twelfth · Glossary
The words category teams actually use.
28 terms from retail category management, defined plainly and honestly — including the part each one is usually got wrong about. Every term has its own page with a longer explanation, a worked example and the terms related to it.
Category management
Category management
Also called catman
- Category management is running a group of related products as one business rather than as a pile of individual lines. One person owns the range, the pricing, the promotional plan and the supplier relationships for that group, and is judged on what the category as a whole earns — which is what stops a decision that flatters one line while costing the shelf around it. Category management: meaning and example →
Category role
- A category role is the job a category is meant to do for the retailer — draw the trip, carry the margin, round out the basket, or hold a seasonal peak. The role decides the yardstick. A destination category judged on margin percentage and a basket-filler judged on footfall will both be managed badly. Category role: meaning and example →
Assortment
Also called range
- An assortment is the set of products a retailer chooses to carry in a category — for the chain, a store cluster, or a channel. It is a choice about what to leave out as much as what to stock: every line added competes for the same shelf, the same working capital and the same shopper attention. Assortment: meaning and example →
Range review
- A range review is the periodic decision about which lines to add, keep, or delist in a category. It is where the year's accumulated evidence — sell-through, margin, supplier terms, competitor moves — is spent at once, which is why the quality of a review depends almost entirely on whether that evidence was captured as it happened. Range review: meaning and example →
Category captain
- A category captain is the supplier a retailer leans on for advice about a whole category — range, shelf layout, promotional calendar. The expertise is real and the incentive is real too: the same plan goes to every retailer in the market, and a captain rarely proposes cutting its own lines. Useful as input, dangerous as the plan. Category captain: meaning and example →
Cannibalisation
- Cannibalisation is a new or promoted line taking sales from something you already stock instead of adding demand. It is the difference between a category that grew and a category that rearranged itself. A line can look like a hit on its own numbers and be neutral or negative once the shelf around it is counted. Cannibalisation: meaning and example →
Own label
Also called private label, house brand
- Own label is product a retailer brands and sells itself. It usually carries more margin per unit and gives the retailer control of the price ladder, and it costs shelf space a national brand would otherwise hold. The commercial question is rarely 'how much own label' in the abstract — it is which tier and which shopper the line is for. Own label: meaning and example →
GMROI
Also called gross margin return on inventory investment
- GMROI is gross profit earned per dollar of inventory held, at cost — margin and stock turn in one number. It is the honest measure of whether a line earns its working capital, and it is format-dependent: the figure that marks a good line in a fast-turning grocery category is a poor one in slow, high-ticket ranges. GMROI: meaning and example →
Pricing
Price index
- A price index expresses your price for an article against a competitor's as a single number relative to parity. It is only as good as the match beneath it: an index built on a listing that is not genuinely the same article — different pack, different variant, a marketplace reseller — is a confident number about nothing. Price index: meaning and example →
Price position
- Price position is where your price sits against the market for a line you can actually compare — over, at, or under. It is a statement about a moment and a matched set, not a strategy. The useful version names the competitors it was measured against and when they were last seen. Price position: meaning and example →
Matched SKU
Also called product matching
- A matched SKU is a competitor listing confirmed to be the same article as one of yours. Matching is the hard part of competitor pricing and the part most often assumed: barcodes are missing or wrong, pack sizes differ, and a numeric suffix in a title is as often a model code as a multipack. A wrong match produces a price comparison that reads perfectly and means nothing. Matched SKU: meaning and example →
Price intelligence
Also called competitor price monitoring, price tracking
- Price intelligence is the practice of observing competitors' published prices for the lines you care about, matching them to your own articles, and reading the result often enough to act on it. The observation is the easy half. The value is in the matching, the recency, and knowing which gaps are real rather than an artefact of coverage. Price intelligence: meaning and example →
Markdown
- A markdown is a permanent reduction in a line's price, usually to move stock that is not selling at the price it was bought to sell at. Markdowns taken early are cheaper than markdowns taken late, and a predictable markdown pattern teaches shoppers to wait — which turns a clearance tool into a discount on full-price demand. Markdown: meaning and example →
