Doreen here…recently I was asked to do some measuring for a “squinch” analysis for a client. Here are just a few things that I learned along the way.
As a cataloger, effective product analysis is one of the most important tools you can use to measure your merchandising efforts.
Sometimes buyers rely on emotions and gut feelings when choosing merchandise for their catalogs. A certain product just “feels” right. This method of choosing products may work for a while if you are just starting out and have a small catalog with a very select audience. However, most marketing experts would agree that some sort of quantitative analysis is the best way to target your winners and therefore give your audience the products they are looking for.
One method of sorting out the top performers from the so-so sellers is to perform a square-inch analysis, also known as “squinch”. This method reveals the cold hard facts–it evaluates each item by showing how much it cost, the actual selling price, units sold, total sales, cost of goods, gross margin, cost of catalog space and how much the product contributes to overhead, fulfillment and profit.
I found that allocating space on a fractional basis, say 1/8 of a page works out well.
Simply stated, the productivity of each item is determined by taking the entire cost of producing the catalog divided by the number of pages, divided by the amount of space each product occupies on the page.
By measuring the amount of space each item takes up on a page, and comparing it to other items on that page you can determine which items are the most profitable and decide to either give less profitable items less space, or to eliminate them altogether.
This information can be very valuable to merchandising staff as well as creative staff when determining product offerings and space allocations for future catalogs.
