Level 3 · Recommend: which products to review?

From numbers to a recommendation

Thomas will put this paragraph at the top of a deck, so it has to carry the whole analysis on its own. The structure that works is what, how much, so what:

• What did you find? Eighteen established products are the weakest in their categories; three of them barely sold at all.
• How much is at stake? $97,441 of 2025 revenue, 4.6% of what the 100 established products brought in. Dropping all eighteen would not dent the business; keeping them all costs shelf space and attention.
• So what should happen? A split decision: put the three near-zero products forward to drop, and review the other fifteen with the buyers.

A list of 18 names with no numbers is a hit list. Numbers with no list leave Thomas to do the job.

Caveats belong in the paragraph

• Revenue is not profit. A product with small revenue and a high margin may be worth keeping. One of the eighteen, the Cedar Concrete Grill Tool Set, has no unit cost on file, so its margin cannot be checked until someone fills it in.
• No stock data. “Slow” in the warehouse means units sitting on shelves. Sales show demand; only Debra’s stock counts show how much is tied up.
• Ranges and sets. A product can sell little and still matter: the third size of a rug, the matching chair of a dining set. The buyers know which.
• New launches are left out on purpose. Eight products launched during 2025, the latest in August. They get judged next year, on a full year of sales.
• One year. A full calendar year removes the season, but one bad year can be bad luck; checking 2024 for the same products is a cheap second look.

The traps in the other options

• One scale for everything. By units, 11 of the 20 slowest established products are Furniture, because furniture is expensive, not because it is unwanted.
• Judging the new. The lantern with 6 units was on sale for half the year. Comparing it with products that had twelve months is the like-for-like mistake again.
• Cause from a ranking. Nothing here looked at price. Saying a price cut will fix the tail is a guess presented as a forecast.

The report structure behind this paragraph

In a written report this paragraph is the executive summary. Below it come the objective (the SMART question from the first level), the data and its limits (what was excluded and why, the missing costs), the method (share of category revenue, the weakest three), the findings with the chart and the 18-row table, the conclusions, and the recommendations with an owner for each: the buyers for the review, Finance for the missing costs, the warehouse for stock counts.