FMCG portfolios accumulate SKUs almost by default. The marketing team has reasons for each new variant, the operating team has capacity to make them, and the channel teams report that incremental SKUs lift incremental sessions. The cumulative effect is portfolio drift — SKU counts that double over five years without commensurate revenue growth, complexity that taxes operations, and customer journeys that the team can no longer cleanly describe.
The expansion discipline is the easiest to neglect and the most consequential to enforce. New SKUs should earn their place against the brand’s existing repeat-purchase metrics, not against incremental session volume. A SKU that lifts sessions but doesn’t move repeat is a SKU that’s recruiting low-quality customers — the kind that cost more to acquire than they ever return.
The consolidation discipline is to look at the portfolio quarterly and ask which SKUs are below the threshold where they earn their place. The threshold should be a function of margin contribution, repeat-driver role, and category-positioning role — not a function of who launched the SKU and how recently. SKUs that earn their place should stay; SKUs that don’t should be retired regardless of internal politics.
The walk-away discipline is rarer and harder. Sometimes the right answer is not to consolidate within a category but to exit the category entirely. The category that looked promising at launch may have shifted; the customer the brand was designed for may have moved on; the competitive intensity may have made the unit economics unworkable. Walking away — selling the brand, licensing the IP, or simply discontinuing — is occasionally the most disciplined move available.
Kaelo Commerce operates across the FMCG and consumer landscape with a deliberately constrained SKU count per brand. The portfolio is reviewed quarterly by the operating team and annually by the Operating Council. The willingness to retire SKUs — and occasionally entire brands — is the discipline that compounds. The FMCG & Consumer sector documents the operating approach.