Case Study
SKU Portfolio Audit
Nineteen of Cinderhaven’s fifty SKUs scored as kill candidates. Another twenty-two as fix-or-kill. The shelf space and production complexity spent on them wasn’t earning its keep.
Most SKU decisions happen by feel — the founder likes the product, a retailer asked for it, it’s been in the line since launch. The numbers that would make the decision clear (velocity, contribution margin, shelf-space cost, production complexity, cannibalization risk) rarely get scored together. So the worst SKUs survive on the strength of one flattering metric while quietly dragging the portfolio.
What the audit finds
The Cinderhaven SKU audit scored all fifty SKUs across five dimensions and classified each into one of four action buckets:
kill
Low velocity, negative or marginal contribution, high complexity. Cutting these frees production capacity and shelf space for the SKUs that earn it.
fix-or-kill
Viable products with one broken dimension. Each gets a specific lever: a price adjustment, a distribution change, a packaging consolidation. If the fix doesn’t move the score within a quarter, it’s a kill.
maintain
Solid performers, no action needed.
double-down
High velocity, strong margin, room to expand distribution.
The velocity gradient across lines is what makes the scoring honest: Artisan Sauces (the flagship) runs at nearly twice the velocity of Snack Bites (the newest line). Some SB items are kill candidates not because they’re bad products but because they haven’t earned enough distribution to prove themselves — and the scoring framework distinguishes between “kill” and “not yet.”
See it worked through
SKU rationalization framework
Multi-dimensional scoring and visualization. Every SKU scored, classified, and mapped across six retailers over a three-year window.
sku.lailarallc.com →What you get
A full scored output for your portfolio: the kill list with quantified annual savings, a fix-or-kill action plan with one specific lever per SKU, and the methodology and queries your internal team needs to re-run it quarterly. This isn’t a one-time cleanup — it’s a decision framework you keep.
Start with a conversation.
Thirty minutes. Tell me about your portfolio and which SKUs you suspect. I’ll tell you how to score them and what a scoped audit looks like. No deck, no obligation.