Five KPIs no category scorecard should miss

A category scorecard is a one-page contract between the commercial team and reality. If it has thirty lines, nobody reads it; if it has one, it is a sales report. Five well-chosen numbers, weighted honestly, are enough to tell whether a category is healthy and where to look first when it is not.

1. Sales value and volume, against the market

Growth on its own says little. A category growing 4% in a market growing 9% is losing. Always pair your own growth with market growth and read the gap, not the number.

2. Gross margin, in money not only in percent

Margin percentage hides mix effects. Report margin in currency as well, so a drop in percentage that comes with a rise in cash margin (a successful trade-up) is not punished by the scorecard.

3. Share of category

For a supplier, share in the retailer's category compared with share in the market. For a retailer, the category's share of the store basket. A stable share in a growing category is fine; a stable share in a shrinking one is a warning.

4. Stock: days on hand and out-of-stock

These two move in opposite directions and must be read together. High days on hand (DOH) means capital is sitting on the shelf; a rising out-of-stock (OOS) rate means the shopper is leaving empty-handed. The healthy pattern is a falling DOH with a flat OOS. A falling DOH with a rising OOS is not efficiency; it is under-ordering.

5. Shopper: penetration and frequency

How many households buy the category, and how often. Sales can grow on price alone while penetration falls, which is a category quietly losing shoppers. This is the number most scorecards leave out, and the one that predicts next year.

Weighting

• Give the shopper and stock lines real weight, not a token 5%.
• Set targets per category role: a destination category is judged on share and penetration, a convenience category on availability and margin.
• Review monthly, re-weight once a year, never mid-quarter.

The scorecard template we use in the KPIs course is available free on the resources page.