A natural beauty care company official recently mentioned to me, off the record, how he wished more retailers would not leave important category management decisions to their distributors. This, he noted, not only relieves the retailer of responsibility, it gives someone else the ability to determine in-store assortment.

Interestingly, a week following this conversation I saw firsthand how assortment can go awry when distributors are making the calls. To be fair, in some of these examples it was also clear the retailer had lost touch with how to maximize assortment in a tight space.

My closest grocery store is a small independent about 15 minutes from my house. On a recent trip I was looking to buy large paper muffin cups. You know, the size needed for baking, well, muffins. From past experience I am keenly aware that I may be out of luck, but I proceed with cautious optimism because it's that or driving 25 more miles into the next state to shop in a "real grocery store." To no one's surprise, deep muffin papers are nowhere to be found. However, the part that makes this story so notable to me was that I came across not one, but five different brands of cupcake paper choices, including some on clip strips hanging next to those on the shelf.

Five?

Unfortunately for this retailer, as my other personal experiences attest, their assortment woes go well beyond the baking aisle. In fact, it has almost become a habit of mine to play "Guess How Many Duplicative Items are on the Shelf?" or "Head's It's in the Store, Tails They Don't Carry it."

Another one of my most recent frustrations was with fajita sauce, something one would expect to easily find, either among other Mexican food offerings or dare I suggest, in with other condiments. While I came up empty-handed on that one as well I easily found four brands of taco seasoning packets. And even more could be found across the baking aisle in a natural/gourmet/ethnic set of condiments. A manager wandered by and after being asked why there were so many taco mixes and in different locations the explanation I received was that the distributor managed the set and determined what went in there. He offered to put fajita sauce on his order sheet and then left me alone to digest this latest revelation.

Then there was the time I was making minestrone soup, which every good Italian knows is nothing without the addition of Ditalini pasta which, of course, they didn't carry either. While some may argue that I set my expectations too high and that a small store cannot afford the luxury of carrying non-core items, my study of the pasta set revealed at least four major brands were on the shelves including a store brand, all at similar price points. But the part that struck me most was that the same basic assortment was offered for each brand. Now I have to ask - with space a concern - how many types of elbow or straight pasta does a store this size truly need to carry?

Well, ironically they did get something right - despite being managed by the distributor, natural personal care products are actually placed in the HBC aisle within their own set. Go figure.