What Belongs in a Retail Range Review Presentation

A range review is the retailer's scheduled re-decision of which products hold shelf space in a category. The major chains run them roughly every six months per category, and the invitation to present can arrive with about two weeks' notice. Two weeks is enough time to format a presentation. It is not enough time to build one. The work underneath a good presentation is done months before the calendar invite.

The buyer across the table runs a category profit and loss. Shelf space is fixed, so every new line you propose displaces something that is already paying rent on the planogram, the diagram that maps every product to a shelf position. Your presentation has one job: show, in the buyer's own numbers, that your product earns that space better than what holds it now.

The pricing waterfall is the spine of the presentation. It starts at the shelf price and steps down through every deduction until it reaches what you keep per unit. Retailer margin varies by category, roughly 25 to 45 percent. Then trade spend, the rebates, co-op contributions and promotional funding deducted before you are paid, which commonly runs 10 to 25 percent of gross sales. Then freight, then your cost of goods. What is left is the number the whole decision rests on.

Present the waterfall at full price and at promotional price, because you will spend a meaningful share of the year on promotion. If your margin only survives at full shelf price, the model is broken, and the buyer will find the break faster than you did. Put cost price, recommended retail price, promotional price points and case configuration on one page. Buyers make decisions from that page.

Rate of sale is units sold per store per week, and it is the number the buyer trusts least from a new supplier, because you have no scan data yet. Concede that up front. Then build the best proxy you can: your DTC velocity, sell-through from any independent stockists you already supply, and the observable performance of comparable products in the category.

Whether your forecast holds depends on numbers most founders have not modelled: units per store per week, times store count, times the weeks between purchase orders. That multiplication is also your production and cash plan. Two units per store per week across 400 stores is a very different business from the same product in 80 stores. Model both before the meeting and present the conservative case. A modest number you hit beats an impressive number you miss, because the next review will be run on your actuals.

Buyers have been burned by suppliers who won the review and failed the logistics. In FY25, 871 retail businesses entered insolvency for the first time, so supplier viability is part of the assessment whether it is said aloud or not. The operational section is not an appendix. Show your DIFOT position, delivered in full and on time, the service measure your buyer checks before your story. Show your plan for EDI, electronic data interchange, the system purchase orders and invoices travel through. EDI builds take months, not weeks, so a credible plan starts before the win, not after it. Cover GS1 barcodes, pallet compliance and how you will hit delivery windows.

The cost of getting this wrong is quantifiable. Chargebacks, the deductions retailers apply when a delivery fails compliance, commonly run 1 to 5 percent of invoice value. Note the cash timing too: the first purchase order typically lands one to six months after a review win. A working capital plan that covers that gap tells the buyer you are a lower risk, and it happens to be true.

End with a specific ask: which SKUs, at which price, in which stores or banners, supported by what promotional program. A vague expression of enthusiasm gives the buyer nothing to approve. A precise proposal gives them something to take into their category plan.

Cut most of the brand story. One minute on why the product exists is plenty; the buyer is not your consumer. Cut follower counts unless you can tie them to purchase behaviour. Cut any sentence that predicts the outcome. The buyer decides the ranging, and a supplier who presents as if the decision is already made reads as someone who has not done this before.

Range reviews run on a knowable calendar. Roughly every six months per category means you can work backwards from the next window and be ready when the two-week notice arrives.

This is the case we build for clients inside the First PO Program, sitting on numbers modelled in a fixed-fee Sprint, but the structure is not proprietary. Bring these five elements, honestly modelled, and you are ahead of most of the room. The buyer still decides. Your job is to make the decision easy to defend.