Clearance
- Clearance is the markdown that ends a line — the price at which remaining stock is exited rather than managed. The money spent on the stock is already gone; the only live question is what the remaining units and the shelf they occupy are worth now. Clearance: meaning and example →
Promotional incrementality
Also called promo incrementality
- Promotional incrementality is the share of volume sold on promotion that would not have sold without it. The rest is demand you discounted for no reason, pulled forward from next week, or took from the line beside it. A promotion evaluated on promoted units alone will always look successful. Promotional incrementality: meaning and example →
Gross-profit floor
Also called GP floor
- A gross-profit floor is the lowest margin percentage a category will accept on a line without someone senior agreeing to it. It is a policy, not a calculation: its job is to decide which decisions need a second pair of eyes, so that the ones below the line can move without ceremony. Gross-profit floor: meaning and example →
Stock and supply
Sell-through
- Sell-through is the share of the stock available in a period that actually sold. It answers a different question from units sold: a line that sold 40 units out of 50 and a line that sold 40 out of 400 are not the same line. Read against how long the stock has been available, it is the clearest early signal that a buy was wrong. Sell-through: meaning and example →
Weeks of cover
Also called stock cover, days of cover
- Weeks of cover is how long the stock on hand will last at the current rate of sale. It connects availability and demand in one measure — and it is only as reliable as the rate of sale behind it, which recent promotions and stockouts both distort. Weeks of cover: meaning and example →
Stockout
Also called out of stock, OOS
- A stockout is a line a shopper wanted and could not buy. The cost is rarely just the missed unit: some of that demand moves to another line you own, some to another retailer, and some does not come back. It also corrupts the sales history, because a line that sold nothing while unavailable looks like a line nobody wants. Stockout: meaning and example →
Lost demand
- Lost demand is the sale that did not happen because the line was unavailable, unfindable, or priced out — and it never appears in a sales report, because reports count what sold. Estimating where it went, and whether it went to another of your own lines or out the door, is most of the value in diagnosing a soft category. Lost demand: meaning and example →
Stock transfer
- A stock transfer moves existing stock between locations instead of buying more. It is the cheapest way to fix a stockout when the units already exist somewhere in the network — and the fastest way to move a problem if the sending location was about to sell them. Stock transfer: meaning and example →
Demand forecast
- A demand forecast is the expected future sale of a line, usually per location and per week. Its accuracy matters less than its honesty about uncertainty: a forecast read as a single number invites a buy sized to it, while a forecast read as a range invites a buy sized to what being wrong would cost. Demand forecast: meaning and example →
Working in twelfth
Remit
- A remit is the commercial section a person owns in twelfth — the categories, and sometimes the explicit set of SKUs, they are accountable for. It is what makes a queue personal: work is raised against the remit that covers it, so the question 'whose is this' has an answer before anyone has to ask it. Remit: meaning and example →
Guardrail
- A guardrail in twelfth is a commercial limit every recommendation passes through, whatever raised it — a margin floor, an approval threshold, a locked supplier setting. Guardrails do not block work; they decide which work needs another person's agreement, so that the rest can move without one. Guardrail: meaning and example →
- An authority limit is the largest value a person can commit without escalation. Above it, a decision waits for sign-off. It is the control that lets a team push routine decisions down to the people closest to the category without pushing the consequential ones down with them. Authority limit: meaning and example →
Tracked set
- A tracked set is the group of articles a workspace has asked twelfth to watch competitor prices for. It is a deliberate scope rather than a whole catalogue: the lines where a competitor's price should change what you do, which is usually a small and well-argued fraction of the range. Tracked set: meaning and example →
Decision pipeline
Also called triage, pending
- The decision pipeline is the path every piece of commercial work takes in twelfth: raised into Triage, picked up into Pending, and committed to the decision record. The stages exist so that 'noticed', 'being worked' and 'decided' are different states with different owners, rather than three shades of an inbox. Decision pipeline: meaning and example →
Decision record
- A decision record is the permanent, timestamped entry made when someone commits a decision — what was committed, what had been recommended, and who committed it. Holding both figures is the point: it is the only way to see where human judgement consistently departed from the model, and in which direction. Decision record: meaning and example →