Planogram: deciding what goes where on the shelf

A planogram is a diagram of a shelf bay showing which product sits where, how many facings it gets and at what height. It exists because shelf position changes sales independently of everything else — the same item moves differently at eye level than at ankle level — and because without one, each store arranges its stock according to whoever filled the shelf last.

What a planogram has to specify

• Position of each product in the bay, by shelf and by sequence along it.
• Facings — how many units face the customer — which is how you express relative importance.
• Shelf height assignment, with the deliberate decisions about what goes at eye level and what goes below.
• Capacity per facing, so replenishment knows how much fits before anything is ordered.
• Adjacencies: what sits next to what, since related products sell each other.
• What is not stocked, which is as much a decision as what is.

Building one without specialist software

Start from sales per product and the physical dimensions of the pack, because those two numbers drive most of the layout. Give the fastest sellers more facings rather than better positions first — facings reduce the chance of running out between replenishments, which matters more than placement for anything people come in specifically to buy. Reserve the best positions for items people buy on impulse or choose between at the shelf, since those are the decisions position can actually change. A spreadsheet with a row per product and columns for shelf, sequence, facings and capacity is enough to run this in a small chain.

Leave the bottom shelf for bulk and heavy items and the top for low-turnover stock, and then check the result from a customer's height rather than your own. A layout designed standing at a desk routinely puts the main line somewhere a shorter customer cannot comfortably reach.

Compliance is what decides whether it works

1. Photograph the bay after the first reset, and use that photo as the reference rather than the diagram.
2. Check compliance on a schedule — a planogram nobody audits drifts back to habit within weeks.
3. Make it easy to follow: label shelf edges so the correct position is obvious without consulting a document.
4. Record deliberate deviations with a reason, since a store with a genuinely different customer mix may be right.
5. Re-issue after range changes rather than letting staff improvise around discontinued lines.

Ettex Sheets holds the layout as a table — product, shelf, sequence, facings, capacity — which is enough to issue, compare and audit without specialist software. The sales data behind the decisions comes from whatever records the tills produce, and the two belong beside each other because the layout is only as good as the numbers that shaped it.