Contact us
In the world of retail, the executive leadership spotlight often shines on buying teams, category managers, and store operations. However, one group that plays a pivotal role in the operation and profitability of retail businesses often goes unnoticed: the Range and Space team. We believe they deserve their moment in the sun, and that moment is now. Here's why.
If you stop to think about where the Range and Space team sits within your retail organisation, it occupies a unique position within the ecosystem, sitting at the intersection of diverse stakeholders – buyers and category managers, store operations, supply chain, property, marketing and finance and of course, customers.
This provides the team with the ability to link decisions and actions from one function to impacts in other functions and significantly influence many of your performance metrics including sales revenue and volumes, gross profit, transaction count, basket size, waste and shrink, on-shelf availability, and labour efficiency.
When the Range and Space team is performing well, they look across categories and understand the nuances of each store, including operational constraints and customer shopping patterns. They’re involved in executing every range and store change initiative and can balance what can often be competing interests or objectives to help the internal retail ecosystem function more effectively. This holistic perspective enables them to optimise space productivity – a critical function as rents and overheads increase, and margins become more compressed.
When the team is not performing well, the cross-functional benefits can be limited or siloed, and at worst, can lead to one area achieving their goals while another area delivers adverse outcomes, such as higher costs or lower sales.
When seen as an enabler of success for multiple functional areas, your Range and Space team becomes a valuable resource to the business.
The team's insights can be crucial in responding to seasonal trends and shifting consumer preferences, ensuring that your retail offering remains relevant and capitalises on sales opportunities throughout the year.
By curating and tailoring space to meet the varied needs of customers in each location, they help create a positive experience and support all your stores to compete for customers while helping you manage profit margins, waste and other priorities.
The past few years have seen a step change in the data-driven tools available to this area of a business, with advanced data science, machine learning, open-source data and cloud technology becoming more affordable and accessible, thereby changing the game for space planning and optimisation. Leading retailers are proving the ability to utilise data to inform decisions removes much of the guesswork, leading to improvements in revenue, margins, and the achievement of strategic priorities.
Despite their critical role however, Range and Space teams still work with a lack of support in many retail businesses, particularly lacking the tools and technology bespoke to their area of expertise. Using outdated tools and processes, pieced together over many years and managed by long standing team members is common. These teams have often been positioned to focus on the execution of decisions made by other areas of the business, rather than being called upon to help these other teams make more effective, space-aware decisions that improve store performance and outcomes.
With better enablement, any space team can and should improve the value they deliver across range selection, micro and macro space activities, with their efforts directly contributing to uplifts of 5-10% in sales and margin. This can have a massive impact on the overall profit and loss statement.
To fully realise the potential of the Range and Space team, retail organisations must invest in advanced tools and processes that enable them to operate more efficiently and effectively. This includes adopting advanced analytics and data-driven decision-making platforms that provide relevant insights into consumer behaviour and store performance.
Fostering a culture that recognises and values the contributions of Range and Space teams and integrating these teams more closely with other key departments helps ensure their expertise is leveraged in strategic decision-making processes. By doing so, retailers can ensure that space-aware decisions are at the forefront of their strategy, leading to optimised store layouts, better product assortments, and ultimately, enhanced customer satisfaction and commercial returns.
If your Range and Space team is not currently contributing to your business in these ways, you’re missing a valuable opportunity and perhaps it’s time for a rethink.
Don’t let your Range and Space team be the overlooked component of future retail success. By understanding their potential, providing them with the tools and support they need, and integrating their expertise into strategic decision-making processes, retailers can unlock significant value and drive substantial improvements in both financial performance and customer satisfaction. The time has come for Range and Space teams to receive the recognition and support they deserve, enabling them to shine brightly and contribute to the overall success of the business.
We help retailers transform how their Range and Space team delivers maximum value. To learn more please get in touch at info@scalenesolutions.com.