cash and for attention.
How often should I edit the range?
A full edit every quarter, with a ten-minute numbers check every month. The monthly check is a look at sell-through and nothing else — no reordering, no cutting. The quarterly edit is where you tier, cut and re-fund. Editing monthly in full is how buyers end up churning the range on noise.
What do I do with a slow seller that customers ask for by name?
Check whether they ask and buy, or ask and leave. A style that generates questions but no receipts is a conversation piece, and conversation pieces are display, not inventory — keep one on the floor for the story and do not reorder it. If it genuinely converts, it will clear 50 per cent in twelve weeks and it will not be on your kill list.
How do I stop the range growing back?
One in, one out, written down. Every new SKU needs a named SKU to displace, and the displacement happens on the day the new stock lands, not "after the season." Without that rule every supplier visit adds two styles and no supplier visit ever removes one.
Tags: #tangma2088 #qiqiyg #tangma2088official #assortmentplanning #skuediting #sellthrough #grossmargin #stockturn #guangzhousourcing #fashionwholesale #rangereview
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