SKU Management
KIMBERLY-CLARK PROFESSIONAL* Takes Control of SKUs.
As part of KIMBERLY-CLARK PROFESSIONAL*’s mission to help our partners to be in control of their businesses in the current economic climate we have upweighted our commitment to ongoing SKU (Stock Keeping Unit) management & optimization.
Feedback from both channel partners and end user customers has prompted an increased focus on managing the number of products in our business as these represent a significant working capital investment to our distributors as well as a big “hidden” cost in terms of administration, catalogue space, warehousing and invoicing. For our end-user customers a streamlined product range reduces complexity and eases the choice of the right product.
During the next few months, we will be removing 150 SKUs from our business across Europe. We will work with you to ensure that we offer an alternative product with a similar market position. It will remove duplication without missing to address end-user customer needs and jeopardising our distributor partner’s future revenue. We have done this by looking at marketplace trends, addressing products with low or declining volume and focussing our efforts on a strong core range of products across our washroom and workplace categories.
Commenting on the program Don Baillie, European Washroom SBU Leader said “We are committed to bringing new products and innovation to the market but we must also ensure that at the same time we phase out or transition products which have reached the end of their product life cycle. By doing this we will ensure our product offer remains simple, relevant and easy to understand for both our distributor partners and our end-users.”.
We look forward to supporting you in the future and welcome any future suggestions on range simplification.
